through the eyes of a young girl who has been murdered. Isobel (Alexandria

Sage) wanders amidst the lives of family members and neighborhood people

discovering death all around her - literally, spiritually, and morally.

Sage does a marvelous job as the lost soul looking for a home. Enhanced

by a splendid cast comprised of Elizabeth Elkins, Lisa Pierotti, Charles

Willey, Tim Corcoran, Leo Farley, and Paula Ewin, LION IN THE STREETS

is a powerful play about the difficulties of living and dying. Thompson

presents a series of scenarios about infidelity and betrayal, illness, deception,

and other daily dilemmas. Throughout, the cast don different personas and

occasionally cavort in modern dance expressions against a background of

theatre class offers an entirely professional, way-above-average rendition of Lion In The Streets, Judith Thompson's rich and challenging 1990 drama.

The actors' controlled, complex performances are further enhanced by Jeannette Lambermont's hip, dynamic direction, and are played out against a flawless technical backdrop of set, lighting and costume.

The play, enacted by a cast of 28, is a series of dreamlike vignett

In the first act, Thompson skilfully blends tragedy with farce, so the sorrowful vignettes never descend into pure melodrama. Tantalizing, imaginative and eerily sad, the first act excites anticipation for the second.

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There is certainly a place for overtly socially active theatre in Calgary, and Sage's program/ newsletter, which, for this production includes a social worker's perspective on violence and power issues, is a unique twist. On stage, however, you need a compelling story and a sympathetic (rather than simply pathetic) character or two in order to qualify as good theatre. Lion in the Streets doesn't do the job.

Both plays contained themes of violence and oppression, LION IN THE STREETS focusing more on society's bashing of marginalised people, while SCAPISM looked at the difficulties of remaining an independent artist in the face of love.

The performances here are almost uniformly excellent, however, with all of the actors, apart from Purves-Smith, playing multiple roles. Each actor has a dud or two in their repertoire - an over-the-top rampage or a flat, uninspired portrayal. But each one scores big at least once, creating in a few broad strokes a complex, exciting character that transcends the playwright's heavy touch. Douglas MacLeod's tortured Father Hayes and Darcy Dunlop's dying cancer victim, who longs for an Ophelia-like death, are two of the best, but Susan Bristow also creates a stable of strikingly unique characters, encompassing a worried mother and a shattered rape victim. Marianne Copithorne's Rhonda is a plain-speaking delight, and Trevor Leigh perfectly embodies fearful hostility in a number of roles.

Judith Thompson's play revolves around a nine-year-old Portuguese girl named Isobel (a wonderfully quirky Esther Purves-Smith), lost and wandering through city streets searching for her home. Eventually, Isobel comes to discover that she is in fact dead, and drifts through the city in hopes of confronting her murderer. In the process, she finds herself a voyeur in the lives of her neighbors, bearing witness to their own troubled lives and warning them of encroaching evil.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jeannette Lambermont's, Eventually Isobel, Thompson Isobel, LION STREETS, Deirdre Atkinson, Judith Thompson, Ophelia Millais', Lori Ferraro, Melrose Dallas, Alexandria Sage, lion streets, preschool teacher, judith thompson's, thompson's play, playwright judith, lives neighbors, deirdre atkinson, dying cancer,
Approximate Word count = 1592
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)