Red Lips, The Musical | Chris Wynters

BOOK: TIMOTHY F. RYAN

MUSIC: CHRIS WYNTERS and JEFF SMOOK

LYRICS: CHRIS WYNTERS

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FIRST PRODUCTION:

May 21 – June 1, 2001

Producing Company: The Leave It To Jane Theatre Company

Theatre: The Rice Theatre, Edmonton

Director: Timothy F. Ryan

Musical Directors: Chris Wynters/Jeff Smook

AUDIO SAMPLES

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CAST:

Aretina Bornwell: Cathy Derkach
Thomas Bornwell:Â Chris Wynters
Alexander Kickshaw: Sheldon Elter
Celestina de Grisbi: Dana Wylie

HISTORY

In 2000, Chris made a return to the theatre, fusing Captain Tractor with Leave It To Jane Theatre in a remount of the Sterling Award winning DIAMOND STUDS, a musical about the life and times of Jesse James, by Jim Waan and Bland Simpson. Although the show was not the hit it had been ten years earlier, when Chris and his band and the Janes had first combined forces to produce the show, it was still a good enough experience to cause Chris and Timothy F. Ryan to plan writing another musical of their own. Tim had had the idea of creating a new show based on THE LADY OF PLEASURE, by James Shirley and calling it RED LIPS and just like that they began to work.

Chris asked Captain Tractor’s ex-bass player Jeff Smook to collaborate on the music and the two began writing songs very quickly, landing on a style somewhere in around where alternative pop music meets jazz. The show was workshopped during that fall and winter at MACEWAN COLLEGE in Edmonton and went into production in April of 2001 and ran at the Rice Theatre that May.

Chris was never actuallyÂ intending to perform the part of Thomas Bornwell, but after asking a host of performers, whom for whatever reason couldn’t do it, or didn’t work out, he decided to step in a day before rehearsals began and signed the contracts sitting at the the table before the first read-through.

The show received rave reviews from the Edmonton Journal, See Magazine and Vue Magazine. It went on to have very well attended run and was nominated for a Sterling Award for best score.

A cast recording was produced in the weeks following the run of the show and was released on Monday, September 10, 2001. The next day things changed quite considerably on Planet Earth.

The Liquid Meld Theatre Company of Calgary, Alberta will be staging RED LIPS, THE MUSICAL in June of 2011, almost exactly ten years after the original production.