YKS#12 Sajal&Ahad AT !! 'Vote for Asfi and Zobia'124p - Page 32

This week we check in with Morpheus Theatre, Ahad Mir and The Phantom of the Opera.

To bring down the curtain on its 22nd season, Morpheus Theatre is presenting Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta Iolanthe at the Pumphouse Theatre until May 13.

As Shakespeare observed in his comedy A Midsummer Nights Dream, when fairies are involved, the course of true love never does run smooth.

Long before the curtain rises on the story of Iolanthe, the fairy Iolanthe (Ginette Simonot) was banished for falling in love with a human.

The affair yielded a son named Stephon (Janos Zeller) who became a shepherd.

He foolishly cast his eye on the beautiful Phyllis (Winnifred Hume), who was also the object of desire for all the members of The House of Peers.

Phyllis loved Stephon exclusively until she saw him embracing Iolanthe who never actually aged and, not knowing they were mother and son, Phyllis set out for revenge, disrupting the once sedate House of Peers with the prospect of her looking for love in the highest of places.

No one does Gilbert and Sullivan better than the folks at Morpheus, and understandably so.

Part of the company's mandate has been to keep these comic operettas alive and vibrant here in Calgary.

For this production of Iolanthe, Morpheus has enlisted Calgary freelance director Kelly Reay to stage the show with help from musical director Carey Unger and choreographer Karen Iwanski.

It's true Morpheus dabbles in dramas, comedies and pantomimes, but it is the company's yearly Gilbert and Sullivan that has people flocking to the Pumphouse.

Morpheus' first staging of a G&S was The Pirates of Penzance back in 1996 and it sold out its entire two-week run so artistic producer Sean Anderson knew he'd tapped into a pretty deep well.

Since that auspicious debut, Morpheus has presented more than 90 plays entertaining more than 65,000 people.

Iolanthe runs nightly at the Pumphouse until May 13 at 7:30 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on May 6, 7 and 13.

CALGARY'S OWN AHAD MIR IS NOW THE PRINCE OF PAKISTAN

It seems like only yesterday that Ahad Mir was singing, dancing and acting his heart out on stages around Calgary.

I first took note of him when he was playing Tony in the University of Calgary Opera Company's production of West Side Story.

Then he was spouting Shakespeare in The Tempest and Macbeth and showed his dramatic teeth in a powerful production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at the Pumphouse Theatre.

He won a Calgary Theatre Critics' Critter Award for his show-stopping turn in Forte Musical Guild's Naughty But Nice and then promptly announced he was going to head over to Pakistan to see if he could get work in film and television over there.

What Mir never trumpeted while creating his resume here in Calgary was that he comes from cinema royalty.

His father Asif Raza Mir is a popular Pakistani film and television actor, director and producer.

Ahad is currently being profiled by major newspapers in Pakistan as one of that country's rising young stars and they're all surprised he chose to train and get his feet wet in Canada.

Ahad explains to entertainment journalists that he didn't want to use his pedigree to break into film and TV in Pakistan.

"It's true I'm an actor's son and sometimes things are offered us on a silver platter, but for me I wanted to do it on my own.

Ahad is currently working on a feature film as well as a TV series so he figures he has proven his worth so now he can work with his father, who is preparing two films for the Mir duo to work on in the near future.

It was thrilling to read how well Ahad is doing, but not surprising because he is a genuine quadruple threat actor.

What did jump out at me though was a remark buried in the middle of one of his interviews.

As he was talking about how all the projects he has been cast in so far he has garnered for himself.

He adds "I love Pakistan and I want to be part of this country's industry. I have no plan to go back to Canada.

Yikes.

I hope that was one of those off-the-cuff remarks actors are prone to and that he means he will still come back to work in the city even if he decides to live in Pakistan.

He could always take a hiatus from filming in Pakistan to walk the boards in Calgary again.