"It's Love, Not a Favour"
Opening night of Meet Me at Vie's: A Musical Celebration of Hogan’s Alley in Olympic Village, running til May 2nd
My table for two, right beside the stage, at last night's premiere of Meet Me at Vie's: A Musical Celebration of Hogan’s Alley was set with a tablecloth, a framed photo of an East End house (251 Prior Street for me), and a double-sided handbill.
"The Alley News" handbill mixed a traditional theatre program with those things you find in coffee shops. It had ads for upcoming gigs by the play's four musicians: vocalists Krystle Dos Santos and Dawn Pemberton, Chris Davis (who played mostly piano here, but also trumpet and drums), and bassist-guitarist Steve Charles. Most of those ads were for Infidels Jazz events; Infidels co-presented Vie's with Musical TheatreWorks, who describe themselves as "the only not-for-profit company in Vancouver dedicated to the development of new musicals".
Dos Santos wrote the show about Vie's Chicken and Steak House (209 Union Street) and the Black Strathcona community around the restaurant: the primary Black neighbourhood in Vancouver's history. That community was largely driven by Black women, from running restaurants to ownership of buildings to a presence of hundreds around the church on the block.
The Vie's team is largely a reunion of Dos Santos' team from Hey Viola!, a prior stage show about Black Nova Scotian activist Viola Desmond. Dos Santos co-created Hey Viola! with Tracey Power of Musical TheatreWorks, who is the director of Vie's. Davis, Charles, and lightning designer Jillian White were also there. (Davis is American and lived in Vancouver for about 20 years, and while he's recently moved back stateside, he's in town again for a while around this production.)
Pemberton is thus the new co-star. While Dos Santos plays the restaurant proprietor Vie, Pemberton plays Nora Hendrix, Jimi's grandmother. Nora lived in the neighbourhood and worked at Vie's; the Jimi Hendrix Shrine endured on the premises long after the restaurant's 1979 closure. Dos Santos and Pemberton have a fun dynamic together and reinforce each other's stage presence well, as they've done in the Betty Davis project.
