NEWS photos Torry Peters

FTER THREE

previews, Ruth Nichol

and Kevin McNulty
discovered they had been
missing a page of script.

Nobody had noticed, and if the
playwright had not been there, the
play Schedules would now be
continuing without those chunks
of dialogue.

But it likely would not have mat-
tered — Ruth Nicho! has never
been at a loss for words.

in Grade 6 she talked her In-
vermere Elementary School class

STEPHEN
BARRINGTON

feature writer

into doing a play ~- ‘My first
shot at producing’ — but details
of title and role are now long
forgotten.

Eighteen years ago she appeared
in her first paying role in One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest; later she
quit her job as a bank teller to go
into theatre full time.

‘4’m shy, but | try to overcome
it,’ says the North Shore’s Nichol,
39. ‘That's the reason | went into
this business.”

Shy? Her? It is hard to believe.

She talks rapid-fire, with the
same infectious energy that has
endeared her to audiences across
the country for productions such
as the Stratford Festival's Pirates of
Penzance and the Arts Club’s
Schedules, her latest appearance.

Jetting back and forth across the
country with her husband, well-
known dancer and choreographer
Jeff Hyslop, the two lived half the
year in Toronto and half in Van-
couver, recently returning here, at
least for a while.

Of bad reviews — she has had
her share — she says: “I think
I'm hurt.”

But she adds: “‘If I’m not good |
have to own up and admit that.
It’s a surprise and it gives you
something to think about; | re-
examine it.”

With a love for musical theatre,
she recently appeared with friend
Diane Stapley in Take Two Mod-
ern Housewives for Calgary's
Lunch Box Theatre — “two old
broads” doing a cabaret.

She says theatre lets her “learn
about myself when ! can dig down
and look.”’ Among recent learn-

RUTH NICHOL...finding
out she is not as shy as she
thought.

21 - Friday, October 7, 1988 - North Shore News

Actress Ruth Nichol? Are

ings: she is not as shy as she
thought.

“The most important thing is
what I think,” she says of her per-
formances. ‘‘| wouldn’t want to
cheat an audience, and | hope
what I’m giving will come through
in what | do.”

A self-described “‘bit of a
homebody,”’ she started her hefty

you kidding?

list of past productions with the
long-running hit musical Jacques
Brel is Alive and Well and Living in
Paris.

She can now be seen in Sched-
ules — an adult comedy of the
‘80s by Canadian playwright Bruce
McManus — at the Arts Club’s
Seymour Street Stage.

Info: 687-1644 or 280-4444,

* GRAND OPENING TONIGHT *

att

New at the Lynnwood Inn
* Live Enferiainment *
In the pub!

Kenny Shaw (2 shows) 9 & 11:00 pm
The Roosters (all night) from 8:00 pm
“Come down home for some
up-town. country’

Main Street & Mountain Highway