actor Ruth Nichol, the two recently wrapped up a successful run of A Little Show.

Music man loves

kids, theatre

MAGINE THE wettest, dampest, darkest day of the

year. Imagine you were a T.V. actor who had to shoot

outside for the entire day, and then imagine being told
you had to re-do the whole thing.

Jeff Hyslop doesn’t have to
imagine it. Last month he taped a
segment for Sesame Street called
“Trashbusters’’ — based on the
blockbuster Ghost Busters — at
Carisbrooke Park in North Van-
couver during one such
downpour.

EVELYN
JACOB

spotlight feature

"We had to re-shoot
everything,’ he recalls, ‘it was
exhausting.”’

Husband of local actor Ruth
Nichol and a father, Hyslop, 38,
has been tied to kids and musical
theatre throughout his career.

In 1980 he created his own
children’s T.V. show, Today’s
Special, which was beamed into
the homes of little ones across
Canada for six years.

Today's Special became T.V.
Ontario's flagship show and
Hyslop’s greatest accomplishment
as an actor. He recalls it with
warmth.

“i'm proud of it. It wasn’t just a
shiock entertainment show to
keep the kids occupied. It was
well produced and morally good.

Unfortunately, Today’s Special
was too goad to last. The show
was eventually axed because it
became too expensive for one
network to produce. And an emo-
tional Hyslop is still bitter about it.

“We really needed another
sponsor,’ he says, ‘I’m sadden-
ed by the fact that after six-and-a-
half years we were just getting it
together. T.V. is sa elusive — it
takes time to get something to
work, | felt like the rug was pulled
out from under my feet. | was
devastated.

“It's hard to live with. | should
have said something publicly
when the show was cancelled,”
he says. “‘it’s hard living in
Canada with such a lack of sup-
port for the arts. Getting funding is
such a struggle — to get a Canada
Council grant you have to do
something strange in Japanese and
walk on your earlobe.”

An accomplished dancer, singer,
actor, director and choreographer,
Hyslop has been tapping his toes

on stages across Canada since his
early ‘20s.

At the age of four he was enroll-
ed in dance classes with veteran
instructor Grace MacDonald and
by age 10 had earned his Equity
card. The next year he danced
with the Bolsiioi Ballet, who were
so impressed with the young
dancer they wanted to scoop him
up and haul him off to Russia. But
says Hyslop: ‘The Bolshoi
wanted me — not my parents, so
we said no. Otherwise | could
have been a great ballet dancer by
now.”’

Classical ballet wasn’t to be his
— but musical theatre was. Hyslop
spent four years with MUSSOC
before auditioning for the Charlot-
tetown Festival, with whom he
danced until he was 20. For two-
and-a-half years he toured the
country with Michael Bennett's A
Chorus Line and starred in Nor-
man Jewison’s movie Jesus Christ
Superstar as the apostle Phillip.

In the early ‘70s he began a long
career in T.V. — as a chorus
dancer for such CBC specials as
the Anne Murray Show and Miss
Teen Canada Pageant and his own
special, Dancin’ Man.

Despite a successful career —
Hyslop has never been out of
work — he says many of his peers
are dropping out of theatre today
for more secure jobs. But he clear-
ly enjoys the excitement of the
stage, and has, judging by all re-
cent signs, no plans of calling it
quits.

Says Hyslop: ‘We're going our
own way trying to make a fiving in
an up and down business.”

Last year he directed the
musicals Peter Pan and Aladdin,
both of which enjoyed enormous
success in Vancouver theatres and
on the road.

This month he and Nichol
wrapped up a two-month run of A
Little Show at the Arts Club
Theatre. The two wrote the show,
a musical tour of the first half of
the 20th century, because they
feared a whole generation of
musical theatre would be lost to
those who have grown up know-
ing only rock videos.

Today he is in the sridst of de-
veloping his own projects — the
stage farce Dick Dead Eye and
musical Six Women With Brain
Death or Expiring Minds Want to
Know — and he’s even thinking of
starting a new children’s T.V.
show.

23 - Wednesday, February 14, 1990 ~ North Shore News

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LOCAL ENTERTAINER Jeff Hyslop has been delighting Vancouver audiences for 20 years. Seen with wife/ |: 2 1534 Marine Drive
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