The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 31

Cbc rpza crpi r'zn rFi crisa MONTREAL, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1989 Works of Quebec photographers on auction block for Leucan lies. Leucan also helps promote cancer research. For tickets or further information, call Priscilla Bittar at 843-5151 or 843-8724. The works are said to be of top quality, in excellent condition, and cover the range of Morrice's career. The collection' is to be displayed at the gallery in April, and will later tour the country.

"It is through the great generosity and commitment of Blair Laing that the gallery is able to obtain and make available for the people of Canada some of the finest paintings of this great Canadian artist," said Charles Hill, the gallery's curator of Canadian art. The gift also couldn't have been more timely. With soaring art prices and static acquisitions funds, the National Gallery as all other comparable Canadian institu Tousignant, Gabor Szilasi, Drolet and choreographer Edouard Lock, who has long been fascinated by dance photography. Tickets for the gala-auction cost $100 each, and the evening includes a cocktail, a tour of the museum's just-opened exhibition of paintings from Montreal art collections around the turn of the century, speeches and a reception until midnight. The gala, a first for the city, gets under way at 7:00 p.m., with bidding starting at 9 p.m.

All profits will go to Leucan, which since 1977 has provided support and assistance to Quebec children with cancer and their fami Wizard alnnost wonderful v' surf iHi'i tin i ti -J, 'J5tr I 'n 4 Wizard of Oz at tha Elgin Theatre long on dazzle but short on drama. tions must rely increasingly on gifts in order to build and diversify its collection. Laing, who is also the author of the two-volume Memoirs of an Art Dealer, said he gave the collection because he wanted to keep the works together and to make them better known. "It is not without sadness that I am, after so many years of collecting Morrice's works, now separated from them," Laing said in a statement. "My consolation is that the collection as a whole will now be widely seen and admired." The Montreal-born Morrice has long been regarded as a pivotal Canadian painter.

Corcoran 's director quits The Washington Post WASHINGTON Corcoran Gallery of Art director Christina Orr-Cahall resigned Monday immediately before trustees were scheduled to vote on her future at the museum. She will leave her post on Feb. 1. The resignation came after a weekend of discussions with a trustee committee, which Monday pre sented to the entire board its report on the problems at the Corcoran. The members approved "in principle" the committee's recommendation for a major overhaul of the board, which has been labelled unwieldy and inflexible.

Orr-Cahall has been the focus of fierce criticism since she cancelled an exhibit of PvObert Mapplethorpe photographs in June, saying she hoped to remove the Corcoran from a brewing political battle over National Endowment for the Arts funding of potentially offensive art. Instead, she plunged the museum into a six-month-long drama. Boycotting artists forced the cancellation of two shows and left the future of a third in doubt. Painter Lowell Nesbitt withdrew a bequest. Half a dozen, staff members resigned, including chief curator Jane Livingston, who had booked the Mapplethorpe sho-- A majority of the gallery staff and Corcoran School of Art faculty had called for Orr-Cahall's resignation.

Payola promoter gets $60,000 fine Los Angeles Daily News LOS ANGELES A former independent record promoter has been sentenced to 100 hours of community service and fined $60,000 for making illegal payments to radio stations to get them to play records he was promoting. William Craig, 44, of Scottsdale, also was placed on five years' probation, during which he must complete a substance-abuse treatment program. Prosecutors said Craig used his company, Bill Craig Enterprises, to make illegal payments of nearly $200,000 to radio station program directors in exchange for adding songs to their playlists. Craig also trierl to mask the payola payments as 'oiuniate business expenses on corporate tax returns. Craig once worked for former record promoter Joseph Isgro, 42, of Glendale, who recently was indicted on payola charges and is to stand trial Jan.

23 on 51 counts including racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and obstructing justice in relation to an alleged payola scheme. on Videotron passionate opinions of sports fans. Melnick, 30, is a knowledgeable sports reporter. His prototype phone-in show was well received when it had a trial run during the fall. With Melnick becoming host of a nightly tavern sports shmooze, Blackman is beefing up his reporting staff.

Catherine Grace, a sportswriter at the defunct Montreal Daily News, has joined CJAD. Another January change will see Rod Dewar becoming the 6 p.m. voice of news on CJAD. The position of newsreadereditorialist has been vacant since Gordon Atkinson left the radio station to mount his successful campaign for a seat in the National Assembly. Dewar will replace Jim Duff, who was interim pinch-hitter for Atkinson.

Dewar was host of a mid-morning music program on CJAD from 1955 to 1970. The iconoclastic announcer left the station under a cloud of controversy after criticizing imposition of the War Measures Act. Subsequent radio work took Dewar to Britain, Toronto and Ottawa. He returned to Montreal a year ago to become freelance host of CJAD's Starlight Concert, On Jan. 15, Louise Penny will become host of Radio Noon, CBM's and phone-in program.

Penny, former host of Quebec A.M. on CBC Radio's Quebec community network, replaces Jim Coward, who will concentrate on CBC music programming. By ANN DUNCAN Gazette Art Critic A special benefit auction-gala will be held tonight at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to raise money for Leucan, a non-profit group that helps children with cancer. The black-tie event was organized by Montreal photographer Marc Drolet, and only photographs will go on the auction block as a way of marking the current 150th anniversary of the invention of the medium. In all, 22 works by 21 Quebec photographers will be auctioned, including photos by Charles Gagnon, Pierre Bogaerts, Serge By PAT DONNELLY Gazette Theatre Critic TORONTO Whoosh! There goes Dorothy, flying on a cable.

Flash! The witch is dead. And, we're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful The Wizard of Oz received a dazzling sendoff at Toronto's historic Elgin Theatre on Monday night. Toto, the cutest little mutt ever to escape euthanasia at the Brampton SPCA, stole hearts every time he perked his bushy little ears. L. Frank Baum's immortal story about an ordinary little girl whisked away into an extraordinary world, worked its magic on the younger set well represented at the gala by dozens of students from the York Montessori School.

My 11-year-old assistant critic gave the show a generous eight out of ten. She summed it up like this: "Although you could see the strings on the flying fairy, the Wizard of Oz is a hit." But this Wiz lacks the multi-generational appeal of Cats. When the Wicked Witch of the West (Dean de Gruijter) stared after Dorothy and her three pals bouncing down the aisle toward Oz and said: "There is nothing so de-. pressing as boundless enthusiasm," this less-than-enchanted adult was inclined to agree. The surfeit wasn't of enthusiasm the cast could have done with a little more of that but of meaningless activity.

i The non-stop pyrotechnics, the trapeze-artist swinging, the ran-. tic choreography and the hollow trickery of it all made the Wiz a tad tiresome. It was as if no one trusted the story and the performers to do it; on their own. Tough act to follow Judy Garland is one tough act to follow. But Karen Egan's Dorothy might have had a chance to connect with the audience if she wasn't constantly upstaged by one thing or another.

Letting the orchestra overpower Egan's thin and emotionally colorless voice during her crucial first number was unforgivable. Let's face it, if you lose it on Somewhere Over the Rainbow; it's pretty hard to get it back. The Wiz's first half hour was duller than the lull before a Midwest dust storm. The acting was stilted, the direction mundane, the set a banal imitation of a 19th-century melodrama backdrop. Tears won't he general manager of Vermont ETV is unequivocal in assessing the impact of Videotron's decision to switch PBS stations.

"This is a catastrophe for us," says Hope Green. "We had hardly any notice, and it's very distressing not least because we've just been through a pledge drive." Friday morning, Videotron subscribers some of whom pledged money last week to become members of Vermont ETV won't be able to see the Public Broadcasting Service station their dollars are supporting. The cable company, which serves 600,000 subscribers on the South Shore and in eastern parts of the MUC and Laval, is pulling the plug on Vermont ETV. Free Trade behind switch Videotron viewers who dial up channel position 14 on Friday will see WCFE-57, the PBS station in Plattsburgh. Videotron is making the switch because of copyright provisions that are part of the Free Trade agreement.

The cable company will be paying less to receive Channel 57's signal than it would for Vermont ETV. By switching from Vermont ETV to WCFE, Videotron's retransmission fee saving will be approximately $300,000, or SO cents a year for each of the system's subscribers. The financial impact on Channel 33 is quite a bit heavier. Toronto 1 The and show floor voice The an The Only a slick did Only way (Gerry baritone flerve. His in tht who needs.

does Wiz. Most G. Blair Laing, a Toronto art collector and longtime gallery owner, has given the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa an extremely generous gift of 84 works by the superb Montreal artist James Wilson Morrice (1864-1924), the gallery has announced. The collection, which includes 16 large canvases and 49 small oil sketches, is valued at $15 million, the gallery announced. is a spectacular production that's Karen Egan as keep Vermont pull in Channel 33.

But some might be forced to make the effort. Green predicts that "people who really love our service won't be as happy with Channel 57." The two PBS stations are similar but not identical. Approximately 60 per cent of their programming is the same, but because the stations serve a common area in Vermont and upstate New York, they have tried to differentiate between themselves by creating unique schedules. At the beginning of the 1980s, Channel 57 scheduled a lot of movies. Vermont ETV is the movie station now, with a late flick every night at 11.

During December, Channel 33 is telecasting 42 movies, compared to 16 on the Plattsburgh station. "We believe that movies are very strong with our Canadian viewers," says Ann Cur-ran of Vermont ETV. "They seem to have an insatiable appetite for them, and we schedule at least 30 movies a month." Curran says that her station buys the entire PBS prime-time schedule while WCFE tends to do more independent purchasing. Among the Channnel 33 programs that Channel 57 does not carry are American Playhouse, Travels, American Masters, To the Manor Born, Executive Stress, The American Experience and The Lawrence Welk Show. "Lawrence Welk is not my favorite television program" Curran says, "but it does it V- Then along came the tornado the visual effects took the by storm.

The Good Fairy Glinda (Mary Trainor) popped up through the and lent her mature belter's to the Munchkinland song. munchkins themselves were eyeful, all porcupine quills and butterfly flutters. Scarecrow (Lee MacDou-gall) did a charming rendition of Had a Brain, backed up by chorus of strutting crows. Then the Tinman (Ted Simonett) no more than his duty on Had a Heart, leaving the open for the Cowardly Lion Salsberg), to take command on the strength of his lordly singing If I Only Had the King of the Forest number Second Act was a royal tour-de-forest. Salsberg is the only performer really pours on the personality, which is exactly what the show Although George Merner his stock-comedy best as the There's no getting around it.

of the applause at the Wiz ard of Oz was for the scenery, the costumes, the magical illusions and the dog. If the Wiz seems like a show assembled by a choreographer, that's because it is. Choreographer Madeleine Paul shares the directing credits with David Taylor. And her double position seems to have given her the upper hand. Gcenes like the one in which Dorothy and her buddies are saved from poisonous dancing- poppies by a Glinda-launched snowfall are handled with amazing technical wizardry.

Drama missing But a sharp sense of the dramatic is missing throughout. Almost three hours of this is too much for a mere adult. You get distracted worrying about things-like: Why doesn't the orchestra conductor choke to death in the dry-ice fog? The kids will love it. So serious-ly consider sending them with a babysitter. Mom and Dad would be much better off catching Les Miz or The Phantom of the Opera.

ljiii.lilWMimiJJWlll.U,Hil.i.)'li i as, Dorothy and an SPCA mutt as Toto ETV station have a loyal following among older folks. We get letters thanking us for Lawrence Welk that would make you weep." Tears won't be enough to keep Vermont ETV on Videotron. Green said yesterday she may schedule a couple of special programs urging viewers to call the cable company, but the pleas have to be on the air today and tomorrow because Channel 33 is gone on Friday. The new year will bring a few radio changes to the Montreal airwaves. Beginning Tuesday, Jan.

2, Mitch Melnick will take calls and trade quips with the city's rabid rooters on CJAD's Sports-Phone. The show will air weeknights from 11:15 to midnight. Melnick no Ted Tevan CJAD sports director Ted Blackman stresses that Melnick's show "will not try to replicate Ted Tevan," who was host of a succession of noisy and uninformative Montreal sports phone-ins. Blackman promises the CJAD program will create "an atmosphere for civilized conversation." Civilized sports talk may seem an oxymoron to anyone who remembers Tevan's strident responses to cretinous callers. But is possible to do intelligent and interesting radio that spurs thought and reflects the i i arm a ti be enough to TV RADIO Mike Boone Green is still crunching numbers on what it will mean to lose her Videotron audience.

Preliminary estimates indicate that Vermont ETV will be hurting bad. Green believes that as many as 15,000 of the station's 40,000 contributors are Videotron subscribers. Their annual donations are approximately $500,000 U.S. 25 per cent of the station's fund-raising take and 10 per cent of Vermont ETV's operating budget. "This is an instant crunch," Green says cf the financial hammer-blow.

"I feel sick about it. It doesn't mean we're going belly up, but it comes in a year when the state of Vermont is having tough times and our government money will be down." Green says that Vermont ETV's broadcast signal is available to many Montrealers who can tune it in with UHF and rooftop antennas. But she is clutching at straws; 600,000 Videotron cable subscribers are not going to get out out of their armchairs and start mucking around with UHF settings to.