The Souris Valley Theatre's second musical of the season opens up tonight, and cast and crew alike will be looking to carry on with the momentum the theatre has experienced so far this summer. The wildly successful spoof Corner Gassed finished up on Sunday, and tonight Rhyme Rustler: The Ballad of Robert Service takes the stage for the first night of its three-week run.The musical tells the tale of Robert Service's time in the Yukon during the gold rush.Service, a Scottish poet, spent several years in the Canadian north, where he wrote a number of his best-known poems, including "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee."The musical's writers, Grant Paterson and Jim Dobbin, adapted some of Service's ballads, putting them to ragtime music and featuring them in the show, and also worked up a number of original tunes to carry the story along.Patterson and Dobbin, who both teach at Mount Royal University in Calgary, also make up the entire cast of the play. Dobbin plays Robert Service and Paterson plays the Ragtime Kid.Souris Valley Theatre director Ron Ror said Rhyme Rustler will be a change of pace from the farcical Corner Gassed."It's funny and exciting and very musical, but it's not a farce. It's a story of a real man and what he went through, and a little bit of Canadian history too," said Ror.The musical runs Wednesday through Sunday for the next three weeks. All shows start at 7:30 p.m., except for 2 p.m. matinees on Aug. 1, 5 and 15. There will be no show on Aug. 4.Tickets cost $21 for adults and are available from the CBO at Henders Drugs.
