Theatre World: Kickback Scheme and Prison Term

theatre world: Before his fall from grace, the theatre mogul had produced hits including Ragtime, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Phantom of the Opera, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, according to The Chronicle Herald. Sousatzka, which is some five years in the making, makes its world premiere in Toronto on Thursday ahead of a planned Broadway run later this year. Drabinsky's return to the theatre world comes nearly a decade after he was found guilty of two counts of fraud and sentenced to a five-year prison term for his role in manipulating expenses and a kickback scheme that cost Livent Inc. investors an estimated 500 million. With recent stories of asylum-seekers in Canada and abroad looming prominently in the headlines, the fictionalized tale seems particularly timely. All the characters and their stories resulted in a circumstance where refugees and exile became the predominant history of each of them, Drabinsky said in an interview. The musical is set in 1982 London, but flashes back to Warsaw before the Second World War and during the Nazi occupation, and to Soweto, a township in Johannesburg, South Africa, where deadly riots over education broke out in 1976. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.