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Amazing Gracie starring Pamela Campbell and Nancy Beck, is a fast-paced, vaudeville-style musical revue based on the comedy and songs of the legendary British entertainer Gracie Fields. Gracie’s career spanned over seven decades and took her all over the world. She sang for Allied troops in the jungles of the South Pacific and just behind the front lines in France. She sang for royalty and for factory workers. She appeared across Canada, including in the Maritimes. In fact, one time when she performed at the old Charlottetown Forum, she used a boxing ring as a stage!
Gracie Fields had an astonishingly broad vocal and emotional range. She would go straight from a gentle lullaby into a raucous ear-splitting whoop, and her audience loved it! Without attempting to impersonate the incomparable Gracie, Amazing Gracie keeps true to her spirit and style. Outrageously wacky songs (including Walter, Walter, Lead Me to the Altar, My Little Bottom Drawer, and Gracie’s famous The Biggest Aspidistra in the World) share the stage with familiar favourites like Danny Boy and Bless This House. Though the overall tone of Amazing Gracie is lighthearted and brilliantly silly, there are unforgettable moments of stillness and moving simplicity. Amazing Gracie is good old-fashioned fun! Pamela Campbell Islander Pamela Campbell made her debut as a clothespin on the Confederation Centre stage and has gone on to become a singer, actor, composer, recording artist, music and theatre director, voice therapist, and teacher. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, a BMus from the University of Western Ontario, and a Graduate Diploma in Voice Therapy from the Boston Conservatory. Pam performed and taught in various centres across Canada and the USA before returning home to PEI in 1989. She has appeared with such organizations as the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Canadian Opera Company, Syracuse Stage, the Charlottetown Festival, PEI Symphony, and Banff School of Fine Arts. Collaborating with Nancy Beck, Pam has toured extensively in North America with her original one-woman musical, Wingin’ It!, including a 1998 Off-Broadway run in New York City. Her recordings include For the Love O’ Burns, A Nightingale Sang, An Evening Prayer, and Wingin’ It! Nancy Beck Born and raised in Montague, PEI, Nancy Beck grew up on the music of Gracie Fields. Coming from a family of directors, actors, storytellers, magicians, and singers, Nancy inevitably ended up studying drama, receiving an MA from the University of Toronto and a BFA from the University of Calgary. She has worked across the country in theatre, music, publishing, broadcasting, and film. A lyricist, playwright, producer, and director, Nancy has developed numerous productions, including Off Her Rocker, Laugh Lines, A Nightingale Sang, The Ugly Duckling and Wingin’ It!. As an actor, she has appeared in plays and musicals such as Harvest Moon Rising, White Weddings, Temporary Insanity, Jewel, The Strike at Putney Church, and Scenes from a Wake. Nancy has done over 200 performances of her one-person play, A Rowboat in the Attic, which tells the story of Inkerman, the historic old Island house that was in her family for almost a century. Please call or email for more information: |