After 18 years, one would think word of North America’s largest entertainment showcase of talented 50-plus performers — the RBC Seniors’ Jubilee — would have spread to the four corners of the continent.
Indeed, the convoy of buses lined up along Simcoe Street, adjacent to Roy Thomson Hall, on each of the five days of Jubilee week, not to mention near capacity crowds packing the auditorium, would bear testimony to that belief.
Nevertheless, each year this unique cabaret is being discovered and embraced by a new bevy of fans.
After many years as Toronto Star entertainment writer/reviewer, Geoff Chapman might have assumed he’d seen the best that the metropolis had to offer. He would have been wrong.
In 2000, he heard about Jubilee. The concept reminded him of the variety shows at the London Palladium that he’d seen on television and at the venue itself, as a youth growing up in England.
“It struck me as something different and I thought I should go along and see it,” Chapman says. He did just that, wrote a review for The Star, and hasn’t missed a year since, even though he’s been retired from the newspaper since 2004. For the past three years, he has penned the write-up about Jubilee for the Roy Thomson Hall program.
“What impressed me most was the energy and the enthusiasm,” he says. “It’s in Thomson Hall — the entertainment throne, if you will — and the people on stage seem to realize they are in someplace special. They are having a wonderful time on stage and the audience is having a wonderful time right along with them.”
The reviewer admits that before his discovery of the event, he hadn’t heard of it, which might seem surprising. But, he says, “this city is constantly bombarded with entertainment options, so there are some things that kind of fly under the radar.”
However, now a fervent supporter, he’s working to raise the event’s profile, at least within his circle of friends and colleagues, exhorting them each year to come along with him to see one of the shows. Each of the five days features a different line-up, both on the auditorium stage and in the hall’s circular lobby where a variety of casual acts entertain patrons for two hours prior to the afternoon stage show.
“I’m always delighted to see the large crowds,” Chapman says. But, he wonders if people who haven’t seen the show might have a built in bias against the word “seniors,” a bit of irony since the goal of Jubilee founders and organizers, producer Glenda Richard and artistic director Wayne Burnett, has always been to demonstrate that talent is not limited by age or labels.
His hypothesis is one that Tammy Johnson Mayer can relate to. She heard about the Jubilee a few years ago and latched onto the idea as something she could do with her mother-in-law. However, “mom” was somewhat reluctant that first year, Mayer says. “I think she thought it would just be a lot of old people.”
But she was proven wrong. Both Mayer and her mother-in-law were “amazed” at the level of talent they saw on stage that first year. “I’m 42 and I love it,” Mayer says.
“It’s meaningful for me to see mom enjoy it,” she adds. “And to show her older people making a difference, especially now that she had given up driving and feels some loss of independence. I wanted her to see that life isn’t ever over and see people using their gifts at any age.”
Helen Steinberg was also blown away by the caliber and variety of talent at Jubilee, when she discovered the show through a brochure at the Royal Bank two years ago.
“I was just so impressed with the whole show,” she enthuses. “The quality, the organization of the production. It’s just amazing the number of people who perform and the ages they are. It’s simply inspirational.”
Steinberg, who’s 63, also does some jazz and Latin dancing and has been motivated by the performers she’s seen at Jubilee. She’s now considering auditioning herself and, at the very least, is determined to keep up with what she’s doing.
It seems the message that age imposes no limits, particularly on talent, is coming through loud and clear.
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