Billy Bishop Goes to War

Description

Billy Bishop Goes to War ranks as one of Canada's most successful and endearing musical dramas in history. The Governor General's Award-winning musical documents the glorious World War I exploits of Canadian flying ace Billy Bishop.

John Gray John Gray is the author of a novel, many magazine articles, and several stage musicals, a book on tattoos, Lost in North America: The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream (1994), Local Boy Makes Good (1987) and the internationally acclaimed Billy Bishop Goes to War (1982) with Eric Peterson. He has contributed sixty-five satirical pieces for The Journal on CBC Television, and is a frequent speaker on cultural issues. Among his many awards are the Governor General's Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award and the National Magazine Award.

" Billy Bishop is a high-flying ace of a show, capturing the humour, the hellfire and the derring-do of an extraordinary career ... The score is filled with vintage replicas of the kind of songs that sent men rushing in--and out--of battle. There are martial airs, barracksroom ditties, Kiplingesque tunes of glory, Gilbert and Sullivan-like patter songs and also a bitter brew of Brecht-Weill." -- New York Times " Billy Bishop Goes to War is a delightful--and cunningly wrought--work of art." -- New Yorker "A landmark of the Canadian theatre ... John Gray's success with Billy Bishop lies in the universality of the human individual--a universality that works precisely because Gray has kept the show on one-individual terms. He creates and deflates the hero myth in the same gesture." -- Vancouver Sun