Years of investigation finally paid off on Oct. 22 when Garth Drabinsky (pictured above) and three fellow executives of Livent, Inc., a theatrical production company, were charged with a raft of fraud charges.

Garth Drabinsky

The Toronto Star was all over it like maple syrup on back-bacon: "Embattled entertainment impresario Garth Drabinsky was charged with 19 counts of fraud yesterday following a four-year investigation," wrote business reporters Madhavi Acharya, Tom Yew and Rob Ferguson. Garth & Co. face "fraud charges by the RCMP [that’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police] in connection with allegations that the group falsified financial statements, bilking investors and creditors of $500 million."

News of the charges hardly come as a bolt from the blue. The investigation into Livent has been ongoing for years. Indeed, says the Star, the charges are "the result of one of the biggest corporate fraud investigations in the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police"–and Drabinsky himself hasn’t traveled to the United States since 1999, when similar charges were unveiled on our side of the border.

Livent’s big productions have included Kiss of the Spider Woman and the long-running Phantom of the Opera in Toronto.

In its story, Reuters news agency tried, rather bizarrely, to tie the case to recent fraud cases in the U.S.: "The case marks Canada’s first high-profile prosecution of an alleged corporate accounting fraud since the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. put the issue in the public spotlight," wrote Jeffrey Hodgson in the Reuters piece. The difference here is that in those cases, thousands of people lost their jobs and, in many cases, pensions, as a result. Not that Livent’s alleged wrongdoings were minor, but four Canuck theatre-types caught with their hand in the till doesn’t seem to rise to the level of Enronian malfeasance. Though we’ll find out at the trial.

The National Post, a generally conservative Canadian daily, took the opportunity of the arrests to wax irritated at the nation’s "kindler, gentler" protocol for arrests: "We would love to give you an outline of the alleged accounting shenanigans, still unproven in court, that kept Livent looking financially fit, even as it neared disaster," apologized Derek DeClout facetiously in the Post. "But this is Canada, where your right to know even the slightest detail about a stock market scandal is trumped by the rights of the accused."

DeClout appears to be annoyed that he and his fellow journos didn’t get the pleasure of publicly humiliating the (alleged) crooks. "When police were ready to bring charges in the collapse of Adelphia Communications Corp., the company’s founder, John Rigas, offered to turn himself in. Instead, they picked him up, handcuffed him, and made sure not to block the view of the TV cameras," he notes, referring to one of the recent U.S. corporate scandals. "And Mr. Drabinsky? He went to an RCMP detachment near Pearson International Airport…[and] the police took him to the courthouse for his bail hearing, which was conveniently scheduled for the same hour as the RCMP’s press conference about the charges."

O, Canada. When will you learn to treat accused criminals with the derision they so richly deserve?

Woody In The White House?

Woody Harrelson, the boyish actor who made his name on "Cheers" and the movie White Men Can’t Jump, has in recent years made a second name as a mouthpiece for the American Left. Currently in London’s West End appearing in the play On An Average Day, Harrelson has published a piece in the Guardian, one of that country’s most prominent (and leftist) dailies. After a soft introduction about his chummy relationship with a cab driver also named Woody, Harrelson gets to the point: "I don’t believe we should be bombing cities in our quest for one man. We’ve killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war–mostly by blocking humanitarian aid…Only your prime minister doesn’t seem to have noticed."

Harrelson, MacLachlan On An Average Day

This is just the sort of thing that drives the American Right: a wealthy Hollywood entertainer criticizing United States foreign policy in the foreign press. But that’s just the beginning. What, Woody’s cabby asks him, would he do "in Bush’s shoes"?

"Easy," he answers. "I’d honour (the) Kyoto (treaty on global warming). Join the world court. I’d stop subsidizing earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon. I’d shut down the nuclear power plants. So I already have $200 [billion] saved from corporate welfare. I’d save another $100 [billion] by stopping the war on non-corporate drugs. And I’d cut the defense budget in half so they’d have to get by on a measly $200 [billion] a year. I’ve already saved half a trillion bucks by saying no to polluters and warmongers."

On An Average Day pairs Harrelson with Kyle MacLachlan (late of "Twin Peaks" and "Sex and the City") as brothers, and the reviews have been mixed. "Though the star quality of this duo is glaring from their first steps onto the stage, they are, from then on, horribly let down by the script," says the BBC. The Guardian, meanwhile, loved it: "It is a cliché that parents warp their children, but MacLachlan and Harrelson remind you how devastating that can be on an individual level."

Major League

Crain’s Chicago Business offered a report on Oct. 16 about the new Chicagoplays Theatre Guide, created by the League of Chicago Theatres after Stagebill was acquired by Playbill last summer and quickly dispatched to the dustbin of history. Writer Jeffrey Mullman assembles some glowing reviews from the guide’s users, but raises questions about the future financial viability of the project.

"Now it needs some advertising to begin covering its considerable costs. The program had no ads in September; it has two in its October issue," Mullman reports, citing the League’s president, Marj Halperin.

"That’s not nearly enough to cover its estimated first-year cost of $400,000–a steep price for a nonprofit organization with an annual operating budget of only $5 million."

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