John La Touche News

What did our critic think of CANDIDE at Palais Theatre?

After the Ball, a new album from two-time Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole has been released in physical and digital formats! Listen to the album here! The recording finds Ebersole at the start of a brave new chapter, reflecting on life, love and family now that the last of her three adopted children has flown the nest. 

Christine Ebersole is releasing a special new album titled 'After The Ball' on Friday, September 30. BroadwayWorld has your exclusive first listen to the first track released from the album, 'A Sleepin' Bee'.

After the Ball, a new album from two-time Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole, will be released in physical and digital formats on Friday, September 30.

Run, don't walk, to see the brilliant CANDIDE at the Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis! This is the opening production of their twenty-fifth festival season, and it is, for my money, the most wonderful of the many lovely shows they've done.

The Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Youth Orchestra and a stellar cast of performers join to present a wonderful expression of Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE under the baton of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs' Artistic and Music Director Brett Weymark and theatrical direction by Mitchell Butel. 

When you hear the first few notes of the rollicking overture, you know Bernstein is genuflecting hard to Johann Strauss. Yet this is a story in which the principal characters are bayoneted, hanged, maimed, raped, prostituted, ravaged by disease, and enslaved, among other things, a story which, thematically, takes the characters and us right to the edge of the Nietzschean abyss and gives us a good long sobering look into it - not the sort of thing Strauss or Gilbert and Sullivan ever did.

On January 27, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented the Bernstein work at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with a cast that included Emmy-winning television star Kelsey Grammer. He is best remembered for his two-decade-long portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the situation comedies Cheers, Wings, and Frasier. As Voltaire and Pangloss, Grammer had a huge speaking role that he acquitted with a commanding personality and considerable wit. Surprisingly, he sang quite well, too.

92Y announces Ted Chapin, President & Chief Creative Officer of Rodgers & Hammerstein, will serve in the newly created role of Producer of Lyrics & Lyricists, beginning next season. For nearly five decades, L&L has been at the forefront of exploring and sharing the best of the American Songbook, and this opens a new chapter.

92Y announces Ted Chapin, President & Chief Creative Officer of Rodgers & Hammerstein, will serve in the newly created role of Producer of Lyrics & Lyricists, beginning next season. For nearly five decades, L&L has been at the forefront of exploring and sharing the best of the American Songbook, and this opens a new chapter.

The opening fanfare of one of the most exhilarating overtures ever to hit Broadway signals the joyous return of New York City Opera. After financial woes threatened to pull down the curtain for good in 2013, the company that was christened in 1943 as 'the people's opera' by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia has returned with a new home and an old friend, director Harold Prince's rollicking production of Leonard Bernstein, Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche and Hugh Wheeler's CANDIDE.

The second of a six-part, decade-by-decade video series sampling the legendary artist's performances of musical theatre classics.

Ronny Whyte epitomizes everything gracious, refined, and sophisticated that's become rare in music presented by artists under a certain age and temperament. Even with jazz interpretation, his accessible choices and deceptively casual delivery present songs as their authors intended. When he composes, tacit symbiosis with lyricists creates melody and images that seem to come from a less complicated era. Last Saturday night, Whyte was joined by veteran collaborators--Boots Maleson on bass, David Silliman on drums, and guest guitarist Sean Harkness--for a show that featured mostly eclectic American Songbook standards and originals from his own oeuvre.

The 2016 season of New York City Center's Tony-honored Encores! will open with Cabin in the Sky on February 10-14, 2016, with an all-star cast, including: Harvy Blanks, Chuck Cooper,Marva Hicks, Carly Hughes, Jonathan Kirkland, LaChanze, Norm Lewis, Forrest McClendon,Michael Potts and J.D. Webster. The company just gave us a special sneak peek and BroadwayWorld was there for the big day. Check out interviews with the company and a performance preview below!

The 2016 season of New York City Center's Tony-honored Encores! will open with Cabin in the Sky on February 10-14, 2016, with an all-star cast, including: Harvy Blanks, Chuck Cooper, Marva Hicks, Carly Hughes, Jonathan Kirkland, LaChanze, Norm Lewis, Forrest McClendon, Michael Potts and J.D. Webster. The company just gave us a special sneak peek and you can check out performances from LaChanze, Potts and Hughes below!

Sometimes a flop Broadway show is better appreciated after closing, and may even return as a hit!

Long Beach Opera's 2016 season has been announced and includes a new production of the 1974 version of Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta Candide, winner of four Tony Awards; the world premiere of Tobin Stokes' Fallujah, with a libretto by Iraqi-American Heather Raffo, based on the story of a US Marine and his experience during the Iraq war; Suzan Hanson starring in Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), a moving monodrama about unrequited love; and the West Coast premiere of the video-pop opera The News by Jacob TV – the Andy Warhol of new music.  

The 2016 season of New York City Center's Tony-honored Encores!series will open with Cabin in the Sky on February 10–14, 2016, followed by 1776 and Do I Hear a Waltz?. Jack Viertel is the artistic director of Encores!; Rob Berman is its music director.

After a string of highly successful shows and CD's (culminating with the 2013 Bistro Award for Outstanding Recording for Some People's Lives), Moira Danis returns to the cabaret stage with a brand new show and a new venue. Oops…I Fell In Love!, which will open at the Metropolitan Room on Sunday, March 23, 2014 at 4:00pm, explores a love affair from beginning to end to beginning again.