Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 @ 01:37 AM

The grosses are out for the week ending 5/11/2008 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (15.5%), BOEING-BOEING (14.9%), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (12.3%), CRY BABY (10.5%), SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (9.7%), GYPSY (6.3%), THURGOOD (3.9%), MACBETH (3.8%), XANADU (3.2%), IN THE HEIGHTS (2.9%), CHICAGO (1.9%), THE LITTLE MERMAID (1.6%), THE 39 STEPS (1.3%), PASSING STRANGE (0.7%), SPRING AWAKENING (0.7%), THE COUNTRY GIRL (0.7%), JERSEY BOYS (0.5%), AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (0.1%),

Down for the week was: SPAMALOT (-16.3%), AVENUE Q (-10.7%), MARY POPPINS (-9.5%), LEGALLY BLONDE (-8.0%), RENT (-7.0%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-4.6%), A CATERED AFFAIR (-3.8%), HAIRSPRAY (-3.2%), GLORY DAYS (-3.1%), MAMMA MIA! (-2.8%), CURTAINS (-2.6%), TOP GIRLS (-2.4%), SOUTH PACIFIC (-2.1%), GREASE (-1.9%), THE LION KING (-1.5%), NOVEMBER (-1.1%), A CHORUS LINE (-0.2%),

Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 @ 01:06 AM

Luckily, it's a great story.  A descendent of slaves whose interest in the law began when, as a child, he was punished for misbehaving by having to read the U.S. Constitution, Marshall's early work with the N.A.A.C.P. fighting legal battles against institutionalized discrimination led to his victory arguing the landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate, but equal" was unconstitutional.  More than twenty years later, President Johnson appointed him as America's first black Supreme Court justice.

And even more luckily (luckilyer?) Laurence Fishburne gives a truly noteworthy performance in a role where it sometimes seems his acting chops aren't tested as much as his memorization skills.  With a warm, dignified presence that commands attention while remaining a regular guy, Fishburne, directed by Leonard Foglia, is a skilled and ingratiating storyteller.  He effectively presents Marshall as a humble man, with a rascally side, who can take pride in his achievements and his place in history while recognizing those who helped make them happen.

Photo of Laurence Fishburne by Carol Rosegg

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While Broadway audiences are getting a taste of Tennessee Williams' revised text for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Off-Off-Broadway's The Actors Company Theatre (T.A.C.T.) is treating New Yorkers to a rare production of a far more extreme overhaul.

By the time his 1948 drama Summer and Smoke, a philosophical battle of body vs. soul played out between spirited southern belle Alma Winemiller and the playboy next door, John Buchanan, Jr., closed after a disappointing three month run on Broadway, Williams was already reconsidering his characters and story.  Though his new version of the play, re-titled The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, was finished by 1951, it was perhaps because Summer and Smoke unexpectedly became a huge Off-Broadway hit in a 1952 production directed by Jose Quintero, making a star out of Geraldine Page, that the new play wasn't published until 1964 and didn't reach Broadway until 1976, having only a third of the run of its predecessor.  While Summer and Smoke is still fairly popular among regional theatres and has even had a Broadway revival, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale remains the play the author preferred and considered to be among his best efforts.

Director Jenn Thompson's beautifully acted production, the first in New York since its Broadway run, features a company that embraces the playwright's elevated language as conversational poetry.  Still set sometime before World War I in the fictional town of Glorious Hill, Mississippi, the relationship between Alma and John still takes center stage, but in a completely new approach.

Alma is now a free-spirited artistic type, feeling stifled by the stuffiness of her surroundings.  Nicknamed "the nightingale of the Delta" for her love of singing at public events, she's also committed to her literary salon gatherings and hopes to spread artistic appreciation all across the south.  But her unusually animated way of expressing herself (we first see her loudly delighting in the Fourth of July fireworks, then claiming in a panic to have gone blind from their brightness), her sing-songy speech pattern and an assortment of aggressive eccentricities keeps the locals at a respectful distance.  At first it seems that actress Mary Bacon may be overdoing Alma's affectations a bit, especially for the intimate Clurman Theatre, but Williams makes it clear through the way others describe her that an extreme performance is exactly what is desired.  She is a bit of an oddity, but Bacon finds what makes her a tragic and empathetic figure.

John Buchanan, Jr. is still the young doctor next door that Alma has been lovesick over since childhood, but the new script changes him from playboy to mama's boy.  If not romantically attracted to Alma, he is fascinated by her uniqueness, perhaps even more so because of his domineering mother's disapproval of her eccentric neighbor.  While Todd Gearhart plays John with a sweet, simple appeal, his role seems severely underwritten compared with his leading lady's and it's not until a scene near the finish, where Alma takes him to a rent-by-the-hour hotel, ready to settle for the briefest moment of intimacy, that the two become interesting as a pair.

A fine supporting cast is headed by Larry Keith as Alma's stern minister father and Darrie Lawrence as John's mother, each playing their roles with a controlling manner that comes out of parental concern.

I'll leave it to the Tennessee Williams scholars to discuss their preferences of one play over the other, but either way T.A.C.T.'s production of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale offers a rich and satisfying look at a rarely seen work of one of America's greats.

Photo of Todd Gearhart and Mary Bacon by Stephen Kunken

Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 @ 08:41 AM

The most legendary legend concerning Nanette is, of course, the one that isn't true.  Sort of.  Because although its very unlikely that a cent of the $125,000 (plus a $300,000 loan) that Broadway producer and Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee collected from selling rising star, disciplinary headache and contractual holdout Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in October of 1919 went into a musical that didn't hit Broadway until 1925, it's very likely some of the cash helped finance his Broadway production of Emil Nyitray and Frank Mandel's farce My Lady Friends, which opened that December and had a healthy seven-month run, inspiring Frazee to turn that property into a musical.

Frazee hired, as Cole Porter put it, gifted humans like Vincent Youmans (music), Irving Caesar (lyrics) and Otto Harbach (book and lyrics) to join Mandel (book) in adapting his play about a philanthropic Bible publisher extorted for money by three gold-diggers after innocently helping them financially.  The score included the popular hit "I Want To Be Happy," that legendary gift to soft-shoe dancers everywhere, "Tea For Two," and a terrific assortment of lesser-known gems like the exuberantly rhythmic "Call Of The Sea" and the effortlessly light ballad, "I've Confessed To The Breeze (I Love You)."

Although the musical theatre historian in me would have loved to see director Walter Bobbie stage the original 1925 script and score, which Frazee directed himself, it's understandable why Encores! instead opted for the revised version that opened on Broadway in 1971, which starred Ruby Keeler and achieved a sort of legendary status through Don Dunn's juicy page-turner, The Making of No, No, Nanette, which chronicled the underhanded off-stage dealings and various abrupt firings involved in reviving the show as a nostalgia piece that traded spoof appeal for simple elegance.  Burt Shevelove's revised book (adapted here by David Ives) cut a few numbers like the opening, "Flappers Are We," but it's lean, quick and funny.  The orchestrations by Ralph Burns and Luther Henderson, featuring twin pianos, eschews the traditional 1920's sound in favor of dreamlike arrangements full of lush romanticism, snazzy rhythms and grandiose flourishes.  The music floats gracefully from the thirty piece orchestra, working under the baton of music director Rob Fisher, especially during the extended dance sequences where choreographer Randy Skinner creates the most exciting moments of the night, building tap and Charleston routines into frenzied celebrations while expressing the simplicity of "Tea For Two" as romantic dance poetry.

Scenic consultant John Lee Beatty frames the onstage musicians in a white lace proscenium, which Ken Billington lights in lovely soft pastels.  Costume designer Gregg Barnes fashions the first act, set in New York, with plenty of black and white, switching to cheery multicolored pastels for the second act's beachside scenes and has the company looking swell in their period evening wear by the finale.

The silly and complicated plot begins at the Manhattan home of three-quarters-of-a-millionaire, Jimmy Smith (Charles Kimbrough, all wonderfully befuddled innocence) who, despite being utterly devoted to his wife Sue (Sandy Duncan, who can still floor an audience with her corn-fed charm and joyful dancing), can't help coming to the financial aid of pretty young ladies in distress.  When three of his lovely beneficiaries (Jen Cody as a red-hot, belty flapper, Nancy Anderson as an operatic conservatory lass and Angel Reda as a blonde bombshell) threaten to expose him as a sugar daddy if they don't get a big payoff, Jimmy's hot-shot lawyer Billy (Michael Berresse, bursting with slick song and dance charisma) is on the case.  But when Billy's shopaholic wife Lucille (the drippingly droll Beth Leavel) suspects him as the real philanderer, there's nothing left for her to do but stand tall, look fabulous and stop the show cold by lending her fluttery expressive vocals to "The Where-Has-My-Hubby-Gone Blues."

And who is this Nanette and why do people keep saying no to her?  She's the orphaned niece of Jimmy and Sue, who, although in love with legal assistant Tom rejects his marriage proposal because she wants to live a little before settling down.  Mara Davi and Shonn Wiley play their romance with straight-faced earnestness, singing beautifully and making a charming dance team.  Rosie O'Donnell lands her jokes nicely in the non-singing role of Pauline the maid (the character did have a comic solo in '25) and even gets to flash some admirable tapping.

By the way, with this production Sandy Duncan uses her program bio to announce to the world that she does not, in fact, have a glass eye.  Once again, No, No, Nanette is associated with a famous legend.

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top: Sandy Duncan and Company; Bottom: Mara Davi and Shonn Wiley

Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 @ 04:35 AM

The grosses are out for the week ending 5/4/2008 and we've got them all

Up for the week was: AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (27.1%), GLORY DAYS (21.8%), A CATERED AFFAIR (4.9%), THE LION KING (1.3%), THURGOOD (0.4%), SOUTH PACIFIC (0.3%),

Down for the week was: CRY BABY (-30.2%), SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (-29.6%), NOVEMBER (-23.8%), A CHORUS LINE (-21.3%), THE 39 STEPS (-19.5%), LEGALLY BLONDE (-17.9%), PASSING STRANGE (-16.6%), LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (-15.9%), THE LITTLE MERMAID (-15.0%), BOEING-BOEING (-14.8%), GYPSY (-13.8%), SPRING AWAKENING (-11.7%), CURTAINS (-10.4%), IN THE HEIGHTS (-10.0%), RENT (-9.5%), MACBETH (-8.7%), AVENUE Q (-8.6%), HAIRSPRAY (-8.3%), CHICAGO (-7.5%), XANADU (-6.9%), GREASE (-5.8%), SPAMALOT (-5.6%), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (-4.9%), THE COUNTRY GIRL (-4.6%), TOP GIRLS (-3.7%), MAMMA MIA! (-2.5%), MARY POPPINS (-1.9%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-1.3%), JERSEY BOYS (-0.6%),

Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 @ 05:23 PM

And while Gallagher and the supporting cast all do excellent work (Along with the slick and business-like Zien, there's Remy Auberjonois as the roll-with-the-punches playwright, Lucas Caleb Rooney as the efficient and compassionate stage manager, Anna Camp as an inexperienced young actress and Joe Roland as the dresser) it's the incomplete performances of Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand as the couple whose crumbling marriage may live or die on opening night, that bring the otherwise fine production down.

Though Freeman certainly registers as a worn down man whose personal tragedy and battles with the bottle have both wasted a once-prominent career and alienated himself from his wife, we see no hidden glimmers of the immense theatrical power Dodd insists the man once had and is still capable of.  Even when energized by the excitement of opening night, he never convinces us that Frank Elgin is as capable a stage actor as, say, Morgan Freeman.  McDormand also lacks spark as Georgie, who self-effacingly refers to herself as "the country girl."  There is little chemistry between the two (both do their best work in scenes opposite Gallagher) and we get no sense that this couple was actually in love at one time.  For two very accomplished actors working with a celebrated director, their performances simply skim the surface of Odets' drama, showing little detail and communicating little subtext.

The production has a terrific, shadowy period look under Natasha Katz's lights.  Set designer Tim Hatley contributes wonderfully gritty backstage locations and Albert Wolsky's dark-hued costumes add to the atmosphere.

While I don't normally consider the pre-opening buzz a production receives when I watch a play and write my review, it's no secret that there have been reports of this one having a rocky go at it in previews.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is simply a case where the two leads just need more time to work things out in performance and that it won't be long before they are far more effective in their roles.

Photo of Joe Roland, Morgan Freeman, Peter Gallagher and Frances McDormand by Brigitte Lacombe.

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"I don't have my glasses on so everyone's young and thin!"

Posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 @ 12:17 PM

Just as the Waters film parodied the way the 1950s have been depicted in the cinema, director Mark Brokaw's production mocks the way the era has been seen through musical theatre.  In fact, you might call Cry-Baby a clash between the rude satire that Grease was when it first hit Broadway in 1972 and the sanitized family fare it has evolved into.  The cheery, candy-colored world created by Scott Pask (set), Catherine Zuber (costumes) and Howell Binkley (lights) plays straight to material that kicks nostalgia to the curb and presents the Eisenhower era via knowing, modern day cynicism.

The sturdy and clever book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan has the James Dean-ish loner Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker (James Snyder) and peppy, wholesome blonde Allison (Elizabeth Stanley) falling for each other at Baltimore's 1954 Anti-Polio Picnic.  While the self-proclaimed squares that make up Allison's social network sing, "We avoid all temptations/We fight modern scourges!/Repress all our lustful and primitive urges," while preparing to bend over and take a vaccine needle to the butt, Cry-Baby's gang warns, in song, "You gotta watch your ass these days."

Our anti-hero got his nickname for the way he reacted when his parents, suspected of being Communist arsonists, were sent to the electric chair.  Though Allison's grandmother (Harriet Harris) tries to keep the couple apart ("You are turning this carnival into a circus!"), the high-schooler's hormones lead her to hear Cry-Baby sing at a lakeside dive.  But when a fire breaks out during a break in their make-out session, you-know-who is the main suspect.

In keeping with the spirit of the piece David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger are credited for writing songs instead of a score but that doesn't keep their collection of catchy period tunes propelling very funny, self-referential lyrics from being good theatre music.  "Girl, Can I Kiss You With Tongue?," has a classic rock ballad romanticism expressing a thought that was certainly on the minds of most high school boys, even if it could never be played on the radio.  The celebratory finale, "Nothing Bad Is Ever Gonna Happen Again," predicts that the 50s will bring an end to racism and provide decent housing and universal health care for all.  ("There are no more assassinations/No more conflicts overseas/We conquer mental illness/And venereal disease!")

Rob Ashford's choreography is some of the best to be seen on Broadway these days as he nixes nostalgia and mixes high energy period steps with character-driven visuals that contribute to the warped sense of fun.  Having a chorus of jailbirds do a tap dance with license plates on their shoes may not sound like a good idea, but it fits perfectly here and Ashford's ensuing jailbreak ballet is a wildly exuberant hit.

If there's a hitch in the evening it's that Snyder and Stanley have the unenviable task of playing the romantic leads in a show that's decidedly unromantic.  Both are in terrific form vocally and play their roles just right but they're continually overshadowed by the supporting players who get the real juicy stuff.  Alli Mauzey, for example, may not have a lot of stage time as the deranged schizophrenic with a crush on Cry-Baby, but she threatens to steal the show every time she walks on and delivers the most memorable musical moment singing the Patsy Cline parody, "Screw Loose," a song I suspect cabaret singers will be having switchblade fights over any day now.  ("Eccentric; erratic/Toys in the belfry; bats in the attic.")

Harriet Harris' star presence and impeccable comic timing are sharp as ever, though her only solo is not the songwriting team's best effort and seems to be in an uncomfortable key, keeping the quirk-mistress from really soaring with it.  Christopher J. Hanke also displays some excellent comedy chops as Allison's clean-cut, country-clubbing boyfriend ("I'd like to remind the wait staff that in the event of a nuclear attack, the shelter is for members only.") who leads the four-part harmonizing group, The Whiffles.

Chester Gregory II, who mixes James Brown moves with Little Richard vocals as Cry-Baby's best friend and the trio of pregnant teen Pepper (Carly Jibson), curvy perv-magnet Wanda (Lacey Kohl) and tough babe Mona, a/k/a Hatchet Face ("I'm ugly on the inside, too!) are all great fun and sing the hell out of their numbers.

Cry-Baby may not be the kind of show you'd take your conservative grandma to, but your crazy uncle who all the neighbors tell their kids to avoid will have a great time.

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top: James Snyder and Elizabeth Stanley; Bottom:  Harriet Harris and company.

Posted on Saturday, May 03, 2008 @ 12:41 PM

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 @ 01:29 PM

A Catered Affair will most likely not change Broadway forever – heck, not even Show Boat did that – but bookwriter Harvey Fierstein and composer/lyricist John Bucchino have broken a major rule here with positively gorgeous results.  While most musicals play on an elevated reality that makes the story sing, the realistic tone of A Catered Affair demands that the music speak.  Director John Doyle's quiet and underplayed production contains the kind of naturalistic acting rarely seen in musical theatre, made possible by a delicate score, elegantly orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, which seamlessly weaves sung lyric in and out of spoken dialogue.  It's ambitious, daring and completely captivating from start to finish.

While the authors take a few liberties with Gore Vidal's screenplay for the 1956 motion picture The Catered Affair (based on an earlier teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky) the setting remains the 1950's Bronx tenement apartment of Aggie and Tom (Faith Prince and Tom Wopat), who were rushed into marriage twenty years ago when their son Terrence was conceived.  As the story begins the financially struggling couple is expecting a large government check after their boy was killed in Korea.  Cab driver Tom wants to use the money to take advantage of an opportunity to buy a taxi medallion, but when daughter Janey (Leslie Kritzer) announces that she's going to quickly marry her boyfriend Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh) because a friend needs someone to drive her car out to California and the couple can work it into a cheap honeymoon, Aggie insists on changing all plans and using the money to give her the lavish wedding day she never had and Janey doesn't want.

Overseeing, advising and generally sticking his nose where it doesn't belong is Harvey Fierstein as Aggie's brother, Winston, the type of fellow they used to call a "confirmed bachelor," who lives with the three, sleeping on the couch.  Though his large role is only peripheral to the plot, the character's (and the actor's) charm and optimism provide necessary wisps of lightness to the generally somber proceedings.

Bucchino's music is more about emotion than melody.  Writing for characters who repress their feelings and, especially evident in Doyle's staging, do not communicate well with each other, his light chamber sound underscores dialogue until characters start singing on the same understated level of realism as they speak.  There are few applause breaks in the intermission-less 90 minutes and most of the songs (with the composer's conversational lyrics perfectly matching the bookwriter's urban non-poetry) fluidly alternate singing with speaking.  Even when Tom lets his bottled-up anger loose with "I Stayed," a wounded man's reminder to his wife that he has always been there for his family, the devastating finish comes with a spoken line, and quite a perfect one at that.

Wopat is just superb in the role, his gruff, disinterested demeanor hiding a nearly-beaten man whose personal tragedy has brought him to the edge of modest success, only to risk losing it by succumbing to his wife's desires.  Prince, as the woman living out her fairy tale dream through her daughter, has never been so subtle and so fragile.  Some of the season's best acting comes in a scene where she explains the unromantic details of her own wedding and then, left alone, sings of the wedding she envisions.  Kritzer is just wonderful, playing the daughter with a hard, sensible exterior that gradually peels away once she gets caught up in the excitement, exposing her to the hurt that comes when plans go awry.  (In one telling scene her best friend says she can't be matron of honor, or even attend at all, because she and her husband don't have the money for a dress and a suit.)

Matt Cavenaugh provides a sturdy presence in his less developed role as the groom and the trio of Lori Wilner, Heather Mac Rae and Kristine Zbornik add touches of light humor in various roles, most prominently as gossipy neighbors watching life through their apartment windows.

Set designer David Gallo's Bronx streetscape, Zachary Borovay's photo projections, Brian MacDevitt's shaded lighting and Ann Hould-Ward's costumes all provide realistic, appropriately unromanticized visuals.

While nobody would mistake A Catered Affair for the feel-good musical of 2008, you might just leave the Walter Kerr feeling good about the future of intelligent, adventurous musical theatre.  I found it exhilarating.

Photos by Photo by Jim Cox: Top: Leslie Kritzer and Faith Prince; Bottom: Tom Wopat, Faith Prince and Harvey Fierstein

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 @ 09:58 AM

The grosses are out for the week ending 4/27/2008 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: A CHORUS LINE (24.4%), PASSING STRANGE (19.3%), XANADU (17.9%), NOVEMBER (17.6%), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (14.8%), LEGALLY BLONDE (14.6%), RENT (12.8%), SPRING AWAKENING (12.6%), CRY BABY (12.6%), MACBETH (12.1%), A CATERED AFFAIR (11.7%), THE COUNTRY GIRL (10.3%), AVENUE Q (10.3%), CURTAINS (9.2%), CHICAGO (7.9%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (7.5%), LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (7.5%), IN THE HEIGHTS (7.1%), THE LITTLE MERMAID (6.5%), SPAMALOT (6.2%), TOP GIRLS (4.4%), HAIRSPRAY (4.0%), THURGOOD (3.6%), MAMMA MIA! (2.4%), MARY POPPINS (1.2%), SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1.1%), GREASE (1.0%), JERSEY BOYS (0.6%), SOUTH PACIFIC (0.3%),

Down for the week was: GYPSY (-4.6%), BOEING-BOEING (-3.9%), THE LION KING (-1.5%),

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 @ 07:16 PM

Choosing material that, if not exactly obscure is of the less-frequently earmarked pages of the American Songbook (Cole Porter's "The Laziest Gal In Town," Rodgers and Hart's "What Is A Man?"), she can keep you hanging on a word anticipating what interpretive twist she'll bring to piece, never disappointing.  Her girlish embarrassment in Porter's "Don't Look At Me That Way" and her resigned wistfulness in Francesca Blumenthal and Ronny Whyte's "If He Were Straight and I Were Young" show off sharp comic skills while she pulls off an unexpectedly sultry rendition of, of all things, Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's "Hey, Look Me Over."

Familiar Favorites like "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Bill" and "Blue Moon" are performed with an immediacy that makes each lyric hit the ear like a fresh new thought.  There is no nostalgia in a Julie Wilson performance.  At 83 she still seems to be finding new shadings for the songs she's been performing for decades.

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There's a type of play that always annoys me.  I'm sure you've all come across a few of these at one time or another.  It's the "serious comedy" where the playwright seems to feel the need to suddenly stop being funny once the deep and thought-provoking message behind the jokes is unveiled somewhere around the middle of Act II, then hits us with a bunch of good ones just before the final curtain.  Fortunately, Paul Rudnick will have none of that.  My face still hurts a bit from the two hours of laughter I enjoyed from his farcical fantasy, The New Century, a play where he can respectfully address issues involving 9/11 and AIDS without zapping the light, humorous tone so whimsically served up by director Nicholas Martin and a top-notch cast.

The first act and a half consists of three scenes, unrelated but for their theme of how straight America's increased acceptance of homosexuality can have its bizarre twists.  We begin with Linda Lavin at her dry-humored best in a solo piece where she's addressing the assembled members of a Long Island chapter of the support group called Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Trans-gendered, Questioning, Curious, Creatively Concerned And Others.  Dressed in the Massapequa interpretation of elegantly tailored by William Ivey Long, she proudly advises her fellow members that she is, "the most accepting, the most tolerant and the most loving mother of all time," and relates the story of how her three children came out to her, one at a time, concerning their sexual orientation, sexual identity and sexual fetishes, increasingly testing her non-conditional acceptance.  Both the writing and Lavin's conflicting desires for both a traditional family life and to be seen as a model of liberal tolerance are flat out hysterical.

Peter Bartlett, New York theatre's go-to guy for celebratory portrayals of gay flamboyance, does his usual delightful job playing a cable-access television host, Mr. Charles, in the second scene.  Claiming to have been kicked out of New York for being "too gay," he now broadcasts from Florida, where he gaily mocks the homosexuals who are embarrassed by his queeny personality, believing it promotes a negative stereotype.  In between answering viewer letters ("Should gays be allowed to marry?  Yes, to the old and wealthy."), angering his critics with demonstrations of the classic "nelly fit" and nailing a rapid-fire monologue that chronicles the history of gay theatre, he banters with his twink ward, Shane (a charismatically dim Mike Doyle), whose every entrance models an adorably sexy costume.  (All except one entrance, that is.)  At the scene's end Mr. Charles is approached by a station employee (Christy Pusz), whose admiration for the man inspires her to make an unusual request involving her infant son.

After intermission we're treated to a solo piece featuring Jane Houdyshell as crafts enthusiast Barbara Ellen Diggs from Decatur, Illinois, demonstrating her many kitschy creations like scrapbooks and knitted toaster cozies.  And while her description of the cut-throat competitiveness of cake decorating contests is just a scream, her presentation segues to her impression of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and memories of her deceased gay son.  While her boisterous performance turns momentarily quiet and touching, the play keeps a forward-thinking, positive outlook, just as Barbara Ellen does by memorializing her son through her handiwork.

The final scene has all five characters meeting in a New York hospital maternity ward, an appropriate place for the author to sum up his hope for the future.  The joke behind the play's title is wonderfully contrived and the perfect capper for this warm, uplifting and extremely funny evening.

Photo of Linda Lavin by T. Charles Erickson

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 @ 09:40 AM

If they only knew his masterpiece was just waiting in the wings.  After hearing of a performance of The Taming of the Shrew where husband and wife stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne had allowed some residual anger from a marital squabble to work its way into their performances, Porter got in touch with his old collaborators, married playwrights Sam and Bella Spewack, and on the night before New Year's Eve '48, they presented Broadway with one of the funniest, wittiest and most romantic musical comedies Gotham has ever seen.

The Paper Mill Playhouse's new production of Kiss Me, Kate, directed by James Brennan, has everything you'd want from a great evening of musical theatre; big laughs, terrific singing, sizzling dances, clever staging and, of course, a magnificent collection of songs ("Another Op'nin', Another Show" "Too Darn Hot" "So In Love" "Always True To You In My Fashion").  Paper Mill uses the version of the script from the 1999 Broadway revival, which includes uncredited revisions that alter the plot just a bit and add a handful of jokes that would not have been heard in a 1948 musical.  Brennan's mounting adds its own little tweaks to the text, which actually work very well.

Mike McGowan cuts a dashing figure as exasperated egomaniacal actor/director/producer Fred Graham, trying to score a Broadway hit with a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew starring himself and ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Michele Ragusa).  Though Lilli is touched by the flowers delivered from Fred's dresser on the first night of out-of-town tryouts in Baltimore, in the middle of the performance she discovers they were actually meant for Lois Lane (Yup – that's the character's name.  Amanda Watkins plays her.), the ditzy nightclub singer getting her first break in legit theatre.  All hell breaks lose onstage and off as the scorned woman takes revenge on her ex through the more physical scenes in Shakespeare's raucous comedy.

While not tearing up the stage in their rowdy scenes or shooting well-timed zingers at one another, the two stars show off lovely singing voices.  McGowan's rich and appealing baritone hits some impressive and unexpected heights while Ragusa's pretty soprano, sounding almost girlish at times, gives extra tenderness to her classic ballad, "So In Love."

Watkins is a hoot as Lois, getting laughs with the character's awkwardness reciting Elizabethan verse, but sizzling with showgirl confidence when the music turns hot.  William Ryall and Gordon Joseph Weiss, as the eloquent gangsters sent to collect on a gambling debt charged to Graham who wind up as on stage characters, are a riot in their scene-stealing roles and I've never seen a funnier performance of their show-stopper, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."

Choreographer Patti Colombo, who did some astounding work in Paper Mill's production of the dance-heavy Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, has fewer opportunities here, but impresses nevertheless.  From the hot ballet moves Watkins performs with Timothy J. Alex, Wes Hart and Stephen Carrasco in the "Tom, Dick or Harry" number to the Jack Cole inspired jazz combinations for "Too Darn Hot" and even the simple waltz-clog for the gangsters, her dances are packed with style, character and mounting excitement.  I'll buy Patti Colombo a train ticket from Paper Mill to Penn Station if somebody will have a great Broadway assignment waiting when she arrives.

Photos by Gerry Goodstein:  Top:  Mike McGowan and Michele Ragusa; Bottom:  William Ryall and Gordon Joseph Weiss 

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 @ 02:36 AM

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 @ 05:47 PM

This is the artist whose orchestral arrangements have brought extraordinary subtext, drama and humor to the original Broadway productions of Show Boat, Of Thee I Sing, Anything Goes, Porgy and Bess, Annie, Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate and My Fair Lady.  With Richard Rodgers he helped translate the distinct sounds of far-off locales into the musical theatre vernacular with Oklahoma!, The King and I, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music.  In South Pacific, the softly muted horns and lavish waves of strings that permeate the air during the most romantic moments of what is arguably Rodgers and Hammerstein's most mature and complex score are only equaled by the flip jauntiness of sliding brass he gives the show's livelier tunes.  Hearing people go nuts when the stage floor in front of conductor Ted Sperling is rolled back during the overture to reveal a formally clad thirty piece orchestra playing these divine pearls is the only proof you need that theatergoers know and appreciate the real thing when they hear it.

The beauty that Rodgers and Bennett provide musically is matched visually by set designer Michael Yeargan, who utilizes the Vivian Beaumont Theatre's thrust stage to create a vast beachscape that peaks at an upstage sand dune, and Donald Holder, who sumptuously lights evening scenes and romantic interludes.  And what Bartlett Sher's production does so well is contrast the beauty of the locale with the ugliness displayed by some who occupied those innocent shores during World War II.  It's unfortunate that he does so with so many cuts and additions to Hammerstein and Logan's book.  Even more unfortunate is that nowhere in the program is anyone credited for having made these revisions, leaving the uninformed thinking what they're watching is completely the work of the now deceased authors.

But this is an interpretation of South Pacific, and of the prejudices of Americans, that might not have been welcome when the show premiered so shortly after the war's end.  Based on James Michener's collection of short stories, Tales of the South Pacific, the action takes place on two small islands, one of which is being used as a U.S. Navy base.  With a plan of attack uncertain, the sailors, Seabees and nurses have been stuck there for months with nothing to do, suffering from boredom, tension and severe sexual frustration.  Meanwhile, the young, self-professed cock-eyed optimist, Ensign Nellie Forbush from Little Rock, Arkansas (O'Hara) has had a whirlwind romance with a local – the wealthy French planter Emile de Becque (Szot) – who she doesn't know is a widower with two bi-racial children from his deceased Polynesian wife.  The subplot involves Marine Lt. Joseph Cable (Matthew Morrison), who has arrived to try and recruit de Becque to join him on a dangerous mission that requires someone with an intimate knowledge of a neighboring island.  A Tonkinese entrepreneur named Bloody Mary (Loretta Ables Sayre), who has created an impressive business selling grass skirts and shrunken heads to the visiting yanks, introduces Cable to the beautiful young Liat (Li Jun Li), who the marine immediately has sex with, temporarily forgetting his fiancé back home.  Upon discovering Liat is Bloody Mary's daughter, and that she intends to see them married, Cable, who doesn't mind having fun with Liat but would never dream of taking her home to the family, emotionally retreats the same way Nellie retreats when presented with the reality of Emile's mixed race marriage.

While the Hammerstein/Logan book explains, while not excusing, the prejudices of Nellie and Cable as being confused kids far from home not knowing how to deal with a world that has different values from the ones they were brought up with, Sher, through both character interpretation and altering the script, plays up the less attractive aspects of all the main characters, making this South Pacific a romance that is in no way romanticized.

The fine singing actress Kelli O'Hara, whose beautiful soprano is not fully utilized in this role written for Mary Martin, plays Nellie a bit cold and introspective, even during her lighter moments.  An added line has her using a racial slur upon discovering the ethnicity of Emile's first wife and the ensuing scene, where she impulsively decides to break off their relationship, is played with such suppressed anger that you might imagine her disgusted at the thought of almost having let a man touch her sexually after touching "one of them."

Brazilian opera star Paulo Szot, making his musical theatre debut, sings "Some Enchanted Evening" and "This Nearly Was Mine" with enough elegant passion that the applause-inducing staging and lighting effects that accompany his final notes are not only unnecessary, but completely out of place in this naturalistic mounting.  I just wish that during his book scenes he would show as much passion for Nellie as he does for his politics.  Though originally written as the pacifist of the musical, a major detail in the story of why he fled France has been altered to make him a man capable of intentional violence towards others.

Matthew Morrison is very effective as Joe Cable.  As a dark and brooding presence sent on what might be considered a suicide mission, he seems to have only two things on his mind; getting laid and getting to kill some Japanese before he dies.  He appropriately plays his scene with Liat, including the soaring "Younger Than Springtime," with more self-satisfaction than tenderness.  This production restores the charm duet "My Girl Back Home" (cut from the original Broadway production but included in the film) for Cable and Nellie which helps establish some much-needed sympathy the pair requires this time around.

Danny Burstein does an excellent job as the wheeling-dealing Seabee Luther Billis (as do Victor Hawks and Noah Weisberg as his sidekicks Stewpot and The Professor), growling out his funny lines and showing such sweet and honest affection for Nellie you might be willing to see her dump the Frenchman and marry him.  Loretta Ables Sayre's Bloody Mary eschews the comic cuteness usually associated with the role and plays her as a serious-minded survivor.  "Happy Talk," where she tries to sell Cable on the idea of marrying Liat, has probably never been staged so suggestively.

And, without spoiling it for you, I'd just like to make mention of a beautiful and heartfelt moment Skipp Sudduth pulls off when his Captain Brackett momentarily drops his tough exterior.  It's unexpected, but so right.

The most interesting move Sher makes, and one that could not have been pulled off in 1949, is to cast three black actors (Mike Evariste, Jerold E. Solomon and Christian Carter) as the only non-white members of the military seen on stage.  Though they're never seen as the target of any racism, they still remain somewhat separated from the others in much of the staging.  The director goes a little overboard, though, in having the trio placed behind Morrison, observing as he sings the score's controversial song about the nature of racism, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught."  For a moment there I was afraid he was going to have them singing backup.

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top: Paulo Szot and Kelli O'Hara  Bottom:Victor Hawks, Danny Burstein and Noah Weisberg

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 @ 05:40 AM

That's what I wrote nine months ago when Patti LuPone gave one of the most frightfully emotion-packed performances I've seen in my thirty-two years of theatergoing.  Of her performance of "Rose's Turn," I wrote, "the gaping wound of her loneliness is exposed with such vicious honesty that it would be impossible to watch in real life."

Scratch that.

Oh sure, it's still the most breathtaking, emotionally packed evening of damn near perfect musical theatre in town (No, make that of theatre in town.) and Ms. LuPone's Rose is now an even more complex and finely detailed portrayal, but while she hasn't exactly turned demure on us for Gypsy's transfer to Broadway, she has seriously toned it down.  The resulting Rose Hovick that she and bookwriter/director Arthur Laurents have sent to the St. James wouldn't stand for such raw emotional displays.  Instead we see the gradually transformation of a pushy stage mother into a delusional madwoman who, in her musical climax, gleefully mocks the vaudeville performances of the daughter she called Dainty June and then, while the real-life audience cheers their approval, milks their applause in a vicious parody of the daughter who became the world's most famous stripper.  Horrifying grief and determination is traded in for spit-in-your-eye moxie as LuPone turns something great into something better.

Even set designer James Youmans is in on the act, although it isn't apparent until a minute before the final curtain that the crumbling false proscenium of his sparse design represents the fading dreams of fame that Rose clings to.  When she finally realizes the connection between how she's treated her daughters and how her own mother treated her, we get a simple but telling visual ensuring us that her dream delusions have flown away.  In the musical's final moment, when LuPone's Rose desperately grasps for the only thing in life that gave her strength and security, we see confirmation that her old dreams are gone for good.

Though the majestic Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim score takes a back seat to no other, especially when played by a full on-stage orchestra, this production might be nicknamed "Arthur's Turn" for the way the book scenes electrify with outstanding acting displayed throughout the company.

Boyd Gaines' dark-edged Herbie is a memorable portrayal, hinting at violent tendencies the man may be trying to suppress.  While clearly being with Rose has restored a sense of warmth and joy to his lonely life as a traveling candy salesman, his self-defacing comments about what a real man would do in his situation land as grim warnings.  He's a doormat, but you get the feeling he chooses to be one because he's afraid of the alternative.

As the introverted Louise who would eventually become world famous as strip-tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, Laura Benanti is first noticed with a genuinely touching rendering of "Little Lamb," ending with a tragic and tearful expression of the song's final lines.  As circumstances force Louise into the spotlight, we gradually sense that she has developed her mother's sense of humor and forceful nature, combined with a sexual intelligence that makes her rise to burlesque stardom an instantly comfortable fit. 

Leigh Ann Larkin's very effective performance as Dainty June off-sets the awful cuteness of her on-stage persona by making her a resentful icicle when the curtain goes down, speaking in an unschooled interpretation of highbrow, actorly tones – at one point seeming to take a Brechtian approach to a simple conversation with her sister.

Two of the summer's trio of gimmicky strippers – Alison Fraser as the arty Tessie Tura and Marilyn Caskey as the deadpan Electra – are joined by Lenora Nemetz, who not only belts up a storm as trumpeter Mazeppa but whips up unexpected laughter in Act I with her droll take on secretary Miss Cratchitt.   Tony Yazbeck brings a smooth, understated charm to his song and dance, "All I Need Is The Girl."  Bonnie Walker reproduces Jerome Robbins' historic original choreography.

A great musical has a great production with a great star.  This is the kind of stuff they call legendary.

Photos by Paul Kolnik:  Top: Patti LuPone; Bottom: Laura Benanti, Patti LuPone, and Boyd Gaines

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 @ 09:34 AM

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 @ 12:51 AM

The grosses are out for the week ending 4/13/2008 and we've got them all

Up for the week was: SOUTH PACIFIC (7.1%), MAMMA MIA! (5.6%), CRY BABY (5.3%), THE LITTLE MERMAID (3.6%), MACBETH (3.6%), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (2.9%), AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (2.7%), GYPSY (2.2%), MARY POPPINS (1.5%), SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1.3%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (0.7%), RENT (0.5%), GREASE (0.5%), JERSEY BOYS (0.3%), XANADU (0.3%),

Down for the week was: THE COUNTRY GIRL (-9.0%), CURTAINS (-8.0%), AVENUE Q (-6.8%), A CHORUS LINE (-5.6%), NOVEMBER (-5.4%), PASSING STRANGE (-5.2%), IN THE HEIGHTS (-4.0%), LEGALLY BLONDE (-3.2%), CHICAGO (-1.3%), THE HOMECOMING (-1.1%), THE LION KING (-0.8%), SPAMALOT (-0.6%), SPRING AWAKENING (-0.6%), HAIRSPRAY (-0.2%), A CATERED AFFAIR (-0.2%),

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 @ 04:13 PM

It's My Party (And I'll Sing 'Cause I Want To) is the name of her seven performance long birthday celebration.  Having just turned 80, her husky purr of a voice still hits the kind of exactingly colorful tones singers in their 30s would die for.  Combine that with the authoritative savvy and lyric interpreting skills that come with decades of experience and you've got an artist who seems to have never left the top of her game.

This is a woman who exudes such class and joy that she can get away with opening a show by wandering through the audience singing Kool And The Gang's disco hit "Celebrate Good Times," sticking the microphone in the faces of adoring fans when it's time to shout, "Come on!"  She can shamelessly milk the title song of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams' Applause – which she recorded even before the Broadway show opened – with a tongue-in-cheek gimmick that gets the audience clapping while giving a thrilling intensity that builds little by little to the title song of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's Celebration.

With arrangements and supporting vocals by another extraordinary artist, Billy Stritch at piano (not to mention sublime work by Tom Hubbard at bass and Jim Eklof at drums), she struts to a jazzy "Walking Happy" (Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn) after calming the room with a softly sincere "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" (Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Lowe), the lyric slightly altered to honor her audience.

To celebrate her birth month she treats us to a lush "April In Paris" (Vernon Duke/Yip Harburg) segueing into a bossa nova rendering of "I'll Remember April" (Gene de Paul/Patricia Johnston/Don Raye).  Confused by this year's March Easter, she insists on ending her April medley with Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade" anyway.  And, as is a favorite comic routine of hers, comes up with multiple variations of the song's final line.  ("I could write a gospel/If you would make it poss'ble," "I could write a missive/If you would be permissive.")

As is her custom, Maye ends the show with the song she says is her mantra, Jerry Herman's "It's Today," and at 80 years old she still exuberantly kicks her legs in the air.

In her younger days, Johnny Carson looked into the camera after one of her 76 "Tonight Show" appearances and said, "And there, young singers, is the way it's done."  She's still doing it.

Photo by Maryann Lopinto

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Some fifty years younger than Marilyn Maye is the prolific songwriter Seth Bisen-Hersh whose frequent cabaret concerts have included titles like And Then She Dumped Me… (an hour of songs about his ex-girlfriends) and The Gayest Straight Man Alive (you get the idea).  At his best, Bisen-Hersh reminds me a bit of the great Oscar Levant, with his sour, comedically fatalist approach to life.  His newest collection of songs of bitter frustration, Why Am I Not Famous Yet?, which deals with subjects near and dear to the hearts of young performers – stalled careers, lousy apartments, doomed relationships – just completed a 3-night stint at Don't Tell Mama.  And while some may be turned off by the composer/lyricist's frequent use of vulgar sexual imagery (a woman dating two men sings, "I've got a skirt stained with jizz/And I don't know whose it is.") I found a lot of his songs rather clever.

Seth is joined by a talented group of young singers.  Cait Doyle is a brassy comic who frantically tries to display her versatility in the "32 Bar Blues" and bemoans noisy city nights in "Sleep Deprivation."  Melissa Zimmerman is a charming belter who is wonderfully daffy in a 50s style lament of how the 3-year-old she baby-sits is the only man who gives her respect and unconditional love, while Elyse Beyer (filling in for Rori Nogee at the performance I attended) shows terrific lyric dexterity in a tricky patter song about a typical day for a struggling actress and the very funny "I'm Not Interested In You," where she tries to convince a male admirer that just because she's friendly to him it doesn't mean she wants to date him.  Her ardent pursuer is played by Rich Martino, who lends a warm baritone to the lonely ballad "When The Spotlight's Off" and a fun comic touch to "I Need A Studio." ("Finally an apartment that's all mine/Who cares if it's only 9 by 9.")

"My friends make children.  I make cabaret acts," says the songwriter.  "You don't have to change a cabaret act's diapers or take care of it until it goes to college.  We need less children and more cabaret acts."  Seth Bisen-Hersh is certainly doing his part to increase the cabaret act population and his off-beat, irreverent material makes for a fun time.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 @ 09:40 AM

It's New Year's Day and as the diner's philosophical waiter (Jonathan Hammond) observes how, "On January first the past, the present and the future converge," Marcy sits alone in set designer Sandra Goldmark's railroad style dining room, looking over help wanted ads while her painting career flounders.  While avoiding phone calls from her disapproving fraternal twin sister (Jenny Fellner), she recalls a visit from her widowed mom (Teri Ralston), who's got a new boyfriend and is off for a luxury cruise.  Meanwhile, two older women at nearby table, Joyce (Mary-Pat Green) and Dorothea (Janet Carroll), complain bitterly about nearly everything because they've reached the age where they feel nobody notices them.

Though it all may sound rather bleak, the mood remains upbeat and lightly comic.  Mark Berman's orchestrations for piano, cello, viola, clarinet and flute present the pleasantly uncomplicated music in a graceful manner, but Shayne's best work comes in her conversational lyrics which sometimes come out in unexpected rhyme schemes and often avoid rhyming altogether.  The choice to perform the one-act piece without applause buttons keeps the arcless plot moving freely.

On stage throughout the piece and rarely given a break from being the center of attention, Champlin's warmth and spunk, combined with sterling vocals and intelligent, emotional phrasing, keep Marcy a sympathetic presence.  Green and Carroll handle their comedy deftly, Fellner's sisterly concern is touchingly genuine and Ralston's misguided attempts to help her daughter are funny and sweet.  Hammond's unflappable waiter, sung with a soothing baritone, keeps the mood nicely grounded while Marcy's yearning for success on her own terms finds her lost in the stars.

Photo of Donna Lynne Champlin by Carol Rosegg

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 @ 03:17 AM

Since 1995, Fare For All has had only one public performance per year, along with several private showings for school groups, in the hotel's auditorium.  At first I was surprised to hear that the performance would be nearly two hours long with no intermission, but the interactive show continually pulls all the audience members into the action and the crowd I attended with was enthusiastically involved throughout.

After director Karen Oughtred warmed up the audience by helping them practice their imagination skills we were introduced to the characters, all based on real people.  Living in the hotel are its owner, James Woodhull (Greg Maklin), his daughter Sarah (Clara Barton Green) and son George (played by an actress named "Zoe!"), along with their cook Flora Miller (Joy Kelly), a former slave.  Guests include Katie Stodd (Emily Marshall), a milliner trying to land a rich husband, and a demanding Scotsman, James Stuart (Maklin).  There's a bit of a plot involving Flora wanting to take a day off to visit her hospitalized son just when she's needed to prepare a large meal for an important party, and the strong singing and dancing cast performs with gusto, but the real fun comes when the actors use audience volunteers to help demonstrate life in the 1830's.  Naturally, we all learn how to make turtle soup, but we also get a lessons in the proper way a gentleman asks a lady to dance, the types of toys kids played with in the 19^th Century, how to keep chimney fires burning all day and, my personal favorite, how ladies flirt with gentlemen using "the language of the fan."

I'm afraid it'll be another year before Fare For All is performed again, but in the meantime you can visit the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden and view the gorgeous period rooms.

Photo of Joy Kelly, Greg Maklin and Clara Barton Green by Karen Oughtred

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Okay, so it's Sunday night, you've got an hour to kill and only five bucks to spend.  You can either buy a beer and stiff the bartender (not recommended) or laugh your head off watching Leslie Collins pay tribute to the kind of folks she grew up with in her native Texas with Poteet Girls.  Directed by Erick Devine, Poteet Girls is a collection of monologues based on Collins' experiences growing up in a Dallas suburb.  The junior high school girls she portrays have some serious issues to deal with, including religion, absent parents, abstinence and coming up with the right routine for the talent portion of the local beauty pageant, but they're all handled with a gentle, realistic humor that's very funny while remaining sincere and affectionate.  Highlights include a collection of science fair projects covering topics like the church's stance on the history of dinosaurs and the ever-popular home-made volcano and a hilarious song and dance routine using a power ballad arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner."  And Leslie Collins effectively transforms herself into each distinctive character, including a smug male classmate and a chain-smoking grandma, without any costume changes.  She even gives the audience members free Girl Scout cookies at the end of the show.  How's that for class!

Poteet Girls plays Sunday nights, April 13^th, 20^th & 27^th at 9:30pm at The People's Improv Theater.

Photo by Scott Treadway

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I just got word from Christine Pedi that she'll be performing her Nightlife Award winning show, Great Dames, in Johannesburg, South Africa.  So if you know any South Africans who are into impersonations of Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, spread the word!

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 @ 02:44 AM