High Life 1999 - Articles Page 10.6

The cast of 'ANNE FRANK, a musical', based on Anne Frank's life will feature 12 artists on stage to recreate Anne Frank's life filled with the touching music and lyrics written by Jean Pierre Hadida. This production marks the U.S Off-Broadway Premiere of this successful French musical which will be performed for the first time in English (adapted by Dylan Hadida). Directed and produced by David Serero, this new Off-Broadway production will take place at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street New York 10016), originally produced by Francine Disegni for Broadway Mad Production, Simon & Michal Kalfon.

HartBeat Ensemble announces the world premiere of Pegao, a family drama set in Puerto Rico in the 1970s. The new work, built a round of high-stakes game of dominos, is written by Ensemble member Cin Martinez with dramaturgy by acclaimed playwright Edwin Sanchez and is directed by Ensemble member Hannah Simms. The cast for Pegao includes Yohanna Florentino, Clara Tristan, Joel Oramas, and Angelina Adam. Performances run May 30 through June 9, 2019 at HartBeat Ensemble's Carriage House Theatre (360 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, CT). Pegao will be presented in Spanish and Spanglish with English captioning. The Saturday performances will be presented without English captions. Tickets are $25; $20 for students, seniors, and Greater Hartford Arts Councils' Let's Go cardholders. No one is turned away due to lack of funds. Tickets can be secured by calling (860) 548-9144 or visiting HartBeatEnsemble.org.

1999 marked a momentous year for Scottish rock band Travis. Singer/songwriter Fran Healy, guitarist Andy Dunlop, drummer Neil Primrose, and bassist Dougie Payne had been together since the beginning of the decade, and were gearing up for the release of their sophomore album, The Man Who, following the release of their 1997 debut, Good Feeling. Though the album found moderate success in the UK and set the band up for extensive touring—opening for the likes of Oasis—Travis were still reasonably unknown internationally. All of that was about to change.

Add together a foggy night, dead body, clues that point in different directions, twists and turns, and what do you get? Agatha Christie's The Unexpected Guest. The Unexpected Guest opened in 1958 in the West End and was turned into a novel by Charles Osborne in 1999. Test out your detective skills at Little Theatre Mechanicsburg where The Unexpected Guest will take the stage April 26-May 12. I had the opportunity to take a sneak peak of the first act and to speak with two of the actors-Kaitlyn Booth, portraying Laura Warwick, and Nova Lorraine, playing Inspector Thomas.

Seattle Rep today announced the complete casting for its highly anticipated west coast premiere production of Christina Ham's Nina Simone: Four Women, a celebration of the life and journey of one of America's most iconic singers and civil rights activists. When 'The High Priestess of Soul' Nina Simone heard about the tragic bombing deaths of four young girls in an Alabama church in 1963, the songstress turned to her music as a means of expressing the country's agony. In Nina Simone: Four Women, Ham uses Simone's 'Four Women' as the framework to explore Simone's shift from artist to artist-activist through storytelling, debate, and music, immersing audiences in the complex harmony of protest. Nina Simone: Four Women is directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton and runs April 26 - June 2, 2019 (opening night is May 1) on the Bagley Wright stage. Single tickets are on sale now (starting at $17) and are available through the Seattle Rep Box Office at 206.443.2222 or online at SeattleRep.org.

Musical Theatre West's entertaining, high-energy new production of CATCH ME IF YOU CAN---which continues performances at the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts in Long Beach through April 14, 2019---is, for the most part, a sleek, stylish, and abundantly entertaining piece of theater, filled with nostalgic fun and features a plucky anti-hero at its center whose bad behavior can both be seen as terrible and worth cheering for in his sheer audacity and skill. Despite its flaws, the show is a worthy trip back in time, especially with the presence of its two terrific lead actors Jacob Haren and Jeff Skowron as the teenage con artist and the FBI agent chasing him.

"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough," says Peter Pan, and this month it definitely seems that BroadwayHD subscribers will be getting everything they've dreamed about and even more! In April, BroadwayHD, the premier streaming service for live theater, will be adding a number of standout productions to their service including the beloved family favorite Peter Pan starring Cathy Rigby, remastered in high definition and available on streaming for the very first time, and an intriguing documentary Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. In addition, one of the most renown music festivals, the BBC Prom, will be coming to the service with the debut of BBC Prom: Dawn at Dusk and BBC Prom: Rogers and Hammerstein this month as well.

Oh, those wacky Brits: They love their comedy dry, broad and often rather lowbrow, they adore mistaken identities, hijinks in the bedchamber and a bit with a dog. And that, gentle readers, is exactly what is delivered in the deliciously irreverent, surprisingly heartfelt Shakespeare in Love - Lee Hall's stage adaptation of the 1999 Oscar-winning best film of the same name - now onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theatre in a sparkling new production from Nashville Repertory Theatre.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus, who will present their Spring Concert, L'Amore e la Vita (Love and Life) for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 6 and 7. Led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. This program, which Ketchum humorously calls the Rom-Com of opera, will feature selections from two Verdi operas I vespri siciliani and Ernani, three Donizetti operas - Don Pasquale, La fille du r giment and L'elisir d'amore, as well as operatic sequences from Bizet's Les p cheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), Delibes' Lakm , and Puccini's La rondine.

I thought throwing out my Annie CDs would be easy--I thought I only had one! Obviously that would be the indispensable Original Broadway Cast Recording with Dorothy Loudon and Andrea McArdle. How wrong I was! I knew that, as a kid, I had the tape of the 1982 movie soundtrack with Carol Burnett and Aileen Quinn (and an all-star supporting cast!), but I didn't remember buying it on CD. And when the hell did I get the CD of the 1999 TV version (with Kathy Bates and an all-star cast)? And, oh yeah... I forgot about this studio album from the 90s with studio cast queen Kim Criswell--I think I bought back in the day somehow convincing myself Ruthie Henshall was playing Annie. (Spoiler alert: She plays Grace.) Oh, and I do remember this '30thAnniversary' deluxe production with Chicago area diva (and original star of the sequel, Annie Warbucks) Alene Robertson as Miss Hannigan plus a lot of bonus material. To add insult to injury, I also have a Blu-Ray of the recent Hollywood remake with Cameron Diaz. I don't even have a Blu-Ray player! This thing is definitely going into the trash along with all the audio, but I will listen to a few tracks online for my edification.

From Friday, March 29 through Tuesday, April 9, BAM presents Strange Desire: The Films of Claire Denis, the most extensive retrospective ever presented in the US dedicated to Denis, a filmmaker consistently counted among the greatest living directors by filmmakers and critics alike. Denis' work is a delicate balance of contradictions: her films are beloved, yet elusive; influential, yet singular; grounded in corporeality, but with a shifting relationship with time. Born in France, raised in colonial Africa where her father was a civil servant, and eventually returning to France as a teenager, Denis subtly explores race and colonial relationships, love and eroticism, the texture of bodies and environments, and the elasticity of time. Following the retrospective, BAM will screen Denis' critically acclaimed new feature, the poetic science fiction film High Life (2019), starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, and Andre Benjamin. Denis will appear in person at BAM for a sneak preview show on April 3. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on April 5.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus, who will present their Spring Concert, L'Amore e la Vita (Love and Life) for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 6 and 7. Led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. This program, which Ketchum humorously calls the Rom-Com of opera, will feature selections from two Verdi operas I vespri siciliani and Ernani, three Donizetti operas - Don Pasquale, La fille du r giment and L'elisir d'amore, as well as operatic sequences from Bizet's Les p cheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), Delibes' Lakm , and Puccini's La rondine.

Kicking off the 2019 theatre calendar in Hong Kong is the feel-good classic that is Mamma Mia! Seen by over 60 million people around the world, the musical premiered in London's West End back in 1999, and is now celebrating its 20th anniversary! With no sign of it slowing down, 2018 saw the launch of its International Tour, and after months on the road, it has finally arrived in Hong Kong, opening on January 16th!

On Today, November 8 at 8:00 p.m. Music Director Daniel Barenboim leads the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra-the lauded ensemble of young musicians from Israel, Palestine, and other Arab countries that Mr. Barenboim co-founded in 1999 with his late friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said-in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. The evening's program will feature Richard Strauss's Don Quixote-with violist Miriam Manasherov and cellist Kian Soltani stepping forward from the orchestra as soloists-as well as Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. This performance-Carnegie Hall's Annual Isaac Stern Memorial Concert-will be broadcast live on WQXR 105.9 FM.

On Thursday, November 8 at 8:00 p.m. Music Director Daniel Barenboim leads the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra-the lauded ensemble of young musicians from Israel, Palestine, and other Arab countries that Mr. Barenboim co-founded in 1999 with his late friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said-in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. The evening's program will feature Richard Strauss's Don Quixote-with violist Miriam Manasherov and cellist Kian Soltani stepping forward from the orchestra as soloists-as well as Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. This performance-Carnegie Hall's Annual Isaac Stern Memorial Concert-will be broadcast live on WQXR 105.9 FM.

Matthew Morrison couldn't be more 'Glee'-ful about launching Bay Area Cabaret's 15th Anniversary Season on Sept. 30 at the world-famous Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. 'I love places that have so much history,' says the Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe nominee. Among the celebrated singers who've sung there: Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Peggy Lee and Tina Turner. And in 1961, Tony Bennett first performed 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' there, which is especially apt since the Fairmont sits high upon Nob Hill, 'where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.'

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will host Nkame, a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of the late Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayon (1967-1999), who, during her short but fertile career, produced an extraordinary body of work central to the history of contemporary printmaking in Cuba and abroad.

W;T is a 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning drama by Margaret Edson. The play also received the 'Best New Play' award for 1999 from the New York Drama Critics' Circle. Edson used her work experience in a hospital as part of the inspiration for her play. Functioning as both the narrator and a character in the play, the character of Vivian Bearing (Kristin Fern Jihnson) shifts between the present and the past, as she experiences stage four ovarian cancer through diagnosis to treatment with high-dosage experimental chemotherapy and finally, to her demise. Along the way, she also examines her life choices to discovers that she prefers kindness to intellectual detachment.

Evans's Production, with a Translation by Paula Wing, Will Feature a Cast of Three Women Bringing to Life Assassinated Journalist Anna Politkovskaya's Uncompromising Drive to Unveil Hard Truths

Celebrate America and the beginnings of our country's musical theatre history with a new look at the life of George M. Cohan in the Southern California premiere of Musical Theatre West's (MTW) production of Yankee Doodle Dandy! at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center July 6-22, 2018.  For tickets go to www.musical.org, call (562) 856-1999 ext. 4 or visit the MTW Ticket Office.  Tickets start at $20.

Walnut Street Theatre concludes its landmark 209th season with the ultimate feel-good musical, MAMMA MIA! Filled with ABBA's catchiest hits, and directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford, this high energy musical begins previews on May 15th, opens on May 23rd, and runs through July 15th on the Walnut Mainstage.

Julien's Auctions, the world record-breaking auction house, held its highly anticipated music auction, PROPERTY FROM THE LIFE AND CAREER OF PRINCE May 18, 2018 at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York in front of a packed crowd of music collectors and the Purple One's super fans bidding live on the floor, online and on the phone across the globe. Top selling items was Prince's custom made played yellow Cloud guitar which sold for an astounding $225,000 (pictured above right) well over its original $60,000-$80,000 estimate.

Walnut Street Theatre concludes its landmark 209th season with the ultimate feel-good musical, MAMMA MIA! Filled with ABBA's catchiest hits, and directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford, this high energy musical begins previews on May 15th, opens on May 23rd, and runs through July 15th on the Walnut Mainstage.

The High Line presents a new season of Out of Line. Now in its third year, this series of acts and performances features a wide range of contemporary artists from all over New York City. Performances are held monthly on the High Line at 14th Street, from May through August.

Goodman Theatre revives Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, Emily Mann's 'warming theatrical event' (Variety)that celebrates the lives of 'two strong, vibrant women dispensing joy and wisdom' (Chicago Tribune). Goodman Theatre Resident Director Chuck Smith's production features Ella Joyce and Marie Thomas as the Delany centenarians, Bessie (1891 - 1995) and Sadie (1889 -1999), respectively, as they trace their lives in a heartfelt reflection of their family history and triumphs over prejudices in times of social unrest.