Kristin Salaky - Page 11

Though earlier in the primaries he admitted to being bored by showtunes like 'Oklahoma' in grade school, this Comedy Central article proves that Barack Obama has since developed quite the savvy taste for musical theatre. Unfortunately, the article fails to mention that John McCain was the original Mortimer in The Fantasticks.

Thanks to the gang at [title of show] the new parlor game sweeping the nation (or at least Chelsea) is to come up with unusual names for drag queens. The best one I could think of was 'Belle Jar' but Mike Ceceri of North Shore Music Theatre came up with what I humbly consider to be the best one evah….

Imagine Hamlet infused with a shot or two of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and you'll get an idea of the atmosphere of Moonwork's very clever and entertaining Bound In A Nutshell. Adaptors Gregory Sherman and Gregory Wolfe (who also directs) craft a new script exclusively out of lines from Shakespeare's text, resetting famous scenes and reassigning classic quotations into new contexts and creating a modern day setting where the Prince of Denmark is imprisoned in a mental institution, a surveillance camera fixed on him 24/7, for the murder of Polonius.

I'm all for creative non-traditional casting, but is Katie Holmes now playing Joe Keller, the successful businessman accused of selling faulty airplane parts to the U.S. government during World War II, in the upcoming Broadway revival of All My Sons? I only ask because this MSNBC blurb is about how she's starring in the production. I would think she'd be better suited for the supporting role of Ann Deever, the daughter of Keller's business partner who has been romantically involved with both of his two sons

While the creators of Desir may have had La Ronde in mind while dreaming up their sensual fantasia of backstage trysts, the sight of so many buff fellas in period undergarments, which, with all due respect to the sensational athletic skills on display, are certainly a selling point of the evening, reminded me more of an entry from playwright Robert Coles' legendary series of Cute Boys In Their Underpants adventures, namely Cute Boys In Their Underpants Go To France. (Yes, it's a real play!) Certainly if Olympic gymnastics offered points for eroticism (something I think they should seriously consider for London 2012), Desir would undoubtedly qualify as an evening of gold medal champions.

In this amusing and somewhat bittersweet interview with the BBC, Ruthie Henshall tells of being smuggled into Buckingham Palace regularly after performances of Cats in order to visit her secret boyfriend, Prince Edward. Though she was in love with the British royal, the relationship ended because she knew she could not continue her theatre career if they wed.

Yes, she sings it. And if you've never heard her sing it as a full-fledged, poised, articulate, sexy and self-effacingly humorous adult then you haven't really heard her sing it yet.

I never thought of myself as especially gossipy. Surely there are at least two other Michaels in this burg who set the gold standard at reporting that sort of stuff. But when ace press agent Richard Kornberg, the man who convinced half the city that Ben Brantley loved In My Life, says, 'Come here, Michael. You're gossipy,' I pay attention. So after handing me tickets for Friday night's performance of Absinthe, Kornberg wanted to make sure I knew that Daniel Bedingfield would be in the audience that night.

I generally refer to songs from musical theatre as showtunes but every so often I run into someone who thinks it's an inappropriate term. Tell us what you think in our new poll…

Sometime after Betty and Adolph and long before Hunter and Jeff, another pair of New York actors wrote a musical with juicy roles for themselves and achieved their dream of taking it to Broadway. Not exactly hippies, but inspired by the dramatic possibilities of the flower power movement, bookwriter/lyricists Gerome Ragni'>Gerome Ragni and James Rado'>James Rado devised a story where the former played Berger, a high school student and de facto leader of a tribe of Manhattan hippies, and the latter was his newly-drafted buddy Claude, who can't decide if he should join his friends in burning their draft cards and, if necessary, fleeing to Canada, or comply with his parents' wishes that he go fight in Vietnam for his country.

Please forgive my delay, dear readers, in jotting down a few thoughts on the latest Scott Siegel enterprise, the second annual All Singin', All Dancin', which scorched the Town Hall stage last Monday night. What with a bundle of new shows to take in since then (and a biggie opening up tonight) sometimes the task of summarizing a one-night-only revue has to be set aside briefly to write about new, longer-running productions.

If the old chestnut about life imitating art doesn't cross your mind a couple of times during A.R. Gurney's new comedy, Buffalo Gal, you may want to make a copy of The Cherry Orchard part of your subway reading this week. But brushing up your Chekhov isn't completely necessary to enjoy this funny little character study where the Russian playwright's story of the cultured aristocracy falling to the vulgar values of the middle class is replaced by a struggle for artistically conscious live theatre to survive while uninspired sitcoms rake in the bucks and offer immediate stardom.

An orchestra ticket for Thurgood, with one actor and a modest set, costs nearly as much as one for August: Osage County, which has a large cast and an elaborate design. Orchestra seats for [title of show] aren't much cheaper than those for The Lion King. With Broadway prices what they are, do you want to see where your money went when you attend the theatre? Or is that less important than great material and wonderful performances? Let us know at our new poll.

Playgoers with fond memories of wholesomely sexy television comedies like Love, American Style and The Love Boat may get a kick out of Flamingo Court, Luigi Creatore's trio of one-acts about romance among elderly Florida retirees. The octogenarian playwright most known to Broadway audiences for having co-written the book, music and lyrics for Maggie Flynn (ya gotta love a guy who can get a musical about the New York Draft Riots to Broadway) Creatore may not have written the laff-riot of 2008, but the evening is often very sweet and amusing, especially when he's not making fart jokes.

Early arrivals to the McGinn/Cazale for Second Stage's Theatre Uptown production of Animals Out Of Paper can fill up their spare minutes by folding up a creation or two with the free origami paper made available in the lobby. Or, if you're like me, just admire the pieces already on display.

As someone who gets a euphoric high from that strict-tempo ritard the orchestra takes toward the end of Fade Out-Fade In's overture, who considers the Broadway cast album of One Night Stand to be the perfect road trip CD and who more than once has been moved to get in front of a mirror and mime Nancy Dussault's performance of 'Love Is A Chance' while listening to Bajour, you might expect me to fit snugly into the target audience for [title of show], the musical where conversation between stars/authors Hunter Bell (bookwriter) and Jeff Bowen (composer/lyricist) is peppered with so many obscure (and some not so obscure) musical theatre references that you'd swear you just stumbled into a midnight cabaret act at Don't Tell Mama or The Duplex (a/k/a everyday martini talk at Marie's Crisis). Yes, after months of promotional YouTube videos promising it would happen, the Twenty-First Century's Montgomery and Stone have finally landed their ninety minute musical on Broadway, and to paraphrase what Gracie Allen said about Jumbo, if it continues running for as long as it hasn't been running it should be a great success.

Although that bountiful cornucopia of high praise, John 'I Loved It!' Simon, chose to heap lavish compliments on those he saw as standouts with his usual critical generosity, I'd rather not review the performances showcased by Scott and Barbara Siegel in their second annual concert of new talent, Broadway's Rising Stars. Oh, if I did, words like dazzling, beautiful and heartfelt would certainly come to mind, but I'd rather see last Monday night's show as a celebration of all the new faces without comparing their abilities at this early stage of their careers.

Though idiots like the academic assortment of Richard Nelson's Some Americans Abroad, his 1989 satire of Yankee cultural self-loathing, may be high on Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord High Executioner's little list of those whose loss would be a distinct gain to society at large, this verbose crew would undoubtedly escape the axman's blade. After all, they have tenure. And just like, as one character argues, a life sentence with no chance of execution gives a convict the freedom to kill a prison guard without fear of harsher punishment, tenure is the desired life sentence that defends these plastic-souled elitists against the consequences of their own ignorance.

This New York Observer feature on 'New Old Gays' confuses me. Do you have to actually be homosexual to be considered a New Old Gay? Because the writer is describing me and about half of my straight male friends.

Grease? Legally Blonde? Pretty obvious choices, if you ask me. If we must cast Broadway shows through TV reality programs, how about considering some of the choices in our new poll?