Cole Porter News

Northwest Savoyards has announced the opening of Cole Porter's beloved song & dance show, Anything Goes, at the Historic Everett Theatre, Friday, June 8th through Sunday, June 17th.

Recently, conductor Keith Lockhart was joined by Bernadette Peters to present the schedule for the Boston Pops' Spring 2012 season. Peters was the guest during the Opening Night concert at Boston's beautiful Symphony Hall. As stellar as she is, Peters is only one of the sensational artists who have been scheduled to appear with the Boston Pops which is celebrating its 127th season. On June 5th, 6th and 7th, Broadway's Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley will perform "A Tribute to Cole Porter". American Idol's Melinda Doolittle will join Gospel singer Crystal Aitkin and Charles Floyd for the 20th Gospel Night Celebration on June 9th. Although many people know Steve Martin as a comic actor and playwright, he is also a very serious musician who will be bringing his bluegrass band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, to play with the Pops on May 29th and 30th. Anne Hampton Callaway, who is one of the premier interpreters of the American Songbook will bring her unique stylings to what is being billed as "The Barbra Streisand Songbook" on May 15th and 16th. Singer Maureen McGovern will join the Pops to sing selections from her Broadway show LITTLE WOMEN as a tribute to the novel's author Louisa May Alcott.

Tony Award winner Cady Huffman will play the roles of Ms. Pratt, Clarissa and Mrs. Bamberg in Prospect Theater Company's upcoming new production of Cole Porter's NYMPH ERRANT, featuring the original 1933 Porter score and a revised book by Rob Urbinati. Performances begin July 7 at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row.

To close out the 2012 season of 92nd Street Y's Lyrics & Lyricists, Rex Reed pays tribute to the studio that gave us such iconic movie musicals as 42nd Street, Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Star is Born and My Fair Lady.

Three stars of Broadway and pop music - plus a celebrity DJ - have joined the entertainment lineup for the Encore Celebration presented by Krieg DeVault. The June 16 event benefits the Center for the Performing Arts and serves as the first annual Great American Songbook Hall of Fame.

92YTribeca has announced its upcoming theater events this month and in June 2012, including Handbook for an American Revolutionary, Let Me Ascertain You, On Cole Porter and All That Jazz, On the Iconic Barbra Streisand, and Woman of Whimsy. See below for details.

The 20th Anniversary season of New York City Center's Tony Award-winning Encores! series will open on January 30, 2013 with Fiorello!, the show that launched the series in 1994. The season will continue with It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, followed by On Your Toes. A Gala Encores! at 20 Celebration on November 12, 2012 will star Tony Award nominees and Encores! alumni Rauil Esparza and Kelli O'Hara.

Gregg Marx, a popular L.A. based crooner, voice-over artist and former soap star will make his first New York City cabaret appearance since 2005 tonight, May 21 and tomorrow, May 22 at The Metropolitan Room. His Cole Porter show, Music & Lyrics by Cole Porter, brings with it a uniquely personal edge. A little known piece of show business history connects Gregg Marx, the famous Marx Brothers, Salvador Dali and Cole Porter; and it's a lot closer than the popular parlor game of six degrees of separation.

Prospect Theater Company (Cara Reichel, Producing Artistic Director / Melissa Huber, Managing Director) presents its annual gala, 2012's Spring Soiree, in the Harbor View Room at Battery Gardens in Battery Park. This special one-night-only event is tonight, Monday, May 21 with an 8 pm concert performance, featuring performances by Broadway friends as well as Prospect stars.

Richard Connema recalls his first experience with SOUVENIR at a special post show conversation and Q & A with the 'Souvenir' cast and crew following the 2 p.m. Sunday, May 20 matinee performance of 6th Street Playhouse's production of 'Souvenir."

Fast-Rising Cabaret Stars Will Dazzle Royal Room Fans from Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day: Carole J. Bufford, Nicolas King, Jennifer Sheehan, Wayne Hosford & Ariana Savalas The Colony Hotel - which The Palm Beach Post has hailed as "probably the best place for cabaret on the planet" - plans another sizzling, song-filled summer with some really hot and fast-rising performers straight from Manhattan's leading cabarets - several of whom are making their Royal Room debut and other performers who are returning favorites for loyal fans of the Royal Room Supper Club. The Colony Hotel's world famous Royal Room is widely celebrated for presenting "immaculately staged cabaret performances" by well known Grammy- and Tony-winning stars (Conde Nast Traveler, February 2011).

FEINSTEIN'S AT LOEWS REGENCY will continue its Spring 2012 season with Maude Maggart and her new show "Into The Garden." Inspired by the recent centennial of the Titanic, the evening will focus on landmark events, music, cultural shifts one hundred years ago.

Rodríguez & Rodríguez play tonight, May 18 at 7:30pm at Don't Tell Mama, 343 W. 46 Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues). Reservations: 212.757.0788 or www.donttellmamanyc.com. $15 cover plus two drink minimum (cash only).

Goody Goody, the American Classics resident female vocal trio of Valerie Anastasio, Mary Ann Lanier (Somerville) and Heather Peterson, with pianist Robert Humphreville, performs a unique concert saluting the popular girl groups of American popular music, from the jazzy stylings of the Boswell Sisters, the tight harmony of the Andrews Sisters, the 50s sounds of the McGuire Sisters and the Chordettes, and the classic ensembles of the 60s with the Shirelles and the Supremes, through to the Roches and solo singers like Carole King. Featured hit songs include Bei Mir Bist Du Schon, Lollipop, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time, On the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe, and Baby Love. Performances are tonight, May 18 at 7:30pm at Pickman Concert Hall of the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Sunday, May 20 at 3 pm at Follen Community Church, 755 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, Massachusetts.

Craig Smith, Managing Partner of the new Alhambra Theatre & Dining announced this morning that Joyce DeWitt will star in Sam Bobrick's romantic comedy, Remember Me. Miss DeWitt is most widely known to audiences for her starring role as 'Janet Wood' in the ABC Television hit series "Three's Company," but she is no stranger to live theater, working both as actress and director in a stage career which spans over forty years. She recently starred in A Scattered, Smothered and Covered Christmas Musical and the Canadian productions of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Dinner With Friends and Alfred Uhry's Tony Award-winning play The Last Night of Ballyhoo.

Prospect Theater Company (Cara Reichel, Producing Artistic Director / Melissa Huber, Managing Director) presents its annual gala, 2012's Spring Soiree, in the Harbor View Room at Battery Gardens in Battery Park. This special one-night-only event will be held on Monday, May 21 with an 8 pm concert performance, to feature performances by Broadway friends as well as Prospect stars.

On the edge of glory, GLEE momentarily brought back the ecstatic excitement and indescribably infectious joy which made the musical dramedy series a huge hit in its first and second seasons, then commanding upwards of twelve million viewers a week. Now sixty-plus episodes into the series, in a two-hour episode helmed by co-creator Ian Brennan, last night's two-episode gorge-worthy and gorgeous feast - 'Props' and 'Nationals', by the hour - was a reminder of everything that cynics have cited as lacking from episodes in Season Three, as flagging ratings and a general media lull plagues the once seemingly indomitable mega-show despite its continued inventiveness and dramatic daringness. It was fresh and sassy and outrageous, but touching and heartfelt - attributes ascribed to the best episodes of the show. Yet, it was so much more, too - and then there's the music! Both hours were a totally over-the-top tribute to all things big and wow-worthy, coming at just the right moment to pump some energizing lifeblood into the audience base - passing references to Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Marvin Hamlisch and Elton John as well as multiple winks at DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES songwriter and BAT OUT OF HELL mastermind Jim Steinman collectively pushing the theatre insider reference quotient into the stratosphere; and appreciably so. Yes, indeed, last night's double-dose of GLEE was an OD-worthy escapade worthy of returning to time and time again - Lea Michele's solo spots of Jason Mraz's 'I Won't Give Up' and Celine Dion's Grammy-winning 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now' alone were standouts of not only this or any season, but the series itself. With more than fifteen songs performed - everything from Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj and The Who to STARLIGHT EXPRESS, TOMMY, FLASHDANCE and KISS ME, KATE - there was something for everyone in the two-hour GLEE extravaganza overflowing with the witty one-liners, out-of-this-world twists, outlandish characterizations, as well as the idiosyncratic theatrical reality that only GLEE can create. It was a true return to form to prove any and all naysayers wrong, and, this, coming after last week's Ryan Murphy-penned 'Prom-asaurus' season highlight, no less.

Producer John Forslund's OFF THE BOOKS: A Cole Porter UNPUBLISHED CABARET evening at The Duplex Piano Bar & Cabaret, New York plays tonight, May 16 and also May 26.

Actress/singer Elaine Paige, having originated Evita, Chess, Piaf and Anything Goes in London, is unquestionably the queen of the West End, and with a Drama Desk nomination securely in place for her Broadway performance in the new Kennedy Center production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, which opened at the Ahmanson May 9, Paige is fast becoming a theatrical sensation in the US as well. In our chat, she says what she thinks about Stephen Sondheim, Follies, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Barbara Cook, her favorite career highlights including her leading men, as well as her popular radio talk show for the BBC entitled Elaine Paige on Sunday.