Julie Andrews News

The Pasadena Playhouse has updated the performance schedule for two unusual one-person shows - Amy G in Entershamement and Joe Orrach in In My Corner - to reopen the newly re-designed Carrie Hamilton Theatre. Entershamement has a limited run of five performances, while In My Corner runs for one night only. With these shows, that perform May 22 to May 31, The Playhouse is relighting the refurbished Carrie Hamilton Theatre, which has been changed from a proscenium theatre to a black box, and can be configured to accommodate many different kinds of productions.

Goodspeed Musicals is delighted to announce that Tony, Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner Sheldon Harnick will be the latest recipient of The Goodspeed Award for Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre. Over the years Mr. Harnick's work has been represented on the Goodspeed stage with Fiorello! (1985), She Loves Me (1978), The Apple Tree (1999), and this summer's 50th Anniversary production of Fiddler on the Roof at the Goodspeed Opera House. The award will be presented by longtime friend and star of stage and screen, two time Tony Award-winner Tony Roberts (Broadway's Promises, Promises; They're Playing Our Song; Victor/Victoria; Cabaret).

Let's start at the very beginning... Almost sixteen years after first producing the show in 1998, the Castle Craig Players will make the hills come alive again, as they present THE SOUND OF MUSIC for two weekends only - May 30 through June 8.

Scott Siegel is two-for-two. The diminutive and indefatigable nightlife/cabaret impresario of such productions as Broadway By the Year and the Nightlife Awards at Town Hall, as well as regular variety shows like Broadway Unplugged and Broadway Ballyhoo, last fall decided to give the already skyrocketing cabaret career of Georgia-born southern belle Carole J. Bufford a booster shot when he became the producer, director, and co-creator of Bufford's latest effort, Body and Soul (which this Thursday night at 9:30 begins a weekly run at the Metropolitan Room). Siegel didn't waste much time finding another promising female singer to champion, producing and directing six new shows (on Wednesdays and Sundays between April 27 and May 14 at 7pm) featuring a lovely soprano who is also from the south—the south of Ireland, that is. Thirteen years ago, recently minted American citizen Maxine Linehan was just another starry-eyed singer/actress who traveled to New York City with dreams of a musical theater career. Today, if her May 4 performance at the Terminus Recording Studios is any indication, Siegel has another budding star on his performer roster.

I was just a little more than a year into my new side career as a cabaret show reviewer when I first saw a Karen Oberlin show. It was Valentine's Day night 2012 and Oberlin—with guitarist Sean Harkness and guest violinist Aaron Weinstein—would be performing her romance-laced set, Stringing Along With Love, at the Metropolitan Room. At the time, all I knew about Oberlin was that she was considered among New York's best female cabaret singers, and I hadn't researched her performing history pre-show. About a third of the way into her set I leaned over to my wife (it was Valentine's Day after all) and whispered, “You know, she has a real Doris Day quality in her voice and in the way she delivers some lyrics.” This immediately ratcheted up my appreciation for Oberlin since there are four passions I inherited from my Dad—baseball, reading the morning papers, sports writing and Doris Day (well, also Sophia Loren, but that's for another column). Since Dad had grown up during the prime of the Big Band Era of the 1940s, I heard the sultry sounds of a young Doris Day singing songs like “Sentimental Journey” on the family stereo more than a few times. Once I saw Day's strikingly adorable blondness on a record cover and her rocking body in one of her films, I knew what Dad was talking about. As popular, famous, and near iconic as Doris Day became, in my book, as a singer and screen beauty she's always been vastly underrated. Little did I know that Karen Oberlin had been doing a Doris Day tribute show so since 2001 at places like Firebird, Iridium, and the late Danny's Skylight Room, and produced a CD, Secret Love: The Music of Doris Day, in 2002. Karen Oberlin had instantly become my secret love.

The 2014 Honorees for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance, the 6th Annual Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence in the Theater for an Outstanding Performance in a Broadway or Off-Broadway Production, and the John Willis Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, were announced today by the Theatre World. The winners will be celebrated at the 70th Annual Theatre World Awards Ceremony set Monday evening, June 2, 2014 beginning at 6:45 p.m. at Circle in the Square (West 50th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue), home of the current Broadway revival of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.

Broadway legends Julie Andrews and Idina Menzel appeared together in the Bravo Clubhouse on last night's WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE. Below, check out clips from the show

Even the legendary Broadway gods and goddesses have come face to face with failure. On May 31, June 1, and 2, Lyrics & Lyricists pays tribute to musical theater's most thoroughly panned musical bullion as artistic director and Tony Award-winning lyricist and director David Zippel closes the season with Panning for Gold: Great Songs from Flop Shows. Vocalists Brent Barrett, Christiane Noll, Lorna Luft, Jessica Lea Patty, Lillias White and Tony Yazbeck sing numbers like "All the Things You Are," "They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore," "As Time Goes By" and "He Touched Me" that - despite their origins in such failures as Very Warm for May, How Now Dow Jones, Everybody's Welcome and Drat The Cat!, respectively - have become American Songbook standards.

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: HERE LIES LOVE, THE FABULOUS MISS MARIE and TOO MUCH SUN begin today off-Broadway!

Broadway legends Julie Andrews and Idina Menzel will appear together in the Bravo Clubhouse tonight, May 1st, on WATCH WHAT HAPPENS!

Sleeping Cutie: A Fractured Fairy Tale Musical with Music by Doug Katsaros and Lyrics / Book by Diane Sampson - A world premiere production in this exclusive Off a Cliff / PlayGround co-production in San Francisco has been extended! Due to popular demand - six Performances have been added! Now playing thru May 21, 2014.

Will Friedwald's 'Clip Joint: A Video Music Mixtape' will premiere on Tuesday, April 29 at 7 PM at Stage 72 / The Triad (Green Room.

I hardly know where to begin in describing the beautiful, world-class, but dramatically uneven production of the beloved and immortal 'The Sound of Music' that opened at the Civic Opera House over the weekend. All the resources of Lyric Opera of Chicago have been brought to bear on a brand-new production of a title that is known throughout the world, and the result is occasionally thrilling--a feast for the eyes, and usually one for the ears as well.

Robert Cuccioli, Rachel York, Alice Ripley, Karen Mason, Marc Kudisch, Shannon Lewis, Martin Charnin and Shelly Burch will join Marymount Manhattan College in celebrating Frank Wildhorn at Gotham Hall tonight--April 28, 2014 at 6:30pm.

The producers of RODGERS + HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA, the 2013 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical from the creators of South Pacific and The Sound of Music, have announced the show's tour dates for the 2014-2015 season. RODGERS + HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA will launch its national tour at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, RI on October 10, 2014.

Mackenzie "Mack Z" Ziegler, the nine-year-old breakout star of the Lifetime's smash hit reality series, "Dance Moms" zoomed up the iTunes charts this weekend with sales of her self-titled debut album, "Mack Z."

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: the New York Pops will host a starry gala evening in honor of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman tonight!

Bravo Media has announced on the official WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE Facebook page that Broadway legends Julie Andrews and Idina Menzel will appear together in the Bravo Clubhouse on Thursday, May 1st!

Sleeping Cutie: A Fractured Fairy Tale Musical with Music by Doug Katsaros and Lyrics / Book by Diane Sampson will have its world premiere in this exclusive Off a Cliff / PlayGround co-production in San Francisco for a limited engagement, running four weeks only.

WNET, parent company of New York's public television stations THIRTEEN and WLIW21 and operator of NJTV, announced the appointment of Michael Kantor as executive producer of its American Masters series.