Can-Can Revival 00/00/0000 - Articles Page 6

Stars in the House continues tonight (8pm) with Chita Rivera's birthday celebration! An accomplished and versatile actress/singer/dancer, Chita Rivera has won two Tony Awards as Best Leading Actress in a Musical and received five additional Tony nominations. Most recently, she appeared on Broadway in Kander & Ebb's musical The Visit (2015). In 2018, she was awarded a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.

BroadwayWorld put together a list of all the live action musicals you can stream on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, BroadwayHD, and Disney Plus. Are you looking for something to get your mind off… all of this? So are we. Because everyone needs some escape,

R&H Movie Night will continue on Friday, July 24 with a live viewing party of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, the classic 1957 film starring Academy, Emmy and Grammy Award-winner Julie Andrews. 

Since Friday May 1, Yardbird Suite, Edmonton's premiere jazz venue since 1957, has been presenting a series of online performances for the Yardbird Suite Virtual Series. Since it started the Series has accumulated over 30,000 views. Edmonton audiences have been watching local jazz musicians on Yardbird Suite's Facebook page at facebook.com/YardbirdSuite perform live, without an audience, from Yardbird Suite. 

Just 5 shows? Right now I would settle on seeing pretty much anything in a theatre, legs pressed against the seat in front of me and an overpriced beverage in hand. With the Government's recent announcement of a rescue package for the arts, we can see a chink of light in the darkness that has enveloped the industry for so many months. Although we still don't have a date when theatres can reopen, we can dream about what we would like to see when it does, finally, happen...

In this time of social distancing and remaining responsibly indoors, we are all looking for ways to brighten our days and get moving any way we can! In the spirit of celebrating theater and providing motivation to get up and get shakin', we're taking a look back and paying tribute to some of the greatest dance numbers in musical theater history!

Kansas City Ballet Artistic Director Devon Carney today announced the launch of KCBallet@Home, a compilation of on demand performances, public online dance work outs, classes, podcasts, and more. Details can be found at KCBallet@Home.

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, the Actors Fund, the national human services organization for everyone in performing arts and entertainment, has teamed with SiriusXM Broadway host Seth Rudetsky and his husband, producer James Wesley, to produce a daily online show, entitled Stars in The House, featuring stars of stage and screen.

Rachel Zegler, star of the upcoming West Side Story film remake, took to YouTube to share a cover of What Baking Can Do from Waitress!

Visit our list of the best musicals & shows you can watch from home! We've got you covered with all the must-sees on streaming sites including Tony-award winners, favorite stars and top performances.

The Third Avenue Playhouse, located in historic downtown Sturgeon Bay, announces its lineup of six plays for the upcoming 2020 season. The plays include an early career work from playwright David Mamet, a 1964 musical by the legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, a multi-award winning classic about the unlikely friendship between an elderly lady and her driver, the story of an unconventional advice columnist, and a farcical take on the making of Gone With The Wind.

Boston Ballet's rEVOLUTION: Dance on the Edge features three works by pivotal choreographers which stretch the label 'contemporary' to its breaking point. The three pieces, which all premiered between 1957-1987 may trace through the timeline of progress for commercial ballet in America, but I question if anything a ballet company can do could live up to the streamlined, techno aesthetic toted by their marketing team. The title, with its radical use of capitalization, cuts through the smooth blackness on the cover of the program above a photograph of two dancers in an acrobatic pose in green leotards. Inside the booklet, a geometrically conceived sketch of a dancer invites us to an event called 'Turning Pointe' where we can engage with a?oeleading innovators in the arts, sciences, and industry who are building the future in Boston.a?? Another page announces Boston Ballet's upcoming collaboration with Stephen Galloway, the creative movement director for the Rolling Stones, promising to a?oeshatter expectations of what ballet can bea??. 

The theatre may look sleepy right now, but in just under 5 months, Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre will come alive, ready to present their blockbuster 2020 season. Kicking off the summer, on June 12, 2020, Rocky Mountain Rep opens Kinky Boots! Charlie Price has reluctantly inherited his father's shoe factory, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Trying to live up to his father's legacy and save his family business, Charlie finds inspiration in the form of Lola, a fabulous entertainer in need of some sturdy stilettos. Lola turns out to be the one person who can help Charlie become the man that he is meant to be. As they work to turn the factory around, this unlikely pair find that they have more in common than they ever dreamed possible... and discover that, when you change your mind about someone, you can change your whole world. Winner of six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Kinky Boots will have you dancing in the aisles and discovering why, sometimes, the best way to fit in... is to stand out!

Will the slipper fit? Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester is looking for the star of its 2020 production of Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella a?" and has announced details of how performers can apply for forthcoming auditions at the venue.

Alabama Shakespeare Festival presents Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat on the Festival Stage January 11 – 25, 2020. Based on the 1957 book by Dr. Seuss, the play was adapted by Katie Mitchell and originally produced by the National Theatre of Great Britain.

Erik Lee Preminger, the son of legendary burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee (whose 1957 memoirs inspired the classic musical GYPSY) and film director Otto Preminger, will appear in-person at Naples's Theatrezone on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 to present his one-man show about his famous mother (featuring rare home movies, television shows, newsreel footage, a question-and-answer session, and more). He was kind enough to give me and BroadwayWorld readers some insight into his life and his show ahead of the January 15 performance; read below. 

Alabama Shakespeare Festival presents Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat on the Festival Stage January 11 a?" 25, 2020. Based on the 1957 book by Dr. Seuss, the play was adapted by Katie Mitchell and originally produced by the National Theatre of Great Britain. N.D. Seibel returns to ASF to direct the Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) production, which features this year's Fellowship Company.

1957 was a momentous year in country music. The radio was filled with huge hits by the stars of the day: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Ferlin Husky and Jim Reeves. Future stars like Patty Loveless, Vince Gill and Pam Tillis were all born in 1957. Meanwhile, in a Kalamazoo, Michigan factory, one of the first Gibson guitars featuring a cutaway and built-in pickup was being manufactured. That guitar would become a prized possession of Woody Lynch, who would eventually pass it along to his son, a 19-year-old burgeoning country artist, Richard Lynch.

Erik Lee Preminger, the son of legendary burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee (whose 1957 memoirs inspired the classic musical GYPSY) and film director Otto Preminger, will appear in-person at Naples' TheatreZone on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 to present his one-man show about his famous mother (featuring rare home movies, television shows, newsreel footage, a question-and-answer session and more).

With Thanksgiving, Chanukah and Christmas just around the corner, here are some shows that can put you in the holiday spirit. These musicals, ranging from classic fare to recent Broadway hits, are the perfect stocking stuffers for your family, your friends, or even for yourself.

With Thanksgiving, Chanukah and Christmas just around the corner, here are some shows that can put you in the holiday spirit. These musicals, ranging from classic fare to recent Broadway hits, are the perfect stocking stuffers for your family, your friends, or even for yourself.

Bay Area Musicals presents the first production of the Company's 2019-2020 season, the timeless 6-Time Tony Award-winning masterpiece GYPSY. Inspired by the 1957 memoirs of legendary burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee, GYPSY features music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents. Bay Area Musicals' production of GYPSY runs from November 9 a?" December 8, 2019 and will perform at San Francisco's Alcazar Theatre (650 Geary St, San Francisco, CA 94102).

The first clue that ANASTASIA was going to be different than what I expected was a note on the title page reading, “Inspired by the Twentieth Century Fox Motion Pictures.” Plural? A savvy journalist, I quickly asked Siri to bring up the imdb page for “Anastasia”. Turns out Fox made ANASTASIA twice, the 1997 animated off-brand Disney princess movie and a 1957 film that scored Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar and marked Helen Hayes' transition to the big screen. And it turns out the musical version has more in common with LES MISERABLES and RAGTIME than BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Gone is the hell-wizard Rasputin, his talking fruit bat sidekick, and the singing demon caterpillars. At intermission, I asked my third grade niece, Adalyn, how she was liking it. “It's awesome…it's real people, like no Beast or anything. No animals.” We decide that Disney staged musicals are great but more it's more impressive when you can achieve the magic without a story that departs from reality. ANASTASIA is historical fiction hypothetical. It poses a “what if…?” that a daughter of the last czar of Russia (The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna) escaped when the czar's family was executed in 1918. Rumors persisted for decades that Anastasia did, in fact, escape. In 2007, DNA testing confirmed the remains of all four Grand Duchesses were in the Imperial grave. In this version, Terrence McNalley's book follows Anastasia's rediscovery of her identity after surviving the attack on her family and sustaining some plot enabling amnesia. Renamed “Anya” she grows up and makes a life in post-Revolution Russia. Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress (in a staggeringly moving performance by Joy Franz) has fled to France and offered a cash reward for anyone escorting the rumored alive Anastasia to Paris. The wily duo Vlad (Edward Staudenmayer) and Dmitry (Jake Levy) pull a My Fair Lady style makeover on Anya to collect the Dowager's prize. They are pursued by Gleb (Jason Michael Evans). A Soviet officer drawn to Anya romantically but tasked with finding and eliminating the last Romanov. Anya's memory becomes somewhat coaxed back, but the Dowager has stopped seeing Anastasia claimants after too much heart-break from countless frauds. It sounds dark, but with high-tech digital scenery and inspired performances across the cast it is delightful. Stephen Flaherty (Music) and Lynn Ahrens (Lyrics), responsible for bringing us RAGTIME, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, LUCKY STIFF, as well as the Oscar nominated songs carried over from the animated film. ANASTASIA is a perfect context for this pair. “Stay, I Pray You” (my favorite song of the evening) is evocative of RAGTIME's “New Music”. The two songs literally race my heart in a strangely specific way. My real test of a National Tour at Gammage is how fast I get the music playing in my car on the way home. At ANASTASIA I was already finding, “Stay, I Pray You” walking through the parking lot. The rest of the score is similarly haunting. Lila Coogan, as Anya/Anastasia, powers through the score with nuance, clarity, and passion. Tari Kelly, as Countess Lily, and Stadenmayer (Vlad) were Adalyn's favorite performances and I have to agree. This incredibly gifted pair take the “triple threat” designation (singer, dancer, actor) and go quadruple with the addition of flawless comic timing. The choreography by Peggy Hickey is masterful. It somehow combines inventive and traditional throughout and the ten-minute slice of “Swan Lake” infused into “Quartet at the Ballet” is the highlight of the second act. It's a fun-size version that gets an under-represented art form onto the plate. This kind of trope often means the plot putting the plot on hold. But here, it is the connective tissue between Anya, Dmitry, the Dowager, and Gleb as they each bring us up to speed heading into the show's climax. Ultimately, the show's success comes from applying a higher artistic standard to the “previously-animated-film-now-theatrically-staged” genre. It cashes in on the name draw of the 1997 film then gives the viewer something much more enriched than what they think they are coming to see.

Author Kathleen Varn has announced the release of her new historical women's fiction novel, Gardenia Duty. In 1957 jobs are scarce in rural Ashland, Alabama. Bobby Higgins is facing life decisions; his family's farm struggles and threat of the draft hangs over 18-year-old males as the Cold War rumbles in the distance. Bobby heads off to boot camp, vowing to provide for his family from his pay. Between shore and sea duty, Bobby leaves broken hearts in every port.

What do the 1950s have in common with 1912? Both were ages of innocence. When Meredith Willson wrote his story with Franklin Lacey about a con artist bamboozling an Iowa town in 1912, which formed the substance of his musical The Music Man (1957), the effect became like that of N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker. People were jubilant, ecstatic and welcomed Professor Harold Hill, as they craved a good old-fashioned love story coated with ironic excitement. He was a charmer, and they saw way past his bad side. Now in a spectacular new production at 5-Star Theatricals, this company headed by Tony nominee Adam Pascal, keeps the show fantastically rousing and musically. almost perfect yet grounding the love story within the realm of  kitchen.sink believability. With splendid director Larry Raben, divine choreographer Peggy Hickey and fab musical director Brad Ellis at the helm, a marvlous 40 member cast takes the The Music Man and offers a much needed take on the way life should be, whether it's 1912, 1955 or 2019.