I Do! I Do! - 1968 - West End Articles Page 19

From Founding Artistic Director, Ari Roth: 'The eight amazing plays in Mosaic's 5th Anniversary Season offer up Stages of Awakening-urgent, exhilarating and humble-that hurtle our characters, and by extension, us, forward to new levels of awareness, puncturing bubbles of pretension along the way. To be 'woke' is to be no longer in the dark about what's happening around us; about the systems of oppression and persistence of racism that permeate daily life. But it can be tricky terrain, these states of 'wokeness,' leading to pats-on-the-back of self- congratulations and new forms of denial. Our extraordinary playwrights are hip to our follies and foibles, just as they're poised to wake us up to the realities of our moment and the relevance of history still knocking on our door.

The first words sung in A Bronx Tale, the tonally uneven and musically disappointing touring show that opened at D.C.'s National Theatre on Tuesday, are literally "this is a Bronx tale." The artistic subtleties don't get much better from there, as the musical (based on a movie based on a one-man show) proceeds to tackle issues from morality to racism with all the delicateness of a mobster smashing someone's head in with a baseball bat. Everything about this production is underwhelming from the performances to the design to the direction and choreography. Ultimately, A Bronx Tale is the perfect example of why we should stop adapting movies into musicals.

Atlanta's nationally acclaimed Alliance Theatre and Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Susan V. Booth are pleased to announce the productions of the Theater's 51st season.  Since opening in 1968 the Alliance has been dedicated to expanding hearts and minds on stage and off with diverse programming for all ages.  The 2019/20 season marks the Alliance's first full season back in its transformed performance space, the newly opened Coca-Cola Stage.

And as we look out at what the country has become in recent years, and how social media has illuminated what we have always been, it's necessary to have artists like Suzan-Lori Parks around to keep us thinking, and talking, about what we can aspire to.

It was Up UP and Away last night at the Eissey Campus Theatre as Jimmy Webb, one of America's most highly regarded songwriters spent an evening playing and singing his music for the Palm Beach Audience. It's always thrilling to hear the stories behind the creation of iconic music, and I was thinking as Jimmy performed his songs, I guess this it what have been like if the likes of George Gershwin and the other great composers were around to spend an evening describing the process and inspiration of creating music and lyrics.

'Ain't Too Proud - The Life and Times of The Temptations' opened March 21, at Broadway's legendary Imperial Theatre. However, many fans of the Temptations music may not know the group's long and complicated history. 

If a singer/actor/dancer is considered a triple threat, New Mexico transplant David Carter is more like a quintuple threat. In addition to being the technical director at the Santa Fe Playhouse and a huge advocate for making the arts (in particular, performing arts) accessible for all, he translated, served as a dramaturg for, and is currently performing in The Oasis Theatre Company's production of Moliere's The Miser. I was able to pick his brain about his theatrical experience, his translation process, and some other artistic endeavors he currently has in the works.

On May 10th, The Last Poets will release their album Transcending Toxic Times via Ropeadope. Today, the group unveiled the album's first single “For The Millions.” 

The award-winning, autobiographical comedy MY LIFE ON A DIET, starring Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning writer and actress Renee Taylor ("The Nanny"), kicks off a national tour this weekend with three performances at The Gateway, Performing Arts Center of Suffolk County (215 South Country Road, Bellport, NY 11713) on Friday, March 15 at 8pm and Saturday, March 16 at 3pm & 8pm.  The tour continues with a limited run at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts' Lovelace Studio Theater (9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210) from Friday, April 5 through Sunday, April 14.

Westport Country Playhouse will present a Script in Hand playreading of the romantic thriller, "Tricks of the Trade," on Monday, March 25, at 7 p.m.  Written by the late Sidney Michaels, who lived in Westport, Connecticut, the reading will be directed by Anne Keefe, Playhouse associate artist and curator of the playreading series. Tickets are $20 each. 

MTS ENTERTAINMENT IN COLLABORAZIONE CON LA COMPAGNIA DELLA RANCIA INDICE UN BANDO DI AUDIZIONE PER LA NUOVA PRODUZIONE DELLA VERSIONE ITALIANA DI HAIR PER LA STAGIONE TEATRALE 2019/2020.

New York Live Arts (Live Arts) to present the New York premiere of Netta Yerushalmy's Paramodernities, March 14-17, 2019, having commissioned the work as part of the Live Feed Residency Program. The complete six-part encyclopedic series is a multidisciplinary work that weaves theory and performance into a four-hour-long hybrid event. Yerushalmy and a cast of 20 dancers and scholars, ranging in age from 20 to 68, perform deconstructed installments of Nijinsky's “Sacre” (1913), Graham's “Night Journey” (1947), Ailey's “Revelations” (1960), a mix of Cunningham works “Rainforest,” “Sounddance”, “Points in Space”, “Beach Birds”,  and “Ocean” (1968-1990), dance numbers from the 1969 Fosse's film “Sweet Charity”, and a response to Balanchine's “Agon” (1957) that includes none of the original choreography.

An immersive experience unlike any other, a performance of Bella Gaia fuses stirring performances of world music and dance with high fidelity NASA imagery of Earth. Time-lapse nature photography and cultural heritage footage meets NASA supercomputer data visualizations, creating an unprecedented audiovisual experience inspired by astronauts who spoke of the life changing power of seeing the Earth from space. 

Okay, this week, I only have to throw out two CDs, but it hurts! I'll never forget May 31, 1992--the 46th Annual Tony Awards. I had just turned 16 and was eagerly tuning in to absorb the Broadway of it all. I didn't really know much about any of the shows, other than that friends and family in New York had flipped for Guys And Dolls and that my parents had loved an earlier incarnation of Jelly's Last Jam when it played the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Glenn Close was hosting and Patti LuPone was presenting and I was not moving from my seat on the couch until I had a ranked list of the shows I wanted to see when I got to New York to visit my grandparents for Thanksgiving.

53 Above presents 4th Annual Tomatoes Got Talent winner Teresa Fischer in More than You Know-a Rosemary Clooney tribute-on Wednesday, March 13th at 7:00 pm. Musical direction by Paul Chamlin. Fischer sings the Clooney songbook and tells the story of her return to the stage following a mental collapse in 1968.

MerleFest, presented by Window World, is proud to announce new artist additions for MerleFest 2019: Amos Lee, The Milk Carton Kids, Steep Canyon Rangers, The Del McCoury Band, The Casey Kristofferson Band, and David Holt. The annual homecoming of musicians and music fans returns to the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, April 25-28. MerleFest is pleased to welcome these six distinguished acts to the 2019 lineup:

The heart wants what the heart wants, and so we tell each other - and ourselves - the lies needed to get it. Betrayal is a sophisticated drama and a devastatingly honest exploration of love, sex, marriage, and friendship. Told backwards from the end to the beginning, Harold Pinter's narrative masterpiece will move and astonish you.

The Broward Stage Door Theatre is slowly but steadily growing into its new Lauderhill home. The Producers is a show that can challenge any major regional theatre with its performance and technical demands. The Stage Door has taken on said challenge with grace. Throughout the show's month-long run, audiences have laughed at the show's timeless Mel Brooks humor and were moved by some high-quality performances.

The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts presents the Los Angeles premiere of Renee Taylor's MY LIFE ON A DIET, the award-winning, autobiographical comedy written by Taylor and Joseph Bologna, which opens its 12 performance, limited engagement on Friday, April 5 and continues through Sunday, April 14, 2019, in The Wallis's Bram Goldsmith Theater.

The award-winning, autobiographical comedy MY LIFE ON A DIET, starring Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning writer and actress Renee Taylor, will kick off a national tour this spring with three performances at The Gateway, Performing Arts Center of Suffolk County (215 South Country Road, Bellport, NY 11713) on Friday, March 15 at 8pm and Saturday, March 16 at 3pm & 8pm. The tour continues with a limited run at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts' Lovelace Studio Theater (9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210) from Friday, April 5 through Sunday, April 14. Dates in other cities across the U.S. and in Canada will be announced in the coming weeks.

Cabaret maven Teresa Fischer sings the hits of Rosemary Clooney and tells the story of her return to the stage following a mental collapse in 1968. Paul Chamlin Musical Directs.

A BRONX TALE is a musical adapted from a film that was once a one man show written by Chazz Palminteri. The Broadway Smash premiered with previews on November 3, 2016, and officially opened December 1, 2016 at the Longacre Theatre. Launching its North American Tour in the Fall of 2018 the musical features music written by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book written by the original one man show stopper Chazz Palminteri. While on its tour stop in Tampa at the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, we as the opening-night audience were truly thrust into Old City New York full of Mobsters and Italian lessons to boot. 

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) will present the Zelda Fichandler Award to Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of the Magic Theatre, at a special ceremony hosted by Larry Goldfarb at Villa Taverna in San Francisco on January 31. The award was originally presented at an event in New York City on November 11, 2018 and accepted by Taylor Mac on Greco's behalf.

Garry Marshall Theatre presents the West End and Broadway play The Mountaintop by Katori Hall.  The Mountaintop is directed by Gregg T. Daniel, who recently staged A Raisin in the Sun at A Noise Within (Ovation Award nomination for Best Director) and Her Portmanteau at Boston Court.