Martha - 1944 - Broadway Articles Page 5

The James Beard Foundation Award is the most coveted honor in the American food industry. It is often referred to as the 'culinary Oscars.' But what do we really know about the man whose name has become synonymous with culinary excellence?  

New York City Ballet will open its 2017-18 Season at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, September 19, and will continue with 21 weeks of performances, through Sunday, June 3, featuring 61 ballets by 15 different choreographers.

The Deborah Zall Project will present a program of works by legendary modern dance choreographers Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow and Anna Sokolow, along with dances by Deborah Zall, May 12 & 13 at 8 PM at the Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St. 

The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. (Linda Shelton, Executive Director) is pleased to welcome back Centre National de Danse Contemporaine-Angers (CNDC), two years after its sold-out Joyce debut last season, from April 4 – 9. 

When the Nazis arrested 15-year-old Anne Frank in 1944, her diary was tucked away in a briefcase, and had the Nazis not dumped its contents during a search for what they might call 'valuables,' the diary would have been lost to time. 

Artistic Director of Santa Barbara Dance Theater since 2012 (UC Santa Barbara's professional dance company in residence), Pilafian is at this writing preparing for the company's winter season, Anima and Animus, which will roll out over two weekends of performances at UCSB's Hatlen Theater, January 13-22. The program includes works by guest choreographer Becca Lemme, Brandon Whited (UCSB Theater and Dance Assistant Professor- and newly minted dance faculty member), and Artistic Director Pilafian himself. Also, included in the program will be a work by mid-century firebrand choreographer (and dancer for the dispossessed) Jane Dudley, as restaged by longtime Dudley interpreter Nancy Colahan. Is there a thread that connects these seemingly disparate dance pieces? Pilafian replies without hesitation.

White Christmas, always a treat on film (1954), creates a unique and refreshing glow on stage. The original Broadway and touring productions - the first national tour played the Pantages in 2005 - were gloriously directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Randy Skinner, who turned the second act opener 'I Love a Piano' into one of the most inventive and lively tap sequences ever. Now in a short tour and directed and choreographed by Skinner, White Christmas The Musical finally returns to the Pantages but only for a week, through December 4. This is a sparkling production with terrifically paced staging and superior choreography by Skinner and a sturdy acting ensemble which includes the presence of  the delightfully funny Lorna Luft as Martha Watson. Yes, it's a frothy concoction and weak on plot, but so heartwarming and... with the spectacular Irving Berlin tunes, who cares? Run to get tickets while they are available!

Here are our suggestions - our choices, as it were - for the shows to catch, the people to see, before Monday morning rolls around. Again. When work beckons, we promise you'll have so much more interesting water cooler chatter to share that you'll be the envy of everyone at the office:

Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace, a genteel and sometimes beguiling 'suspense comedy,' is a favorite among the nation's various and sundry community theater companies. And for good reason: It's slyly amusing, despite its age, and it features some genuinely engaging (if somewhat despicable, depending upon your perspective) characters who have entertained audiences for 75 years (it bowed on Broadway in 1941).

This fall, the Jewish Museum is upending museum conventions with Take Me (I'm Yours), an exhibition featuring artworks that visitors are asked to touch, participate in, and even take home.

This fall, the Jewish Museum is upending museum conventions with Take Me (I'm Yours), an exhibition featuring artworks that visitors are asked to touch, participate in, and even take home.

Joseph Kesselring's dark comedy farce Arsenic and Old Lace dates back to 1941 and was made into one hilarious film starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra in 1944. Nevertheless, the comedy is timeless, so it still holds up quite deliciously in 2016. One never tires of murder especially when it's played out in a spooky old Brooklyn mansion adjacent to a cemetery...and most of the Brewster family who inhabit it are most definitely certifiable. Elderly Abby Brewster (Robin LaValley) and her sister Martha (Eliane Weidauer) dispose of over the hill lodgers all alone in the world - to bring them peace and eternal happiness. They offer homemade Eldeberry wine laced with arsenic and think they're doing the old codgers a favor. It seems perfectly harmless to them. In fact, they already have 11 bodies buried in the cellar and are about to embark on a funeral service for number 12 who is resting comfortably in the window seat of their living room. It helps when their nephew Teddy (Robin Thompson) - who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt - carries out their orders and buries the bodies, convinced that he's digging locks of the Panama Canal. When brother Mortimer (Tim Benson) - a drama critic for a local paper - discovers the body by accident, he automatically assumes it's Teddy who has killed the man, never dreaming that his sweet aunts are responsible.

Cagney's pugnacious attitude and formidable talent grabbed Creighton by the lapels, and now he's starring in a Yankee Doodle Dandy of a musical.

This June, FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.54Below.com/Feinsteins or call (646) 476-3551.

DanceAfrica, BAM's longest continuing program, enters its 39th year with new Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam leading this traditional Memorial Day weekend extravaganza, beginning today, May 25, and continuing through May 30.

On May 11, 2016, dancers from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University will be the first to perform Martha Graham's iconic choreography for APPALACHIAN SPRING with a new version of Aaron Copland's score for full orchestra, completed in collaboration with the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

This wildly popular comedic farce written by Joseph Kesselring revoles around two elderly sisters who are famous in their Brooklyn neighborhood for their numerous acts of charity but are as crazy as loons. Mix in a dollop of Teddy Roosevelt, a dash of Albert Einstein, and stir with an assortment of quirky characters and you get a lethal cocktail of murder, mayhem, and laughter. Come see what the N.Y. Times called 'a play so funny you will never forget it.'

This wildly popular comedic farce written by Joseph Kesselring revoles around two elderly sisters who are famous in their Brooklyn neighborhood for their numerous acts of charity but are as crazy as loons. Mix in a dollop of Teddy Roosevelt, a dash of Albert Einstein, and stir with an assortment of quirky characters and you get a lethal cocktail of murder, mayhem, and laughter. Come see what the N.Y. Times called 'a play so funny you will never forget it.'

The 'House of Pelvic Truth' has lost its contraction. Known for its dominating heroines and intense psychosexual dramas, The Martha Graham Dance Company at the age of 90 has come to resemble a bevy of rail thin beauties who alternate between striking lovely poses and engaging in repetitive calisthenics.

DanceAfrica, BAM's longest continuing program, enters its 39th year with new Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam leading this traditional Memorial Day weekend extravaganza, running May 25-30. DanceAfrica 2016-Senegal: Doors of Ancient Futures inaugurates Salaam's artistic vision, building on founding Artistic Director Chuck Davis' mission to embrace the contemporary African world.

On May 11, 2016, dancers from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University will be the first to perform Martha Graham's iconic choreography for APPALACHIAN SPRING with a new version of Aaron Copland's score for full orchestra, completed in collaboration with the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

PITTSBURGH - Be part of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's 2016 European Tour from the comfort of a seat at Heinz Hall! On May 22 at 2 p.m. EST, Pittsburghers can cheer on their home orchestra while watching a concert with a simulcast live from Berlin, Germany.

As BroadwayWorld reported yesterday evening, Kenneth Joseph 'Ken' Howard, Jr., a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and president of the performers union SAG-AFTRA, died today, March 23, at his home near Los Angeles. He was 71. Betty Buckley, who starred alongside Howard in 1776, wrote of the departed:

 Kenneth Joseph 'Ken' Howard, Jr., a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and president of the performers union SAG-AFTRA died today at his home near Los Angeles. He was 71.

 Kenneth Joseph 'Ken' Howard, Jr., a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and president of the performers union SAG-AFTRA died today at his home near Los Angeles. He was 71.