Once is Enough - 1938 - Broadway Articles Page 3

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Appropriately enough, the supposedly haunted Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton is currently playing host to the happy spooks of 3-D Theatricals' regional production of THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which continues performances at this historic theater through October 25 before migrating south to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center for shows October 31 - November 8. Filled with gleeful, cheese-tastic one-liners and catchy, cleverly written tunes from Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party, Big Fish), this seemingly underrated stage musical gem is a lively, highly-amusing little comedy that celebrates individual uniqueness while poking lots of giddy fun at fragile family dynamics, pointing out that even the most creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky beings among us face the same kinds of OMG-drama that so-called 'normals' do. As an added bonus, 3DT's production features a stellar cast led by TV's Bronson Pinchot as Gomez and Broadway vet Rachel York as Morticia.

One of Stephen Schwartz's failures The Baker's Wife, which toured extensively across the US in 1976 but never made it to Broadway, had a cast recording with Patti LuPone, Paul Sorvino and Teri Ralston and has had a few revivals including the UK. Why did it bomb? It's a simple, sweet show with a lovely message about human connection and a few pretty ballads, especially the hit 'Meadowlark', but there's a spark missing, nothing really exciting to get people into the seats; it's most definitely not commercial enough for Broadway. Based on the 1938 French film La Femme du Boulanger, that may be the main reason that the show is rarely performed. Now onstage at Actors co-op, Baker's Wife is mounted scrumptiously with terrific direction from Richard Israel and a superlatively cast ensemble.

It was 'out with the old, in with the new' for another of the Franco Zeffirelli productions that were once the Metropolitan Opera's bread and butter, designed for audiences to cheer for the scenery even when the cast might not have been top drawer. This time, the victims of changing times (and administrations) were the twin bill of Mascagni's CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA and Leoncavallo's PAGLIACCI.

The Program Launch for the second half of 2015 shows that the Independent Music Theatre team comprising Luckiest Productions (David Campbell, Lisa Campbell and Richard Carroll), Neglected Musicals (Michelle Guthrie), and Neil Gooding Productions, the driving force behind Hayes Theatre Company, have no intention of slowing down are staying true to their vision to provide a permanent home for small-scale musical theatre and cabaret.

In the 2015-16 season, David Mirvish will present 14 shows in Toronto, consisting of seven shows in the Mainstage Subscription Series, three in the Off-Mirvish Subscription Series and four shows off-subscription.

A rare revival of Rocket to the Moon, the 1938 play by Clifford Odets (AWAKE AND SING, GOLDEN BOY), starring Ned Eisenberg, starts performances tonight at the Theatre at St. Clement's. Directed by Obie and Lucille Lortel Award winner Dan Wackerman (Counsellor-at-Law), Rocket to the Moon will play a limited engagement, opening Monday, February 23rd. Eisenberg graciously sat down and spoke with BroadwayWorld about taking on the role of Ben Stark in this seldom-performed Odets piece, working with Wackerman, and more!

At the end, the audience for this show is pulled not merely into the studio but into Bedford Falls, as the stage snow falls not only on the characters in the story set there but on the performers in the studio and on the audience as well. It is a perfectly magical double fourth-wall violation. Indeed, to state what must already be obvious, this whole show is perfectly magical.

As previously reported, Village Voice theatre writer and creator of the Obie Awards, Jerry Tallmer passed away earlier this week on, November 9, 2014. He was 95 years old.

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU opens tonight, September 28, 2014, at the Longacre Theatre (220 West 48th Street), after 32 previews. The production is directed by six-time Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Scott Ellis (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Twelve Angry Men, 1776) and will play a 19-week limited engagement.

The distinguished experience of Director Kenneth Albers returns to American Players Theatre (APT) in rural Spring Green for David Mamet's multiple award winning play, American Buffalo. First produced in 1975, the three person drama fills the indoor Touchstone Theater with the talents of Brian Mani, James Ridge and Brendan Meyer in perhaps one of the most poetic uses of profanity heard and placed on stage.

Tap dance on 'roids and LSD* -- that is what STOMP is.

On the 30th October, 1938, Orson Welles broadcast a dramatisation of The War of the Worlds. Seventy five years and one day later the South Australian Radio Collective played a recording of that radio play to an audience who assembled especially to hear this work.

The season premiere of NATURE airing Today, October 16, 2013 on PBS, takes viewers behind the scenes at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium to see the work of the Sea Otter Research and Conservation program

Nature tells the story of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's 501st attempt to save a stranded orphan otter and teach it to fend for itself in the wild.

The season premiere of NATURE airing Wednesday, October 16, 2013 on PBS, takes viewers behind the scenes at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium to see the work of the Sea Otter Research and Conservation program

Nature tells the story of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's 501st attempt to save a stranded orphan otter and teach it to fend for itself in the wild.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the lineup for Cinema of Resistance, (August 23-29) a weeklong survey of politically charged films from around the world.

Back on April 1, when he posted his third compilation of delayed cabaret reviews from shows staged during the winter, BroadwayWorld.com's lead New York cabaret reviewer promised Number 4 would come with arrival of summer. Okay, so he missed his self-imposed deadline by a couple of weeks. but here's yet another catch-up column with critiques of a half dozen spring shows performed by Bryan Batt, Dawn Derow, Lynly Forrest, Dennis McNeil, Anastasia Barzee, and Nina Hennessey.

Coming up this week, 54 BELOW, the performance venue located just below the legendary Studio 54 at 254 West 54thStreet, will present some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. 54 Below also launched its series of late night events. Joining Tuesday nights' popular "Backstage" with Susie Mosher is the "54 Piano Bar," a new vocal competition - 'The Callback," and more:

Apparently, it is Elvis Week in Nashville (at least according to the fine folks at Loveless Cafe), so before we head out to the theater for a full weekend of show openings and the like, a trip to West Nashville for a slice of the Loveless' Elvis pie is in order (for the uninitiated, that's peanut butter, banana, bacon and homemade whipped cream-the four basic food groups, according to The King.), so before we slip into a diabetic coma, here's installment #7 of Music City Confidential, all the news that's fit to print from onstage, offstage, backstage and beyond…

When the original Broadway production of Fela! closed in January of 2011, Zuccotti Park was little more than a block-long plaza where Wall Streeters would enjoy a bit of lunchtime sun.  For now, at least, the park has pretty much returned to that status, aside from the tourists taking photos of themselves at the spot now famous for birthing the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Supported by a superb 10-piece orchestra (including six horn players), Catherine Russell's set at the Allen Room for Jazz at Lincoln Center was a tribute to songs her dad Luis recorded or performed with the great Louis Armstrong from the late 1920s through the 1930s. By the end of her show, Russell had clearly proven that she has become one of the finest interpreters of jazz and blues on the contemporary music scene.

The CAPA Summer Movie Series, the longest-running classic film series in America, celebrates its 41st anniversary in 2011 with an impressive assembly of classics, cult favorites, and much beloved films.

Due to popular demand, the following shows have added additional performances: Encore: Friday, October 2nd at 5pm Fat Camp: Friday, October 2nd at 4pm