Passion Photos - West End

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.

MUMBAI, 30th OCTOBER 2015: Hugely anticipated, Eros International and Hansal Mehta's 'Aligarh', opened the Jio MAMI 17th Mumbai Film Festival with Star India in a packed screening at Regal, Colaba tonight. This pivotal film marked the first time that a Hindi film opened the festival since 1997, the inaugural year of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

Harold Pinter's macabre tragicomedy returns to London's West End in this new production directed by Jamie Lloyd (Donmar's Passion, Broadway's Cyrano de Bergerac, National Theatre's She Stoops to Conquer, Royal Court's The Pride). It follows the critically acclaimed and sold out Macbeth, starring James McAvoy, in a thrilling season of work for Trafalgar Transformed. Starring Simon Russell Beale (Privates on Parade, National Theatre's Timon of Athens and Collaborators) and John Simm (Elling, Sheffield Theatres' Hamlet and Betrayal), The Hothouse opened tonight, May 9, 2013, and BroadwayWorld has photos from the festivities below!

Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, have extended THE SOUND OF MUSIC, the Tony Award and Academy Award-winning musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, through January 8, 2012 due to popular demand. The production opened October 27. A captivating love story featuring some of Broadway's most popular music, THE SOUND OF MUSIC is directed and choreographed by multi-Jeff Award winner Rachel Rockwell (Sweeney Todd, Ragtime and Miss Saigon at Drury Lane Theatre), who was named 'Best Director' by Chicago Magazine in 2010. THE SOUND OF MUSIC features an all-star cast led by five-time Jeff Award nominee Larry Adams as 'Captain von Trapp' (the Broadway production and National Tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, Drury Lane Theatre's Ragtime and The Music Man, and The Merry Widow at The Lyric Opera of Chicago), Tony Award-nominee Patti Cohenour as 'Mother Abbess' ('Mother Abbess' in the 1997 Broadway revival of The Sound of Music, 'Christine' in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, and The Light in the Piazza at the Lincoln Center) and introducing Jennifer Blood as 'Maria' (Falling for Eve Off-Broadway).

The award-winning York Theatre Company (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director) will present a Developmental Lab of Judith Shubow Steir's new musical ONLY A KINGDOM, directed by David Glenn Armstrong, on November 9-12, 2010 at The York Theatre Company at Saint Peter's, 619 Lexington Avenue (at 54th Street).

Italy's Dario D'Ambrosi, a radical innovator of the theater and founder of the movement called Teatro Patologico (Pathological Theater), will stage a novel version of 'Romeo and Juliet' at La MaMa December 3 to 13. His interpretation is meant to contrast the marvel of love with the fragility of life, the shock of the moment of total loss, and what he calls a 'schizophrenia of the world.'

Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center welcomes the return of American Ballet Theatre (ABT), America?s National Ballet Company®, led by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, July 16-19, with its full-evening production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. MacMillan's masterful interpretation of Shakespeare's enduring romantic tragedy entered American Ballet Theatre?s repertoire in 1985 and has since become one of the Company?s signature productions. Against the sumptuous setting of Renaissance Italy, MacMillan weaves a dance tapestry rich in character nuance and sensuality, and Sergei Prokofiev's stirring music underscores the lyric beauty and passion of this beloved ballet's star-crossed lovers.

North American Cultural Laboratory (www.NACL.org), Brad Krumholz and Tannis Kowalchuk, Co-Artistic Directors, will present the Manhattan premiere of 'THE UNCANNY APPEARANCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES,' based on a story written by Mr. Krumholz and created by NACL in collaboration with the ensemble. Krumholz also directs. Performances begin on December 2 at HERE Arts Center (www.here.org), 145 Sixth Avenue (between Spring and Broome Streets, enter on Dominick Street), and the show will officially open on Thursday, December 4 at 7:00 p.m. Performances will run through Sunday, December 21.