Looking for a great Christmas gift idea? We’ve got one for you — for next year.
One of our favorite lively desk references, “Show Tunes,” by Steven Suskin, will get a fourth edition in 2010, to be released by Oxford in March. Suskin, who pens Playbill.com’s On the Record and DVD Shelf columns, told us that the newly minted tome that explores American theatre music (arranged by composer) will address musicals from the early 20th century up through June 2009.
The previous third edition included shows up through 1998, when the final “new” entries were The Lion King, Ragtime and Parade. Among the shows added to the 2010 book are The Full Monty, The Producers, Avenue Q, Hairspray, Wicked, The Light in the Piazza, Grey Gardens, Spring Awakening, In the Heights, Road Show and Next to Normal.
The book will index more than 9,000 show tunes (compared to about 6,500 in the first edition, back in 1985). And four new composers now receive their own chapters. (We can’t give everything away in this tease!)
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is probably the most famous Christmas song that most people don’t realize is from a musical.
The tune was penned by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the 1944 M-G-M musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” and first sung by Judy Garland. Following two separate TV remakes — starring Jane Powell and Shelley Fabares — the show (and the song) finally made it to Broadway in a 1989 staging at the Gershwin Theatre.
Since the ’40s, the tune has become a favorite anthem for the holiday season and been recorded and performed by artists of all eras and genres, including Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Whitney Houston, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Anne Murray, Patti LuPone, Frankie Avalon, Robert Goulet and Connie Francis.
Add to that list Fozzie Bear, Bert and Ernie. Yes, here are two of our favorite Jim Henson-designed renditions of the song followed by Garland’s gorgeous original version.
Theatrical leading men nabbed the top three spots in AfterElton.com’s Men of the Decade.
Out and proud actor John Barrowman (La Cage Aux Folles, Sunset Boulevard), who released a candid autobiography, was ranked #1; while Broadway hunk Cheyenne Jackson (Finian’s Rainbow, Xanadu), who came out publicly in 2004, was named #2.
The #3 slot went to Neil Patrick Harris (Assassins, “Doogie Howser, M.D.”) for recanting a statement made by his publicist that he was “not of that persuasion,” and coming out in 2004. Harris later fired the publicist.
The #6 slot was shared by a host of out theatre folk under 30, including former Wicked ensemble member and “American Idol” finalist Adam Lambert, Spring Awakening Tony nominee Jonathan Groff, Toxic Avenger’s Nick Rodriguez, A Chorus Line’s Nick Adams and Scott Evans. Both Evans and Rodriguez appear in a gay story line on “One Life to Live.”
Every December brings about a slew of holiday-themed TV specials, ranging from concerts to comedy shows to movies. But who can forget the all-but-lost art of the Christmas variety show, equal parts music, sketch comedy and celebrity cameo?
Among the most memorable were the “Osmond Family Christmas Specials” of the late 70s and early 80s. Donny and Marie Osmond would both go on to headline on Broadway and in national touring companies of shows such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The King and I and Beauty and the Beast- but here is an unforgettable clip from one of their perennial holiday offerings.
ABC’s “1979 Donny and Marie Christmas Special” Opening Number – “We Need a Little Christmas” from Mame
There are few modern holiday-season comedies as beloved as “A Christmas Story.”
Based on the stories of radio humorist Jean Shepherd, the irreverent 1983 flick set in the 1940s follows young Ralphie Parker, whose only wish for Christmas is a Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle. A standard on television every December (TBS plays the film for 24 straight hours on Christmas Day), the film is responsible for bringing such images as a pink bunny costume and a tacky leg lamp into the yuletide culture.
So popular is the film that the Cleveland home where it was shot has been turned into A Christmas Story House Museum, offering guided tours and displaying original props and costumes. There is even a gift shop where visitors may purchase their very own Leg Lamp or any number of souvenir items inspired by the movie.
It seemed only a matter of time before so popular a work made its way to the stage. Philip Grecian’s theatrical adaptation (which has run in Cleveland every year since 2005) made its company debut at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Utah’s Pioneer Theatre Company this season. In all three cases, A Christmas Story has broken box office records.
An unrehearsed, 50-year-old, three-part medley provided a pleasant postscript to the Dec. 21 matinee of Danny and Sylvia at Off-Broadway’s St. Luke’s Theatre on West 46th Street.
Brian Childers and Kimberly Faye Greenberg, who play Danny Kaye and his songwriting wife Sylvia Fine, invited to the stage a member of the audience, Susan Gordon, who played Kaye’s daughter in his Red Nichols biopic, “The Five Pennies.”
Then, the new trio broke into the movie’s most felicitous musical collision (all authored by Fine) — Gordon doing the title tune, Childers doing Kaye’s “Lullabye in Ragtime” and Greenberg taking over Louis Armstrong’s “Goodnight—Sleep Tight.” Of the three, the Oscar nomination went to the title tune, which lost 1959’s Best Song Oscar to another star-and-child duet, Frank Sinatra and Eddie Hodges’ “High Hopes.”
“Danny was wonderful,” Gordon recalls. “I worked on the picture for nine weeks, and he sorta adopted me. There was a rapport off-camera that was as good as it was on-camera. Looking back, I’m sure part of that was to help create the on-camera relationship. He was lovely, and, at the end of the movie, Danny gave me a present — a gold charm that said ‘Susan, Danny Kaye.’ That was the kind of relationship it was.”
Once the filming was completed, the two of them never crossed paths again. At 59, Gordon is a married businesswoman, a mother of six and grandmother of two.
Whoopi Goldberg was spotted in the audience of Broadway’s Ragtime a few weeks ago and the following day she sang its praises on TV’s “The View.”
This past week Goldberg and her “View” co-hosts welcomed Ragtime star Christiane Noll and female ensemble members to perform “Back to Before” from the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens musical. The television appearance, which was not presented in costume, gave the song even more contemporary resonance.
The new musical White Noise, about a young female white-separatist singing duo, has a fan in Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg.
Goldberg was in attendance for a Dec. 14 Manhattan reading of the musical that has a book by Matte O’Brien and music and lyrics by Robert Morris, Steven Morris and Joe Shane. Additional material is by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Edges). Ryan J. Davis originally conceived the show.
“The View” co-host told audience members at the 29-hour Equity reading presentation that she was a fan of the musical and “wanted to help the show in any way she could.” White Noise made its world premiere in summer 2009 in New Orleans and has been characterized by producers as being Broadway-aimed. No official announcement has been made.
The latest readings featured new songs and new additions to the book since the New Orleans bow. Cast members for the reading included Nancy Anderson, Jacob ben Widmar, Sarah Jayne Blackmore, Rodney Hicks, Antwayn Hopper, Laura Lim Jackson, Grasan Kingsberry, Erin Kukla, Mackenzie Mauzy, Andrew McGinn, Patrick Murney, David Nathan Perlow, John Preston, BranDon Williams and Libby Winters.
Goldberg, who made a brief appearance in the Broadway musical Xanadu and starred in the revival of Forum, has produced the Broadway productions of Thoroughly Modern Millie and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
White Noise is inspired by the real-life story of “Nazi folk twins” Lynx and Lamb Gaede of the band Prussian Blue.
Stephen Kunken, David Cromer, Tappan Wilder and Jason Butler Harner photo courtesy of O&M Co.
On Dec. 20, after putting Grover’s Corners to bed at the Barrow Street Playhouse, Jason Butler Harner turned over the keys of Our Town to the production’s director and original Stage Manager, David Cromer, who will begin a two-week stint in the role Dec. 22 and then pass it along to Stephen Kunken on Jan. 5.
Harner is off to London to make his debut there in a Donmar Warehouse revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1970 domestic drama, Serenading Louie. He will co-star with three young Brits who round off the two-couple donnybrook: Charlotte Emmerson, Jason O’Mara and Geraldine Somerville. The director is Simon Curtis.
Coast of Utopia marked Harner’s Broadway debut. He was Tom to Sally Field’s Amanda Wingfield in the Kennedy Center production of The Glass Menagerie and co-starred with Annette Bening in The Cherry Orchard at L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum. Off-Broadway, he scored high marks in The Paris Letter and Orange Flower Water.
Manhattan Theatre Club opens 2010 with Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, beginning previews Jan. 5 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
The work tells the story of Sarah and James, a photographer and a journalist, who have been together for nine years and share a passion for documenting the realities of war. When injuries force them to return home to New York, the adventurous couple confronts the prospect of a more conventional life. This play marks the fourth collaboration for Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies and Tony Award-winning director Daniel Sullivan.
Laura Linney and Brian d’Arcy James lead a cast that also features Eric Bogosian, in his Broadway acting debut, and Alicia Silverstone.
Race
The Miracle Worker
Equivocation
Sesame Street Live
Dear Edwina
Nice Jewish Girls
Gone Bad
The Pride
Circle Mirror
Transformation
ALSO SAVE ON
BROADWAY'S BEST
Burn the Floor
Finian's Rainbow
In the Next Room
Next to Normal
The Phantom of the Opera
Ragtime
Rock of Ages
Superior Donuts
White Christmas and more!
