The Tony-winning revival of Hair is among the selections for the AfterElton blog’s 2009 Visibility Award winners.
Hair (and its messages of love and inclusion) was named Theatrical Event of the Year by the blog, which offers “news, reviews & commentary on gay and bisexual men in entertainment and the media.” The musical shut down for a day so that the cast could attend the National Equality March in Washington, DC. Cast member Gavin Creel is an out gay activist and co-founder of Broadway Impact.
Honorable mention for Theatrical Event went to Tony Awards host Neil Patrick Harris and songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
Former Wicked ensemble member and “American Idol” finalist Adam Lambert was named Musician of the Year. “Glee” took TV Musical of the Year and “The United States of Tara,” featuring Toni Collette, was named TV Drama of the Year.
ABC’s “Modern Family” nabbed TV Comedy of the Year and “Ugly Betty” received an honorable mention. The film “A Single Man,” based on the Charles Isherwood novel, took Movie of the Year, with honorable mention to “Taking Woodstock.”
“One Life to Live” cast members Nicholas Rodriguez, Brett Claywell, Scott Evans and Ron Carlivati (all of whom play into the new gay storyline on the series) were named Men of the Year. Adam Lambert received an honorable mention.
While "Avatar" took the Dec. 18 weekend's movie box office with an estimated $73 million, Rob Marshall's feature film musical “Nine” pulled in big numbers for its limited release.
“Nine” earned a whopping $247,000 — which breaks down to a $61,750 per-screen average for the four screens it played on. (By comparison, “Avatar” pulled in a $21,147 per-screen average.)
The screen adaptation of the Maury Yeston-Arthur Kopit stage musical of the same name stars Daniel Day-Lewis (as film director Guido Contini) along with Marion Cotillard, Dame Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, Nicole Kidman and Sophia Loren. The film opens wide Dec. 25.
“Miracles do not only happen on 34th Street,” observed Thornton Wilder’s nephew, Tappan, on Dec. 16, the night the Barrow Street Playhouse Off-Broadway revival of his uncle’s beloved Our Town racked up its longest run ever — 337 performances! — topping, by one, the original Broadway run engagement at Henry Miller’s Theatre on 43rd Street.
Tappan Wilder photo by Aubrey Reuben
Our Town is so steeped in our DNA as The Great American Play that such allusions to miracles on 43rd Street and Barrow Street were lost on the invited audience, but the nephew insisted that the opus was, by no means, a slam-dunk.
Its two-week Boston tryout was “a disaster,” he said simply. “They cut it short, and the play arrived at Henry Miller’s Theatre on a stretcher,” opening Feb. 4, 1938.
In the film musical "Nine," Nicole Kidman is Claudia, the muse who executes The Visions of filmmaker Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). The scene that leads into her “Unusual Way” song finds them squabbling over the plot of his (nonexistent) script, supposedly about a man and his muses.
“And these muses” — she asks, having been told there are millions of them — “they fall in love with the man?”
“Exactly,” he replies, “they fall in love with him.” Beat. “I’d rather be the man,” she responds. “What?” he asks, stunned.
Jonathan Cake, a beefcake Brit with RSC training, arrived on Broadway seven years ago this week playing Jason to Fiona Shaw's Medea and has worked steadily in American television and theatre ever since (Lincoln Center's Cymbeline, Atlantic Theatre Company’s Almost an Evening, et al) — but he has been M.I.A. since The Philanthropist last season. So what is he working on?
“I’m working on dirty diapers and making tasty but nutritious dinners for my children while my wife has left me for the theatre,” he says.
The diapers in question belong to two-year-old Ignatius and seven-month-old Phoebe.
His wife, whom he met guesting on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” is American actress Julianne Nicholson, and she can be found playing a troubled mom at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater these days in This, the well-received new play by Obie-winning Melissa James Gibson.
You know TV’s John-Boy is a long way from Waltons Mountain when he is standing accused of rape, as Richard Thomas’ new character is now doing at Broadway’s Barrymore in David Mamet’s Race.
You also know it when you connect his husky, still-boyish voice with the lucrative Mercedes-Benz commercials on TV. “I know. Isn’t it cool?” he says, at a loss for explaining how he has come to this, from TV-drama stardom in the ’70s. “Well, y’know, it’s a long road in a crazy business, so anything can happen. It’s a wonderful thing for a theatre actor to have. I think all people who work in the theatre should have a voiceover.”
So maybe he won’t ring in the New Year with Dick Clark, but Adam Lambert is still warming up for another New Year’s Eve party.
After making headlines with his risqué performance on the American Musical Awards, Lambert faced a slew of backlash from ABC television, which cancelled numerous appearances with the “American Idol” contestant, including “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”
Lambert is now set to perform a 40-minute set at midnight as part of the Gridlock New Year’s Eve event located at the Paramount Pictures Studio. Pamela Anderson (”Baywatch”) will host the event, which will include a fireworks display. Also scheduled to perform throughout the night are Kevin Rudolf, Wonderland, Qwes, Dakota Lamas, Far East Movement and ten different DJ’s.
The evening is open to the public, with tickets priced $150. Visit GridlockLA.
After a break following two sold-out extensions, the critically cheered Circle Mirror Transformation returned Dec. 15 to Playwrights Horizons for additional performances through “at least Jan. 17″ (translation: maybe longer).
The play is in the form of theatre exercises in which a drama class teacher puts students through acting games that, unexpectedly, reveal who they are as people.
How she got to this point even surprises the author, Annie Baker. “I never know what I’m writing,” the playwright insisted. “I really have no idea. It just goes.”
Audiences and critics were especially surprised by a moment late in the play, in which the rehearsal-room setting transforms.
Baker said, “I actually didn’t know the ending was coming. It sorta happened. I hadn’t planned it. It was a very weird, magical thing.” Nor did she have a theatre background that would help her through this unchartered terrain. “I’ve never been an acting student. I’m dating an actor [Michael Chernus from Hunting and Gathering], and he was helpful — and I took acting classes as a kid, but I was never a professional actor.”
A musical theatre stage adaptation of 101 Dalmatians embarked on a national tour Oct. 13 in Minneapolis.
Rachel York stars as Cruella de Vil, the villainess with a taste for fur, in the new family-friendly touring show with a score by BT McNicholl and STYX founder Dennis DeYoung.
Jerry Zaks directs a cast featuring James Ludwig as Pongo, Catia Ojeda as Missus and Julie Foldesi as family nurse Perdita.
In Dallas through Dec. 20, subsequent touring stops include Boston, Miami, Birmingham and Atlanta.
Work Light Productions, the producer of he current national tour of Avenue Q, is donating money raised during a song in the show to the Monmouth Medical Center Foundation/Valerie Center, an organization that provides healthcare services for children with cancer and blood disorders.
During “The Money Song” in Act Two of Avenue Q, the cast collects donations ostensibly for The Monsterssori School, a school for Monsters that is the dream project of one of the characters. Work Light Productions announced that any and all dough collected will be donated to the foundation.
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 Heights
Next to Normal
The Phantom of the Opera
Ragtime
Rock of Ages
Superior Donuts
White Christmas and more!
