Alan Cumming and the downtown denizens who make Our Hit Parade the weekly not-to-be-missed event that it is, bid a farewell to the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, with a tribute performance of "We Are The World" at Joe's Pub. Jackson and Lionel Ritchie originally penned the song that raised funds for famine relief in Africa.
Normally a top ten countdown of the hits of the week, Our Hit Parade devoted its July 29 performance to Jackson's music. Featured alongside Cumming are Miguel Gutierrez, Jenn Harris, Murray Hill, Claudia Gonson, Dudley Klute, NA+AN and more.
Our Hit Parade is created by Tony nominee and Obie winner Kenny Mellman (Kiki & Herb), chanteuse Bridget Everett (At Least It's Pink), pop song opera impresario Neal Medlyn, producer and MTV cameraman Brendan Kennedy, and writers Ada Calhoun and Peter Schjeldahl.
The trailer for the latest Ethan and Joel Coen film "A Serious Man" — which features stage star and Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg in the lead opposite Richard Kind as his brother — is now available online.
The 1967-set film centers on "Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university," whose wife decides to leave him for his pompous colleague, according to production notes. While dealing with an unemployable brother (Kind) on his couch, a son with discipline problem at Hebrew school and a daughter stealing from his wallet, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. "Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person – a mensch – a serious man?"
The R-rated comedy, penned and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (Offices, Almost an Evening), will open in theatres Oct. 2. Stuhlbarg (Hamlet, The Pillowman) and Kind (The Producers, Sly Fox) star with Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus and Adam Arkin (Brooklyn Boy, I Hate Hamlet).
An outdoor performance of Two Gentleman of Verona in Rhode Island was interrupted July 30 when two men walked through the crowd and stole two donation jars full of money used to fund the free summer Shakespeare performances in Wilcox Park. Colonial Theatre Shakespeare Festival director Harland Meltzer and actor Rudy Sanda, who was waiting for his entrance backstage when he heard the commotion, chased the thieves into a nearby backyard.
Sanda tackled and pinned one of the suspects down until police could arrive. “I looked at the guy under the actor and said, ‘I bet this is the first time you’ve been tackled by someone wearing lace cuffs,’” Meltzer commented to a local paper. The other individual is currently being sought.
Bette Midler will join Kelly Ripa July 31 as guest co-host on “LIVE! with Regis and Kelly” — stepping in for Regis Philbin. The songstress will help interview guest Adam Sandler, conclude end “Top Dog Week” with canine talents and enjoy a hot dish as another chef prepares food for LIVE’s “Ultimate Hometown Grill Off.”
Before rising to stardom in music and film, Midler made her Broadway debut playing daughter Tzeitel in the original Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof. She returned to the Great White Way in several concerts: Bette Midler, Bette Midler’s Clams on the Half Shell Revue and Bette! Divine Madness. She was honored in 1974 with a Special Tony Award for “adding luster to the Broadway season.”
A selection from Frank Wildhorn's Broadway-aimed musical Bonnie & Clyde will be presented as part of the Broadway Theatre Project Festival in Tampa beginning July 30. Now in its 18th year, BTP provides young artists with hands-on training from actors and creative professionals within the Broadway community. The three-week summer workshop culminates in a public presentation at the University of South Florida showcasing the work of BTP participants, many of whom go on to careers on Broadway.
BTP artistic director Debra McWaters directs and choreographs the Bonnie & Clyde selection, with Broadway music director David Loud leading students through songs from the upcoming Kander and Ebb revue First You Dream. The Wildhorn musical will make its premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in November, while First You Dream is scheduled to arrive at the Signature Theatre in Washington, DC in September.
Last summer BTP was the first to showcase songs from Wildhorn's Wonderland, a contemporary take on "Alice in Wonderland," which will premiere at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in November.
Beyond the imminent Broadway revivals of his Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, what’s on playwright Neil Simon’s wish list? The 1969 Tony Award-nominated Best Musical Promises, Promises, he told Variety’s Army Archerd in recent days.
The 82-year-old writer hopes that there will be movement on a previously reported plan to bring the 1968 musical comedy (based on Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment”) back to Broadway.
Sean Hayesphoto by Joan Marcus
Simon penned the libretto, and Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the songs, helping to usher in a period when a musicals finally made contact with a modern pop-rock sound (coinciding with Hair, it turns out).
Simon was happy with a 2008 reading of the show that featured Sean Hayes (”Will & Grace,” Encores! Summer Stars’ Damn Yankees), but no production has yet been announced. Conversations among producers continue, we are told.
At a reading on Oct. 18, 2008, Hayes played Chuck Baxter, the role originated by Tony winner Jerry Orbach, and Anne Hathaway (”The Princess Diaries, ” “Rachel Getting Married,” Central Park’s Twelfth Night) played Fran Kubelik, created by Jill O’Hara (together, they sing the show’s hit, “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”). Fans of the score are hoping that the outcome isn’t “a guy with a pin to burst your bubble.”
Two young girls will have the chance to be a princess for the day and make their Broadway debuts in Shrek The Musical this September.
The creators of the Broadway production have teamed with Nick.com to create a website where aspiring young actresses ages 6 to 14 can rehearse and upload a video of themselves performing Princess Fiona's "I Know It's Today" from the Dreamworks musical. Videos can be submitted July 28-Aug. 16.
All submitted video performances will be viewed by Shrek director Jason Moore, lyricist and book writer David Lindsay-Abaire, composer Jeanine Tesori and Tony-winning actress Sutton Foster. The team will then select two young actresses to perform opposite Foster as "Young Fiona" and "Teen Fiona" at the evening performance on Sept. 19.
The winning contestants will be notified by Sept. 10 and will receive travel and hotel accommodations in New York City where they will meet and rehearse with Sutton Foster and the Shrek creative team in preparation for their Broadway debut.
Isabel Keating, known for her Broadway turns in The Boy From Oz (as Judy Garland) and Hairspray, is the subject of this week’s Playbill.com Cue & A feature. When asked the question of her favorite pre-show or post-show meal, the current Off-Broadway star of A Lifetime Burning, gave more than one serving of answers:
Pre-show I am hooked on a sandwich I make with avocado, tomato, basil and shaved parmesan. OR the fava bean salad at Amarone (add shaved parm). During the show, watermelon, it is perfect right now. Post-show, fried calamari with garlic aioli or tomato sauce if eating out. At home, it’s my smoky eggplant salad (get them, they’re in season!) and/or PASTA! PASTA! PASTA!
The star also admitted one of a guilty pleasure, her favorite junkfood: French Fries.
For more from Keating, visit Playbill.com’s Cue & A section Tuesday.
While fans of Leslie Bricusse score of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" wait for a Broadway adaptation of that classic 1971 film (no, nothing has been announced, but we can dream, can’t we?), news has surfaced that 2009 Tony Award-winning director Matthew Warchus (God of Carnage) is to direct a musical based on another kids’ book by the late "Chocolate Factory" writer Roald Dahl — "Matilda."
Roald Dahl's "Matilda" illustration by Quentin Blake
The New York Times reports that the 1988 book about a girl genius is being developed, and that some songs have already been written. The Times said the musical will have some new characters and "a new device" that will connect the story's episodes together. It's not yet clear yet who is writing the libretto and score.
According to RoaldDahl.com, "Matilda is an exceptionally bright young girl with an insatiable appetite for books and reading. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, think she's just a nuisance. Matilda thinks, rightly, that all they are interested in is watching TV and making money by cheating people. She decides to punish them. She soon discovers that she has supernatural powers which are not only going to prove useful at home but also at Crunchem Hall School where Matilda and her classmates must contend with the scariest headmistress of them all — Miss Trunchbull."
"Matilda" was the biggest seller among Roald Dahl's books for children. Jeremy Treglown noted in his biography of Dahl, "No book of Dahl's ever sold so fast. In Britain alone, half a million paperback copies went across the counter within six months."
The movie version, released in 1996 and directed by Danny DeVito and starring Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Embeth Davidtz, Mara Wilson and Pam Ferris was a hit.
Theatrical musical fantasy is not new for Warchus; he staged The Lord of the Rings in Toronto and London. Will “Matilda” be a golden ticket to a new kid-friendly chapter in the director’s career?
To celebrate the Broadway revival of Ragtime — previews begin in October at the Neil Simon Theatre — Alfred Music Publishing has released two new vocal collections: “Ragtime the Musical: Vocal Score (Complete)” and “The Ahrens & Flaherty Songbook.”
The vocal score, priced $85, contains over 400 pages of professionally arranged piano/vocal music of the entire Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty score.
The A&H songbook, priced $21.95, boasts these titles: “After the Storm,” “All Those Christmas Clichés,” “Alone in the Universe,” “At the Beginning,” “Back to Before,” “Close But No Cigar,” “Come Down from the Tree,” “How Lucky You Are,” “The Human Heart,” “I Was Here,” “If the World Were Like the Movies,” “It’s Possible,” “Journey to the Past,” “Larger than Life,” “Love Who You Love,” “Make Them Hear You,” “Mama Will Provide,” “My Body Wasn’t Why,” “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think,” “Once Upon a December,” “Our Children,” “Ragtime,” “Something Beautiful,” “Streets of Dublin,” “Times Like This,” “Waiting for Life” and “Wheels of a Dream.” Visit alfred.com.
