Stage and screen star Sigourney Weaver — currently seen in the flesh (and in blue flesh) as scientist Dr. Grace Augustine in “Avatar” — will host the Jan. 16 episode of “Saturday Night Live.” She will be joined by musical guest The Ting Tings.
Weaver has appeared Off-Broadway in the world premieres of Crazy Mary and Mrs. Farnsworth. The actress, known for her film work in the “Alien” series, “Ghostbusters” and “Gorillas in the Mist,” has also appeared onstage in Hurlyburly, The Mercy Seat and The Guys — which was directed by her husband Jim Simpson.
Self-proclaimed Elaine Paige-wannabe Susan Boyle, who rose to fame on "Britain's Got Talent" belting Les Miserables' "I Dreamed a Dream," continues to break records with her debut album.
Boyle’s album, titled “I Dreamed a Dream” (on the Syco Music/Columbia label), has reached its fifth week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. The album took in 510,000 in sales (now totalling 2,982,000), according to Nielsen SoundScan. The New York Times reports she is the first artist in the 53-year history of the chart to debut at No. 1 and stay in that position for the following four weeks (Lauryn Hill and Ashanti held it for three).
The 48-year-old Scottish singer’s new CD also includes “Daydream Believer,” “Cry Me a River,” “Amazing Grace” and “Wild Horses.”
As 2009 comes to a close, we couldn’t help but think of the numerous musical theatre tunes and scenes about, or set during, the final holiday of the calendar year. So we went fishing on YouTube.
Here are just a few of our favorite New Year’s-themed show tunes:
“Happy New Year” from Rent
* “A Perfect Year” from Sunset Boulevard
*
“Happy New Years” from the Fred Astaire classic “The Holiday Inn”
*
“Don’t Tell Mama” from Cabaret (performed here by Dame Judi Dench)
*
“Masquerade” from Phantom of the Opera
*
“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” by Frank Loesser (performed by Diana Krall)
A number of musicals include New Year’s Eve scenes, but there aren’t too many shows in which that holiday is the primary focus. One show that does center around the last day of the year is postmodern pop group GrooveLily’sStriking 12, a concert-style take on the “The Little Match Girl.”
The trio — consisting of Gene Lewin on drums, Brendan Milburn on keyboard and Valerie Vigoda on electric violin — has performed the show around the country over the last six years, including an Off-Broadway stint, and released a 2004 live album. (In addition to the band’s three-person presentation of the show, a theatrical version for actors is also available for licensing.)
Having just wrapped up a Striking 12 engagement at the DC-area Arena Stage, GrooveLily will ring in the New Year with a performance at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall. More information on the 8 PM performance can be found here.
Below are a few tunes from the musical, which concerns a “grumpy guy” who vows to spend his New Year’s Eve alone:
Michael Jackson’s iconic 14-minute music video “Thriller” is among the 25 films to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2009.
“Thriller,” which marks the first music video to make the Library of Congress’ list, had been considered for entry in previous years, but finally made the cut following Jackson’s death this past summer.
Tony Award-winning choreographer Michael Peters, who co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Bennett, collaborated with Jackson and Tony-nominated choreographer Vincent Patterson (Kiss of the Spider Woman) to create the signature moves for “Thriller,” which was directed by John Landis.
Jackson sold the rights to “Thriller” to the Nederlander Organization for development as a Broadway musical. Peters also staged Jackson’s gang-inspired music video “Beat It,” which featured Patterson as the leading white gang member. Patterson also appeared as one of the zombies in “Thriller” and later conceived, co-directed and choreographed “Smooth Criminal.”
The 2007 Tony-winning revival of Journey’s End was just the beginning of Hugh Dancy’s New York stage career. He’s set to surface next Off-Broadway — in February 2010 at the Lucille Lortel — in a new prize-winning London import, The Pride, which won its first-time author, Alexi Kaye Campbell, the Critic’s Circle Prize for Most Promising Playwright as well as the John Whiting Award for Best Play.
Dancy didn’t see The Pride during its premiere Royal Court engagement — and not because he knew he’d be playing it stateside. “I’d like to claim such high motives,” he quipped impishly, “but to be fair to myself, I wasn’t actually in London.”
He didn’t catch up with Campbell until Play Two, Apologia, when it opened at the Bush Theatre in London. “We went out afterwards and talked more about that play because it was right there in my mind,” recalled Dancy. “It’s wonderful. It’s about the children of a woman returning to their family home just after she has written an autobiography in which she hasn’t mentioned any of them.”
Campbell, like Steppenwolf’s versatile Tracy Letts, got to playwriting from acting and has worked extensively as a performer in theatre, film and television.
Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose, who lends her voice as Disney’s first African American princess, is at work on a new Broadway musical.
In an interview with Essence Magazine regarding her work in “The Princess and the Frog,” Rose revealed that among her new projects is a new Broadway musical, which she is co-composing.
Known for her roles in Caroline, or Change; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and “Dreamgirls,” Rose stars as Princess Tiana in Disney’s latest animated feature “The Princess and the Frog,” which features a score by Randy Newman.
Rose joins a line-up of Broadway women who have previously voiced leads in Disney films including Jodi Benson (”The Little Mermaid”), Lea Salonga (”Aladdin” and “Mulan”) and Judy Kuhn (”Pocahontas”).
“Glee” had its fall season finale Dec. 9 and unlike unhappy-in-love Finn, fans got everything they wanted. (Spoilers: An end to pregnancy shenanigans! The Wemma kiss! Sue suspended! Lea covering Barbra!)
As the afterglow of that episode fades (much like our memories of last night’s drunken karaoke), fans of the hit FOX dramedy are faced with a yawning chasm of nearly four months before “Glee” returns to the air on April 13. So what’s a Gleek to do?
The Dec. 29 release of the DVD set “Glee, Vol. One: Road to Sectionals” should help tide fans over until fresh episodes about McKinley High’s hapless glee club resume in the spring. The four-DVD set will feature the director’s cut of the show’s pilot episode, plus the 12 episodes that aired this past fall. DVD extras will include exclusive behind-the-scenes featurettes and audition videos from the show’s cast.
As a holiday gift to “Glee” fans, here’s an exclusive DVD clip from the early episode “Preggers.” In one of the show’s signature moments where music and plot come together, McKinley High’s football team find a creative way to loosen up during a pivotal moment in the game.
“There’s a luxury that happens when you do a musical film, and that is: you have to rehearse,” says “Nine” director Rob Marshall. “We had six weeks of rehearsals and two weeks of pre-recording. It was during that time that we created a company.” Marshall didn’t know it til the “Nine” press conference, but he almost lost his leading man when he talked like that.
Daniel Day-Lewis readily confesses that such talk “initially made me step backwards because I don’t tend to rehearse, I don’t really like to rehearse, and I couldn’t understand how you could go through eight weeks of rehearsal without exhausting every possibility to the point where it was just mind-gasping on the floor.
“The first musical number I remember listening to was Fergie’s ‘Be Italian.’ It was a fairly early stage of rehearsal, and I just thought, ‘We might as well just go home now,’ because it was magnificent then — and we still had six weeks of rehearsal left.”
Liz McCann and Jerry Frankel were in the opening wave of producers checking out Parts I and II of Horton Foote’s The Orphans’ Home Cycle the first time the plays were done back-to-back at the Signature Theatre Company, fueling the notion Orphans may have a home on Broadway when it ends its Off-Broadway gig March 28.
If so, this could give Foote a clean shot at his overdue Tony — and a chance to equal Alfred Uhry’s triple-crown achievement of a Pulitzer Prize, an Oscar and a Tony.
Meanwhile, the Cycle keeps spinning Off-Broadway, alternating Part I and Part II, then doubling up with both installments on Wednesdays and Saturdays. And, after the first of the year, director Michael Wilson will add Part III to the mix.
The cast of 22, playing 67 different characters, will then address the concluding three one-hour plays in the trilogy: 1918, Cousins and The Death of Papa. The last two opuses, done regionally, will be new to New York.
Self-proclaimed Elaine Paige-wannabe Susan Boyle, who rose to fame on "Britain's Got Talent" belting Les Miserables' "I Dreamed a Dream," continues to break records with her debut album. 
