The unlikely duo plan to shop their new show to Broadway producers and theatre owners next week, the New York daily states. The show will feature Feinstein and the Dame offering their interpretations of the standards, including classics by Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin and Stephen Sondheim, among others.
No official announcement about the project has been made.
A five-time Grammy nominee, Michael Feinstein is often credited with reinvigorating interest in the American popular song. The crooner has performed in concert halls around the world and on Broadway and now co-owns his own nightclub, Feinstein's at Loews Regency. His numerous solo recordings include "The Sinatra Project," "Michael and George: Feinstein Sings Gershwin," "Big City Rhythms" "Romance On Film, Romance On Broadway," "Michael Feinstein with The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra," "Only One Life: The Songs of Jimmy Webb" and "Hopeless Romantics."
Dubbed Australia's First Lady, Dame Edna is the invention of Barry Humphries, a successful character actor in Europe and Australia as well as an esteemed landscape painter. Some of Humphries' theatrical credits include roles in Waiting for Godot, Oliver! and Maggie May, but his most successful outings have been as Dame Edna, a character he created in 1956. Humphries was given the Order of Australia in 1982 and was endowed with an Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University in Australia in 1994. The Dame found success on Broadway during the 2000 season with her Tony Award-winning show, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour. In 2004-05, her Back With a Vengeance played Broadway and earned a Tony nomination for Special Theatrical Event.