THEATRE GOSSIP #386 - "Send In The Doctors In Surgical Gowns! / Glynis Johns Is Too Young To Leave Us!" Edition

Link to previous thread

I missed the end of the last thread. Did we learn what Elaine Stritch said about Marge Champion?

I wouldn't put much credence in Stritch's takedown of Marje Champion. First of all, it was in very poor taste to slam a living and well-liked person. Stritch was not a truthful person and she blamed everyone else for problems she created.

Bizarro World Tony Awards! Who's got a ticket?

Best musical: will it be MOULIN ROUGE? JAGGED LITTLE PILL? SIX?

Of course, GIRL FROM NORTH COUNTRY was nominated, but no one believes it'll win. Or maybe TINA slid in there?

I want to hear more from the guy that got picked up and had sex with somebody who recommended he see Brigadoon.

What was better: the sex or "Brigadoon"?

I want to hear more from Billy Boy about actually working with Stritchy.

R2 Here you go, three quarters of the way through Act Two.

I tried to watch the Stritch video, and could not get past the narcissism. I know who she is, but the only thing I have ever seen/heard her in is Company, which, of course, is iconic. But I don't understand her hold on this board. The neediness and insincerity she displayed in the first fifteen minutes of At Liberty were enough to never want to see her in anything. I admit that, since I am not familiar with her body of work, I am not the target audience, but she dd nothing to make me care to learn more about her. She was tiresome.

[quote]Here you go, three quarters of the way through Act Two.

That's a lot to slog through to hear a bitchy remark about Marge Champion. Hard pass.

R9 Shoot Me shows Elaine at the end. You can see the fear.

R10 Just because I want to fuck you, LONG story starts at 1.30

OMG, I sat through LIBERTY once, live, on a date.

I have sufficient of Elaine Stritch, then and now.

I'm a big fan of Marge Champion. Enjoy her dancing in old movies and her interviews are wonderful. Also an important part of Disney film history. Saw her dance at the last MGM salute at Carnegie Hall with Donald Saddler and they were great.

But Jerry Herman in his autobio put Marge in a negative light as well.

Lincoln Center summer events canceled.

Marge & Gower...

"Was Rodgers strictly hetereo?"

I can neither confirm nor deny.

"Was Rodgers strictly hetereo?"

I can neither confirm nor deny.

Stumbled upon first five minutes on YT of a Burt Bacharach special which aired New Years Day 1990 on the BBC. It starred Daniel Massey, Ute Lemper, Juliet Prowse and a very hot looking Philip Casnoff. It was directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne. Looked for the whole thing on YT and DM but no luck. Maybe our Rock Follies guy can dig it up?

Did William Shakespeare like to get high?

Get your woke Broadway asses ready for the all-female version of 1776.

They're gonna love my all trans Latinx version of The Desert Song

[quote] I missed the end of the last thread. Did we learn what Elaine Stritch said about Marge Champion?

I'm sorry- I tried to post it at the end of the last thread but I was locked out thanks to Muriel and her prime time bullshit.

Here's the video and it starts at 1:44:40 (I know it was posted upthread but I have the timecode.) It's too visual to describe properly.

Also, OP, I don't think anyone is going to fault you for the title. I tried to start a new thread earlier and the only thing I could think of was Nick Cordero, not fitting material for a thread title, so I passed. Of course now that I've been reminded of that bullshit 1776 production, there was lots of fodder there.

I saw At Liberty on Broadway, although I barely remember any particulars, I do remember highly enjoying it.

I recently borrowed the audio CD from the library and it was very entertaining.

That Marge Champion story was endless and, ironically, about Marge dragging out an exit.

You could have titled the thread, "1776, Girls, 1776"

Cool Cool Considerate Patriarchal Condescending Abusive Oppressive Straight and Oh So White Cis Men

You did fine, OP. I'm glad you gave Glynis pride of place for this one.

Why does Broadway hate men and white people?

[quote]But Jerry Herman in his autobio put Marge in a negative light as well

Really? What did he say?

That tape that was linked of Stritch's show kept jumping all around. I never did hear the punch line for the Marge Champion story.

[quote]Best musical: will it be MOULIN ROUGE? JAGGED LITTLE PILL? SIX?

Six never got their opening night, so is it even eligible? Didn't the shutdown happen the day of what was going to be Six's opening night?

R13 and R30, the index of Jerry Herman's memoir has two listings: pages 91 and 106.

On Page 91, he writes: "Marge Champion did the sweetest thing. In the middle of all the hysteria, she came over and put her arm around me, and very quietly said, 'Has anyone ever told you what a beautiful score you've written?' Because it came at a time when my emotions were unsteady, I was overwhelmed by the kindness of that gesture."

On page 106, he writes: "Marge Champion talked to me."

Who are the actual people cast in 1776 tho - we know that no one here has any sex stories about them, but are any of them known/good?

Bullshit explanation of 1776 from Director Diane Paulus, but it will go well with the woke, SJW New York crowd:

"I have been overwhelmed by the compassion, humanity, and unstoppable creativity expressed by our company of 1776 who have come together from across the country for our virtual workshop. Their resilience has infused me with hope for the future of theater amid this time of uncertainty.

"As we embark on our journey together on this production, we find ourselves reckoning with our country's history, reexamining the pivotal moment of our nation's founding portrayed in 1776-the writing of the Declaration of Independence, a 'promissory note,' that, in Martin Luther King's words 'America has defaulted on.' Our cast includes multiple representations of gender, race, and ethnicity that allow this revival of 1776 to more broadly reflect today's America, our America.

"As artists, we are embracing our American history as a human predicament and are committed to the process of learning from the past in order to move forward together."

- Diane Paulus, Director of 1776 / Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director

For R33 who reads Reader's Digest. He names Marge Champion as talking him into settling the plagiary suit concerning the song Hello Dolly which he absolutely did not want to do because it was completely false. This way 20th Century Fox would buy the film rights. Why would he name her if he still wasn't bitter about it? It cost him $600,000 which in the 60s was an enormous sum of money.

Sunflower.

I agree with R35: that is one BS statement. Look, I'm the poster who said in the previous thread: as director, Paulus is free to cast whomever she likes in the 1776 revival.

But taking a show about our Founding Fathers and casting it largely with non-white actors was done previously, and brilliantly in HAMILTON. This just feels like a retread, and a not very inspired one, no matter how much she quotes MLK. She also fails to account for gender-reversing what appears to be most of the roles. Are they women & non-binary performers playing men? Or are they redefining the gender of the historical figures? How will this even work, with women singing men's roles in different keys, et al?

I wish her luck, but this sounds like a wreck waiting to happen.

[quote] I want to hear more from the guy that got picked up and had sex with somebody who recommended he see Brigadoon.

Since you asked.

I met him at the party after the Beverly Sills Farewell Gala at Lincoln Center in October, 1980. I was sitting alone at a table and he came up and asked if the seat next to mine was taken. We got to talking about the performances and I mentioned how wonderful it was to see Ethel Merman perform live. Sensing an opportunity, he wooed me back to his apartment with the promise of hearing a bootleg version of Merman in HELLO, DOLLY! (on reel-to-reel tape, no less).

R6, the sex was very good, but I wouldn't put out until I heard both "World, Take Me Back, AND 'Love, Look in My Window'. I may have been easy, but I wasn't cheap.

The next morning he took me to breakfast at Wolf's Deli on Sixth Ave. As I sat there eating lox and eggs in my rumpled-from-having-been-lying-on-the-floor-all-night rented tuxedo we discussed what shows I'd seen so far and he recommended two more: MORNINGS AT SEVEN and BRIGADOON. I ended up seeing, and enjoying, both.

More importantly, I suppose, was that I fell madly in love, not with the nice young man who brought me home, but with the city where nobody looks twice at a hungover 23 year old sitting in a deli in disheveled formal wear at eight in the morning enthusiastically discussing Broadway musicals. I knew at that point that I would somehow end up living here, and, although it took me 21 years to do it, I finally did.

Bravo, R39.

No, asshole R36, I have the book and read it. He does not say anything bad about Marge Champion.

Here is the text:

All the major film companies were begging for the film rights to HELLO, DOLLY!, but we were in serious negotiations with Twentieth Century-Fox. hey were prepared to do a lavish, expensive film of the show, and they were offering us the best deal.

The negotiations were going beautifully--until the studio heard about the lawsuit business. The legal department of Twentieth Century-Fox was very polite, but very firm: "We can't complete these documents," they told us, "while there is a legal cloud over the property."

That's when my phone really started ringing. I think Gower Champion was the first one.

"Jerry," he said, "my heart is broken for you. This must be even more painful for you than everything you went through in Detroit. But we've all worked very hard, and you've got to see that this is our big chance to make some real money."

"Gower," I said, "I would never stand in the way of my friends and collaborators. Let me think about this."

Then Michael Stewart, who was like my brother, came to me.

"I don't know how to say this," he told me, "but this may be our only chance. Styles change so fast in Hollywood. One minute musicals are popular, the next minute they're not. If we don't make this movie deal now, we may never get another chance. Can't you just settle this business?"

I told him, "I want to resolve this more than anybody. But if I settle out of court I can't fight these charges. I can't even try to speak up for myself."

Marge Champion talked to me. Everybody talked to me. Even Thornton Wilder's people came to me and said, "How can you take away this man's income?"

Don't get me wrong--nobody was badgering me. They were all very kind. They just made me feel that I had to straighten this out, and do it fast, or we would all lose about $3 million dollars. And I would be responsible.

I can't say that it was my decision to settle, because I really had no other choice. I could not alienate all the people I had worked with. I could not stop their income--or my own, either, because I wanted this movie deal to go through as much as anyone else.

So we settled out of court for $200,000. Today, that does not sound enormous, but in those days that was a fortune for me. I paid the $200,000 and it was over.

Do I regret not having fought the suit? The answer is yes. I would love to have taken a stand and defended myself. It still bothers me that I didn't get that chance. So, in a way, that painful chapter in my life never closed.

[quote]R9 I don't understand [Elaine Stritch’s] hold on this board... She was tiresome.

She was. And she was a braying embarrassment. But, I also have to admire her (grating) exuberance. At least some of the time.

Some gay men grow up feeling inhibited and like they can’t be completely open until they escape their families and home towns. I think that makes Stritch’s unabashed outspokenness appealing to them. She was a live wire - like a coarser Bette Davis.

Just felt like listening to...

Stritch's big Broadway opportunities to become a big musical star were in "Goldilocks" and "Sail Away". The former has a great score and a lousy title. I've seen it in a Musicals Tonight production and it's a fun show -- with a misleading title (it's about early silent Hollwood films, not a fairy tale) that plays fine even with a piano reduction, though one of its glories is the orchestrations by its composer Leroy Anderson (and Hershy Kay, too). She's a lot of fun on the recording, but the show flopped, as did "Sail Away", which was written for her by Noel Coward with whom she become good friends. Her part even got bigger, as the show wasn't quite working and they incorporated songs and the part of another actress whose they let go. But it flopped, too.

She also at some point really got out of hand as an alcoholic. One of the pit singers in "Company" told me she was hired on the understanding of Hal Prince that if she started drinking again during the show, she'd be fired. She did have a career, including a tv show in the UK and I believe stage appearance there, though don't have the details. She was known for being very talented also in plays like "Bus Stop" and even was in the movie remake of "A Farewell to Arms" in a supporting role. But I guess her Broadway kind of icon status really started with her "Ladies Who Lunch" and that documentary where she can't land it until the second day of recording. Hopefully she was more consistent in person doing the number, as she's great on the released album.

Early Elaine at 6:00...

Stritch worked steadily for decades. If she had been the horror that many here would like to believe, no one would have hired her.

The obsession with Stritch always befuddled me. She was truly awful in every way to work with, and her narcissism made Debra Messing look like Doris Day. Why everyone continues to obsess over this horrible person with a so-so artistic legacy surprises me.

No one is wrong about Elaine Stritch being a horror. She could be when she wanted to be. I suspect she would agree.

The naysayers are wrong about her not being worth it. She was worth it.

Back in the day, Stritch was a talented singer and actress. By the 1980s-90s, the voice was gone, but she still knew how to "put over" a song.

Whether she was worth all the drama and mess in her last decade will probably always be up for debate.

This has been posted before but here's Elaine and Russell Nype doing You're Just in Love from Call Me Madam. Merman had opened the first national in DC but then Elaine took over for the rest of the run.

Work that skirt, Elaine, work it!

That's the beginning of the end...

wonder land

wonder land

Putting It Together.

Carol , the 50th Anniversary.

Glynis Johns and Charles Laughton in "Major Barbara" on Broadway.

Elaine Stritch, left, as the first Trixie Norton in the "Honeymooners" sketches on Jackie Gleason's variety show, when it was on the DuMont Network and Alice was played by Pert Kelton. Gleason fired her after one episode and replaced her with Joyce Randolph (still alive at 95).

Forgot the program: also starring Burgess Meredith and Eli Wallach; Laughton directed.

Looks like this version of the female 1776 has the women playing men. What possible insight could that bring, other than being a tranny musical?

It gives actresses jobs?

It reinterprets a classic for modern audiences?

If it’s not your cup of tea, don’t go.

R60 Male actors and enbys too. If they dress femmy, they can be in.

God knows I’d rather watch the new interpretation instead of the original staid relic.

Oh please god Billy Porter won’t be in it.

"It reinterprets a classic for modern audiences?"

You mean the SJW woke crowd? That modern audience?

R39, thanks, that brought a tear to my eye. Posts like that are a main reason I come to the DL.

Very late in her career, Stritch was great on 30 Rock. I don’t think Tina Fey or Alec Baldwin would have tolerated any crap from her.

Stritch was very funny on 30 ROCK and she and Baldwin (no day in the park to work with, either) played well off one another.

Tina Fey diplomatically referred to Stritch as being "a handful" in at least one interview that I recall.

Fey also got a great performance out of Tracy Morgan, so there you are. The woman is a miracle worker.

Stritch was a problem on 30 Rock. Alec Baldwin mentioned (I think in that last documentary about her) that she wasn't given enough time to rehearse so during each take she would mess up a line on purpose so in the next take she could say it differently.

Aw, you're sweet R65

r68

smart actually and I loved her on 30 rock!

[quote]like a coarser Bette Davis.

Oh, I don't believe such a thing could be possible.

And she doesn't even look at him. Case. Closed.

[quote]God knows I’d rather watch the new interpretation instead of the original staid relic.

Then this has worked out rather well for you.

They had Patti LuPone's dresser from Company on the Biden Town Hall. She had taken a leave of absence from Hamilton. I bet she has some stories to tell.

Thanks a lot for ignoring *me* r58. I was sitting right in fucking front of you!

Bitch.

Let's deviate from the octogenarian chatter for a second to watch young Chalamet in Sweet Charity.

Alright, listen up, boys. That's enough. Stop dragging me. I've had it with this shit. Am I making myself clear? I've had it.

[quote] More importantly, I suppose, was that I fell madly in love, not with the nice young man who brought me home, but with the city where nobody looks twice at a hungover 23 year old sitting in a deli in disheveled formal wear at eight in the morning enthusiastically discussing Broadway musicals. I knew at that point that I would somehow end up living here, and, although it took me 21 years to do it, I finally did.

How do you feel about not arriving until after the city fell to shit?

The two girls are pretty good in that Sweet Charity, but Chalamet isn’t. He doesn’t have a clue how to play the elevator scene.

[quote] I've had it.

If you keep dressing like that, you'll never have it again.

R77 explains once and for all why Stritch never quite crossed over into a heterosexual male fandom.

STRITCHIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Enough.

[quote}I wouldn't put much credence in Stritch's takedown of Marje Champion. First of all, it was in very poor taste to slam a living and well-liked person. Stritch was not a truthful person and she blamed everyone else for problems she created.

I wouldn't put any credence in anything she said in AT LIBERTY. Someone else who was in that production of THE WOMEN that Elaine trashed in the show said that everything Elaine said it about it was completely false. The fact that the show was tremendously entertaining of course has nothing to do with the level of veracity in the stories.

[quote]The two girls are pretty good in that Sweet Charity, but Chalamet isn’t. He doesn’t have a clue how to play the elevator scene.

What are you talking about? He's completely charming in that scene, and if he misses one or two of the laughs, he gets all of the rest of them, and you can tell from the audience response that they adore his performance.

Aw, Tim O'tay was quite good there.

I predict audiences will no longer tolerate a cancel-culture-virtue-signaling-SJW conformist-politically- correct-'woke' society in a post-pandemic world.

Go watch John McMartin in the movie if you want to see the elevator scene work like gangbusters, even though the song was replaced by an inferior one. Chalamet was deadly, really bad. The “audience” was full of teen and pre-teen girls and gay boys who wanted to fuck him (or already had).

[quote] wouldn't put much credence in Stritch's takedown of Marje Champion.

Aren’t you paying attention? Stritch never did a takedown of Marge Champion. That was just the fantasy of the theatre thread’s resident liar. We’ve seen the receipts.

R39, How did you get invited to the Beverly Sills after party?

The Women must bring out the worst in actresses. I seem to remember Mary Louise Wilson talking about the terrible time she had when she did the 1970s Bway revival.

Diane Paulus is the worst kind of director: opportunist, leaden and self-important.

Let's be honest--THE WOMEN is a fun movie, mostly because of that marvelous cast and Cukor's sharp direction, but it barely deserves its camp classic status. It's complete tripe as a story. As a stage play, served straight up, it's dreadful.

No one cares whether Mary gets her Mister back. Not really.

I've seen a professional production of The Women. If you cast it correctly, have a big budget (huge cast and lots of period costumes) and a decent director who can direct comedy/keep it moving along, it's a lot of fun.

They really didn't change much from play to movie. The play takes place in so many locales it didn't need "opened up" like many plays do when adapted for film.

The 2001 production with Cynthia Nixon was deadly.

[quote]They really didn't change much from play to movie. [The Women]

To the contrary, Anita Loos bragged that she and her two co-screenwriters kept only one line from Clare Boothe Luce's stage play in their screenplay. One of those writers was an uncredited F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote some early drafts. Some lines from the stage version violated the Production Code and wouldn't have made it past the censors.

The entire plot of the movie is from the play down to the specific scenes.

The only major difference I can think of (I saw the play 15 years ago) is there's a scene with Edith in the hospital right after she's had her latest baby. Not in the movie though most of the info from that scene was used in other scenes in the film.

But, you're not going to be shocked by any major differences between the two. Though, obviously, the play doesn't contain a 15 minute long Adrian fashion show and a monkey.

Now, with Stage Door, there are huge differences between the original play and the film (with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers). Plot is totally different as are the characters.

Cukokr detested the fashion show and wanted it cut. The studio overruled him.

Did you know the Technicolor version of the fashion show was a completely different filming from the black and white version? The first home video release to include the Technicolor sequence was on DVD and it included the separately filmed black and version as an extra.

Who the hell is Elaine STITCH?

Dorothy Parker said that the film of Stage Door was so different that they should have called it Screen Door. And please remind me, who was the man who took you home and then recommended Brigadoon again?

I had a good friend who worked backstage on a number of Roundabout productions. She said the worst experience was on The Women. The cast HATED each other. No one got along and they could barely stand to be in the same building together. On the other hand, her best experience was Twelve Angry Men. The cast were all joined at the hip. They frequently went out together after the curtain came down and have remained terrific friends.

So, um...

What exactly is the point of this 1776 ? Women are prominent all over Broadway and always have been. This place never shuts up about Gypsy, Mame and Funny Girl. This makes them look pathetic. Create a new piece, oh that's right, originality is too hard.

To be fair, the Chalamet performance was from high school.

If Noel Coward writes a musical for you--and remember this was a decade BEFORE Company--you've got something. Maybe not something you'd embrace on a personal basis, but something.

One of the things I don't like about STAGE DOOR, THE WOMEN and other plays from that era is that you'd often have at least 10 or so bit players. It's like Kaufman, Hart, Ferber, etc. were repurposing film scripts and (particularly in STAGE DOOR), you end up with a flabby, episodic play.

R94, I think you may be thinking of Design for Living, which kept only one line from Coward's play.

The Women keeps ALOT of the stage play.

[quote] How did you get invited to the Beverly Sills after party?

It wasn't by invitation. Depending on how much you spent for your ticket, it did or did not include the party/supper afterward. IIRC, it was held in a giant tent behind the New York State Theater. I was waiting for the omelette line to die down when Mr. I've Got a Bootleg You Might Like sat down next to me. I never did get supper that night.

I do remember the ticket was $150 (one of the upper tiers), which is $470 in today's dollars, and that I paid $35 for an orchestra seat to the just-opened 42ND STREET ($109 in current dollars). No wonder I stayed at the Vanderbilt Y.

(BTW, I went back and reread the Times review of that evening. The reviewer noted that the curtain didn't come down until after midnight, which means the supper afterward must've been around 1 am. And I guarantee that I'd been running around the city all day. What I wouldn't give to have all that energy now).

[quote] How do you feel about not arriving until after the city fell to shit?

I was born and raised in San Francisco and there was an old saying that someone will inevitably tell you that San Francisco was so much better X years before you got here. It was true 20 years ago and it will be true 20 years from now. Even with all its troubles, New York is still a wonderful place to live.

[quote] I was born and raised in San Francisco and there was an old saying that someone will inevitably tell you that San Francisco was so much better X years before you got here. It was true 20 years ago and it will be true 20 years from now. Even with all its troubles, New York is still a wonderful place to live.

True, but often those people who "just got here" hadn't had the experience of it 20 years prior like you did. You actually had something to compare it to. That was the reason I asked. I moved to NYC in the mid-80s when I was 16 and I know that, though there was a definite difference between, say 1987 and other time periods such as pre-AIDS late 70s or Mad Men mid-60s, etc., up until Guiliani sold out the city and started bulldozing properties in 1995 one could still be in NYC and get an idea of a lot of what made NYC like no other place on earth. And by the time 9/11 rolled around, the city had become unrecognizable.

You spoke so lovingly of your time in the city in 1980 that I wondered if it was a shock to come back post-9/11 to find that it didn't really exist anymore. And I don't just mean the landscape.

Oh, properties were bulldozed en masse under Koch. Long before Ghouliani got his hooks into the city.

After the near-death experience of the late 1970s, New York offered a large tax-abatement program for new construction. There was a date in the late 80s by which the foundation had to be in place in order to claim the tax benefit. Therefore, the early and mid 1980s were a bulldozer festival in NYC. Old buildings were ripped down right and left. The Millennium Times Square stands where a row of tenements stood until one afternoon in 1984 or 1985 when Harry Macklowe brought in a crane and started knocking them down... with people still inside. A wrecking ball hitting the facade gets 'em out fast. Better than a court order. It was in 1982 when the Morosco, the Helen Hayes and the Bijou theaters were all knocked down.

Then, in 1987 when the stock market tanked badly, there were empty foundations and half-built towers that were shut down and placed into bankruptcy. Which is how the Actor's Fund got the Aurora.

[quote]Mr. I've Got a Bootleg You Might Like

So THAT'S what they called it back then.

Sigh.

Remember when the biggest upset of this theatre season was the mixed response to THE INHERITANCE?

Good times.

Would it shut up the "woke" SJWs if they did an all-male version of "The Women" -- or would they just complain they are taking roles away from the ladies? What it it were all-Asian men? That probably wouldn't cut it. All African-American men? Hmm, that might work...

Singapore/Flinging shit would still probably write diatribes on ATC

The only stage production of THE WOMEN I'd be interested in seeing would feature all African-American men. Now THAT would be some theatre.

didn't you read the 2 posts above you?

Tyler Perry Presents "The Women"

Too bad Jussie Smollett will be in prison. It could have been his Tony Award.

I think if males were cast in THE WOMEN, they’d find how tiresome it is to play shallow, bitchy characters with just a few scenes.

Uh, John McMartin had years to perfect his performers and Bob Fosse to direct him. Chalamet was charming.

More Tim from Sweet Charity.

Hard to believe that he got the role, considering he really can't sing. Here is someone more representative of the program.

1776, what can be learned? More bullshit in this article.

That story is dated May 2019, R119, FWIW.

I seriously doubt this 1776 revival will ever make it to Broadway. Producers are already concerned about re-opening profitable shows and bringing in sure-fire hits. I cannot believe there will be money found to support this production coming to Bway.

It wasn't even clear that Paulus' current production of JAGGED LITTLE PILL was going to be profitable before quarantine happened.

Oh wait--the ROUNDABOUT already committed to the 1776 revival? Holy cow.

Okay. This is going to be a shitshow, then.

R105 thanks for sharing your memory. In these times, when sickness is all around us, it's nice to hear stories of good times.

Everyone needs to read and memorize r107's response because it's historical truth.

Giuliani didn't wreck New York City, he did the only thing that would save it. Starting in the 1960s, New York came under poor leadership. As the 1970s hit, financial problems hit the US and NYC really took a blow. The city was bankrupt and desperate. Coming into the 1980s, New Yorkers still hadn't learned how to elect good leadership and foolish decisions continued. New York sold to whoever had the cash. Donald Trump had his father's cash and began throwing it around. The US had turned all manufacturing over to Japan and the Japanese were buying everything. Giuliani came in and decided that with all the cash flowing around that NYC should clean up Times Square, hence a company with deep pockets like Disney. I think they could have done a better job of redoing Times Square, but at least it got done. Now pay attention. Giuliani didn't wreck the city. It was Bloomberg that came in and basically did a hedge fund job on the city. Stripped it of its identity, sold off assets and let the rich strip the place of value. Bloomberg killed NYC.

But the problem is that New Yorkers never learn. We're headed for the same financial problems that plagued us in the 1970s and the buffoon de Blasio has no clue what to do. He sits in his wet diaper and whines that the government won't give him more money, even though the money he has been given is poorly spent. The only problem now is that we have no artists left to bring us joy to carry us through hard times. All the art we're being given has strings attached. It has to be created by someone who checks diversity boxes. So all we get are all-women productions of 1776 and musicals of music that were performed better by the original artists and we can sit at home and listen to for free. Basically, we're screwed.

Not a Giuliani fan, but I agree with R122. My god, remember the city during the Koch era?

Yes, I actually lived there during the Koch era. And, outside of crime, it was way better than what it is now.

Koch was pretty good the first 2 terms. By the 3rd, he'd gotten out of hand.

"Yes, I actually lived there during the Koch era. And, outside of crime, it was way better than what it is now."

What made it better?

My viewpoint is that interesting people lived in the city at that time. Bloomberg purged the city of interesting people. I just don't know where they went.

A lot of them died from AIDS. Koch stunk in that way, though, being closeted and terrified of being exposed as a gay man.

Yes, you seem to want to lay all the blame at Bloomberg's feet and exonerate Guiliani, but Guiliani started the ball rolling in a major way. It certainly didn't immediately cause independent businesses and artists who didn't come with trust funds to flee the city. Those things take time. But Guiliani's plan was to turn Times Sq. into a corporate paradise, and once you go down that road, you don't stop there. Bloomberg just kept the train running.

We haven't had a good Mayor in NYC since Koch, and he certainly wasn't perfect, and yes, botched the AIDS crisis in a big way. But also remember that he was dealt a situation that mirrors this current one in some ways. Let's say he decided to go full Cuomo and close down the bars and the baths early on- He would have had the same kind of revolt that we're seeing in deplorable country, only by gay men. When Larry Kramer and Richard Berkowitz spoke out about abstinence, closing the baths and then safe sex, the majority of NYC gay men threw a fit. So while I'm not excusing Koch, his situation was not as cut and dried as memory likes to portray.

[quote]The two girls are pretty good in that Sweet Charity, but Chalamet isn’t. He doesn’t have a clue how to play the elevator scene.

Thought he did terrific for high school but then I don't have a rolled up Playbill permanently shoved up my ass like most theater queens here do.

Please don't defend Koch's handling of the AIDS epidemic in NYC. Not on a Broadway theatre thread. Many of us lost people--friends, colleagues--during those years.

To excuse or justify his behavior and inaction, fueled by his own closeted status: it's obscene.

Sorry, R122, but Giuliani is not responsible for the Times Square clean up. He claims credit for it, and he undoubtedly assisted, but Times Square redevelopment started with the theater owners and the NY Times. They had enormous investments in real estate and the City had allowed the area to sink into squalor. Koch and Cuomo were on board long before Giuliani was around. The crash that happened in 1987 set the whole thing back, which is how Giuliani was able to get his grubby little hands on it.

[quote] Please don't defend Koch's handling of the AIDS epidemic in NYC. Not on a Broadway theatre thread. Many of us lost people--friends, colleagues--during those years. To excuse or justify his behavior and inaction, fueled by his own closeted status: it's obscene.

I'm not going to debate this, and I certainly wasn't trying to upset anyone, nor (as I said in my previous post) am I trying to defend Koch. I understand it's still a very raw subject, likely exacerbated right now due to current events.

[quote]I'm not going to debate this,

Good idea.

Fuck you, R133

Even in the crime ridden 70s NY was a vibrant city that included its middle and lower classes. It wasn't just for the rich. There was still a lot of great theater. Hal Prince and Joe Papp were producing wonderful shows and there weren't office towers on every block. Light came into midtown not just at noon but also in the early morning and late afternoon That wasn't by accident. It was called zoning.. Going to the upper east side and waiting to see the newest film in an exclusive engagement and waiting on line was an event. The destruction of NY started in the mid 60s with the tearing down of the Paramount, Capitol, Astor, Claridge, George Abbott, Metropolitan Opera and Penn Station.

But it went well beyond that into high gear with the despicable disgusting worm Ed Koch who fought very hard to tear down the Morosco , Bijou and Helen Hayes in the 80s. NY character is gone and I rarely go. It now might as well be Shanghai.

Great discussion on NYC evolution over the past few decades. I wish it had its own separate thread.

Buyer & Cellar is still on YT. I thought Michael Urie was terrific in it.

They also tore down the Criterion, Rivoli, Loew's State theaters, etc. as well. They only movie palaces in NY I think left are the wonderful Loew's Paradise in the Bronx (mostly restored a few years ago, though I don't know how much use it's gotten since) and the Loew's Kings in Brooklyn, which has concerts these days. There may be a few others (maybe one in Washington Heights?).

Yes the destruction those great remaining Times Square movie palaces along with the Warner Cinerama and DeMille came in the wake of the Marriott apocalypse in the late 80s.

And the beautiful Adonis! The developers of Worldwide Plaza refused to go forward unless the Adonis was torn down.

Fuckers.

Remember when this was a theatre thread? Good Times...

And we're talking about theaters. Theaters that were in New York City. Were, sadly.

We are sharing the good times we had in them. Including the Adonis.

Some of the younger folks don't care. Until they are older and find that they've torn down the red staircase at TKTS or something that was erected during their time.

I have a brick from the Morosco. I was a kid and a guy on a bulldozer let me go inside the fenced area to take one.

Someone, awhile ago, requested Buyer and Cellar. Found it.

[quote]And the beautiful Adonis! The developers of Worldwide Plaza refused to go forward unless the Adonis was torn down.

Did they have to call in a hazmat squad?

And the nacreous layer of permacum must have been a bitch to deal with.

The East-West Players in LA often do all- or mostly Asian casts ... I saw their "Mamma Mia," and had tickets for "Assassins," which unfortunately was COVID-cancelled.

Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet in 1899 so everyone should relax. 1776 will either be good or it won't

R100 And we will never forget FOLLIES: let's have an all male version.

"Thought he did terrific for high school but then I don't have a rolled up Playbill permanently shoved up my ass like most theater queens here do."

Not for good enough for LaGuardia High School. Look at another alum in Hairspray.

and another.............

And do you know what the real name of the Adonis was? The Tivoli. On 8th Av. It might as well have been Omaha as far as theater people were concerned.

And who is the idiot who says you can't talk about theaters on a theatre thread? What a dumbo.

Giuliani didn't "save" NYC.

Like Trump taking credit for what Obama started, Giuliani came in and took complete credit for what Dinkins started--cleaning the subways, hiring more policemen, cleaning up Times Square. Giuliani just rode the Clinton economic boom. NYC didnt do any better overall than the other American big cities did.

Please - Dinkins was a nice enough man -- but he didn't do a damn thing about blacks who were jealous of a white-owned store that they were picketing because it wasn't black owned. Among other stuff.

1776 is a bore of a musical so I'd welcome anything, ANYTHING, to make it more enticing.

The book is so dense and complete that the songs aren't even necessary

R153 = Giuliani

[quote] Dinkins was a nice enough man -- but he didn't do a damn thing about blacks who were jealous of a white-owned store that they were picketing because it wasn't black owned.

It was Dinkin's responsibility to curtail freedon of speech?

Women Of Colour @ Studio 54.

Dinkins did speak about protests against Korean grocers , which I assume R153 was apparently referencing

You Can't Take It With You with Jason Robards.

Dinkins spoke up about the Korean grocers after a long, long time. It was reverse prejudice against hard-working people of another ethnicity. They should have started their own business to compete, but they just wanted to protest instead.

[quote]You Can't Take It With You with Jason Robards.

A Paper Mill Playhouse production that went to Broadway.

It was Dinkins who cut the crime rate and figured out how to get the porn out of Times Square through rezoning.

But Guilliani was a protoTrump, taking credit for other people's efforts while making their programs less efficient.

Someone had told me years ago that The Adonis originally had been a movie theatre given to Fanny Brice by her husband Billy Rose as a gift but I've never been able to verify that. Anyone hear similar or differently? Little did the audiences going to see the big film hit of 1940 know what would eventually take place up on that screen. And in the seats. And in the bathrooms. I personally don't know, a friend told me about it.

[quote] To be fair, the Chalamet performance was from high school

Yes, there’s no shame to the fact that he’s not so good in a high school performance. But as it happens, the Charity and the gal playing the secretary are very good for their ages.

I want to see the verisimilitude of Benjamin Franklin as a transgender Latina.

R163, you must mean the original Adonis on 51st and 8th. Someone wrote about the fact that Kate Hepburn always parked there when she was doing COCO at the Mark Hellinger, and someone would always walk her to her car parked in front of the gay porn palace.

Jesus, the Dinkins shit makes one long for the threads about Stritch. At least it was about "theater."

Mille grazie, R144!

[quote] The destruction of NY started in the mid 60s with the tearing down of the Paramount, Capitol, Astor, Claridge, George Abbott

You forgot the original Ziegfeld (the stage theatre, not the movie theatre), torn down in 1966 after Anya closed. And of course, back in 1960, the destruction of the Roxy ... which brings us back to Follies.

"It was Dinkins who cut the crime rate and figured out how to get the porn out of Times Square through rezoning."

You're wrong. There was still porn in Times Square at the start of Giuliani administration. It was Giuliani who issued the mixed law that said porn shops had to have mixed inventory. You'd walk into a porn shop and you were greeted by 200 dusty Deanna Durbin videos. You had to go to the back, behind the curtain to get what you came for.

The original Circle In The Square in the West Village was torn down to build an apartment building.

No Broadway shows this summer. At all.

Didn't Patti say that Company was going to be her last Broadway musical?

[quote] Someone wrote about the fact that Kate Hepburn always parked there when she was doing COCO at the Mark Hellinger, and someone would always walk her to her car parked in front of the gay porn palace.

Didn't Hepburn live next door to Stephen Sondheim in Turtle Bay? Why would she bother to drive across town instead of having a car and driver pick her up?

I also had a brick from the Morosco. I have no idea where it is now. Lost in one of my moves, I guess.

"Didn't Hepburn live next door to Stephen Sondheim in Turtle Bay? Why would she bother to drive across town instead of having a car and driver pick her up?"

Hepburn was fiercely independent. Even Scotty Bowers mentioned that she drove in LA even though she could have requested a car and driver.

I think Hepburn and Sondheim lived on different streets but their back yards joined up.

There's a hilarious legend that says that one night very late Hepburn came across the backyard screaming at Sondheim because he was playing his piano too loudly. He used that to write the part of the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd. Can't you imagine Hepburn screeching "City on fire! "

I think we all need a little BOMBSHELL about now.

Chalamet is quite winning in those clips. He's not the world's greatest singer, but it's not like he's playing Jean Valjean. Oscar isn't a tough sing. He landed most of the laughs, which is more than I can say for most high school performers.

While I sympathize with women getting less interesting roles on film and TV (any idiot can see that's true), the musical theatre has always been better for women than it has for men. They get Mama Rose, Sally, Phyllis, Reno Sweeney, Annie Oakley, Desiree, The Witch, The Baker's Wife, Norma Desmond, Mrs. Lovett, etc. and men get Bobby, Harold Hill, Sweeney Todd, Henry Higgins and...Billy Flynn? The female musical theatre roles always seem to be a bit more interesting and complex than the male roles.

Men get the Emcee in "Cabaret", Tevye, Pseudolous, Barnum, among others, too.

Most of the men's prime roles are character leading roles, including Harold Hill, played by movie character actor turned Broadway musical star Robert Preston.

[quote]Men get the Emcee in "Cabaret"

Not in my production, they don't.

[quote]and men get Bobby

Are jew callink me a man? May your mother's toenails rise from the grave and fly into your eyeballs!

Tevye & Pseudolus = character lead roles? Maybe.

[quote]It was Dinkin's responsibility to curtail freedon of speech?

It's my responsibility to curtail apostrophe abuse.

Don Quixote, King Arthur, Seymour Krelborn, Valjean, Curly, Evan Hanson, Elder Price....

Billy Bigelow, the King, Curly . . .

^^ Sorry for the Curly repeat.

R170, this stuff does not happen overnight. Dinkins got the council to do the study and develop the plan--that got implemented under Giuliani. But Giuliani was just following DInkin's blueprint. The redevelopment of 42nd Street had long been desired, but it was the Dinkins administration who finally figured out how to do it. Had he gotten another term, he would have gotten the credit--but as it was Giuliani did not change a comma in Dinkins' plan.

And it was Dinkins who lowered the crime rate. Giuliani claimed he deserved credit because even though crime went down under Dinkins, he was the one who publicized it and made people feel safe.

Which tell you all you need to know about him.

It was the police head under Giuliani, who Giuliani got jealous of and fired, that got the crime rate down.

WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT DINKINS AND GIULIANI ? TALK ABOUT FOLLIES.

"I think we all need a little BOMBSHELL about now."

No one needs the dud Bombshell, now or ever.

Oh dear. That Broadway actor Nick Cordero had to have his leg amputated. Blood clot.

I know what I'm watching in 10 minutes:

The Dick Cavett Show

TONIGHT, ON KTTVDT4 11.4, 1 HR 2019

BETTE DAVIS AND WHITNEY STINE • TALK

Bette Davis talks about her musical The Corn Is Green, and Whitney Stine chats about writing Bette's biography. Later, Davis and Cavett perform a scene from Dark Victory, and Bette answers audience questions...

Sondheim and Hepburn lived on the south side of the same block, 4 or 5 doors away from each other. All those townhouses shared a common garden area out back. I think it was East 49th but I'm open to correction.

The Adonis nee Tivoli, opened 1921, 1440 seats, was never a mainstream movie theater, it mostly played independent, exploitation, second run and foreign language pictures, eventually moving into nudies and hardcore, ending its colorful existence as a bastion of gay male delights, both on and off acreen.

[quote]R194 Bette Davis talks about her musical The Corn Is Green

Tim Robbins father (Gill) was in that.

He was also a replacement member of the 60s folk group “The Highwaymen”

Hepburn lived next door to Sondheim, which is why she could hear his piano playing. And when she knocked on his door to get him to stop, she was (as always with her) very demanding, but she didn't raise her voice. That unique instrument made its effect without volume.

One of the Ethan Mordden books has the story in detail, in two versions. One (what actually happened) is what Sondheim told Mordden. The other is the variorum version that went through New York's theatreland gossip circuits, each teller adding a detail or two. It's more fun than Sondheim's account.

I did a couple of plays with Gil Robbins in the 1960s. I didn't know Tim Robbins was his son. It might not be the same Gil Robbins.

Sondheim lives in the 200 block of East 49th St. Hepburn lived immediately next door, to the west.

Sondheim lives in the 200 block of East 49th St. Hepburn lived immediately next door, to the west.

[quote]r199 I did a couple of plays with Gil Robbins in the 1960s. I didn't know Tim Robbins was his son. It might not be the same Gil Robbins.

This Gil Robbins is in the back row, far right. I think the whole Robbins family for a time did industrial shows for G.E. or some manufacturer - the kind of between-gigs job performers get to make ends meet.

That’s why they’re all holding little electrical appliances (or something?)

Yes, that's the same Gil Robbins. Thanks, R202.

I [italic]think [/italic]Gil Robbins is the one in the yellow shirt (?)

[quote]R203 Yes, that's the same Gil Robbins. Thanks.

What kind of plays did you do with him? Was he a good actor? I think he did a lot of experimental music projects in Greenwich Village, back in the day. He also managed the Gas Light Cafe, which was a famous music venue.

r205 And looked highly fuck able.

Excuse me, r202, I'M the GE spokesperson around here...

We know, r193. The threads have been keeping up with Cordero’s sad situation.

R86, don't be a dick. I'm certainly not suggesting that Timothee Chalamet was as good in the SWEET CHARITY elevator scene as John McMartin was in the movie, but I think he did a fine job with it overall even if he did miss a few laughs.

[quote]The Millennium Times Square stands where a row of tenements stood until one afternoon in 1984 or 1985 when Harry Macklowe brought in a crane and started knocking them down... with people still inside.

I don't think there were still people inside, but that was an awful thing he did.

[quote]While I sympathize with women getting less interesting roles on film and TV (any idiot can see that's true), the musical theatre has always been better for women than it has for men.

R179, what any idiot should be able to see is that, historically, women have definitely been underrepresented in SOME areas of show business, such as directing, writing, etc., in theater, film, and television, but I have never understood or agreed with so many people's insistence that there has been any lack in quality or quantity of roles for actresses in an of those media. And I think a lot of women lose all sympathy for themselves when they keep on INSISTING it's true, even though they apparently still have your sympathy, because you have bought the lie. If it were possible for someone to make a list of all leading and featured roles for men and women in film and TV (and theater) from, say, 1930 to 2000, and total up the numbers, I think you'd be surprised by the results and retroactively very embarrassed by your gullibility.

Actually, I was in Sondheim's townhouse and he did live directly behind Hepburn, and the little study with the piano was very close to her study across the way, only a couple of yeards between them.

[quote]Actually, I was in Sondheim's townhouse

And when you were tied up in the basement, was it Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick or Hermione Gingold that opened the door to your freedom?

R205, BYE BYE BIRDIE and THE VISIT (the play, not the musical which hadn't been written yet) in summer stock. I remember him as being good and nice. I didn't get to know him well. They were short runs (BIRDIE was two weeks and THE VISIT only one).

R205, the Gas Light where Midge Maisel did some early gigs?

[italic]TIM ROBBINS IS PRACTICALLY YOUR NEPHEW ! ![/italic]

Get on a plane.

^^ in response to

[quote] r212 summer stock. I remember him as being good and nice. I didn't get to know him well. They were short runs.

R212 Cut to the chase, did you trick?

R214 and R215, I am in NYC and I've seen Tim Robbins here--I think he lives here.

R216, No.

If you throw yourself on his mercy maybe he has a big, rural estate he can sequester you away on until the corona madness has safely passed. It could be something like “Mrs. Winterbourne”

We all must do what we must to survive!

Wasn't Nell Carter also in that Bette Davis musical?

LOL. He's not gay, is he?

[quote]R219 Wasn't Nell Carter also in that Bette Davis musical?

Yes.

The other woman is the wonderful Marion Ramsey.

Gil's wife of 59 years died 12 days after him in 2011.

Joshua Logan wrote that Davis was a real pain during the tryouts of that show, and ultimately put a lot of people out of work when she chickened out.

The sad thing was there were a lot of young hopefuls in the cast who would have been making their Broadway debuts.

Apparently the story is that it was the song "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" that was driving Katharine Hepburn crazy when Sondheim was composing it.

It was probably diminishing the gusto of a Kate muff diving session.

Watching Buyer and Cellar. Urie is carrying this middling text as far as he can take it, which is fairly far.

You're right I left out the Ziegfeld which one can see the façade of in I believe How to Murder Your Wife. I left out the Roxy because that was about 1960 which was a bit before the wholesale slaughter and character change of the Times Square really started. I also left out the movie theaters the Astor and the Victoria which were torn down along with the other 3 playhouses at between 45th and 46th. So you see actually 5 theaters were torn down for the Marriott. And the Morosco and the Helen Hayes were among Broadways best.

The Astor and Victoria started out as playhouses with the ornate interior of the early 20th century then became prestigious first run movie theaters often showing major films on a roadshow basis and then were modernized in the 50s. Another interesting note that the original name of the Victoria was the Gaiety. It turned to burlesque in the 30s for a brief period. Then for some reason that name moved across the street to the female burlesque house which I believe was once one of those taxi dancer palaces. This became as most of us know a gay strip house.

East 49 seems like such a random and out of the way place to live for both of them

It might be heretical to say, but the only major loss was the Helen Hayes. It was a very pretty theatre, inside and out. The Morosco had a vaunted position as a playhouse, but it was not such a great theatre. Kind of plain, cramped and drab, actually. And the Bijou was a dump. But I absolutely miss what those blocks used to look like, including the Hotel Piccadilly and the busy coffee shop in its lobby. The Marriott is a complete botch. Soulless, eye-defiling. It's the hotel equivalent of Mordor.

Seth Rudetsky has a new podcast show called “Back to School”. The first four guests were Tina Fey, Vanessa Williams, Sean Hayes, and Rosie O’Donnell.

All were really entertaining. He’s a great interviewer. Highly recommended though it will bring back unpleasant memories of being a gay kid in high school.

It did have a lovely window card....

Wow. Bette Davis, Dody Goodman, and Anne Francine.

That's a lot of actress for one show.

"Virtual" 90th birthday celebration for Sondheim.

Sondheim's and Hepburn's front doors were close to one another, almost side by side so to speak. So close that I accidentally rang hers the first time I visited him. No one answered, and Sondheim later said I was lucky she wasn't home because she wouldn't have been pleasant.

And no, we didn't trick.

Gawd, what dreck...

[quote]And no, we didn't trick.

Well, of course you didn't trick R236.

[quote]The Morosco had a vaunted position as a playhouse, but it was not such a great theatre. Kind of plain, cramped and drab, actually.

It was perfectly lovely.

Just watched Buyer and Cellar, too, and I found Urie absolutely charming and the show unexpectedly moving. I always thought Urie was sorta cute, but there are certain shots and angles in this where he looks absolutely gorgeous.

I'm not understanding the issues with the play itself. It's creative and fun and moved at a really great pace. Did Streisand ever see it?

I liked BUYER AND CELLAR, too, R240. It's not Stoppard or Pinter, and never claimed to be. And Urie was terrific.

The only thing I ever heard about the play and Babs was some vague comment she made about "people profiting from her public persona" or some such. I cannot imagine she would be thrilled if she saw it, frankly. Some uncomfortable truths there.

"Babs was some vague comment she made about "people profiting from her public persona"

Says the woman who owes her career to Fanny Brice.

Christ, Sondheim looks like someone hit him in the face with a bag of nickels.

"Christ, Sondheim looks like someone hit him in the face with a bag of nickels."

After his face got run over by a Grub Hub delivery bike.

I thought the play treated Streisand rather fairly and I left the show, if anything, liking her more for being vulnerable and human.

Sondheim is 90. People who are 90 tend to look old.

His skin is pale and his eye is odd.

Two years ago I spent a few months living in Berlin for work purposes, partly to attend Theatertreffen, which is an annual theatre festival consisting of works that are mostly very serious and very German. While there, I took a weekend trip to Bochum to specifically to see the production of Starlight Express that's been running there for THIRTY (!) years.

Although I was familiar with the score, I'd never before seen a production. It's bonkers and - in parts - yeah, in parts, it is dreck. But it is also totally unique, the staging is great, and it doesn't take itself too seriously. I had a great time, and left loving it as much as some of the best stuff I saw in Berlin.

It's also kind of crazy that a production of a strange 1980s megamusical has been running in this rather insignificant German city for three decades.

LOL, R247.

German FOLLIES!!!

Kiss Me, Kate - London '99.

Larry Kramer - In Love And Anger.

Drama Desk nominations:

Richard III - Ralph Finnes.

Richard III - Act Two.

[quote] Sondheim is 90. People who are 90 tend to look old.

We beg your pardon

^ Does she have a dungeon?

Oh, shit, R250, I thought you’d posted a link to the Follies production in Dresden this year that was reset to a bunch of Germans’ nostalgia for the former East Germany.

Sondheim looks 115. He looks older than the oldest man in the world in England who just turned 112 and was interviewed on tv. I like vodka too but how much has that man been drinking?

Francis Jue is a double nominee for the Drama Desks? The only thing I know him from is the nasty Chinese Foreign Minister on "Madam Secretary."

He’s 90 and he’s still sharp as a tack when you see him interviewed. Let him drink what he likes.

Tammy. Blanchard was nominated for Little Shop but Jonathan Groff wasn’t?!

If all of these other awards are still announcing nominees and will hold the ceremony online, can't the Tonys do the same? If so, maybe they wouldn't have to wait all the way to the fall.

From 90 to 17. Derek Klena in Joseph.

Groff still looked too pretty.

when will dramedy stop complaining that starsinthehouse's plays and other on-line readings, getting together actors for play readings, aren't available on his work schedule? It's not all about you, dramedy.

^ In reference to...

I"ve wondered for the last decade, why hasn't Sondheim gotten any eyelid work done?? He's had that droopy eyelide for a long time

R267 ATC and those great play reading Seth Rudetysky and his husband have been arranging.

Oh, here ya go, mein Liebchen r258....

R269 Ahhh, right.

Who is that supposed to be in that pic at r270? Young Phyllis? Old Phyllis? Dead Phyllis? Zombie Phyllis? Nazi Dominatrix Phyllis?

I thought I heard Sondheim had given up the booze after his heart attack in his early 40s, along with cigarettes and his old unhealthy eating (steak + martini + cigarettes for dinner). Did I have that wrong?

PS: steak + martini + cigarettes for dinner sounds DELICIOUS right now.

Wow, The Drama Desks pretty much ignored Broadway this year. The Inheritance is the only Broadway multiple nominee in major categories.

[quote]The only thing I ever heard about the play and Babs was some vague comment she made about "people profiting from her public persona" or some such. I cannot imagine she would be thrilled if she saw it, frankly. Some uncomfortable truths there.

Are they truths or some stranger's belief they are?

R262, I found that bizarre as well.

Rocky/Raquel

Don't know when Sondheim started drinking again, but I've heard of too many first-hand accounts of being in his company while he drank a lot not to believe them.

I feel quite sure that Babs has ] sneaked a peek at Buyer & Cellar via tape after so many of her pals, including Barry Manilow, told Jon Tolins that she would have loved it.

It makes me happy to hear that Barbra might have loved the show, because I thought it was surprisingly heartfelt and approached her from a pretty loving place.

R250, I’m the one who posted that trailer a few threads ago! God, I’d love to see the entire thing.

I've always thought Derek Klena is one of the cutest-hottest of the young crop of Broadway actors, so thanks for that clip. But why do SO MANY young people distort vowels so weirdly, like singing "darkin" instead of "darken?" It's annoying.

My issue with "Buyer and Cellar" is that, apparently, a lot of the details about the mall beneath Streisand's house are true but a lot of them are not, and it bothers me that truth is completely mixed up with fiction like that, even if there are all those disclaimers at the top of the show. Also, while Michael Urie is a great actor and a comic genius, his imitation of Streisand's way of speaking is probably the worst I've ever heard. It's ironic that a script that requires so much talking like Streisand would be played by an actor who cannot do a New York Jewish accent, as Urie also showed in "Torch Song Trilogy."

Urie back when he replaced in "How to Succeed...."

The original, dearly departed Helen Hayes Theatre.

R283, why does the mix of true and fictional details about the building bother you? Are you worried that in the event of a natural disaster someone might be trapped in Babs' mall because they were confused by the play?

[quote]Why does the mix of true and fictional details about the building bother you?

Not just details about the building, but also a lot of material about Streisand's behavior and attitude. I can't fully explain it, but I think the inclusion of so much exaggeration and false information makes it seem like it ALL might be exaggeration and false information, but so much of it IS NOT. Also, it bothered me that the disclaimer stuff at the beginning made such a point, for legal reasons, that this play wasn't REALLY about the ACTUAL Barbra Streisand, when that was the whole point of the thing. I had a similar problem with HILLARY AND CLINTON.

Everyone's fave, Lin Manuel Miranda will be on Conan tonight.

I think that roughly 15 minutes should be cut out of Buyer And Cellar. It runs a bit long. The ending needs to be rethought as well. It seems more like let's get this over with rather a conclusion to the story.

The whole hair thing threw me. Urie is very cute but I can't imagine anyone wanting pillows the color of his hair. I seriously doubt Streisand would like it let alone love it. She might pretend to but you kind of know she'd be raging at home to Brolin. She has to make the jokes.

While her estate is spectacular she tries so hard for good taste the rooms lack both beauty and warmth. I was surprised. A Laura Ashley mausoleum.

I have a fantasy that they'll turn Buyer and Cellar into a feature film and Streisand will play the fictionalized version of herself. That would be hysterical!

It'd also be the only chance we might get to see her perform some material from Gypsy.

She'd insist on directing.

R283, it was written for Jesse Tyler Fergusson. Say what you will about his acting, we all want pillows that color.

Maybe it all is exaggeration and false information, R287. Or maybe you should just take it that way if it bothers you so much.

(I would hate to have you sitting next to me at Richard III, Hamilton, Saving Mr. Banks, Annie Get Your Gun, Ed Wood......)

R295, I don't have to take it at all. Or, I don't have to like it. I saw the show with Urie, and I'm just expressing what I didn't like about the script and his performance. Feel free to disagree. And I expect I'd hate to be sitting next to you at any show :-)

You probably loved the piece of garbage MASTER CLASS, didn't you?

[italic]How’s Glynis ? ?

[quote]R396 You probably loved the piece of garbage MASTER CLASS, didn't you?

How very dare you?!

Ugh, thank god Jesse Tyler Ferguson didn't get his hooks into it.

R262 I agree. Jonathan was great but Tammy, who I usually love, was grating

I think most people were let down by the conclusion of B&C. Even Mr. Tolins. But the rest is pretty great. I would love to see how Urie does with a heterosexual character. (Did anyone see his Hamlet?) Everything I've seen him do is a variation of the dizzy queen. And he was atrocious in TORCH SONG.

[quote] And he was atrocious in TORCH SONG.

Having seen the original I was greatly disappointed by TORCH SONG. Not only was Urie not very good, I couldn't stop staring at Mercedes Ruehl's frightening plastic surgery results

Her face was fake but hers was the the most real performance on that stage.

Nope, Mercede's face should not be on any stage. Sorry. It was disturbing, you could not concentrate on anything she said. I think the problem is that the play has aged terribly.

Urie's Hamlet was....interesting. A lot of it worked, a lot of it didn't. Fascinating experiment, anyway.

Looking forward to The Little Dog Laughed on Play in the House at 2. I always get it confused with As Bees in Honey Drown.

I saw Michael Urie in "Hamlet." He was shmacting all over the place, but at least he gave you something to watch. The rest of the production was DOA, set in a dreary dystopian future in which people were constantly staring at cellphones. The climactic duel was turned into some sort of laser tag battle. Terrible production.

[quote]How’s Glynis ? ?

She's pissed that no one invited her to the Sondheim birthday tribute.

[quote]How’s Glynis ? ?

Oh, dear.

"The DL Apostrophe Abuse Monitor"

Turn in your credential. You're a fraud.

Send in the morticians...

Do you think Johnny Galecki or Neal Huff will do the nude scene today (nude)?

Turn down the volume a bit, since Julie White, who was good and got the Tony, screams a lot!

Where is Tom Everett Scott? He was in the original cast.

R294-I've always wanted orange pillows with streaks of gray running through them.

She seemed just fine on the episode of Naked City I watched yesterday, r297

R315 He was in the Original Broadway cast, this is the cast of the Off Broadway run at 2nd Stage

I just watched the video of BUYER AND CELLAR, and the things that bothered me about the show and the performance when I saw it live didn't bother me nearly as much this time, I guess maybe because this time I was aware of the issues going in to it. The writing is really very funny and clever, although I agree that the ending is a letdown, especially that whole thing about his hair that brings his relationship with Barbra to an end. That did seem really lame and clunky. Urie really is a GREAT actor and comedian, as I said above. He wrung every possible laugh from the thing. I do still have a problem with his Streisand voice, but he really sounds nothing like her, and her actual way of speaking is SO famous. But, like I said, it didn't seem to matter as much this time, and I had a greater appreciation for the rest of the performance and for the script.

Urie sounds like Vinny Barbarino. It's too low of a voice. I'm wondering if he made the choice to do it that way (maybe he couldn't sustain a higher voice for two hours a night?) or if he just didn't have the acting ability to create a believable voice.

Watching LITTLE DOG LAUGHED reading right now.

Johnny Galecki looks kinda rough for 44. He is kajillionaire, at least, thanks to his sitcom, and his house is absurdly nicer than most of the crappy actor apartments I've been seeing in these events for the past several weeks.

I think this was the pillow she was on the fence about, R316.

r321 it looks like he added lots of extra lights for this in the background, doesn't it, on either side of those sconces?

[quote]Johnny Galecki looks kinda rough for 44. He is kajillionaire, at least, thanks to his sitcom, and his house is absurdly nicer than most of the crappy actor apartments I've been seeing in these events for the past several weeks.

Looks very mansiony.

Seriously, I've seen so many crappy apartments (mostly in Manhattan, but not exclusively) online recently.

What the hell is LITTLE DOG about, anyway? A G4P hustler? Not sure I'm gonna stay with this. No disrespect to the actors...

All the major quotes in Buyer & Cellar are things BJS actually said, aren't they? Maybe off the record, but somehow verifiably accurate. That's what I've always heard.

Buyer and Cellar does fall into the ridiculous. First, that the actor was the first to suggest Barbra do Gypsy. Second, that she would pay him for acting coaching.

It all sounded fairly legit to me. I do remember Arthur Laurents mentioning that Barbra flat out asked him if he thought she was too old for Rose and, for some reason, he said Rose was ageless. Made me feel she might be a little less delusional than some would believe. She clearly thought of that before approaching him. Sometimes, I think him green lighting that movie was his last final jab at the world.

Yeah, Rose is ageless. But the actress playing her better not be.

The Crucible with Richard Armitage - Act One.

The Crucible - Act Two.

The Pirates of Penzance with Patricia Routledge.

Jul;ie Walters - By Her Friends.

Did anyone ever record Julie Walters in the stage play of "Educating RIta"? The movie, which was great, seems pretty rare these days. She was hilariously funny in it, and Michael Caine was also quite good.

R333 No. Film is great. She is so delicious.

She is great always but particularly delicious when she appears on the Graham Norton Show.

Can someone re up the real Buyer and Seller?

[quote]Urie sounds like Vinny Barbarino. It's too low of a voice.

That's a pretty good description. While I don't think it's necessary for the guy playing the role to do a perfect, full-on impression of Streisand, if it doesn't sound ANYTHING like her -- and if it sounds more like someone else -- that takes me out of the play, at least a little bit.

[quote]I'm wondering if he made the choice to do it that way (maybe he couldn't sustain a higher voice for two hours a night?) or if he just didn't have the acting ability to create a believable voice.

I doubt that's the reason, as "Barbra" doesn't actually have all that many lines in the play. I guess Urie just can't "do" her, as per one of the disclaimers at the beginning. But I wonder if Jesse Tyler Ferguson can't "do her" either, and that disclaimer was originally written for him?

[quote]Turn down the volume a bit, since Julie White, who was good and got the Tony, screams a lot!

Because she was performing right in front of a webcam today, and with a mic right there, she didn't feel the need to shout or scream at all to fill a Broadway theater, so her voice didn't have any of that awful rasp it develops when she does that. So I actually thought her performance today was superior to what I saw on stage.

The actors in LITTLE DOG LAUGHED did a great job, including White. I was glad to have seen it, having missed the stage production in NYC.

But I don't think it's a great (or even particularly good) play. It's glib and arch and wraps itself in faux sophistication. It's cheap, frankly. BUYER AND CELLAR looks at similar themes (culture of celebrity, public persona vs private happiness) with more depth and feeling, for all of its limitations.

R336 It is still up on this thread.

Is there a video of the Little Dog Laughed reading?

Michael Urie was the original star of Buyer and Cellar, not Jesse Tyler Ferguson. I think people might be confused because Ferguson starred in a one-man play -- Fully Committed -- at roughly the same time. But Urie was the one who opened Buyer and Cellar.

Thanks, R341, but we're referring to the fact that BUYER AND CELLAR was apparently written for Jesse Tyler Ferguson, but he was unable to do it at the time, so they got Urie -- who obviously did very well with it.

I'm surprised they didn't just cut all of that stuff about Alex's hair color when Urie was cast, because it sounded ridiculous for Barbra to say that she wanted to get pillows the color of his hair when it was a totally nondescript, very common shade of dark brown.

If Tyne Daly could be contracted to play Rose, it's a shame Julie Walter wasn't.

I don't think Stritch really takes down Marge Champion in that story. She exposes herself to be in much the same company as Champion - desperate to make an impression, good taste be damned.

I know Michael Ball did "Aspects of Love" on Broadway but boy from this he was a terrific Edna, definitely gave old Harv a run for his money. That's Mickey from The Monkees too.

I almost thought Julie White was losing her voice when I saw her last year in "Gary". But yes, she toned it down somewhat today, and I was actually more impressed by her today that I was when I saw it off-Broadway. Of course, back then she was also competing for the notoriety of seeing all, and I mean all, of what Johnny Galecki had to offer (if only fairly briefly, but most memorably).

"if it doesn't sound ANYTHING like her -- and if it sounds more like someone else -- that takes me out of the play, at least a little bit."

It sounds like her via the ironic, Jewish inflections, and instantly recognizable as Streisand.

[quote]I guess Urie just can't "do" her, as per one of the disclaimers at the beginning. But I wonder if Jesse Tyler Ferguson can't "do her" either, and that disclaimer was originally written for him?

She's not that hard to imitate. Voice through the noise, Brooklyn accent, a few Yiddish inflections.

r345

when I went to London, I went to see Hairspray because Michael Ball was in it and he was out, the actress playing Tracey and Penney were out as well! I 'm not sure what the rules are in London about getting your money back when the leads are out

[quote]Can someone re up the real Buyer and Seller?

CELLAR, not Seller.

[quote]I almost thought Julie White was losing her voice when I saw her last year in "Gary". But yes, she toned it down somewhat today, and I was actually more impressed by her today that I was when I saw it off-Broadway.

Agreed, she sounded like she was losing her voice in GARY. She also sounded like she was losing her voice when I saw on Broadway in THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED, and I'm told she sounded like she was losing her voice when she went into VANYA AND SONIA. Unfortunately, she tends to scream or shout her lines when she's doing live theater. I guess she never learned how to project without doing so. Which is too bad, because she's very talented and quite hilarious.

[quote]Of course, back then she was also competing for the notoriety of seeing all, and I mean all, of what Johnny Galecki had to offer (if only fairly briefly, but most memorably).

Ah yes, JG was VERY impressive in that way in THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED when he did it originally. No little dog he! I've always wondered if that's part of the reason why he was chosen for the role, but if so, I don't know how that would have worked in terms of auditions :-) His acting in the play was excellent, so maybe that had nothing to do with it and was just a happy bonus.

[quote]It sounds like her via the ironic, Jewish inflections, and instantly recognizable as Streisand.

I don't agree. Urie really didn't sound like her in BUYER AND CELLAR -- again, as per the disclaimer at the beginning of the show. There's more to imitating her voice than just doing "ironic, Jewish inflections." As somebody else mentioned, the whole timbre of the voice Urie used for Barbra was wrong.

Why would an ex employee be expected to do a good impression of his former employer?

Not enough talk about "Gypsy" of late, so maybe this will provoke some.

[quote]Why would an ex employee be expected to do a good impression of his former employer?

That's not the point. When people do bad impressions of Streisand -- or anyone else -- it sounds really stupid. Obviously, Urie himself felt his impression of her speech was poor enough that there needed to be a disclaimer inserted at the top of BUYER AND CELLAR. Maybe you think that was sufficient, but every time he "did" her in the show, I was taken out of it a little big because he did sound more like he was imitating some Brooklyn Italian guy.

[Quote] When people do bad impressions of Streisand -- or anyone else -- it sounds really stupid.

You get irate if someone retells a personal experience and doesn't pull off pitch perfect impressions of the other participants?

Lansbury's accent is really distracting in those scenes. She sounds like she has a mouthful of potatoes. Bonnie Langford as Baby June gave probably the best performance

Um, Lansbury seems a bit out there in that clip.

Are we sure she was a great Mama Rose?

She was a terrific Mama Rose.

Did anyone see Barrett Foa in Buyer & Cellar? How'd he do with the Barbra voice?

Lansbury's "Rose's Turn" is pretty terrific. She really looks like a madwoman. Can you imagine Barbra going that insane and committing that much?

Speaking of committing, Michael Ball is excellent in that Hairspray clip. You really feel for and love his Edna.

[quote]You get irate if someone retells a personal experience and doesn't pull off pitch perfect impressions of the other participants?

That's not what I meant. I don't know why the hell you're arguing with me about my opinion of Urie's Streisand "impersonation," since it's MY opinion. If someone does an imitation of Streisand's voice that comes out sounding more like John Travolta or Sylvester Stallone, that bothers me.

[quote]Um, Lansbury seems a bit out there in that clip. Are we sure she was a great Mama Rose?

In GYPSY, Lansbury used a character voice that I thought made it sound like she was obviously acting the role rather than becoming the character, but on those terms, she was still pretty fabulous in the part :-)

Just for fun, who was the worst Edna you've ever seen?

[Quote] If someone does an imitation of Streisand's voice that comes out sounding more like John Travolta or Sylvester Stallone, that bothers me.

Are you Coco Peru?

"Just for fun, who was the worst Edna you've ever seen?"

Ferber. Couldn't carry a tune

[quote] But I don't think it's a great (or even particularly good) play. It's glib and arch and wraps itself in faux sophistication. It's cheap, frankly.

Well, R338, it was written by Douglas Carter Beane. What else could it be?

So who will they get for Love Letters on Plays in the House? You KNOW they’ll do Love Letters because it’s perfect for this sort of thing. I can see Goop and Hamm doing it.

Just give it up, r352. Urie wasn't a female impersonator, he communicated a fantasy Barbra of hauteur and pathos. That's all the role required and he succeeded admirably.

[quote] That's not what I meant. I don't know why the hell you're arguing with me about my opinion of Urie's Streisand "impersonation," since it's MY opinion. If someone does an imitation of Streisand's voice that comes out sounding more like John Travolta or Sylvester Stallone, that bothers me.

I think people are curious as to why you're so vehemently arguing Urie's "impersonation" of Streisand when the character clearly states that he doesn't "do" Barbra. That should be the end of it. Who cares about your opinion when it's completely moot for the specific reason that the character says he does not do an impression.

Many of us tell stories that involve the "dialogue" of another person and we often put on a voice to differentiate between characters that only vaguely (if that) approximates the other person. I'm sure Tolins wrote the line not to help the actor out (whomever it would be) but to help the audience out. If you tell an audience that you're NOT doing an impression, then they can relax and just listen to the story. If you don't, then you're gonna get a bunch of people thrown out of the narrative because they won't be able to help critiquing the impersonation.

I saw the LA production of The Little Dog Laughed. It's just like everything else Beane writes- banal and overpraised. White was fine, but it wasn't much of a stretch of a performance and I was pissed off anew that she beat Vanessa Redgrave for the Tony award. Redgrave was exemplary in The Year of Magical Thinking and I don't understand how she didn't win.

Everyone hates Joan.

Douglas Carter Beane seems open and affable and kind of goofy in interviews, so I'm inclined to like him and wish him the best. But man, he is one lucky writer: a long career propelled forward by fun, super-gay themed projects that get a lot of attention if not lofty praise: the drag movie, TO WONG FOO, THE NANCE, books for musicals XANADU, SISTER ACT, the revised CINDERELLA from a few years back, and others. He seems very well connected.

I remembered how much I like AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN off Bway in 1995 (which felt super-gay, fun, a little outrageous), little realizing that the playwright would essentially be writing the same script for the next 25 years.

Going back upthread a bit, why do so many DLers romanticize NYC of the '70s and '80s? Frankly, it was a shithole. Very dirty, grimy, and rampant with crime, prostitutes, and drugs. The city almost went bankrupt around that time.

I love her

That must be her "Evita" Tony that is in the locker. Because it's associated with Andrew, she keeps it out of sight down in the locker.

Right. Out of sight. Unless there is a camera in the room.

That shithole had the musicals of Price and Sondheim and other Prince productions like Candide and Twentieth Century and the productions of Joe Papp. It had great film repertory houses like the Regency and the Little Carnegie among others. It had the NY City Ballet still being run by Balanchine and great dancers like Farrell and McBride. ABT was at a peak with the international stars it featured.

And the Metropolitan Opera still featured immortal singers that caused audiences to go into deliriums. It still featured neighborhoods for lower and middle class people who could afford to live in the city and take part in these pleasures. As a book clerk I was one of them.

May I ask you are you very very young or extremely stupid?

R365. Nor was she convincing as a woman.

[quote]Going back upthread a bit, why do so many DLers romanticize NYC of the '70s and '80s? Frankly, it was a shithole. Very dirty, grimy, and rampant with crime, prostitutes, and drugs. The city almost went bankrupt around that time.

Because they didn't live there. They came for their annual 37 shows in five day trips and cheap thrills walking the Deuce and 8th Ave and than ran all the way home.

Drama desk nominations. Thoughts?

Outstanding Musical

Octet

The Secret Life of Bees

Soft Power

A Strange Loop

The Wrong Man

I saw 2 of these but I'm curious what others think.

Outstanding Play

Cambodian Rock Band

Greater Clements

Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

The Inheritance

Frankly, I'd love to see The Inheritance win, just to piss off all the haters and naysayers. I really did think it was remarkable.

I think any of the Off-Broadway plays that were nominated would be a better choice than The Inheritance, especially Heroes... and Greater Clements.

R379 another extremely stupid asshole who had no idea of the vibrant arts scene by young poor people who could live in the city, the alternative music scene, the gay bars, the book stores, the record and cd stores, the changing light, the non oppressive feeling of not having office towers and condo buildings and Starbucks and chain stores everywhere.

R383 really gets it. There is nothing like the galleries and performances that were there then. Anyone who wanted to make something happen could.

Remember "miniature golf" in the vacant lot next to 8BC? Darinka? Gas Station? And the numerous bars and galleries featuring art and music. Bookstores with different personalities and interests.

It was a very alive place and it really is not anymore.

Money is the root of all evil. It surely can kill the life of a great city.

[quote]another extremely stupid asshole who had no idea of the vibrant arts scene by young poor people who could live in the city, the alternative music scene, the gay bars, the book stores, the record and cd stores, the changing light, the non oppressive feeling of not having office towers and condo buildings and Starbucks and chain stores everywhere.

Bitch, please.

R386 If you weren't there don't comment. If you were there and say such things then you were a somnambulist. I simply have no patience for reading idiocy like R379.

Next up from National Theatre Live (after this week's Twelfth Night) is Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating in the roles of Dr. F. and the Creature. I saw it twice in the (movie) theater so I could see each in the roles and liked BC better as the doctor, although they're both good. Fantastic production, too. After Frankenstein it's Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo in Antony and Cleopatra.

A&C has one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare: "Oh happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!"

Right up there with "Methought I was enamored of an ass!" We know, girl.

I usually like Sophie Okenedo, but I didn't like her in Anthony and Cleopatra. She seemed to be acting Shakespeare rather than being a person.

I have seen Okenedo in the Crucible (Broadway) and The Goat (London) and I thought she was rather mediocre in both.

[quote] A&C has one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare: "Oh happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!"

This line is set gorgeously to music in Samuel Barber's opera A&Cleo, which opened the new Met Opera in 1966. Leontyne Price sang Cleopatra with her glorious soprano.

The Cherry Orchard - with Zoe Wanamaker.

The Cherry Orchard with Dame Peggy Ashcroft.

The Cherry Orchard with Dame Judy Dench.

Memphis! How tall Charlie Williams is....Mmmmmmm

The only Cherry Orchard I've ever seen was the 1977 Lincoln Center production with Irene Worth, Raul Julia, Mary Beth Hurt and La Streep. Irene Worth was fantastic. Bought the lovely Paul Davis poster, too.

You somehow forget ME.

Joel Grey writes about missing the theater:

The only "Cherry Orchard" I've seen was with (non-Dame) Annette Bening, Sarah Paulson, Frances Fisher, and Alfred Molina.

Ben Brantley revisits "All About Eve":

Rodgers was strictly hetero, liked 'em tall and built.

But Hammerstein... apparently did everything.

Update on Nick Cordero:

How Raúl Esparza corralled stars for a virtual Stephen Sondheim birthday celebration:

If theatre does return they might have to set age restrictions, requiring ID. Nobody over 70 allowed entry because they’re in the most vulnerable group. No more blue hair lady matinees!

I saw Joel Grey in The Normal Heart and he was great casting. Then I saw John Shea play the role in London and he did his best but was very miscast. Way too pretty.

If they stop people over 70 from going to the theatre, who’ll go to Roundabout or MTC?

Any truth to the rumor that Joel Grey has a huge dick? I think Frank DeCaro alluded to that once on his radio show

I hope for Joel's sake Frank only knows by reputation.

Jesus, is the TIMES that desperate that Brantley is writing about "All About Eve." Seriously? What the fuck? WHO CARES?

[quote] But Hammerstein... apparently did everything

What have you heard? I had a teacher years ago who swore that he ran into Hammerstein in a gay bar outside the city,mid-1950s. He said Hammerstein said something about “We Kiss in a Shadow” being a song that he wrote for “my people.” I had never heard anything else about Hammerstein so I didn’t believe him.

[quote] If you weren't there don't comment. If you were there and say such things then you were a somnambulist. I simply have no patience for reading idiocy like [R379].

I was there. Nobody I know thinks it was was a wonderland. Apparently you were too busy skipping down Broadway with animated bluebirds circling your head to notice. All the things you list were indeed there and it was still a shithole.

I loved and wanted that poster, r397. Alas, I've never owned one.

Clearly you were seeing and going to nothing if you think it was a shithole. And there is more vibrancy in that one photo than there is 24 hours a day on that street now.

How many times have you seen Aladdin and Frozen and Book of Mormon?

And yes that Cherry Orchard was one of its many pleasures that someone like Joseph Papp gave us. Name one person in the New York theater today like him. Seriously.

I agree. I first came to NY in 1977 after a few visits. The vibrancy of the theatre at that time was intoxicating. Yes, 42nd Street was a filthy mess, but unless you were looking for cheap sex, it could easily be avoided. There simply is no comparison to the amount of and kinds of theatre available today and what was available then.

For a major homophobe Rodgers sure worked best with the gays.

But honestly I have never heard a whisper about Hammerstein. Surely it would have gotten out by now.

[quote]And yes that Cherry Orchard was one of its many pleasures that someone like Joseph Papp gave us. Name one person in the New York theater today like him. Seriously.

I don't think there ever will be anyone like Joe Papp again. The amount of shows that he produced is amazing. He gave us some of the best American theater. He was a genius.

His son died of AIDS.

[quote]I think people are curious as to why you're so vehemently arguing Urie's "impersonation" of Streisand when the character clearly states that he doesn't "do" Barbra. That should be the end of it. Who cares about your opinion when it's completely moot for the specific reason that the character says he does not do an impression.

If I did a really bad Bette Davis impersonation, I would never expect anyone to hire me for a play in which I had to deliver lots of lines in the voice of Bette Davis, with the thought that this would be okay if I stated to the audience at the beginning of the play, "I can't do a good Bette Davis impersonation." Because even with that disclaimer, I would fear that my bad impersonation would grate on the audience every time I launched into it -- especially because SO MANY people CAN do a decent Bette Davis impersonation. Again, you don't have to agree with me, but that was my problem with Urie in BUYER AND CELLAR, though he was great in it in every other way.

As for the back-and-forth over whether or not NYC was a shit hole in the '70s, it never fails to amaze me how people can so passionately argue two different points. OF COURSE, New York was a shit hole in the '70s in many way, including crime and the subways. But, as others here have pointed out, it had many wonderful things going on as well, especially culturally. And rents were affordable, partly because of all the crime and the infrastructure falling apart. And there were still some wonderful, famous old restaurants, shops, and non-chain businesses around, whereas by now most of them have been priced out due to skyrocketing rents and horrendous real estate laws. I REALLY HOPE this will end the arguments.

[quote]“If I loved you, / Words wouldn’t come in an easy way— / Round in circles I’d go!

I don't think it's outrageous to imagine that Oscar Hammerstein, beloved family man, was a product of his time and culture and may have had powerful romantic passions that he never (or rarely) dared to act upon, but that instead inspired his work. This is the same man who espoused homespun, traditional values yet commented on social injustice and racial inequality when almost no one else in musical theatre did.

Did you know that in the 1940s and 50s J Edgar Hoover's FBI assembled an enormous file on him?

Oscar wasn't a handsome man.

R419 you sound like a real catch

I'm not trying to be a ghoul here, but saying Nick COrdero's "right leg was amputated" is pretty vague. How it was amputated will mean a great deal to his future. Was it taken at the ankle? The knee? Higher? Anything below the knee and he'll probably be able to resume his career, with a lot of rehab. But it was higher, well, it's going to be a lot tougher. I wish him and his family the very best, but a little more clarity would be nice.

Of course that's assuming he survives at all, which is looking kind of dicey at the moment.

That 1977 Cherry Orchard was not only superbly acted and directed Andrei Serban, but Santo Loquasto's sets and costumes were exquisite. As were Jennifer Tipton's lighting and all the other technical aspects of the show.

The actual cherry orchard in the show is symbolic and rarely expressed fully physically but Loquasto for it and built an actual cherry orchard in full bloom. It was genius and actually helped the production rather than detracted from the text.

A good example of when thus sort of approach goes wrong was the early 1990s Met Opera production of Wagner's Parsifal. The flower meadow in which Act II opens was depicted with flower blossoms attached to metal stems which wavered violently whenever anyone walked past. The opening night audience laughed out loud at this terrible visual in the middle of Wagner's most serious music drama. (I know this for fact because I was there.) The flower stems were removed from the first revival of the production with its silly fairy tale set design and the entire production was replaced soon after with another new production. It's still known as the Disney Parsifal;

^ but Loquasto went for it, sorry.

Thanks to whoever posted the performance of the Crucible. I have never seen a production and have been avoiding the film for decades. That was life changing theater. Not at all what I expected even knowing the subject, the author and the inspiration.

There is something thrilling in expecting a masterpiece and having those expectations not only met but surpassed.

I personally would have been taken out of the play if Michael Urie HAD done a good Streisand voice. The character was not someone who “did Streisand.” It was a guy telling a story about his time working for Streisand in unusual circumstances. An ability to do a “Streisand voice” is not only not required, but would frankly have been detrimental to the story being told.

[quote] I'm not trying to be a ghoul here, but saying Nick COrdero's "right leg was amputated" is pretty vague. How it was amputated will mean a great deal to his future. Was it taken at the ankle? The knee? Higher? Anything below the knee and he'll probably be able to resume his career, with a lot of rehab. But it was higher, well, it's going to be a lot tougher. I wish him and his family the very best, but a little more clarity would be nice.

His wife is holding out to get the leg the cover of People Magazine. She'll be holding it, of course.

[quote] I personally would have been taken out of the play if Michael Urie HAD done a good Streisand voice. The character was not someone who “did Streisand.” It was a guy telling a story about his time working for Streisand in unusual circumstances. An ability to do a “Streisand voice” is not only not required, but would frankly have been detrimental to the story being told.

Of course. And if you have the actor 'do" Barbra, that subconsciously becomes the whole focus of the show.

I saw Linda Hunt and Rebecca Miller (?) in the BAM production...was that around 1990?

I guess I could google it - but each moment is so PRECIOUS in these trying times. #MustPreserveMyStrength

I saw that production, R430. Swedish actor Erland Josephson was in it along with relentlessly mediocre British actress Natasha Parry. Wasn’t she Peter Brook’s wife? The Nanette Newman/Leslee Mann of avant garde theater. Anyway I remember the production was a mess and those benches at BAM were fucking uncomfortable.

I think of that production as [italic]The Chernobyl Orchard

R422, I really don't want you to "catch" me, so no problem.

At BAM, I loved the rugs! Such opulence and beauty. And when the orchard was lost, and the beautiful oriental carpets were rolled up and pushed aside, the sight of that cold hard stage floor stripped bare of its covering, conjured the image of the orchard denuded of its beautiful trees. The sadness of the actors rolling them up so methodically and stripping the stage of them was a wonderful way to evoke the personal loss of each of them.

I was always glad to have seen that production because of the way those rugs were used.

The possibility of Oscar Hammerstein being gay reminds me of how the smokehouse scene was handled in the last Oklahoma! revival. Having Curly and Jud speak so intensely, initially in the dark ... you'd swear they were about to make out.

And r428 insists he’s not obsessed. She may or may not be an opportunist, but it’s definite that you’re an asshole and kind of loony.

I wonder if Oscar diddled the young Steve Sondheim.

Oscar H may have be been ugly, but he definitely had BDF. That’s enough for many.

There are pictures of Oscar when he was about 20 and when they don't emphasize his heavy lids and brow he was a handsome young man.

He wrote The Gentleman is a Dope so there is that.

[quote]He wrote The Gentleman is a Dope so there is that.

Biden could use that in an anti-Trump ad. Except for the "gentleman" part.

The President is a Dope.

But "dope" doesn't begin to address the problem.

How's this for an anti-Don song? "He Enjoys Being a Dick"!

Hammerstein was very straight. And quiet. And shy.

The simple and beautiful reasons why Hammerstein wrote OKLAHOMA! make him the most romantic hetero that ever lived.

And now....Miss Kirk...

Today it was Love Never Dies. It was Australian cast. I’ve never seen it before. Some good songs and melodies. The biggest problems are the stupid story (really stupid) and how the characters have changed, especially Raoul and Meg. Kiri Te Kanawa sang this song in London at ALW’s birthday celebration. It later became the title song for LND. I missed Michael and Sarah, the original leads. But Kiri sings a beautiful song.

Handsome and hot Karim who I saw last summer singing this and Music Of The Night as a guest duet partner to Barbra at Hyde Park.

Wonderland.

Love Never Dies - FULL STAGE SHOW

I've never liked the title LOVE NEVER DIES. It sounds too much like a tagline. In fact, it WAS the tagline for BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. I wonder if that's where ALW lifted it from?

r446

I love that song

R450, it was known in London as Paint Never Dries.

Angels In America - Millennium Approaches - Part One.

Angels In America - Millennium Approaches - Part Two.

Angels In America - Millennium Approaches - Part Three..

That video of the London Angels just made me miss Ron Leibman. I'm not sure that anyone surpassed him. Not even Al Pacino.

Nathan was...... Ergggh

GIRLS! GIRLS! You're both fat!

The London Angels was just awful. Did Lee Pace’s dick make it any better in NYC?

The London Angels was just awful. Did Lee Pace’s dick make it any better in NYC?

Lee Pace's dick would make anything better!

Just found this, the real musical Norma, the 1st preview from in-house camera, few first scenes.

R462 again, the video has all Patti’s major numbers

Thanks for this. I was there that performance. Exciting to see again.

R462 I was the original musical Norma, too.

R465 So sorry Gloria, you were. I’ve even seen part of it. Performed in some talk or variety show. R464 You saw the first preview. Lucky you. Patti’s keys high notes... real belter.

Talk...talk...

I sang Norma to great acclaim in 1927.

I'm sure this has been posted before, but take a look at the energy and intensity Leibman brings to his scenes, compared to Nathan's version. (For that matter, Stephen Spinella is also tough to beat, since Kushner tailored so much of the part for him.)

[quote]R453 Angels In America - Millennium Approaches - Part One.

[italic]”The curtain rises on an ugly set...”

I enjoyed most of the Bway revival of ANGELS, but yes, there was a lot of hideous design on stage, particularly the sets and lighting. Don't even get me started on the reconceived Angel: is she an insect? A reptile? A crash-test dummy?

Seven plus hours of serious talk-talk-talk is hard going enough. A little eye candy wouldn't have hurt the proceedings.

Thank you, r469. What I wouldn’t give for a video of that whole production. Whatever one thought of GCWolfe's rather screams approach, he and his cast understood the importance of laughs in a show that talky and serious.

Angels in America is probably the most boring thing ever created.

[quote] Angels in America is probably the most boring thing ever created.

Hold my beer.

r 474, please marry me

[quote] Angels in America is probably the most boring thing ever created.

R473 obviously did not see Glenda Jackson in STRANGE INTERLUDE back in the 80s.

The "Angels in America is Boring" Troll needs to GTFO of here and go back to watching some stupid Marvel movie before he gets hurt.

get fucked toots. it's boring. I've never even seen a "Marvel movie" whatever that is.

She thought she should receive special treatment and then when she didn't get it, she takes pictures and runs whining to the press.

^^^Meant for another thread. DL screws up now and then.

Glenda's strange interlude....

Angela Lansbury in Gypsy.

Anyone have the full recording of R481??

I don’t think Angels itself is boring (though it’s much too long). It’s just that NT production that was so awful. The original Broadway production was terrific.

"Toots"?

So you're 98 and dull?

Speaking of ANGELS IN AMERICA, I remember when the miniseries debuted in 2003 and liking it very much. Last summer, I rewatched it with a new friend because he'd never seen it and I had always praised it, but I now found it boring to sit through. We never finished it. What gives?

I disliked the AIA version for HBO, and was surprised by the positive critical response. Nichols and Kushner managed to make Part 2 of AIA even more incoherent and confusing. And the cast is all over the place: Meryl and Patrick Wilson are quite good, but Emma Thompson is terrible. (I hated the angel scenes.) And yet a lot of people love it.

I rewatched the HBO miniseries (which I was meh on the first time around) right after I'd seen the NT production, and thought a little better of it the second time around. But what I really came away with was that Mary Louise Parker got Harper better than anyone else I've seen in the role.

*I* was the original singing Norma.

Watched Love Never Dies tonight, and man, is that show bonkers. There are a few beautiful songs and the orchestra is great, but that plot...oof.

Moulin boot online, missing of course the leading lady. In the movie they sang full songs and then Nicole Kidman & Ewan McGregor sing "Elephant Love Medley" and it was electric, special. Here every song is just medley after medley and it's boring.

R491 What little good there was in Moulin Rouge will be totally missed in bootleg form. The spectacle of it was the main positive draw. I am curious to see Ashley Loren in the role though since I thought Olivo was completely miscast as Satine.

R492 Is it a big dancing role?

Of ourse not, I still can't dance peoples

Moulin Rouge bootleg? WHERE? WHERE?

I knew nothing about Angels until I saw Perestoika done by the graduate theater program at NYU. I thought it was tremendous. I don't know who those actors were but the Roy Cohn/ Ethel Rosenberg scene was incredible and the woman who gives the speech about the souls rising from the earth and joining hands was so magical. What I saw of it in the movie was truly embarrassing compared to what I saw on that stage. It was a parody of the work.

I watched 2/3 of LOVE NEVER DIES. It was a nice-looking production and yes, some of the music was gorgeous, but I kept falling asleep. After the third time, I turned it off.

Theatrical Ambien.

Paint Never Dries.

I’m watching old Tony’s broadcast on YouTube. Great stuff.

I’d forgotten they used to put plays and musicals together in the revivals category.

Karen Olivo is a Latina who has already won a Tony Award, in 2009, for Anita in WEST SIDE STORY. She won that award not because she gave an exceptional performance in any way, but because...it was a famous role for a Latina being played by a Latina, and also it's the kind of role that tends to win nominations and awards. I think Olivo left the business for a few years due to personal issues, but now that she's back, she's still got that Tony on her resume, and she's still Latina. So she's going to keep getting cast in major roles, even when she's wrong for those roles, as in MOULIN ROUGE, and even though she has a very poor attendance record.

David Staller’s the director of Arms and the Man, now streaming on Plays in the House. I sucked David off at the much missed Exxxpressions on W 53rd St. We had coffee afterward and he droned on way too much about Hermione Gingold.

[quote]and he droned on way too much about Hermione Gingold.

How is that even possible?

It isn't, r502, you dear boy.

How’s his dick,r501?

Are there Bootlegs of SUMMER?

Yes I know it was panned but, being a Donna Summer fan, I adored it

R500, Olivo was great as Anita. It’s a great role and she sang, acted, and danced her heart out.

She’s even better in Moulin Rouge and would give her second place for a Tony this year after the chick who plays Tina Turner

Wasted - The Bronte Family Musical.

Wasted - The Bronte Family Musical.

Come From Away documentary.

Despite her Tony, Olivo was not great as Anita. Her dancing was not that well reviewed, and of course, the dancing is a huge part of that role. In MOULIN ROUGE, she's good (when she shows up), but she tries so hard to make the character a "strong woman" that there's no charm or vulnerability there. And no chemistry between her and the leading man, but of course that's partly his responsibility.

AIA - Perestroika - Part One.

AIA - Perestroika - Part Two.

AIA - Perestroika - Part Three.

Aaron Tveit IS White Mediocrity.

Denise Gough as one of the worst things about that NT Angels. And apparently she was a total cunt during the run, too.

The only good thing about the NT Angels was the actress who played Hannah. Everything else was shit.

I also liked Olivo a lot as Anita. Her singing and acting were excellent, very strong. She made the dancing work, but it was clear she is not a Chita or a Rita in the dance department.

Yes, r516. She was the most touching I’ve ever seen in Ethel’s final scene, when she does Kaddish for Roy.

Pacific Overtures...

Could someone provide a quick summary of what happened to Patti and Sunset Blvd? Did she open in London under the assumption she’d be taking the show to Bway and was then replaced by Glenn?

How were her London reviews?

Could someone provide a quick summary of what happened to Patti and Sunset Blvd? Did she open in London under the assumption she’d be taking the show to Bway and was then replaced by Glenn?

How were her London reviews?

R499 I am watching them, too. When Broadway had good material and stars.

1967 was the first year they were nationally televised...

What's Long Duc Dong doing in a tree?

Observing, ya ding-dong.

"Could someone provide a quick summary of what happened to Patti and Sunset Blvd? Did she open in London under the assumption she’d be taking the show to Bway and was then replaced by Glenn?"

She wasn't under the assumption. It was in her contract to create the role in London and then take it to Broadway. Andrew Lloyd Webber got tricky with the American premiere saying that he wouldn't open the show on Broadway but open in LA with Glenn Close. He then breeches his contract with Patti by allowing Glenn to take it to Broadway. He tried to appease Patti by saying she would go into the Broadway run after Glenn did six months. Patti filed a lawsuit.

Thanks R526. How were Patti’s London reviews? In retrospect, did ALW make the right decision for his show?

Of course he did. LuPone reads low class. That's not Norma.

LuPone’s vocals were way stronger. Close’s did exhibit more vulnerability and that’s what Webber wanted

r526

does anyone know... Did ALW think he was going t o win the lawsuit?

ALW thought is was worth just paying LuPone off And keeping Close. That’s what he did

Was Close not available for London?

Didn't he say a movie star for the LA premiere and a Broadway star for NY which was supposed to be Patti

That makes no sense. Two premier companies in the US?

*premiere

Patti's reviews for "Sunset" in London were mixed. But Frank Rich in the New York Times reviewed the London production on opening night (July 1993), and called Patti "miscast and unmoving" and did not like the show. When "Sunset" had its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles a few months later, Vincent Canby in the New York Times went to L.A. and filed a rave, saying that "Sunset" had found its perfect star in Glenn. How could ALW have opened the show in NY faced with a bad review in the Times for both Patti and the show?

Ironically, Frank Rich left the Times reviewing slot in Nov. '93, and by the time "Sunset" arrived on Broadway in fall '94, David Richards was the Times critic. Richards loved Glenn and, to a degree, the show. That may explain why Richards' tenure as Times critic was so brief; you're not allowed to like an ALW show in the Times.

[quote]LuPone’s vocals were way stronger. Close’s did exhibit more vulnerability and that’s what Webber wanted

And none of it mattered as Betty Buckley moved in and blew both of them off the stage. As discussed here forever, Buckley IS Norma Desmond.

Close, even with her weaker voice, was a better fit for the role and acted the shit out of it. I loved her so much in the role back in the 90's that I saw her in the revival a few years back and she was maybe even better. I do think she deserves to have it preserved forever in the film version, but I doubt it'll ever happen. Close is no longer a name and I believe she still has first right of refusal in her contract and I don't see her allowing them to go through with it without her.

R526 Read Patti’s memoirs. Her agent contacted her by phone after reading from Liz Smith’s column Glenn would open it in NY. After months of speculation who would open in NY even though Patti had a contract. She went wild and destroyed her dressing room completely with a standard lamp before throwing it out of the window. All she was able to do was sceaming and destroying.

ALW suggested she should take over the LA production when Glenn moved to NY. Patti was furious after reading it from his letter, taking over the role from a woman he had given her contractual part. ALW was angry when she didn’t like his idea.

R538 For me Patti was the best. She was brilliant and those high notes! R537 Betty was very good, too. My second fave after Patti. Glenn just wasn’t right for me.

You might not be a fan of Patti LuPone but she WAS treated horribly by ALW, who really is a foul human being.

Meh! Patti got a swimming pool out of the deal.

Also, Frank Rich, IIRC, raved about Close. His review of LuPone in London was meh at best. I think Patti has said that Rich cost her the job.

I saw Sunset Blvd with Glenn on its original run.

It's a terrible show. The whole time I was watching the show I kept thinking, "I own this on VHS...I'd rather be watching the original film than this overproduced crap..."

[quote]I think Patti has said that Rich cost her the job.

She says that about Glenn as well. She won't admit that she was just miscast. A Sicilian fishwife playing a silent Hollywood movie star. She was lucky she got to do the role in London.

During "With One Look" everyone kept thinking, it's not her beauty she's singing about, it's that death stare of hers.

I love Patti, but an aging beauty she is not.

I had friends in London who saw Patti both early and late into her run of Sunset. They told me that her improvement into the run was astonishing and that her early mixed reviews were correct but the critics should have come back. Bernadette had a similar situation with her Mama Rose.

Could we say Close was a beauty, either? In their primes, they could come across as cute at best. Betty Buckley - I could imagine her as a beautiful silent film star.

This is another reason why I'm glad Streisand never did the movie.

[quote] Buckley IS Norma Desmond.

Except for the acting part.

Glenn.Close looks quite beautiful in that movie with Redford. The Natiral. She also looked great in Maxie, which was dreck, but she looked great as the silent star.

Elaine Paige was actually the best. Poor Rita Moreno.

They should have cast Stritchie as Norma.

With One Bray.

R336 Here's the original Buyer and Cellar if you still need it. I watched it this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Urie really carries the show as I don't think most of the material is that special but he's charismatic enough that it all works. I would be surprised if it worked half as well with Jesse Tyler Ferguson in the role. I didn't mind him not doing the Barbra voice either, as I think it would've come off too affected.

Elaine...

r555

The 1st show I ever saw on Broadway was SB the night before they closed. My then BF took me and he had seen all of the Broadway Norma's and he said Elaine was the best. She is very tiny!

Elaine Paige was without doubt the best Evita. I saw her and Patti, and the latter might as well have been in a high school production by comparison.

They had to lower the banister on the staircase for her, r556.

Patti came UP the stairs from her basement.

[quote]Denise Gough as one of the worst things about that NT Angels. And apparently she was a total cunt during the run, too.

I also heard Gough was a horror to work with. And if that's true, that's pretty fucked up given the fact that Gough said she was on the verge of leaving the business because she couldn't find work, then landed the role in "Angels," which turned everything around for her. So to then take this incredible opportunity that most people would have been so grateful for and act like a total bitch to everyone ... I mean what an incredibly sad and insecure person she must be. I wish her well but she needs to stop and think if that's why she couldn't find any work in the first place (i.e., nobody wanted to deal with her).

No, Gough made her name with another role - as a junkie (eh... another junkie, not Harper).

Gough has just been cast in a TV show everyone, so she will be right in our faces.

I, too, have seen all of the Norma Desmonds in Sunset Boulevard the Musical. I don't think you can say that any one of them was "the best". Rather, I believe that each had moments that were better than the others. For instance, I found Diahann Carroll's mad scene to be better than the others - fragile, pathetic, frightening, and sad all rolled into one. Glenn Close's end of Act 1 was fantastic. And Betty Buckley's "As If We've Never Said Goodbye" was the most powerful - you believed that she had come home at last.

I saw Elaine Page's first performance when she appeared for Betty Buckley without much rehearsal and then several weeks later when she had settled into the role. Lowering the banister and adjusting her costumes made a huge difference, and she was surprisingly good, although not a terrific actress. The one I liked the least was Petula Clark - just not right for the role.

And Patti was robbed. As others have said, her performance really improved throughout the run. Also, when they brought the show to the US, they made many improvements, and Patti would have thrived in the updated production.

IMHO

But, r563, did you see...Fraulein Schneider?

Miss Schneider...

R563 ^ I love you Billy Boy. That Summer Stock thread will always be one of my favourites.

So, years ago I was doing a satellite cross interview with Elaine Paige. I could see through the monitor she was being weird about the ear piece and messing with the sound guys. I had recently had an interview with Doris Roberts turn to total shit, (what a car wash cunt), and I refused to let the opportunity to have these 12 minutes turn to shit.

So, I got them to patch me through to her ear piece, after they finally got it in, and gave her a little spiel about how thrilled I was to have time with her, how I had loved her since 'Hair', but I finished with, 'All my show queen friends in NYC said you were the best Norma'......

The interview was a gem.

[quote]I had recently had an interview with Doris Roberts turn to total shit, (what a car wash cunt),

You can't just leave that there and walk away. Spill the goods.

She was in town to shoot a crap childrens film and that was all she wanted to talk about. So to any question not about fucking Aliens in the Attic I got sighs, one word answers, and in the case of a question about her Emmy winning turn in St Elsewhere with her long time friend James Coco, a shrug, a stare and a that was years ago dismissal.

[quote]Close, even with her weaker voice, was a better fit for the role and acted the shit out of it. I loved her so much in the role back in the 90's that I saw her in the revival a few years back and she was maybe even better. I do think she deserves to have it preserved forever in the film version, but I doubt it'll ever happen. Close is no longer a name and I believe she still has first right of refusal in her contract and I don't see her allowing them to go through with it without her.

At the performance I saw way back when, Close's acting was terrible. She played Norma like someone age 80, not 50, aside from her inability to sing the score properly. She was MUCH better in that recent semi-staged Broadway revival, but apparently some of the singing was pre-recorded. The is NO WAY IN HELL that she will ever make a film version of the show, as she is now about 25 years old for the part, aside from the fact that her singing voice is even worse than it used to be because she's so old now and was never primarily a singer.

[quote]Could we say Close was a beauty, either? In their primes, they could come across as cute at best. Betty Buckley - I could imagine her as a beautiful silent film star.

Close may not be or ever have been a classic beauty, but she does have the kind of features that one could imagine her becoming a silent film star, whereas Patti does not, aside from the fact that Patti has always radiated a much more "common" kind of vibe.

I'm afraid Glenn is beginning to cling to the idea of making the "Sunset" movie the way Norma clings to the idea of starring in "Salome."

Let's make it a documentary!

[quote]R526 It was in Lupone’s contract to create the role in London and then take it to Broadway.

Another capricious act, by a capricious man.

Re: photo in r537:

Why can’t they place a mic less obtrusively, like in an earring, or on a lapel? How much help do singers NEED that it must be glued to the center of their forehead?? (Certainly Betty Buckley doesn’t need much help, anyway!)

[quote]R569 Close may not be or ever have been a classic beauty, but she does have the kind of features that one could imagine her becoming a silent film star

Oh yes... Close DOES resemble some of those old Hollywood stars!

[quote] Denise Gough as one of the worst things about that NT Angels. And apparently she was a total cunt during the run, too.

Russell Tovey refused to play Joe Pitt in New York because of having to play opposite her again.

So, what would Sondheim's Sunset Blvd with Angie have been like?

Much better than ALW’s, R576.

High School Musical....

R576- Like PASSION without the laughs.

Julie, Carol, and Gwen...

Ruthless Bernadette...

The Beaux Stratagem - Act One.

The Beaux Stratagem - Act Two.

Othello.

Josephine Baker documentary.

Watching Steve's 90th. Someone in a Tree...tears are streamin' down my face.

The Streep-Baranski-Audra trio was the best thing since the 2013 Tony opener.

Someone In a Tree was fucking magical.

Wasn't it, r 588? Some real gems in there last night.

Somebody starting a new thread?

Somethin' wrong with strippin'?

If you're Chrissy Metz, then....yes.

RR

R586 I just watched it and my eyes welled up with tears.

The first time I saw the show the performers got lost in the middle of Tree and the conductor stopped the show. The show had just opened so the audience had no idea why the show just stopped. Who could tell there was anything wrong? The conductor had to tell the performers they had to pick up from a certain point and get back on track. This was the only time I have ever seen such a thing happen.

Sometimes I think Overtures was the best thing I ever saw on Broadway. God it might have been even more beautiful than Follies. Next though was an awful way to end it. Have they gotten rid of it in revivals?

Can someone post a link to Someone In the Tree? I have no interest in watching the entire show, but I would like to see that segment if it was that well done. Thank you.

R595 Is still up on YouTube. Just ff to tree.

R595 Is still up on YouTube. Just ff to tree.

Bajour!

"Whoop-Up"!