THEATRE GOSSIP #542: The "Thoroughly Modern Nellie" Edition

Old thread:

[quote]Isn't Denzel at 70-something a little old for Othello?

In a nod to color- and gender-blind casting, he'll be playing Desdemona this time.

Credit to Denzel. The man could have cruised on by with his film career, but he's come back to the theatre again and again and, I'm sure, been the reason for many audiences' first theatre experience.

Aaron Tveit is going to prove his critics wrong with his interpretation of Sweeney Todd.

He'll be even worse than they are expecting?

Does nobody remember Eden Espinosa cannot act.

[quote]the primary consideration of any revival is whether it respects the wishes of the CREATORS OF THE SHOW when they put the whole thing together in the first place

No, it's not. That is complete nonsense.

['quote]How does Mickey Jo make a living? Certainly not as an "international theater critic." How does he afford all that crappy merch he buys?

People have become millionaires thru YouTube. He and his fiance who has his own channel, just came back from their second New York trip where they stayed for two weeks each time. The hell with the merch, what's up with the rush to the bar the second the doors open. The spend more time discussing what $20 specialty drink they are going to get. It's like they can't see a show without liquoring up.

[quote] the primary consideration of any revival is whether it respects the wishes of the CREATORS OF THE SHOW when they put the whole thing together in the first place

Nope. Perhaps it it respects (or challenges, with precision and intention) the wishes of the WRITERS of the material. Most definitely, [italic] not [/italic] the director of the origijnal production.

Look at John Doyle who found the heart of the Color Purple that the original production missed -- but who also missed the points of Company and Sweeney by imposing a different notion where the material did not support it.

Has anyone been to Spamalot yet?

Mickey Jo and fiance also pig out on desserts and fatty snacks. (Although the boyfriend is supposed to be gluten intolerant.) Can't be healthy.

[quote]The primary consideration of any revival is whether it respects the wishes of the CREATORS OF THE SHOW when they put the whole thing together in the first place

[quote]Nope. Perhaps it it respects (or challenges, with precision and intention) the wishes of the WRITERS of the material. Most definitely, not the director of the original production

I should clarify that, when I referred to the "wishes of the creators of the show," I was referring specifically to the writers. Although, of course, there were many cases where the director was also integral in the actual content of the show, the primary example being Robbins.

That said, what I meant was that any revival or revisal that betrays the spirit of what the original creators gave us is, in my opinion, a bad revival. Daniel Fish's OKLAHOMA! was horrendous because, among other things, the tone and implications of that production were almost the opposite of the original. The Mendes-Marshall CABARET was awful (and the new one seems to be worse) because SUBTLETY was a vital, essential part of the storytelling in the original version, and has no part in these new productions.

[quote]Look at John Doyle who found the heart of the Color Purple that the original production missed -- but who also missed the points of Company and Sweeney by imposing a different notion where the material did not support it.

I agree with you about COLOR PURPLE and mostly disagree about COMPANY and SWEENEY. But whatever you thought of those productions, I don't think it can be said that any of them betrayed the spirit and meaning and point of the shows as written.

Here's the thing about misbegotten revivals:

No matter how well or badly they may be received they can't stop a different interpretation from happening next. That's the nice thing about the theater as an art form.

R10, Arrianna has

So who continues as Lovett and Sweeney after the 12 weeks are over?

If it makes it through 12 more weeks.

I was also someone who went into seeing this Cabaret a skeptic and came out a convert. In addition to the stunning design, I thought it was thrillingly performed and directed, and I much preferred it to the Sam Mendes production.

John Kander and director Rebecca Frecknall had a conversation for The Guardian when this revival was starting performances. Kander, it should be noted, says the following: "It made me realise there are so many ways to do a piece. If the piece has any validity, it’s open to all kinds of not just reinterpretation but reimagining. When I see a production of Cabaret that’s a brand-new take on it and it works, it makes me really happy.” Kander also says, "Whether or not to put the whole show in the Kit Kat club was something that was discussed when we wrote it,” he says (the original Cabaret has two areas of stage space, one for “real life”, one for the club)."

I think Frecknall is the real deal and I do hope most theatergoers allow themselves the opportunity to experience this production without agonizing that it somehow violates the intentions of the original authors.

[quote]If the piece has any validity, it’s open to all kinds of not just reinterpretation but reimagining.

Precisely—which was proven in extremis with Daniel Fish's Oklahoma!, and which was what made that production so exciting to so many (and so infuriating to so many more).

Speaking of misbegotten revivals, early word on Pal Joey is god-awful. It sounds like it’s worse than Billy Porter’s revisal of The Life. Something I wouldn’t have thought at all. possible.

How about this current revival of Chicago in Berlin? When did Hot Honey Rag become an ensemble number?

Billy is changing the character to the Chimney Tran for Jelly's Last Jam.

I didn’t like the Fish Oklahoma because it was clumsy and unfocused and only spoke to people who walked in agreeing, but I think it’s valid to use a piece of Americana to examine our relationship with violence. That said, these messages could have been delivered more forcefully in other ways. It’s not like the show was so beloved by contemporary audiences that turning it on its heads would actually implicate them.

I agree. I liked that an attempt to deconstruct Oklahoma was done, but hate how it was executed.

[quote] I do hope most theatergoers allow themselves the opportunity to experience this production without agonizing that it somehow violates the intentions of the original authors.

There’s only one troll on here who cares about freezing the authors’ intentions in time.

The theater is not a museum.

Further on Cabaret - I did see the 1987 Hal Prince revival, which largely recreated the original staging, with some alterations, including a few budget conscious choices that were harmful. It was still great to see it, and I liked it more than the critics did at the time, but the way that production alternated between the reality of the book scenes and the limbo of the club numbers did make it seem caught in a no man's land of an old fashioned book musical and the concept musicals that were to come in the 1970s. As I wrote at R17, I wasn't a huge fan of the Mendes production, but one thing I thought he accomplished especially well was to make the show really move. It didn't feel as earthbound and you did know where you were in the world of the show without needing a fully executed set of Frau Schneider's boarding house or Herr Schultz's fruit shop.

[quote]Aaron Tveit is going to prove his critics wrong with his interpretation of Sweeney Todd.

Hopefully with his dick hanging out of his pants.

R25, I loved the Mendes version for a lot of reasons, but yes. That 1987 Hal Prince remounting seemed sluggish and plodding. Even the brilliant Boris Aronson designs seemed dusty. There were 21 years between the Prince productions and 14 between the Mendes, but Mendes’ aged much more gracefully - especially with Emma Stone as Sally.

[quote]Here's the thing about misbegotten revivals: No matter how well or badly they may be received they can't stop a different interpretation from happening next. That's the nice thing about the theater as an art form.

That is true. And if they're really bad, they will hopefully fail, as Fish's OKLAHOMA! ultimately did (despite winning a Tony) and, as it would seem, the new PAL JOEY is failing spectacularly.

Agreed that the 1987 CABARET did not work, and it was not a critical success. But that doesn't mean one has to go to the opposite extreme and mount a production that's all about extreme vulgarity and shock value, beginning within the first few minutes of the show.

Yes, performers in Weimar Germany were notorious for their tasteful style. How dare Mendes.

I was fascinated by a lot of the Fish Oklahoma but also questioned some choices (like r23, more the execution than the concept).

Yet whatever one may have thought of that revival, I do believe it has changed the way Oklahoma will be performed in future major revivals. We will no longer see the hokey and happy-go-lucky gingham-frocked paean to American individuality, but something deeper, more complex and more thought-provoking. And I'd like to think that Rodgers & Hammerstein would be very pleased by that.

R31, is that what we were seeing? The 1979 and 1998 Nunn/Jackman productions don’t seem hokey or happy go lucky.

[quote]There’s only one troll on here who cares about freezing the authors’ intentions in time.

I'm calling hypocrisy on you people who make statements like this. Because, to take Fish's OKLAHOMA! as an example: I'm sure that if you wrote a play or musical about everything that's wrong with America and then, 50 years later, someone staged a revival, without changing any of the text, that made it a piece about everything that's RIGHT with America, you would be incensed. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to do so while you were still alive, not without your permission. So whoever wanted to reconceive the show in that way would have to wait till you were dead.

[quote]The theater is not a museum.

That's a straw man argument, because I never said it should be a museum, and there is a tremendous gray area between "museum piece" and "revisal that betrays the intentions of the original authors."

I'm now going to try to bow out of this discussion, but interesting that we're having this discussion immediately after I read an extremely negative review of the new PAL JOEY at City Center. See attached.

[quote]Yes, performers in Weimar Germany were notorious for their tasteful style. How dare Mendes.

Maybe you are more well versed in the history than I am, but I don't think performers in mainstream clubs at the time simulated fist fucking and made jokes about cunnilingus on stage.

R34, I don’t know why the Kit Kat would be a mainstream club, but compared to the reality? Mendes was pretty tame.

So finally, to explain, when you watch a video of a performance made for the stage, it can be jarring. The cast has rehearsed to connect with the back row. They are not engaging in film acting. So yes, this new CABARET, which I have not seen, can look awful in videos and brilliant onstage.

r12- Did you see the original? Tell us more. How was "The Telephone Song"? I'm too young to have seen the original but I have acted in a production of the original material and I prefer it.

I don’t know if I’ll go to the new Cabaret, but mostly because I’m tired of paying so much for Broadway, especially when the stars may or may not be in the show. But this Cabaret seems to have a different overall take. The Prince version was about how we all could be lulled into complicity with violent political movements. Mendes was about how we could be distracted and then destroyed. This one seems to be about how transgression and creativity actually got absorbed into fascism. As of these takes seem interesting and valid to me.

[quote] How was "The Telephone Song"? I'm too young to have seen the original but I have acted in a production of the original material and I prefer it.

You can see "The Telephone Song" in this YouTube video of the 1987 Broadway revival, with Ron Field's original choreography. It's around the 27:00 mark. I have a fondness for that number and think it depicts the easy sexuality of that time and place, but it may seem a little quaint to others. I do wish it were still in the show in some form, instead of Sally having two club numbers almost back to back.

[Quote] And if they're really bad, they will hopefully fail, as Fish's OKLAHOMA! ultimately did (despite winning a Tony)

So it got great reviews for the most part, and one of Tony, and had an acclaimed London production that might still be on tour in the UK. Yes it was not a box office smash after the first few months but it seems like you’re definition of “failing” is pissing off people on DL.

The dream ballet in the Fish Oklahoma! was the worst things I’ve seen onstage. And I saw Metro, Starmites, and Footloose.

“The female reporter who sings the comic “Zips” has been turned into a male reporter, played by Brooks Ashmanskas, who takes off his jacket, drops his suspenders and loosens his tie. The casting stunt would be funny if the setup weren’t to expose the character as a racist. ”

[quote]How about this current revival of Chicago in Berlin? When did Hot Honey Rag become an ensemble number?

They seemed to have changed a lot. Those aren't the same lyrics Fred Ebb wrote. I didn't understand a word they were singing!

Fuck "Pal Joey." Hopefully they will lose their shirts.

[quote]The new Joey, however, is no ordinary cad. He is also an artist, a jazz musician who is tired of white men like Bing Crosby, Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman ripping off Black music.

[quote]Odd, isn’t it, that Rodgers and Hart never wrote a song about cultural appropriation. Nor did they write a song about how a wealthy white woman (Vera) has the hots for a young Black man (Joey).

[quote]Since the legendary songwriting team never wrote about these things, LaGravenese and Beaty must. They do so in excruciating detail, piling up the show with more motivation than it took Sorkin to turn Guinevere into an oppressed but liberated woman plotting for her freedom.

[quote]The Prince version was about how we all could be lulled into complicity with violent political movements. Mendes was about how we could be distracted and then destroyed. This one seems to be about how transgression and creativity actually got absorbed into fascism. As of these takes seem interesting and valid to me.

That's all very interesting the way you write it, but I don't see any real difference between your description of what the Prince and Mendes versions were about. Also, can you explain what you mean by transgression and creativity getting absorbed into fascism? Because I don't understand that at all.

[quote]So it got great reviews for the most part, and one of Tony, and had an acclaimed London production that might still be on tour in the UK. Yes it was not a box office smash after the first few months but it seems like you’re definition of “failing” is pissing off people on DL.

First of all, the Broadway production of the Fish OKLAHOMA! had quite a brief run despite winning the Best Revival Tony, though nowhere near as brief as I think it should have been. And, from all reports, the U.S. tour was a disaster in every way. I'm unaware of the success of the London production or the UK tour, but OF COURSE the Brits were going to love a take on OKLAHOMA! that's all about the very, very dark side of the United States of America.

I’m fucking pissed!

While it's nice to see some razzle dazzle--and COLOR costumes and sets--in that new Berlin production of Chicago at R20, it does seem odd that Billy Flynn is being played by the Emcee from Cabaret.

Sure. Prince put the mirror in the audience, suggesting that Americans could be as complicit as Germans. We enjoyed the show until it went too far and it was too late. So, like Lotte Lenya’s character, we simply accept. Others suffer, but we are at a distance.

With Mendes, we are actually part of the club. We enjoy the entertainment, but the MC includes us in the action. In the final moment, the club is essentially the victim. We were too busy with our debauchery to do anything.

The newer version seems to be about outlandish costumes and characters slowly being transformed into conformity. I don’t want to spoil annything unknowingly based on what I’ve read and seen. But the idea that people who were part of the cabaret turned into Nazis and bystanders is not a crazy interpretation.

Thanks for giving away the ending of this version!

💩🫥

R50, I have no idea what the ending is. I’m just interpreting what I’ve heard

[quote]The newer version seems to be about outlandish costumes and characters slowly being transformed into conformity.

Okay, but that's not at all the same as transgression and creativity getting "absorbed" into fascism, so I'm afraid your phrasing there was poor.

[quote]While it's nice to see some razzle dazzle--and COLOR costumes and sets--in that new Berlin production of Chicago

I hate that set and those costumes.

why is everyone in every pic of the new Cabaret sticking out their tongues.

Because they all dance like Mick Jagger 👅

No tongue!

I just don't think we're in a time where everyone wants to pay a lot of money to be entertained by Anti-Semitism. Maybe I'm wrong on that...

The City Center "Pal Joey" certainly sounds like a dog. Basically, it's been turned into a Rodgers and Hart jukebox musical.

[quote] How about this current revival of Chicago in Berlin? When did Hot Honey Rag become an ensemble number?

[quote]They seemed to have changed a lot. Those aren't the same lyrics Fred Ebb wrote. I didn't understand a word they were singing!

When did Hot Honey Rag have lyrics?

[quote] I just don't think we're in a time where everyone wants to pay a lot of money to be entertained by Anti-Semitism. Maybe I'm wrong on that...

Entertained by Anti-Semitism? What a bizarre perspective.

The events depicted in “Cabaret” are recurring around us right now. Damn right it’s relevant.

Why does Mrs. Lovett have to have an accent if Sweeney never does? (Nor does the judge.) I just always assumed it was because Len Cariou couldn’t do one.

Over at ST Nicholas Christopher is the new Julie Benko. He's on for Groban again tonite. I have friends who saw him a few weeks ago and they said he's fantastic in the role. Might be worth catching in January when he's on between Josh and Aaron. I'm sure the show will be heavily discounted.

I don't want to see a lowly understudy. At those prices, I want to see the STAR!

At 6:44, Aaron says he’s always wanted to star in Sweeney Todd.

I get that Cabaret is relevant. I totally get that, and love the show. (Haven't seen this production). I'm just wondering if people will pay huge prices for "relevance" when we're all living the nightmare. Can the fiction be more truthful than today's headlines? That's what I'm wondering.

[quote]Why does Mrs. Lovett have to have an accent if Sweeney never does? (Nor does the judge.) I just always assumed it was because Len Cariou couldn’t do one.

It makes no logical or dramaturgical sense, but Cariou and Hearn speaking in that sort of upper middle class Transatlantic/American accent always worked for me. Even though, a man of Sweeney's station and circumstance in life might more likely sound Cockney. I can't even explain why, but it always feels 'right'. In fact, I find it oddly jarring when seeing a Sweeney with a more authentic accent (like Michael Ball's)

Man, Jesse Green didn't like Pal Joey, but he's so afraid of being seen as racist, he fills his reviews with a load of doublespeak so that nothing is clear. He's pretty much neutered himself.

Also, he seems to be the only one who loves the orchestrations. He praises them to the hilt while evry other review bashes them.

The fraud imposter that is Pal Joey will flop ( hopefully) and articles will be written about why Broadway is racist.

What are the shows can we “fix“ by making them about race?

The all-White Dreamgirls.

[quote]He seems to be the only one who loves the orchestrations. He praises them to the hilt while evry other review bashes them.

Yes, I noticed that. Interesting. I think I'm seeing the show on the weekend, so I will keep an ear out.

I’ve seen the Frecknall Cabaret twice. It’s a different take on the material and goes to show how there are so many themes worked into the material that you can do very different things with the show and still end up with something both entertaining and thought provoking. I’ve played Schultz twice, once in 2007 and once in 2020 just before the shut down and both of those productions were very different from each other and they also reflected the politics of the moment in various ways.

[quote]There are so many themes worked into the material that you can do very different things with the show and still end up with something both entertaining and thought provoking.

People here keep making statements like that, but I just don't see all these different "themes" in the material. I think there's basically one powerful theme, and that's enough. The main difference is that recent productions have progressively upped the shock value of the decadence of the cabaret scenes, but that's really just a matter of exaggerating what was there to begin with.

Peter White has passed away. That leaves Larry and, I'm hoping, Ruben from the original BITB cast.

R74 So. Gay.

R74 Hank. Hank is still alive.

[quote]He's pretty much neutered himself.

Pics please.

R76. Larry as in Luckinbill not the character Larry.

I much preferred Larry Luckinbill's cousin, Thad.... especially his gorgeous ass.

Yeah, r79. But could it live forever?

Great asses all must, As golden lads and girls, come to dust.

R79, From “Nip/Tuck”.

But, fortunately for us, pictures live on.............forever.

[quote]Why does Mrs. Lovett have to have an accent if Sweeney never does?

Probably two reasons, first Lansbury's accent, so it became a tradition like Edna Turnblad always being a man and she she sings about the "worst pies in London" bringing the audience back to their location and she should sound British.

Speaking of Lucie Arnaz! Surely there is one more role for her on Broadway?

Thursday night Beggar Woman?

Audience member?

Sally.

Sara Gettelfinger coming back to Broadway in Water for Elephants. Love her.

[quote] Sara Gettelfinger coming back to Broadway in Water for Elephants.

I hear that for a carton of Luckies a week and a muff dive, she'll make sure you're not shanked in the women's dressing room.

Melissa Manchester is injured and out of the FG tour for a while. Also, they dropped that Hokey WHERE IS FANNY curtain call bit for the tour.

I left Pal Joey at intermission. It was an atrocity.

Does Tony Goldwyn have any stage credentials apart from his acting work? Why did he get this gig?

R90, I don't know the answer to your question, but I am truly surprised that Goldwyn ever became involved in such a debacle, which sounded like an epic mistake from the get-go. I thought he was much smarter than that, but I guess not.

P.S. Back in the day, when he was hot as hell, Goldwyn would have been a great Joey in the original version. I assume they would have had to simplify the dancing for him, but that wouldn't have bothered me :-)

Goldwyn did a play in LA in 2006 where he gets out of a tub full frontal.

He did that play here at Second Stage.

👆🏻The Water’s Edge by Theresa Rebeck

Rebeck has written one good play in her career. "Downstairs", which played off-Broadway, with Tyne and Tim Daly. And stupidly, despite rave reviews, it never went any further. But a piece of shit like "Dig" gets extended.

[quote]I left Pal Joey at intermission. It was an atrocity.

So you were " disrespecting" the show?

R95, maybe two good plays. SEARED, with Raul Esparza, was also pretty good overall, though his performance was better than the writing.

I can't believe DIG was extended. If anything, it should have closed early. Total nonsense.

I adored the first two plays I saw by Rebeck; VIEW OF THE DOME and BAD DATES. Haven't really liked anything since.

How does Rebek get produced time and again?? And get decent actors time and again?

And she's SO ugly!

[quote]And get decent actors time and again?

Julie White was great in Bad Dates.

Aaron T. has some hairy forearms. Yum.

It's amazing that someone as popular as Tveit has managed to hide the identities of people he's fucking.

R96, I guess I was. I have only ever left a show once before this. I suffer from migranes and my head was pounding a bit but I would have stayed except that this is a show I LOVE and I honestly didn't want to see it further ruined. It was that bad. My friend was intent on leaving and I didn't fight him on it.

I previously left some Wally Shawn play downtown that he wrote and was in and the character spent the entire time talking about his penis. It was three and half hours long and I could not follow a word of it except to know that he was talking about his penis the whole time. I had just started getting migranes and could feel one kicking in and it was not going to be helped by Wally's penis.

Larry Luckinbill was known as Lucky Larrinbill back in the day.

And Nicol Williamson’s play Inadmissable Evidence, was known as Inexplicable Arrogance, largely due to Williamson.

[quote]Aaron Tveit is going to prove his critics wrong with his interpretation of Sweeney Todd.

[quote]Hopefully with his dick hanging out of his pants.

That reminds me of when Aaron Tveit was promoting GREASE LIVE! several years back and did this interview with Paul Wontorek, who at 10:50 brought up the short-shorts Aaron had to wear in one scene.

[quote]TVEIT: "The other guys in the scene were all wearing the basketball shorts, too, but even in rehearsal, when we all came out in our costumes, everyone was laughing at me. I'm like, 'There's 8 other guys in the same shorts. Why are you laughing at me?'"

Then the way he said the following made me think he's well-endowed:

[quote]"I mean, I do have enormous... legs. But anyway..."

The Fish “Oklahoma” bent over backwards to suit the contemporary craze for diversity, and there was stuff I hated about it (like the awful dream ballet, the cornbread, etc.) but I thought the score lent itself perfectly well to the hillbilly/country swing arrangements, and I found the whole production stimulating. Though the form was radical the implied message of the piece was amplified, albeit heavy-handedly. To me, it was still recognizably “Oklahoma!” And more “faithful” traditional versions are available at our fingertips (the Hugh Jackman version is currently featured on Prime) so no harm done as far as I’m concerned.

I get that some classic shows always had weak books, but re-writing extensively to racially diversify a piece makes no sense to me, and I had zero interest in “Pal Joey” from the get-go. The question I have is: part of the reason for these sorts of revivals is to grow a new theater-going audience, one that is younger and more racially diverse. Is it working?

I suspect not, but I’m a gay white dude in late middle age, one of the traditional backbones of the American theater, one who still doesn’t get how the original book for “Flower Drum Song” was horribly racist and who thinks the contortions of David Hwang’s ‘improved’ book were embarrassing and unnecessary. So what do I know?

[quote]The question I have is: part of the reason for these sorts of revivals is to grow a new theater-going audience, one that is younger and more racially diverse. Is it working?

Cedar Fair and Six Flags amusement parks merged because of dwindling attendance. The Six Flags observation can be applied to Broadway:

[quote]"Whereas the theme park industry as a whole has been under significant pressure since the start of the pandemic, Six Flags has created additional pressure of its own, with a volatile new attendance and pricing strategy that has struggled to take root, alienating its core customers and leading to dramatic drops in visitation along the way," Hardiman wrote.

The core Broadway audience- older, primarily white has not been enamored of the wokeness; they have not been replaced by the young, more diverse audience who can't afford the prices.

How did Lilianne Montevecchi ever beat out Anita Morris for Best Featured Actress in Nine? Morris' performance has become almost legendary and they even used her in the commercial.

What is DIG?

Tony Goldwyn can't sing or dance., He can barely act. Though he can act bare just fine.

R107 - I'm more cynical in thinking that it's less about attracting a young audience than out of fear to misstep and get called out at this time when younger people take offense at everything and wield a lot of power due to social media. EVERYONE in this field is currently walking on eggshells terrified of some TikToker calling them racist or sexist.

Example: SOME LIKE IT HOT was made weaker by trying not to offend. The classic last line of the movie "Nobody's perfect" couldn't be uttered because god-forbid someone stand on a stage and call a trans person Not Perfect. The character of Sugar made ZERO sense because they couldn't possibly have a Black woman be a lovable, slutty ditz and not strong and noble. I'm not really sure that the writers were saying to themselves "yeah, this is the way to get young people in" rather than just "we can't offend the woke crowd."

r110

She was considered sexy? hmmm

R113, did you actually see SOME LIKE IT OR HOT, or at least listen to the album? The phrase "Nobody's perfect" was indeed uttered -- cleverly reconceived to launch the big final number.

[quote]Tony Goldwyn can't sing or dance., He can barely act. Though he can act bare just fine.

Barely act? I haven't watched much of Goldwyn, but he was great in the movie GHOST and actually elevated the material. His character could have been a cartoon villain à la Billy Zane in TITANIC.

R114 Anita Morris had a knock-out sexy body!

I have to join this pile-on for the garbage that is DIG. How fucking tedious was it to see everyone flip between murderous rage and groveling for forgiveness back and forth and back and forth?? I do appreciate how DIG let me calibrate my sense of which reviewers are fucking idiots.

[quote]The all-White Dreamgirls.

I'm available for Effie!

Are we really questioning Anita Morris' sexiness? No, she probably wouldn't have been a pinup or centerfold, but she was incredibly sexy on stage.

Here she triumphs over (or because of?) a wardrobe malfunction. Special lady, lost far too soon.

What is DIG?

I didn't know what it was, either, so I looked it up. Here's the synopsis from its website:

[quote]From the author of DOWNSTAIRS and BERNHARDT/HAMLET, Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck is back with DIG, a new play about courage, redemption, and photosynthesis.

[quote]In a dying plant shop in a dying neighborhood, Roger receives a visitor from the past: Megan, the neighborhood screw-up, just out of rehab. He wants nothing to do with this disaster. Rebeck's signature wit, intelligence, and depth brings us a riveting play that asks -- can a soul beyond saving be saved?

[quote]Please note that DIG contains smoking and content contains sexual assault and descriptions of suicide and death.

Sounds like fun.

Thanks, r122. I get yelled at here a lot for using all caps for titles so I just assumed DIG was either an acronym or abbreviation.

Sounds like a spinoff from "Little Shop of Horrors."

No, what we're asking is how Morris lost to Montevecchi.

Wasn't Liliane's number flashier?

[r121] dig is a fast casual grain and protein bowl 🥣 place that gives me the shits THIS IS A THEATRE THREAD

R115 it is uttered but first the lover has to make a huge point of saying YOU ARE PERFECT to which the translady doth protest too much and says "I'm not perfect" because for political reasons, only SHE can say it about herself, not anyone else. Completely the opposite meaning of the film which was done for comic effect and the last frame is Jack Lemmon's wacky surprised face at the line.

Some Like It Hot was a lamely executed, clumsily “woke” bastardizing of the brilliant film. Good riddance.

Tony Goldwyn is an excellent actor. He was terrific in The Inheritance and I'm going to guess much closer to the character than John Benjamin Hickey was.

Anita Morris was ridiculously sexy. I never got to see her onstage. My first exposure to her as a pre-teen was the Rolling Stones video for She Was Hot. Then I saw her in Ruthless People, where she was, again, crazy sexy, but also gave a very funny performance.

That being said, I'm not sure any of the Nine ladies deserved the Tony. A couple years ago, I was doing research at TOFT and watched the original production of Nine. I was somewhat underwhelmed, but I kept waiting for this show-stopping number from Anita Morris and I never saw it. I realized after I rewound that I had watched it and it made zero impression on me. I think Dreamgirls was totally robbed that year of several Tonys.

The reason it was show stopping, r131 was because the choreography, the way she performed it, and her costume were considered very provocative.

[Quote] It's amazing that someone as popular as Tveit has managed to hide the identities of people he's fucking.

He and a girl from Moulin Rouge have been a couple for years. It’s not a secret, but I don’t know that anyone really cares

Wanda...

And that's the difference between sexy and trashy.

She’s no Jenna Elfman

Jane Krakowski won the Tony Anita should have gotten.

And I would have loved to see Anita do Lola in Damn Yankees. She could be funny, sexy and vulnerable. So perfect for the role.

Anita was also in The Magic Show. They did a TV version for Henning and both Ann Reinking and Anita Morris are in it. Annie is kinda like some Las Vegas Showgirl who got plucked from the Tropicana. Anita comes out and you already know this is a star.

Karla Tamurrelli did the show on tour and she serenaded Johnny Carson.

[quote] I do appreciate how DIG let me calibrate my sense of which reviewers are fucking idiots.

True, that. The script was horrible beyond the pale, and because the actors did exactly what was called for by the script, so was the acting. Truly one of the worst plays I've ever seen, and also very offensive in the way they handled the death of a child in such a totally inept manner. Oh, and that moment where the hot but annoying young guy attempts to stick his dick into the young woman after she has passed out? Very special!

r132

Who’s not sucking Grover’s dick? I’m not!

R140 Exactly! That was such a WTF moment coming from a character who had been harmless comedic filler till then. The most deranged part of it all was that the rape was immediately swept aside by the characters.

Anita was defintely the best thing about NINE. Although everyone knows "Call from the Vatican," she actually had two numbers in the show. Her second act song, "Simple," is by far my favorite in the musical. And yes, she should have won the Tony for it.

A lot of criticism here about Tony Goldman being responsible for “Pal Joey,” but I just caught up with the NYTimes article about Savion Glover’s co-direction of the show, and I couldn’t help but notice that in the photo featuring Glover at a rehearsal, Goldwyn is nowhere to be seen.

It seems to me that once Goldwyn (or someone on high) decided more diversity was needed in the cast and that he should have black collaborators (lest he or City Center be accused of cultural appropriation) the musical was taken in a completely different direction and out of his hands by these guys, and his involvement may have ended there except for occasional input, if that.

R144, I think there's some truth in that, and something similar has happened with several other shows insofar as black co-writers and co-directors being brought on to work with established white people. But I'm sure that, for PAL JOEY, this setup must have been planned from the beginning. According to Goldwyn's (not Goldman's) quotes in the NY Times and elsewhere, he is completely on board with it. And now, having climbed on board, he is going down with the sinking ship. I wonder how empty the audience will be for the final performance?

As a long-time theater professional I really don't understand how 2 people can direct a play or a musical. If they completely agree on all points then what's the point of having 2 of them? The only successful collaboration of that kind I can recall was Prince and Bennett on Follies.

If you loved Pal Joey, just wait till February, when we get an Encores revival of Jellys Last Jam with the adorable Miss Billy Porter!

In the past, I think the credit of co-director was sometimes given to recognize the tremendous contribution of some choreographers to the musical as a whole, This is what I would say happened with Prince and Bennett on FOLLIES, and arguably it could have happened with Agnes DeMille on some of her shows. But as noted above, the recent trend of crediting POC and non-POC directors as co-directors is done for completely different reasons.

All of that said, I think only director should be credited, because only one person has to have the final say and responsibility.

[quote] As a long-time theater professional I really don't understand how 2 people can direct a play or a musical. If they completely agree on all points then what's the point of having 2 of them? The only successful collaboration of that kind I can recall was Prince and Bennett on Follies.

I can think of three others, all successful: Trey Parker and Casey Nicholaw for The Book of Mormon, Trevor Nunn and John Caird for Les Misérables, and Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall for Cabaret.

Anita Morris's big number in The Magic Show (Charmin's Lament) is one of the great belter numbers, as well as capitalizing on her sexiness. It's hardly Halloween until you've sung:

I've been shocked/and unfrocked at a/Walpurgisnacht -- Tell me, where is Gloria Steinem when you need her?

Oh, Wanda Richert, r234! She really went off the deep end. While she was in Florida, she was into heavy drugs. Lots of molly. She went completely insane - nearly got 51-50-ed several times.

Now she's in the Midwest somewhere, a bat shit crazy qAnon conservative "reverend".

At least she's still alive.

R144 you’re talking out of your ass…give us anything, something which supports your take…”seems to me” that you made it up.

It doesn't seem that complicated to me: Goldwyn handled the actors and their dialogue scenes. When they had to move in a musical number, Glover took over.

It worked great for Robbins in the movies…he was fired mid-production and still got an Oscar for Best Director!

R153, it's possible that that was the division of labor, but if so, then Glover could have been credited for "Choreography and Musical Staging." As I mentioned, there really should be only one director credited for any show, because only one person can have the final say and the final responsibility for the whole production.

[quote] because only one person can have the final say and the final responsibility for the whole production.

Where exactly is this written?

I think Aaron should wear the basketball shorts in at least one scene in SWEENEY TODD.

Rebeck's "signature wit.....intelligence....depth......." OH MY SIDES!!!

I don't understand your question, R156. OF COURSE, one person and only one person can have the final say about that goes and what doesn't go in any production of any show, otherwise there would be anarchy.

I'm pretty sure Hal Prince stated that there were lots of disagreements between him and Bennett during FOLLIES. And as for the original film of WEST SIDE STORY, apparently that worked so well because (1) to a large extent, Robert Wise stepped back and let Robbins do his thing during the time when he was working on the film, and then Wise stepped to the forefront after Robbins was fired. One can only imagine what the atmosphere on the set would have been like if Robbins had not been fired, I'm guessing there would have been constant arguments between him and Wise until the production finally wrapped.

R158, you're not worth expending the energy on to argue with.

It made for some awkwardness during the Oscars show —

The didn’t even acknowledge each other’s presence at the podium when Roz Russell awarded their Oscars..

[quote]You're not worth expending the energy on to argue with.

Such comments are the refuge of the stupid. Because they don't have the ability to argue a point intelligently, they insult the person they disagree with. Begone, fool -- but before you do, see R160 and R161, and you might actually learn something.

Dear, your comment that there cannot possibly be more than one director on a project belies the fact that there have been directing teams on dozens of projects for film and theater. So what's the point of arguing with you? You're just wrong. It's not opinion, it's fact.

Who talked Roz into wearing that get-up in r161?

It was her Gypsy look!

Robbins filmed four musical numbers for the West Side Story movie (Cool, the opening, America, and I Feel Pretty) and then he got fired. Rita Moreno in some interview said that the Dance at the Gym suffered without Robbins being involved in the filming.

Are you two the same pair of insulting, stupid-calling, all-caps shouting queens who do this back-and-forth in every thread?

[quote]Dear, your comment that there cannot possibly be more than one director on a project belies the fact that there have been directing teams on dozens of projects for film and theater. So what's the point of arguing with you? You're just wrong. It's not opinion, it's fact.

OF COURSE, its a fact that there have been co-directors for many projects over the years. I mentioned at least two of those projects myself. What I wrote was that, in my opinion, only one person SHOULD have the directing credit for each project, because it's essential that only one person have the final say on what works and what doesn't in EVERY area of production -- choreography, physical production, etc. So the problem here is not that I'm wrong, it's that your reading comprehension level is apparently very low.

P.S. the original film of WEST SIDE STORY was a very special case, because Robbins directed and choreographed the original production, and I assume the studio might have hired him as the sole director of the film if he had had more experience in that medium. (He had never directed an entire film, though he had worked on THE KING AND I.) So it's understandable why the studio thought it was a good idea to hire Wise and Robbins as co-directors, but as others have pointed out, it didn't work out very well in terms of how things went during filming, ALTHOUGH it worked out spectacularly well in terms of the quality of the finished product.

To quote you, as was pointed out. Repeatedly!

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Robbins fired from the WSS film because of his disregard for time and budget constraints, not because of any artistic disagreements with Wise?

[quote] What I wrote was that, in my opinion, only one person SHOULD have the directing credit for each project, because it's essential that only one person have the final say on what works and what doesn't in EVERY area of production -- choreography, physical production, etc. So the problem here is not that I'm wrong, it's that your reading comprehension level is apparently very low.

Here's what you wrote, shithead.

[quote] because only one person can have the final say and the final responsibility for the whole production.

Now we're done.

Okay, genius, then explain to me and the rest of us how more than one person can have the final say when there are disagreements -- major or minor -- about a production. No matter how long and bitter the arguments over a particular aspect of a production, someone -- yes, some ONE -- MUST have the final say. If not, how would the disagreement be solved? Would the quarreling parties move to arbitration or to a court of law?

It's shocking, the percentage of people who insist on posting and responding to other people's posts on social media despite the fact that their reading comprehension is at grammar school level, or lower.

Okay, both of you geniuses, explain to the rest of us why you don't just fuck off and die?

R170 which would cause major problems for the producer—who was Robert Wise. Duh

R272 DL is antisocial media. You should know that by now

R172 ^

Team r173

Yes it was all about time and money.

Grover Dale should write a memoir. Six years with Anthony Perkins, 20 with Anita Morris, AND supervising the choreography on "Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (and Don't You Ever Forget It)."

Dale has written a memoir, and was looking for a publisher. He used to post a lot on FB about the book, even sharing some stories, including the beginnings of his affair with Tony Perkins. Very sweet. Notice that his last post was in 2022. Hope he's ok. He's 88.

(Among his other accomplishments, he fathered the gorgeous James Badge Dale. )

At the first talk sessions that became A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett revealed that Dale came on to him when he was starting out.

Also, Bennett was considering Anita Morris as Cassie in the first NY replacement company that Ann Reinking eventually got.

In this fun interview from a year ago, Dale says he is "about to publish my first book":

[quote]The working title is A Boy Like That: Hits, Misses, Messes, and Miracles as I Danced Across the Stages of Broadway and Hollywood. The book is told in a series of anecdotes that recount the ups and downs – both personal and professional – of my seven-decade theater career. I don’t hold back on sharing my struggles (including a scandal or two!) in hopes that my journey from a three-room shack on a dirt road to showbiz success will inspire readers to follow their dreams, and that they’ll find my behind-the-scene revelations, including my failures and foibles, entertaining.

[quote]Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible and real as the world around me. I wished I could dance on location forever.

Hey, guess what?! After reading that review of the "Pal Joey" revisal, I have no interest in seeing it, but will enjoy the LuPone, Gallagher, Newirth recording I own.

I'll let them bewitch, bother and bewilder me.

I love Patti on that recording. She sounds positively fuck drunk on Bewitched..

Patti was the antithesis of the soignee sophisticate that is Vera Simpson. She's more the Staten Island fishwife.

Oh good: the fishwife troll. I always presume you’re one of the amateur photographers she called out and you’re still bitter.

Bebe

Anita’s song “Charmin’s Lament” from Magic Show is actually much better than “A Call From the Vatican” Unfortunately they replaced it in the Magic Show movie.

[quote] Are you two the same pair of insulting, stupid-calling, all-caps shouting queens who do this back-and-forth in every thread?

I can't speak for the guy who insists there can't possibly be two directors on a project, but I'm the other guy and I am not one of that pair. Perhaps I just stumbled on him in the midst of one of his rages and took the bait.

I finally saw Kimberly Akimbo last night—it was a full house. I enjoyed the show more than I expected to. Victoria Clark voice was in fine form. Bonnie Mulligan was out, but her understudy had the chops….didn’t feel like we were missing out at all. The supporting cast was uniformly excellent. A surprisingly moving piece.

[Quote] Unfortunately they replaced it in the Magic Show movie.

Does anyone know why that film version is all different?

Wiki knows. Broadway World knows. IMDB knows. Ya know?

[quote]Bonnie Mulligan was out

Did she replace Bonnie MILLIGAN?

I'm reading elsewhere that, after returning to the cast of SOME LIKE IT HOT following a long absence for some sort of medical issue, J. Harrison Ghee then then left the show again because of some personal/family crisis. Does anyone know if this is true? Either way, I can't imagine it makes much or any difference at the box office, because (a) it seems impossible to tell whether or not this person is going to be in the show, and (b) despite winning a Tony, Ghee is not a ticket-selling star name.

Wow—194. You sure caught ‘em on that one.

Do you know what a mulligan is? So that poster gets a mulligan for typing a u instead of an i.

[quote]Ghee is not a ticket-selling star name.

It is in the Indian food aisle at Food Circus.

Ghee’s father died

r193 thanks for the wiseassery but Wiki has no “why” explanation

[Quote] In 2001, a filmed performance staged especially for the cameras in 1980, directed by Norman Campbell at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, was issued on DVD by Image Entertainment. This production, originally intended for cinema release, differed notably from the original Broadway production, with several of the most memorable songs, such as "West End Avenue" and "Solid Silver Platform Shoes", removed. Doug Henning reprised his original starring role, while Didi Conn co-starred as Cal.

For r186

Is the Alecia Keys musical at The Public really as big a mess as rumored?

How sloshed is Elaine Stritch on this 1975 appearance on The Tonight Show at 1:05:00?

Carson kept having her back. She did a later appearance that was even worse.

Holy cow! That is embarrassing!

Gwen

r202 I saw it. It is not a mess. The music and arrangements are very good. The lead girl is excellent . I had a good time. But no it is not groundbreaking. It is a jukebox musical.

Broadway musicals are just revivals ( many re-conceived to entertain the woke) and jukebox shit.

And yet there are 18 new ones coming in and some are not revivals or jukebox like How to Dance in Ohio and Lempicka. A lot of movie IP too like The Notebook and Back to the Future. But you are right r208

[quote]Doug Henning reprised his original starring role, while Didi Conn co-starred as Cal.

Met Didi Conn last weekend at Chiller. She was delightful, read any report about the weekend and she was the hit of the show. She said no one saw "The Magic Show" but loved doing it and is still sworn to secrecy about the illusions.

She was lying to you—that’s idiotic^

OF COURSE she is sworn to secrecy about magic tricks. You are STUPID if you don't know about that. As I have said REPEATEDLY I never saw the Magic Show but I have listened to the album while eating blueberry PopTarts (unfrosted unless you are an IDIOT) and watching the fungus grown on my Hanes boxer shorts - and none of the magic tricks, as you call them, seem very visually interesting on the recording. OF COURSE a you have said REPEATEDLY because of your poor reading comprehension skills, I can have an opinion who made you the only person with an opinion because you are a woke Sondheimite.

I'm not sure Pal Joey was better than The Life. Both were incredibly bad. Pal Joey's storyline has now been changed to the story of a Black singer who feels that the whites have appropriated the music created by Blacks.

So of course the music of Rodgers and Hart, two white songwriters, makes perfect sense for this new plot. Thank god for Loretta Devine. The audience loved her. And sympathy to poor Elizabeth Stanley, who had the most poorly rewritten storyline.

I have no sympathy for Elizabeth Stanley in this show, not unless the director and musical director forced her to deliver those lines that way and sing those songs like that. As a friend of mine put it, "What the hell was she DOING up there???!!!"

Why go to see a Broadway show if the audience is merely going to be lectured? That's why "Music Man" ( even though some lyrics were changed) and unwoke shows will always draw huge crowds. I have no desire to spend tons of money to see a show that incessantly tells me I'm racist or sexist. I'll just stay home and smoke copious amounts of pot.

The other day Shucked posted online that Reba would be making a big announcement at yesterday's show. Any idea what it was?

Has Hannah Waddingham been announced to play Miranda in The Devil Wears Prada in the West End yet?

One of the low points of this PAL JOEY was when the black central character started making fun of Paul Whiteman's name, some stupid joke about "a lot of white men playing OUR music." And by "their music," I guess he meant the music of Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, etc. What do you expect from a creative team so stupid that they completely misread the lyrics of "The Lady Is a Trampt?" Really quite shocking.

[quote]I'll just stay home and smoke copious amounts of pot.

I hope you sing while doing this!

The Lady was a Trumpt

Investigation: Andrew Lloyd Webber-Backed Drama School ArtsEd Defends Culture Amid Allegations Of Bullying, Misconduct & Toxicity:

who is that AI creature next to haggard liver-spotted Lord ALW?

Boy George returning to Broadway with "Moulin Rouge" limited engagement:

I feel pretty

R223. That's actually exciting and might help Moulin get through the winter doldrums.

Exciting in terms of his name, but Boy George was really not very good as an actor on stage in TABOO. And seeing how his role in MOULIN ROUGE is one that calls for a strong actor, rather than just a presence, maybe this is not such a great idea.

R226 Charles Busch has entered the chat! I’m sorry you didn’t make millions off of Taboo

I keep hearing the Alecia Keyes is moving to The Shubert this Spring.

“I keep hearing the Alecia Keyes”

Oh, dear.

R227, what a bizarre and unfunny "joke." As if Charles Busch were the only person who didn't like Boy George's acting in TABOO. (And I have no idea of Charles's opinion on that subject.)

Pish tosh I liked Boy George a lot in "Taboo".

R230 the joke was because Charles was the book writer of the revamped Taboo on Broadway and wrote about how because of Boy George’s acting limitations, the book scenes didn’t work how he envisioned

It has been renamed “Songs in the Key of Alecia”

I have always wondered how the song "The Lady Is a Tramp" fit into the plot of Babes in Arms (which I've never seen). Did the term "tramp" have a less harsh, less sexual meaning within this song's lyrics back then? Clearly, it was not synonymous with "hobo."

And - just curious - how does the song in this new PAL JOEY misinterpret its original meaning, r218? I'm not trying to be contentious, sorry if it comes off that way.

Rehearsals started today for staged reading of The Code. Tracie Bennett plays Tallulah Bankhead and Tuc Watkins plays Billy Haines. I’d rather see.a one man play with Tuc as Haines, he’s actually really good casting for him.

Huh. I actually think his bf Andrew Rannells would be better, even perfect, casting for Haines.

[quote]R234, you're not coming across as contentious at all.

The meaning Hart intended was that some people might call the woman in question a "tramp" because she doesn't follow the dictates of pretentious society -- she doesn't arrive late for the theater, she doesn't fall asleep at the opera, she would never go to Harlem dressed to the nines, etc. To be honest, I never thought the song fits all that well in BABES IN ARMS, because in that show it's sung by a very young woman -- I think she maybe is even supposed to be a teenager -- and to me it sounds much better coming from an older woman who has had more time to experience all that stuff and other people's attitudes toward it.

The point in that, when a woman sings "The Lady Is a Tramp" about herself, the song is NOT meant as an insult. Quite the opposite, it's a self-congratulatory song from someone who's not pretentious, not a fake, and acts the way she feels rather than the way other people think it's polite to act. For Joey in PAL JOEY to sing the song to Vera makes less than zero sense because, first of all, Vera is exactly the kind of woman who WOULD go to Harlem in ermine and pearls. And anyway, again, "tramp" is not mean as an insult in this song, but that's how it's sung in the movie with Frank Sinatra and in the current mess at City Center.

[quote]Did the term "tramp" have a less harsh, less sexual meaning within this song's lyrics back then? Clearly, it was not synonymous with "hobo."

R234 It was synonymous with "hobo" or "vagrant", as in one who tramps around from place to place. The opening verse makes it clear:

"I've wined and dined on mulligan stew / And never wished for turkey,

As I hitched and hiked and drifted, too / From Maine to Albuquerque.

Alas, I missed the Beaux Arts Ball / And what is twice as sad

I was never at a party where they honored Noel Ca'ad.

But social circles spin too fast for me

My Hobohemia is the place to be."

Thank you r237 and r238 (maybe the same poster?) for the informed responses.

We were not the same posters, but for my part, you're welcome :-)

The line "I hitched and hiked and drifted, too, from Maine to Albuquerque" is another reason why I've never thought the song sounds right when sung by a teenager, as it was in the original BABES AND ARMS. There was a 1950s rewrite of the show that gave the song to an older woman who was created as a new character, and that makes a lot more sense.

[quote]Clearly, it was not synonymous with "hobo."

r234, go to 26:30

Boy George as that emcee-type character at MR seems genius

Apropos of nothing in this thread I’ve been watching some Next to Normal clips on YT - didn’t see the show. Been digging into Alice Ripley a bit - watched her Tony speech - read about the “grooming” controversy etc. Um…she seems like a nut?

[quote]I'm not sure Pal Joey was better than The Life. Both were incredibly bad. Pal Joey's storyline has now been changed to the story of a Black singer who feels that the whites have appropriated the music created by Blacks.

The Left goes on and on about white Americans appropriating black culture, but they never say anything about black Americans appropriating European culture from the many immigrants who arrived en masse at the turn of the 20th century..

Many African-American slaves had been completely stripped of their former identity. After the Civil War, as freed persons, they went out "to find" themselves, being inspired by the slew of Irish, French, Italian, Jewish immigrants that were washing ashore in the late 1800s.

One could argue that European-Americans are reclaiming their heritage.

Bit of a random question - the 42nd Street opening night, where Merrick announces the death of Champion. Why was it recorded? I know it was another era, when the opening of Broadway shows still got live TV coverage, so was that just part of that? Or did Merrick arrange for a camera to be quickly brought in to record him making the announcement?

R244 is the Bizzaro version of a KKK wife in 1920s Indiana…an OG FRAU!

R245. The opening of 42nd Street was a huge deal back then so not unusual for cameras to record the curtain call.

R90- Goldwyn has done a lot of directing for stage, film, and television.

Again, some applause for R237 and R238... the adults in this thread who explained "Lady is a Tramp" and Hart's use of the term "tramp".

It drives me nuts that a different definition has been attributed to the song and the lyricists intent.

The hobo definition makes the song fun to sing and Hart's play on words within the lyrics, make it tricky to put across, but a little wink at the audience from the singer and all's well.

[quote]Been digging into Alice Ripley a bit - watched her Tony speech - read about the “grooming” controversy etc. Um…she seems like a nut?

Ripley has always been a little "off", R243, but that grooming controversy was ridiculous. She did get a little closer to some of her N2N fans than was probably healthy, but she wasn't grooming them.

One of her fans created a video making that claim, and it took on a life of its own. The young woman said that Ripley was the only person who could save her, and a whole bunch of word salad.

It set All That Chat on fire for 3 days in a row. They had the pitchforks and torches out for her. Eventually, it all got deleted, and the whole "controversy" died out.

Much ado about nothing.

Always thought it was "hitched and hiked and grifted too" not "drifted."

"Grifted" gives the singer a bit more of a past.

I have the gorgeous blu-ray of the Todd AO Oklahoma and starting with the dream ballet the musical turns surprisingly dark so I don't know where you are all getting the idea it's all gingham and picnics. And premarital sex rears its head throughout. Maybe it was Zinneman but Rodgers was unhappy with it's financial earnings. It was no film success like South Pacific. I think it's darkness was part of the problem.

Lena was 32 when she sang it in the movie "Words and Music." Good fit for her.

The sad thing that did happen out of that mess is it seems Emily Skinner and she are no longer friendly. They unfollowed eachother on Instagram

I think a teenager during the depression being a hobo was not very far fetched at all. So, in that context, it made sense. As to Pal Joey, watching the dress reheaersal, I was very aware that the writers "borrowed" a lot from the film. Many of the extropolated songs were also in the movie. The lead was a singer, not a dancer, and Vera was a low class person who married up, not a society lady born to it, as in the show. It was nice to see Loretta Devine, but the standout was Aisha Jackson, who was great, no matter how bad everything else was. She deserves better.

[Quote] One could argue that European-Americans are reclaiming their heritage.

If one were an ass

Emily Skinner is a twat.

You can talk about white appropriation of black music but this is a clear case of things working both ways. As in the black use is instruments and notation developed on Europe and the father of it all Gottschalk doing his major studies in Europe.

Thanks R250. Was curious. Appreciate your insight.

Pal Joey did not need fixing. If you want to do a Rodgers and Hart songbook show, write a new book and don’t call it Pal Joey.

I had the same memory, r251, so checked the Complete Lorenz Hart Lyrics book. The version printed is "grifted," but with an asterisk. Footnote says "alternate version "drifted." Don't know which was favored through the years; I've heard both.

Christine sings "grifted" at r241.

[quote][R244] is the Bizzaro version of a KKK wife in 1920s Indiana…an OG FRAU!

I'm actually Latino from the Northeast, who has studied history, which the 'woke' don't seem to care about. They play fast and loose with the facts, as long as it supports their agenda.

Did you think, American black culture just sprung out of thin air? It's an amalgam of European cultures with an African twist.

As I stated, African-Americans had no identity post Civil War. After 2 hundred years of enslavement, they had no knowledge of their African heritage. Even before the war, they had adopted Christian music into negro spirituals.

It wasn't until the 1960s that black Americans sought out their African heritage and became influenced by it.

Just stop while you are behind….TLDR: shut the fuck up, idiot.

I worked with Alice Ripley around 2002 and remember her as great fun and a total pro. She has huge feet, like a woman's size 12, so IIRC the costume shop had trouble getting her period shoes she liked.

She'd be perfect for a King of the Hill musical, r265.

[quote]Um…she seems like a nut?

Sometimes.

To all the Alice Ripley replies - thank you. I have to say it was the Tony acceptance speech that was… something.

r241, that Rodgers & Hart doc is fabulous! Thank you for posting.

[quote]I worked with Alice Ripley around 2002 and remember her as great fun and a total pro. She has huge feet, like a woman's size 12, so IIRC the costume shop had trouble getting her period shoes she liked.

Does she have a big floppy pancreas?

[quote]I worked with Alice Ripley around 2002 and remember her as great fun and a total pro. She has huge feet, like a woman's size 12, so IIRC the costume shop had trouble getting her period shoes she liked.

I've worked with her too, r265. All of what you say is true. She is also incredibly quirky.

(You're welcome, r259)

Akce Ripley is a great lady.

r250 except that Alice Ripley lost a gig because of the unhinged person who made that TikTok video. It was a disgrace how they came after her.

[quote]Always thought it was "hitched and hiked and grifted too" not "drifted." "Grifted" gives the singer a bit more of a past.

Yeah, but if the character singing the song were to tell us that she's a "grifter," that would make her awfully unsympathetic.

[quote]I have the gorgeous blu-ray of the Todd AO Oklahoma and starting with the dream ballet the musical turns surprisingly dark so I don't know where you are all getting the idea it's all gingham and picnics. And premarital sex rears its head throughout. Maybe it was Zinneman but Rodgers was unhappy with it's financial earnings. It was no film success like South Pacific. I think it's darkness was part of the problem.

If you're suggesting that OKLAHOMA! is "darker" than SOUTH PACIFIC, that's an extremely strange comment. SOUTH PACIFIC deals head-on with racial prejudice and features the death of the young secondary leading man towards the end of the story. I think the main reason why OKLAHOMA! underperformed at the box-office was that it was released in two different formats, Todd-AO and Cinemascope, and that confused people. Also, only a small percentage of theaters were equipped to screen Todd-AO films.

[quote]Yeah, but if the character singing the song were to tell us that she's a "grifter," that would make her awfully unsympathetic.

You didn't watch Christine sing it.

[quote]I think the main reason why OKLAHOMA! underperformed at the box-office was that it was released in two different formats

NO! It underperformed because it didn't have ME!

[quote]I think the main reason why OKLAHOMA! underperformed at the box-office was that it was released in two different formats, Todd-AO and Cinemascope, and that confused people.

And each format had entirely separate "takes." The movie was essentially shot twice. Still, I'm not sure why that would confuse people planning to catch it at their local Bijou.

Did the movie of Oklahoma! underperform? I’ve never read that before or that Rodgers said that.

I thought "Oklahoma!" did fairly well at the box office. I know that its follow-up, "Carousel," was a disappointment. "South Pacific" was the top-grossing movie of 1958, and would remain Rodgers and Hammerstein's biggest movie hit until "The Sound of Music" came along in 1965.

[quote]Yeah, but if the character singing the song were to tell us that she's a "grifter," that would make her awfully unsympathetic.

If she was a lower-class dame who married up, surely we already know she was a grifter.

Maybe that's why "drifted" came into being as a substitute.

[quote]The movie was essentially shot twice. Still, I'm not sure why that would confuse people planning to catch it at their local Bijou.

What I meant was that at least some people must have been aware that OKLAHOMA! was shot twice, in TODD-AO and Cinemascope. I assume that was an issue in the marketing, as to which version people would be seeing at their local Bijou. And also, knowing that one version of the movie had been filmed in the new TODD-AO process, which was getting a lot of publicity, there may have been some people who didn't want to see it at their local Bijou if they weren't going to get that version.

Alas, I had no local Bijou.

But, did you have a Bajour?

Not locally, no.

Big closing announcement today...

I've known Alice Ripley since she was Alicia at DePauw University. She's always been quirky. It's part of her charm.

She thinks.

I saw Bijou at the Nob Hill.

Here Lies Love is a “big closing”?

[quote]why I've never thought the song sounds right when sung by a teenager, as it was in the original BABES AND ARMS. There was a 1950s rewrite of the show

Babes IN Arms, not and. And thd original version of the show has quite a bit of a social conscience, dealing with indigent and abandoned youths (which is what Billie is, so it makes perfect sense for her to sing The Lady is a Tramp).

The song was NOT written for a grifter/drifter who married up. That idea was imposed on it in the movie version. Billie’s a homeless young woman of seventeen or eighteen, she’s been living on her own on the road since her early teens.

Larry Hart most likely preferred “grifted.”

[quote]Emily Skinner is a twat.

I’ve worked with Emily Skinner twice, and both times she was friendly, sane, and professional.

Anyone have any idea what the running costs for something like Titaníque might be?

I've worked with Emily too. Lovely.

I wonder if Here Lies Love will be completely forgotten come Tony time, what with all the shows opening between now and April. There's no business like show business.

If you want to make the 1967 production of Cabaret work today, you need an audience from 1967.

As Kander says, it was designed to confront the morality of the 60s. To make that aspect of the original work, without referencing the 60s in some way will lose the author's original intent.

Also, that production was hardly subtle. Even in the Tony number you can see the women have pussy appliques over their vaginas. Grey went deeper into a vulgar performance style than the Emcee in any subsequent major production did. Now, the Emcee is commonly played as a kind of knowing performance artist commenting on the action, but Grey played him as a hokey performer whose commentary is unconscious. (Okay, maybe that last bit is more subtle.)

There was an ambitious production of BABES IN ARMS at the Guthrie in the mid 90s with Erin Dilly, Kevin Cahoon, and an unknown Kristin Chenoweth (and me!) in the cast. The book was completely rewritten by Ken LaZebnik and lots of characters (too many probably) were added. Additional Rodgers & Hart songs were added. It never came to Broadway as hoped for but it was done again at Encores 3 years later with the original book and Erin Dilly starring again. She sang "The Lady is a Tramp" in both productions and it was wonderful.

[quote]In 1985, Ginger Rogers directed a production at the Music Hall in Tarrytown, New York, that starred Randy Skinner who also choreographed the show and Karen Ziemba as Susie. The song "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" was added to the song list.

This also tried out in New London, CT. Ginger wanted a costume cut a certain way. When it was explained to her that because of the bias it wouldn't work, she said, "Well, there's bias and there's bias."

Things were rather prudish in the days of the original CABARET. The choreography of The Telephone Song included a couple who danced while kissing mouth-to-mouth for a very long time. There was an item in someone's column that assured theatergoers that it was entirely OK: the man and woman were married! How far we've come.

Hobos and Hobohemia were much admired during The Great Depression. A care-free lifestyle, where any open window sill might be offering a welcoming slice of apple pie.

Now, not so much.

Total flops so far this calendar year: Here Lies Love; New York, New York; Bad Cinderella, Room. Some Like It Hot also set for closing (at a total loss, I think). Last fall was Almost, Famous. Does all that total $100 million?

[quote]While doing the play, (Aubrey) Plaza is living on the Upper West Side with Patti LuPone, with whom she recently worked on the Marvel series Agatha: Darkhold Diaries. LuPone has since become something of a surrogate mother, making Plaza soup and doing her laundry. “She insisted,” Plaza said. “She’s trying to whip me into shape.” One day, she was attempting to put into words the different sensation she felt onstage, compared with being on-camera. “It’s a thing I feel like I don’t know. Patti said, ‘The performance is lifted.’ It made sense to me.” Shortly before rehearsals started, Plaza came down with a bad case of strep throat. “I was like, ‘Why is this happening?’ Patti went, ‘It’s happening because you have to toughen up.’”

Thoroughly Modern Nellie

Part of the problem with the two versions of the movie “Oklahoma!” was that most people saw it in the CinemaScope format, when the actors were already tired from shooting the same scenes in the Todd-A-O format. Both formats took ages to set up properly.

The energy level and performances of the actors was better in the Todd-A-O prints, but those prints were not generally available until recently. The CinemaScope version is kind of inert and lifeless, despite all the outdoor scenes.

So, Jen Hudson claimed on Seth's show last night, she was unaware she was going to be an EGOT winner? Bitch, that's why you invested your fucking money in A Strange Loop. So you could be an EGOT winner. Stop fucking lying and btw, stop trying to look like Billy Porter. And you ain't never gonna be Oprah.

Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe we think that way and she doesn’t.

[quote]Billie’s a homeless young woman of seventeen or eighteen, she’s been living on her own on the road since her early teens.

That's what I mean, that character of Billie in the original version of BABES IN ARMS has never made complete sense to me. First of all, if she's SO young, how much hitching and hiking and drifting can she possibly have done? And also, if she really DID all that hitching and hiking and drifting, wouldn't the character be a lot more, shall we say, hard-bitten than she's presented in the show?

[quote]Part of the problem with the two versions of the movie “Oklahoma!” was that most people saw it in the CinemaScope format, when the actors were already tired from shooting the same scenes in the Todd-A-O format. Both formats took ages to set up properly. The energy level and performances of the actors was better in the Todd-A-O prints, but those prints were not generally available until recently. The CinemaScope version is kind of inert and lifeless, despite all the outdoor scenes.

I don't agree with the broad statement that the performances in the Todd-AO version are better than in the Cinemascope version. You can say that the actors seem "tired" in the CinemaScope version because they had already shot the same scenes in Todd-AO, but I think in some cases the takes in the CinemaScope version are better in terms of the actors' timing, almost as if they were better rehearsed.

[quote]Total flops so far this calendar year: Here Lies Love; New York, New York; Bad Cinderella, Room.

What's "Room?"

[quote]Grey went deeper into a vulgar performance style than the Emcee in any subsequent major production did.

That statement is beyond ridiculous. From which insane asylum are you posting?

All those celebrity producers in Strange Loop did not invest.

R297, I saw that production (though with Erin Dilly’s understudy). Though it was not the most successful Garland Wright effort, it was great to see that much thought put into a lighthearted musical. Not to mention getting to see the tiny singer with the huge soprano voice. Sadly, Wright died a few years later and the original Guthrie has been torn down.

R311, assuming you're correct, were their names added to the list of producers in return for nothing other than the celebrity value of those names?

r307, you're questioning logic in Babes In Arms???

R307- I don’t know the original book for BABES IN ARMS very well, but isn’t Billie singing the song as part of the show within the show? If she’s playing a character, it doesn’t matter how old Billie actually is.

Yes, r 311. And it was assumed they would use their celebrity and social media reach to promote the show. No idea if that happened...

Aubrey Plaza and DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA are getting absolutely no chatter, good or bad, anywhere. I was barely aware the show was happening.

Maybe so, but it's nearly sold out for its entire run. Also, apparently Plaza is bunking at Patti LuPone's place.

Danny and the Deep.... getting pretty good scores on Show-Score. But many saying the play is dated.

R309 Room was supposed to be a stage version of the movie with Brie Larson. It never opened on Broadway.

R318, The Patti story is so bizarre, it could well be true but she let Aubrey (and her husband and dog) move in? I know it wouldn't be the first time Plaza made up pure bullshit. I'd guess Patti to be savvy enough to pick up on that too. Her bio is largely fake but idiots eat it up. She was a college friend and had to cut her off as she's a pathological liar and generally toxic person. Def something mentally NOT ok there. Plus, who the fuck pays $200 to see an overdone play in a slum theater? YES, she's now a "name", but a 2 person, 1 hour play? She clearly still needs a paycheck during the strike as she's not one to make art, or she realizes she can't play Daria forever

With Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, this must be the first time in a very long time the Lortel is being used for a commercial off-Broadway run. I can remember seeing so many shows back in the 70s when it was still called the Theatre de Lys like Buried Child and then into the 80s. Anyone know why it hasn't been occupied more in recent years?

But, of course, back in those olden days, Christopher Street was a bit of a tourist attraction and the Lortel could count on some footpath traffic.

*

r322 Yeah, it sounds odd, as I didn't think Patti lived in the city when she wasn't doing a show.

Also this quote

[quote]She recalled reading Shanley’s play and feeling like it was “ripping your heart out.” “It’s so sincere,” she said. “Everything today is dripping with disdain.”

Literally her entire personality is based around treating everything with disdain

I live two blocks from the Lortel, and I have no idea why it's dark so often. Such a great history. But Christopher Street is bouncing back with new restaurants and stores, so maybe . . .

I agree, since when did Patti LuPone live on the upper west side? Also she’s not doing theatre and there is a SAG strike so why isn’t she in Connecticut with her husband?

*

Why isn’t she just staying at the Aubrey Plaza Hotel?

AUBREY PLAZA SUITE

[quote]Literally her entire personality is based around treating everything with disdain

She would fit right in here.

"The Lady is a Tramp" only works when sung by the character about herself. And even though she drifts around, she sleeps alone when she "lowers her lamp." This person is throwing serious shade at the society ladies.

But I gather in this Encores production, the lyrics are unintelligible, so I guess it doesn't matter.

It's not an Encores production, it's a City Center production. And yes, the lyrics for this and other songs are largely unintelligible.

‘Merrily’ Revival Keeps Rolling Along To Sold-Out Houses – Broadway Box Office:

Broadway doesn’t go for booze, pills and chain up rentboys!

Only on DL can you find an extended exegesis on a Larry Hart lyric. Gotta love it.

R255, I love the idea that a teenage girl is tired of urban high life as well as the cold and damp of California, so the opts for the carefree life of the open highway.

She has packed a lot of living into less than 2 decades of life.

R338, that's exactly what I mean. The song does not sound right coming from that character in BABES IN ARMS, which is what leads me to guess that maybe it it was a trunk song written previously for another character in another show, and it somehow got inappropriately handed to Mitzi Green in BABES.

BABES IN ARMS is the new FOLLIES!

[quote]She has packed a lot of living into less than 2 decades of life.

But she's still got a lot of living to do.

And "The Lady Is the Tramp" is the new "Zip."

A Tramp! ^

We've all been so eager to see Brooks Ashmanaskamanskas strip

[quote]BABES IN ARMS is the new FOLLIES!

Fucking heathen!

Tickets for "Danny...." are $244?!

WTF?

How is Danny Burstein doing? I know he did Pictures from Home but the entire thing with Rebecca and then his own battle with Covid was a total tragedy.

And those lips!

[quote] Things were rather prudish in the days of the original CABARET.

The late 1960s? You’ve got to be kidding. I was there (as a preteen/teen). There was nothing prudish about that era. Even on TV, we had PBS to show us British shows with bare butts. The Hayes Code ended in 1966, and thd whole Production Code Authority was done by 1968. Nudity, violence, and profanity abounded on then big screen.

Prudish? Hah!

[quote] Hobos and Hobohemia were much admired during The Great Depression.

“Hobohemia” was a term invented by Larry Hart. The real term was “bohemia” or “bohemian” as in a “bohemian lifestyle,” which meant anything that veers dramstically from the norm, especially with an artsy twist to it. (See the Kern-Wodehouse song “Greenwich Village,” which Dorothy Parker so admired).

Billie flaunts and is outwardly proud of her own personal bohemian lifestyle as a “hobo,” thus her “hobohemia.”

But not onstage, r349. A few years later saw onstage frontal nudity in HAIR and it was practically front page news.

R339, you’re wrong on every count.

“The Lady is a Tramp” is not a trunk song, it was written specifically for Billie for late in Act Two, Don you even know much about the social history of the US in the Depression? There were hundreds of kids like Billie in the 1930s, abandoned or orphaned. Much of Babes in Arms takes place in a Work Camp, where the kids are sent (many of the leads are children of vaudevillians who have scored a big tour and leave without knowing their underage children would be sent to a work camp, even though they had a home and provisions).

Billie has been on her own for four or five years. She is, in fact, trying to steal food when she meets Val.

The only one of the big numbers that’s “show within the show” is Johnny One-Note.

Jeez, all this Babes In Arms talk makes me want to see it. Is it remotely revivable?

[quote]Don you even know much about the social history of the US in the Depression? There were hundreds of kids like Billie in the 1930s, abandoned or orphaned. Much of Babes in Arms takes place in a Work Camp, where the kids are sent (many of the leads are children of vaudevillians who have scored a big tour and leave without knowing their underage children would be sent to a work camp, even though they had a home and provisions).

Were they "guests of the WPA?"

[quote]“Hobohemia” was a term invented by Larry Hart.

That is not true. For one, it was the title of a short story written by Sinclair Lewis in 1917 (which he subsequently adapted into a play), a full twenty years before Babes in Arms.

Why do they call them hobos? Others claim it came from the soldiers returning from the Civil War, who were "Homeward Bound." Some suggest it is from the congenial greeting "Hello boy" that changed to "Lo boy" and "Lo bo" and finally to "Ho bo." Others think it came from the word hoosier, meaning a rustic individual, a frontiersman.

[quote]and thd whole Production Code Authority was done by 1968. Nudity, violence, and profanity abounded on then big screen.

[quote]A few years later saw onstage frontal nudity in HAIR and it was practically front page news.

r351, Hair opened in 1968 and Oh! Calcutta! opened in 1969.

I touched a hobo.

I'm sure the hobo was appreciative, r358.

SLEEP NO MORE is closing.

SLEEP NO MORE, the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the theatergoing public, who were happy to pay their money to admire the Emperor's new clothes. And it's not even fully accurate to refer to the "theatergoing public," because that show (or whatever you wan to call it) is not really theater, and I'll bet 99 percent of the people who have attended over the years had no idea going into it that the show has virtually NO dialogue.

Cabaret first premiered on Broadway in 1966, written in 1964-65, just a few years before the sexual revolution in US culture and certainly in Broadway musicals. They couldn't even allow Cliff to be bisexual, so much for sexual freedom in the original Cabaret (which I LOVED btw).

I didn't realize Sleep No More was still running.

R352, your insulting tone is inappropriate. No, I don't know all the details of "the social history of the U.S. during the Depression." But maybe I can be forgiven for not being an expert on the subject, as I didn't live through that period, whereas I'll bet you did.

Anyway, REGARDLESS of what you wrote about so many kids being abandoned or orphaned during the 1930s, I stand by my comment that if Billie is only supposed to be about 17 or 18, it's a wild stretch to think she would be singing about hitching, hiking, and drifting from Maine to Albuquerque, going to the opera, following Winchell and reading every line, attending prize fights, etc., etc. Those lyrics sound to me like they should absolutely be sung by a considerably older woman, and I'm sticking with that opinion. You're free to disagree, but don't be such a bitch about it. Oh, too late...

About a week ago, the Off-Broadway play COVENANT announced a once week "extension." Now they have announced yet another, "final" one-week extension "due to popular demand." But really, how naive do they think we are? Naive enough not to realize that the extra two weeks were built into the schedule to begin with, and that the earlier closing date was announced so they could save face if ticket sales were poor enough that the earlier date was observed?

R564. I’m not 532, but I have to wonder about someone whose defense of getting something wrong is they didn’t live through the period. I don’t live hrough the US Civil War, but I kinda know what happened then. It’s called History. I realize that, to a self-centered narcissist, history is a useless concept, but it’s nothing to be proud of.

Exactly, r366. r364, even when it has been explained to you, you continue to look at it through a contemporary lens.

[quote] I have to wonder about someone whose defense of getting something wrong is they didn’t live through the period

It was a joke that you didn't get.. Because the poster whom I was addressing was such a nasty bitch in their response to me, I was joking about their age. Anyway, the points is that I think I have a fair amount of knowledge of what things were like in America during the Great Depression, but I admitted honestly that I have never studied the specific subject of children who were orphaned or abandoned during that period.

R367, I am NOT viewing the song "through a contemporary lens." I'm saying AGAIN that I don't find those lyrics at all believable coming from a 17- or 18-year-old girl. Can you honestly say you find it remotely credible that, even at the height of the Depression, a girl of that age would have hitched and hiked and drifted from Maine to Albuqurque, that she would have spent time attending the opera and prize fights, that she would follow Walter Winchell's newspaper column regularly? If you DO find that credible, then I strongly disagree.

What I love about the original Cabaret (and yes, I saw it as a 14 year old) Was that the early scenes are so inviting, glamorous and just slightly risque. That's how they pulled the audience in. It then got darker and darker. The ending hit me like a ton of bricks, as you knew what was coming for everyone, and Sally's line, "But Cliff, what does politics have to do with us?" was like a gut punch. One of my favorite Theatre experiences.

R369. Curious if you saw Jill Haworth and what your impressions were. I love her on the cast recording.

R368. I do agree with your point about the oddness of assigning the song to a teenager. The lyrics are for a character who would have been around enough to make fun of someone pronouncing the name as “Noel Ca’rd.” It’s a little recherche for even Eloise at the Plaza.

R360

About fucking time!

R364—if you gonna claim a certain understanding in a post, have some fucking basic knowledge to back it up. Hell, one minute on Google and you could have posted like a know it all—but you didn’t, ‘cause you ain’t.

There’s no humor in your reply, either.

Some gays made their entire personality Sleep No More; I don’t know how they’ll survive without it

It's a '30s musical comedy, r368, not a documentary.

Alan, just get laid already

I did see Haworth, r370. I saw everyone but Joel Grey, who had just left the show. From what I heard, Haworth was very inconsistent, but I loved her in the performance I saw.

R377. Thank you!

I saw CABARET when I was a teenager, I think 3 times, and every time with Jill. I found her utterly captivating, unforgettable. I was in awe of the entire production. The opening number Willkommen was just spectacular. And Lotte Lenya.... OMG!

And I totally agree with the above poster about how the show just seduced you into this glorious world and then turned the tables in Act II, of course ending with Boris Aronson's famous fun house mirror reflecting us in the audience. The Mendes production was entertaining but completely trashy.

*

[quote]What I love about the original Cabaret (and yes, I saw it as a 14 year old) Was that the early scenes are so inviting, glamorous and just slightly risque. That's how they pulled the audience in. It then got darker and darker. The ending hit me like a ton of bricks, as you knew what was coming for everyone, and Sally's line, "But Cliff, what does politics have to do with us?" was like a gut punch. One of my favorite Theatre experiences.

Exactly. Joel Grey's makeup as the Emcee, with his white clown face, red lips, eyeliner and eye-shadow, etc. odd enough to make him seem a bit creepy from the beginning, but the things that happen in the cabaret scenes during the first act of the show are fun and, as you say, just slightly risque rather than being extremely vulgar, off-putting, and offensive. That's why the stuff that happens later comes as a gut-punch, including of course the line in reference to the gorilla: "She wouldn't look Jewish at all."

[quote]If you gonna claim a certain understanding in a post, have some fucking basic knowledge to back it up. Hell, one minute on Google and you could have posted like a know it all—but you didn’t, ‘cause you ain’t.

R373, you hereby win the prize for incoherence. No contest. Congrats!

[quote]Babes IN Arms, not and. And thd original version of the show has quite a bit of a social conscience, dealing with indigent and abandoned youths (which is what Billie is, so it makes perfect sense for her to sing The Lady is a Tramp).

[quote]The song was NOT written for a grifter/drifter who married up. That idea was imposed on it in the movie version. Billie’s a homeless young woman of seventeen or eighteen, she’s been living on her own on the road since her early teens.

My friend Maria is always nervous when her daughter Teresa comes for a visit. Of course, her daughter is a hitman for the Mob. The rumor is she dated Frank Sinatra. You know the song "The Lady Is a Tramp"? It used to be "Teresa Is a Tramp." Well, they had to change it for legal reasons.

R284, fixed it for you:

>>Alas, I had no local Bijou.

R349, it’s the Hays Code, not Hayes Code.

Will Hays, the arbiter of morality.

Let's get this thread back on track. Max Clayton! Who's had him?

Holy Shit. Bebe!

Good role for Bebe.

She can be a little chilly, but her voice is right. But you buried the other casting, r388. Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz will be a very interesting take.

Has anyone bought tickets to Cabaret? It’s hard to justify $700+ tickets at the tables. I guess it makes the $444 tickets in the front mezzanine seem more reasonable.

[quote]How is Danny Burstein doing? I know he did Pictures from Home but the entire thing with Rebecca and then his own battle with Covid was a total tragedy.

That was a nightmare, r347. I remember when they were having trouble finding a replacement for a wheelchair part, something essential for their daily survival. Then Covid.

Danny nearly died. He's doing ok now, and was at a fundraiser last night. He deserves nothing but the best. He's a really great person.

R392, that's good to hear. For some reason, there was always something about him that struck me as being one of those theater folk you'd want to be friends with. Maybe he can get some sitcom or something that can bring him back to the West Coast and earn him a ton of money.

Danny Burstein is one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet.

Alice Ripley didn't just lose a gig, she lost her career. At the time she had concerts and a small recurring role and a film part lined up and all were canceled. She hasn't really worked except for that immersive Next to Normal she did in Europe. Even if everyone thinks what the TiKToker claimed was BS, they still won't hire her to avoid issues. No one wans the wrath of TikTok unleashed on them.

That is sadly fairly accurate, r395. Ripley has always been an oddball, but wasn't difficult to work with (I have worked with her twice, about 10 years apart).

Admittedly, she did not handle the TikToker's accusations well, but she did not deserve to lose work over it.

Anyone's career can be tanked these days.

AllThatChat seems to be down again.

Is this the first time Herr Schultz will be sexy?

Ron Rifkin would beg to disagree, r398

[quote]Even if everyone thinks what the TiKToker claimed was BS, they still won't hire her to avoid issues. No one wans the wrath of TikTok unleashed on them.

R395 more like the chickenshit ultra-liberals who currently run the U.S. entertainment industry won't hire her because they fear some social media backlash.

That's their problem -- always kotowing to the minority. The truth is, the majority won't care.

I read Mary Louise Wilson’s memoir and Ron Rifkin was a shit to her and wouldn’t let her bow alone because he was afraid his would dip after hers.

Total cunt move

R401 Don't believe her

You never wore underwear, Bon.

[quote]Admittedly, she did not handle the TikToker's accusations well.

In what way do you feel she did not handle the accusations well? My memory is that she strongly denied them. What else should she have done?

At one point she referred to the TikToker as as a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, or something like that, r404.

I was and am strongly on her side regarding this situation, but she often dies not express herself well. She is one of those people who should only allow her press on her social media

There goes Matt the Loon, blaming Alice’s problems on the liberals. You’re full of shit as usual, Matt.

Here the cigarette butt comment:

Again, can't blame her. The accusation was absurd - but she should have taken a huge step back and let a publicist handle it.

Our own c list actor led the charge against Ripley on All That Chat.

No idea what r406 is on about. I don't see MA's fingerprints here.

I thought it was the general opinion that Audra can move but not dance.

She can bust a move if there's a Chipotle down the street.

[Quote] As soon as I watched the video, my body knew. I started sweating, my heart started racing. I was having a trauma response.

Trauma, my ass. Some of these “kids” are disasters. An actress was nice to you and then you go too far — these fans get very clingy and often cross a line that social media told them was ok — and then lash out and do real damage. Alice R was the only one entitled to a “trauma response.”

Enjoyed "The Corn is Green" streaming on National Theatre at Home. Emlyn Williams' 1938 play is more than a bit sentimental -- strong-willed English schoolteacher in a poor Welsh coal-mining village -- but Nicola Walker is terrific as the teacher. The director added the character of Williams as a narrator/stage manager/writer, making it a memory play, a la Glass Menagerie. (Nice to see David Gareth Lloyd, long ago Ianto Jones on Torchwood, is still a working actor.) But the best addition was a glorious Welsh all-male voice choir who played all the extras when they weren't singing their heads off.

R411 Ianto!!!

[quote]I thought it was the general opinion that Audra can move but not dance.

She certainly has a prominent beaver.

[quote]You never wore underwear, Bon.

Is that why she always had that "dirty pantyhose" smell?

Was this the only role Bette and Kate shared?

Max Clayton in Chicago

Maybe that didn't work

Did they design a costume for Max Clayton because I imagine that's what he wears while strolling down 9th ave in Hell's Kitchen on any given night.

r411, thanks for the reminder on THE CORN IS GREEN.

Dying to see it, Nicola Walker is one of my fave Brit actresses though I sometimes think she can only play herself. Only seen her live onstage once in Ivo von Hove's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, where she played herself - but then it was Ivo "directing" her. When she was in the play on Broadway I saw her on 7th Ave. and followed her back to her hotel across from Penn Station. I did not go in!

R418 is Hugh Jackman

Does Hugh only imagine it, or does he actually know…?

R419 Is hilarious.

For once I’m jealous of Matt Doyle.

1) Tony award

2) suck Max on the regular

Max's best feature are his thighs. They are remarkable.

^From straddling Hugh when Max was his Music Man u/s.

A West End musical based on the Cassavettes film Opening Night written by Rufus Wainright, directed by Ivo van Hove and starring Sheridan Smith? Uhhh…OK.

Oops, sorry, here’s the link.

I love that movie, but man, they could not have picked a less "musical" film to adapt. Nothing about that film sings.

The opening of the original Cabaret from the Tonys is fabulous. I don't know how it can be topped.

[quote]I love that movie, but man, they could not have picked a less "musical" film to adapt. Nothing about that film sings.

I remember the very first time I read about an upcoming new musical. I said to a friend, "That story just doesn't sing at all." It was "Sweeney Todd."

R430= Pat Routledge

How old is Max Clayton?

The body says 30, but the busted face says a decade older.

R430. You were right. Nothing hummable in that score.

[Quote] The body says 30, but the busted face says a decade older.

Let’s see yours, r433.

We're not talking about me, so what does that have to do with anything?

I taught a hs theater arts class years ago, and the Rego Brothers came to speak to them. They were asked what their next project was. They said that they looked for the most ridiculous premise for a musical to produce - pay toilets. And, voila, out came " Urinetown."

Patti's been at it again, this time claiming she was the only one in the original company of Les Mis with musical theatre experience. Rebecca Caine wasn't too pleased at that. She also revealed Patti once punched her during the factory scene under the guise of 'acting'.

Patti seems to be careening more and more out of control as the years go by, doesn't she? Maybe it's a form of senility or dementia, with old age just amplifying the personality flaws she has had all along.

Maybe she's just a cunt.

Don't fuck with Rebecca Caine.

Competing for the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album: Kimberly Akimbo, Parade, Shucked, Some Like It Hot and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

I think with Patti, old age has set her free (or freer) and she feels she has nothing to lose by speaking her mind. Her fans seem to love that about her, which only encourages her, of course.

I saw van Hove's play production of "Opening Night", and it was...rather good. (and I've hated some of his stagings with the heat of a thousand suns.)

We shall see.

[quote]Rebecca Caine wasn't too pleased at that.

Who?

I think Sweeney will win the Grammy. Love for Josh and Steve will prevail.

I'd rather see Sweeney win than any of the other nominees (except for KA).

[quote]I think with Patti, old age has set her free (or freer) and she feels she has nothing to lose by speaking her mind. Her fans seem to love that about her, which only encourages her, of course.

Sounds a little Trump-like, on her part and the part of her fans, doesn't it?

[quote]Sounds a little Trump-like

Yeah, r448...no.

Is there a part for Patti in Suffs!?

Perhaps there's a part for her in "Insufferable."

[quote]Maybe she's just a cunt.

Yes, but what I'm saying is, even more so than when she was younger. If possible.

[quote]I think with Patti, old age has set her free (or freer) and she feels she has nothing to lose by speaking her mind. Her fans seem to love that about her, which only encourages her, of course.

Well, SOME of her fans love that about her. But of course, they don't have to work with her or deal with her directly, so they're likely to find her antics entertaining rather than hateful. Kind of the way fans viewed Stritch, in contrast to the way her colleagues felt about her.

So what's up with Wasp Woman?

[quote]So what's up with Wasp Woman?

Can you be a little more specific with your question? It's one of the most embarrassingly awful shows to hit the NYC stage in quite some time, if that's the sort of answer you're looking for.

Sorry, but I don't agree with r452. Patti tends to speak her mind, and sometimes puts her foot in her mouth, but if she complains, it's mostly what she feels is right for the show. She is not the nightmare to work with that Stritch was. Stritch, as brilliant as she could be, was all about Stritch, and had a maniacal need to be the center of everything, no matter how much she had to upstage.

[quote]Sorry, but I don't agree with [R452]. Patti tends to speak her mind, and sometimes puts her foot in her mouth, but if she complains, it's mostly what she feels is right for the show.

No, only a small percentage of her rants are about "what's right for the show." Most of them happen when she feels threatened in some way or not fully appreciated, even when those feelings are irrational.

That said, of course the SUNSET BLVD. situation was horrendous, and how ironic that it was perpetrated by someone who's even more of a bitch than Patti.

R444, is there a new production of this or do you mean when it was staged years ago? Tell us more about it.

It’s funny how the Jamie Lloyd Sunset Blvd. just sounds like a total rip-off of Ivo.

"Opening Night" is my favorite movie. I'm excited and scared to see what Ivo and Rufus do with it.

R458 Why? Hadrian was fucking awful.

I didn't see Hadrian, but the I loved the musical adaptation of Shakespeare's sonnets that Wainwright did with Robert Wilson.

SUFFS!

LuPone has told this story before and unfortunately this was taken out of context. What she has always meant was she was working with the RSC who had never really done a musical like this and she HAD, and they didn’t like her ideas. She didn’t mean the cast wasn’t musical or has abilities.

I never knew Rebecca Caine grew up in New Jersey. I thought she was a limey.

They raise Caine in Jersey.

Starting Preciews Nov 15 a new musical!

Merrily is fabulous!

Radcliffe is full of energy, shorter than I ever imagined, adorable, a high tenor voice. Nice tight body.

Grof is very tall.

The orchestra sound is a little over engineered at the start, but then you get used to it.....

My gaylings, go see it so long after I'm dead and gone you can brag that you did.

Has Radcliffe managed to catch up to the orchestra yet? Guy always sounds like he's chasing after them, breathless.

Is the Merrily Revival the new Follies, r466? Fifty years ago, will ancient queens be bragging that they saw it with the original cast (Mendez, Groff, Radcliffe)?

Fifty years FROM NOW, I mean.

No.

Team No

Do you think they will try to recast a la Sweeney?

[quote] will ancient queens be bragging that they saw it with the original cast

Um, no

^^ Oops, supposed to be (the original cast)

"Original" you say? I'm sure some of you were there to see my performance in 1934.

r462 No, nothing was taken out of context at all. Her exact words:

[quote]So now they have brought me in – I am the only American, I am the only one with a musical theatre pedigree, because it was really Royal Shakespeare Company actors that were doing the roles in a musical. So I am the only one with a Tony award, the only American, the only one that understands musical theatre, and so I had more confidence to talk to Claude-Michel and Alain, and even to Trevor and John

Linked to the interview so you can go listen for yourself.

She said exactly what she was being criticised for saying. If anyone messed up here, it was her.

What do you want, r476...do you want to slap her? Push her in front of an N train? Would that make you happy?

I do have a question about Max and Matt. When both are kinda fem, who is the top and bottom?

They scissor, r478.

[quote]I do have a question about Max and Matt. When both are kinda fem, who is the top and bottom?

Not at all a tiresome question on DL.

R478, They role play.

Matt seems like the Andy Cohen type, egotistical and always has to be in control and so insists he's a top

I saw bloody, bloody Norma Desmond in London this afternoon. Not a perfect show, but innovative, creative, out of the box (sometimes a little too out) but a great afternoon at the theatre. Nicole Scherzinger is amazing. A terrific, intense, beautifully sung performance. I'm sure this has all withered to nothing, but it makes you realize how much Glenn Close has got to let it go. She is thirty years older than Scherzinger.

[quote]What do you want, [R476]...do you want to slap her? Push her in front of an N train? Would that make you happy?

Maybe the poster in question just wants to provide further evidence of what a nasty bitch Patti is. Slapping her and pushing her in front of a subway train might be a bit of an overreaction.

There haven’t been a lot of posts about Here We Are, but I thought it was really excellent. I expected it to feel unfinished, but it worked well for me,

And as much as I would have loved additional songs, the extended spoken scenes captured the gravity of the story in a way I doubt any music could replicate or exceed. Singing and serious contemplation of mortality just is not a natural fit. It fits where we are right now. That final image hit me like a gut punch.

In case anyone missed it, Sondheim's country home is up for sale

Here We Are is bad. Should’ve stayed in the drawer.

R485, it sounds like you're working REALLY HARD to convince yourself you liked HERE WE ARE even though it's pretty bad and absolutely, definitely unfinished. I guess you feel you need to justify paying all that money for a ticket.

R488, thanks for your presumption and mind reading, but no. You are wrong on every point. Your need to shit all over other people’s joy, though? That speaks for itself.

[R62]: I was in New york 10 days ago, and saw Nicholas Christopher subbing for Groban, who apparently was out for several days, even though it was reported he was making guest appearances in “Gutenberg.” Actually, though I missed Groban’s singing, I’d read his acting wasn’t great; so i was curious.

Christopher was amazing, a powerful physical presence with a powerful voice to match. Suppressed rage finally exploding in “Epiphany,” which almost stopped the show, as the mostly younger audience was roaring and cheering for so long, as he stood still, gleaming razor held aloft.

He’s really great. House was packed, with a couple empty seats, presumably disgruntled Groban fans. They missed a spectacular performance.

Ashford was good, sinuous and physical, though she missed a lot of laugh opportunities inherent in the lines. I saw the obc twice back in ‘79, and Lansbury was brilliant, one of her great characterizations.

It's really amusing when you can read an unrelated post and guess (accurately) that it's the same tedious cunt from previous threads.

Saw Sweeney a few days ago. Groban was in it but the Toby was out. I'm very glad I saw Groban, because, although his acting was fine, the singing was extaordinary. But Nicholas Christopher was truly brilliant as Pirelli, so I'm sure he must have been an amazing Sweeney. The guy playing the Beedle was also pretty brilliant. The production was far better than I expected. (Having seen the show so many times over the years...including the second preview of the original.)

[quote]Your need to shit all over other people’s joy, though? That speaks for itself.

Well welcome to this thread. It may not be the crudest on DL but it's the most mean spirited.

Any predictions for the Harmony and Spamalot reviews?

R494 - tears will be shed and house cats will be kicked.

A lot of Broadway musical numbers from the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon have been uploaded. Here is Debbie Allen doing America. There's also We Go Together from Grease with Marilu Jenner and Michael Tucci. I had forgotten how raunchy the original show was and I wonder how the MDA people felt about all the simulated sex in the number.

R494, Colin Freeman, Lorna Luft’s husband, is Associate Conductor for Harmony.

"Marilu Jenner"? Well, I'm pretty sure she'd remember *that*!

Grease with Ms Jenner.

r465

I saw an early reading of that Ohio twaddle. It’s terribly earnest, very long—and hugely self-congratulatory in its casting of autistic kids as…autistic kids. Yet another show about high school misfits who triumph over pick-an-issue. Hard to imagine it finding an audience.

The legendary Janna Jensen

R485 / R489, you yourself wrote of HERE WE ARE that you "expected it to feel unfinished" before you saw it. That was my basis for saying that you seem to have worked really hard to convince yourself that it doesn't feel unfinished. Because it is definitely unfinished in terms of Sondheim's contribution, despite the published comments of the book writer and director about how they supposedly convinced Sondheim that it was finished.

Oh do shut the fuck up

I wonder if Ms Jenner still remembers doing that number.

Why does it say she skates to “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” when it’s the Gypsy Overture and The Impossible Dream?

Maybe she came back out for an encore.

*

LEMPICKA!

Just got out of Harmony. Expected it to be a bomb, but the second act does a lot of redeeming. Still, it's overlong, over directed, over amplified, over Ziened, and I wish they had used authentic Harmonist songs instead of Manilow's ersatz ones. Boggess and Benko are lovely and the guys are all swell. Audience seemed to enjoy, but lots of paper, including me. And Rex Reed.

$252 + $23 in fees. That is the price of all seats in the Balcony for MWRA. Is this a new record for the most expensive cheapest tickets on Broadway? I have never seen anything this ridiculous in my life. I would love to see it again (I saw it at NYTW) but not at these prices.

It’s hateful

R510: It's thanks to dynamic pricing, which is a vile scourge that must not be allowed to take root on Broadway.

Don't bother, it's already here.

R494 Harmony was cheesy (too disjointed in first act especially) and a little too long. Loved Benko and Boggess in it. I was pretty disappointed overall since the story is so interesting. I expect polite reviews.

I got out of the play Spain and don't think I can trust Second Stage theater anymore. I've been bored every time I've gone, despite some interesting premises. Also the sound/low amplification is annoying.

Chatter on the Broadway World message board (I [italic] know [/italic] !) for Spamalot is pretty lukewarm—and relatively few comments at all, fewer than usual for a show that’s been previewing for three weeks. I wonder if anyone cares.

Nobody cares about Michael Urie

I loathed the show on its last incarnation, and I was/am a big Python fan.

Sometimes a sellout with raves in DC just doesn’t translate to Broadway. Same thing with Los Angeles. Not Chicago, though. If it plays in Chicago, it’ll usually play in NY.

[quote]Sometimes a sellout with raves in DC just doesn’t translate to Broadway.

And sometimes it does.

R518. Not always

Will Spamalot stay open long enough for Alex Brightman to rejoin the cast?

Let's not forget that the first Spamalot had Mike Nichols in charge. Josh Rhodes is no Mike Nichols.

I didn't know the Opening Night the previous poster referred to is a MUSICAL version starring Sheridan Smith! Written by Rufus Wainwright. Just got the mail shot.

Performances start 6th of March in London - is it playing NYC first?

This happens a lot. Shows do really well regionally and then bomb in NY.

At least THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA had the decency to shutter in Chicago.

I can't believe London is stupid enough to support another try. I know everyone wants Hannah Waddingham to step into Miranda but why the hell would she endanger her career and reputation with that nonsense?

Yes, tickets in the next weeks for Merrily have gotten very expensive. We bought ticket for last Thursday night back in the early summer, and paid prices (orchestra, row S) comparable to what tickets NOW for March cost (about $300 each including taxes and fees). If you want to go between now and Christmas, though, those seats now cost about twice as much. Do use the theatre website and avoid StubHub, etc.

[quote]This happens a lot. Shows do really well regionally and then bomb in NY.

SPAMALOT is not a new show. I saw it in D.C. and thought it was great, if anything even funnier than the original production, largely because of the amazing cast. And the audience loved it. If the audience response on Broadway is similar, it may not matter if the reviews are not great.

I saw the Merrily revival 10 years ago in the West End and the only thing I can determine as being different is the casting of Radcliffe and Groff, with Groff really saving the day with what is described as an electrifying performance that must be the real game changer here, understandably.

I've been a fan of the musical since the OG cast album was released (yes, I had the album) and when I finally saw it on stage, the problems were so obvious - everyone was so unlikable. It seems the saving grace here isn't just the casting of unabashedly adored performers but also Groff's performance in the central role (for which I'm guessing is a lock for the Tony Award, which would be great).

Can anyone who's seen both productions provide any further clarification? The cuts and stuff - including the horrible set - were there years ago. It may have even had a slightly bigger orchestra in London.

I just tried to book for Opening NIght at the Gielgud (which I will see eventually) and the website shows that all of the stalls are sold out through July. I don't believe it. They must be withholding the ticketing before setting further prices on it. I mean, Sheridan Smith is a draw in the West End but, dunno. It's not Legally Blonde.

Sheridan Smith also sold out Shirley Valentine recently. The Brits love her.

[quote]I just tried to book for Opening NIght at the Gielgud (which I will see eventually) and the website shows that all of the stalls are sold out through July.

Stalls? Is it playing in a barn?

Someone gave me a bunch of Playbills that his grandfather had been saving.

Some interesting things. I kept anything that was autographed.

And I found BAJOUR!, Company, Li'l Abner, Coco, Cabaret NY & Boston......very weird to see these titles....lots with ticket stubs attached (all less than $25) - anyone want a Cyril Ritchard autograph?

That’s interesting? You’re not.

What a dick thing to say, R533.

R532, I would imagine that would be a fun thing to go through. Not sure if I'd want to keep anything, but reading them would be a blast.

When I worked for NAT, I remember Tony Randall's office had a large set of file cabinets that were filled with old Playbills. Sometimes I'd sneak in and read them.

R502- da fuck? If he expected it to feel unfinished, why would he have the need to feel otherwise? Sounds like YOU expected it to feel unfinished and had to justify feeling the way when the TRUTH is there is quite a bit of music in Act 2. I loved the show too and I have no problem hating any show no matter what I pay.

My MERRILY balcony tickets were $79 each with no fees. I got them at the box office a few months ago and saw the show last week.

[quote]I never knew Rebecca Caine grew up in New Jersey. I thought she was a limey.

She's Canadian and has resided in London all her adult life.

R531-that is what they call the orchestra in UK

Yeah but R530 Shirley Valentine is a very well known property in the UK. You could put any soap star in a leisure centre production of Shirley Valentine and it would sell out. It’s not Cassavetes. Nothing against the success Sheridan Smith had with it, which was brilliantly marketed, but putting her in Shirley Valentine was a no-brainer, like putting rum in coke.

[quote] I found BAJOUR!, Company, Li'l Abner, Coco, Cabaret NY & Boston......very weird to see these titles....lots with ticket stubs attached (all less than $25).

Tickets didn't really cross the $25 mark until the late 1970s/early 1980s. I remember my orchestra ticket for the original Sweeney Todd was $22.50. By the time of The Pirates of Penzance in 1981 at the same theatre, the high was $30.00. I want to say that starting with Amadeus, ticket prices really started to creep up. I think they charged $40.00 for orchestra seating, which caused a stir at the time.

And the Almeida is doing a musical stage adaptation of Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 film, Cold War? The Brits are certainly doing it their way this season. Firstly, this is already a musical. Also, it’s nominally about the preservation of indigenous folk music in Poland - but this has songs by Elvis Costello? I don’t see how this translates to stage when the folk music and dance was so lovingly presented in the film. How do you show one character in the performing ensemble on the stage within a state and show the other character in the audience within the stage watching her? On the tiny Almeida stage? Good thing I’m not adapting it. I mean, what’s the impetus? Who watches a musical film and says, “We should turn this into a musical!” Clearly I don’t have high hopes for this.

I don’t really get the Opening Night musicalisation either, really. I love the film, since I saw it in the early ‘90s when it finally had a theatrical release. It’s brilliant, I’ve seen it so many times. But what part of this “sings”? Myrtle is drunk most of the time - singing takes energy and a posture that she doesn’t have. She’s in a state of confusion throughout most of the film - how does that translate into song? Let alone dance. Who else sings? The director’s wife could have a song. But who else? This is going to be one of those things that stops dead every time someone has to stand there and sing a Rufus Wainwright dirge. Probably.

Good luck recreating the Rowlands/Cassavetes duet that takes up the final fifth of the film. Cassavetes is about behaviour not plot. What kind of composition is going to capture the spontaneity of that scene. I’m sure it’ll be another production where the actor goes AWOL walking down Shaftesbury Avenue while being filmed. It’s been done so many times already.

It concerns me that in the press release, Wainwright says nothing about women and aging. Hmm. Maybe they should run it in repertory with Applause.

R538. I’m pretty sure an orchestra is still called an orchestra, even by the Blimeys.

Maybe OPENING NIGHT will be in rep with WINE AND ROSES.

The stalls are what Americans would call orchestra seats. The balcony is called the dress circle.

I paid $22.50 for a Saturday matinee ticket to Dreamgirls in 1983, over the holidays, from TKTS.

And the Intermission is called the Interval.

r528, the video of MERRILY in London is easily accessible on YouTube. I hated it when I saw it in a movie theater years ago. Watched it again after seeing the new one. It's largely a carbon copy and I loved it, almost entirely because of the cast. And yes, the ugly set is the same.

That’s right, R547. And they serve ice cream. And you have to pay for a programme.

R544, Opening Night is Cassavetes’ riff on All About Eve, complete with Eve, the fan, being hit by a car in the rain outside the theatre in the first scene and then haunting, bullying and brutalising Myrtle throughout the film. Or Myrtle is doing it to herself. On stage you kind of have to decide.

So R548, with the exception of Groff & Radcliffe, I’ve pretty much seen this Merrily.

Almodóvar did the riff, a while ago…no need for Sheridan to try again.

Joan Blondell is her fabulous self in Opening Night.

Caseavetes beat him to it by about 20 years but who’s counting? They’re both great films.

Well, in actuality, Sheridan did Opening Night years ago only then it was called “Funny Girl”.

The Von Ho All About Eve missed the point, entirely.

[quote]The Von Ho All About Eve missed the point, entirely.

Fancy that.

T664 dummy, Pedro’s riff was an homage to Opening Night…

[quote]Tickets didn't really cross the $25 mark until the late 1970s/early 1980s. I remember my orchestra ticket for the original Sweeney Todd was $22.50. By the time of The Pirates of Penzance in 1981 at the same theatre, the high was $30.00. I want to say that starting with Amadeus, ticket prices really started to creep up. I think they charged $40.00 for orchestra seating, which caused a stir at the time.

Liza's "The Act" broke the $25 ticket. Remember was with my family to see "A Chorus Line" and we walked down to the Majestic to get tickets for the future and my Mom refused to pay it on principal. Of course that attitude didn't last as each show started to do it. Looking at the Sunday NY Times ABC's right now for "The Act" opening week and it started with Saturday eves, whole Orchestra and front Mezzinine. Fridays were still $22.50

R554 dummy, Pedro’s riff was an homage to Opening Night…

The only aspect of London theatre I don't like is having to buy a programme but, at least the programmes are well-designed and informative, beyond the usual bios, more like a souvenir booklet, often including production photos. They ranged from 4-10 pounds on our last trip in September. Bought one every time just as a remembrance.

But I do find it strange that British Equity doesn't seem to require the producers to have a placard in the lobby with, at least the cast listing. If you didn't purchase a program you'd have no idea who you were seeing beyond the stars.

I know people (critics) raved about Groff, but electrifying? Earnest perhaps

Groff is like the white Audra. He can do no wrong.

In 1991, MISS SAIGON was the first Broadway show to charge over $100 tickets.

[quote]NEW YORK -- When the hit London musical "Miss Saigon" arrives on Broadway next year, ticket prices for the best seats will set a record so that prices for the rest of the theater don't.

[quote]Two hundred of the front mezzanine seats at most performances will go for an unprecedented $100, producer Cameron Mackintosh disclosed this week. The $60 ticket price for most other seats will equal the current top set by "Jerome Robbins' Broadway." The much-anticipated "Miss Saigon," a sellout in London since its September opening, will cost $10 million to bring to New York, making it the most expensive show in Broadway history.

I think the original Chicago had a top ticket price of $17.50 when it opened. OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!!

R563, But the spitting.

Groban is out all week. With all his other recent absences, Is he over it? And where is Michael Riedel

Fantasia and Bernadette Peters want to know

R259 I got my tix for June on Monday after they opened and most of the cheapest tix were already gone. Ivo also has lots of fans in Europe. I know people that when Castellucci, Ivo, Ostermeier open a new production, they travel just to see it. We used to see some of those great continental productions but, lately, nothing. Are BAM and St. Ann's finished?

Don't forget me!

Yeah, whatever R560. Since Opening Night is derivative, it all leads back to All About Eve anyway.

You should probably get back to the rescue dog thread.

R561, the usually have a white slip of paper available that lists the cast. If you don’t see it available, you should ask an usher.

Well R569, I’m glad you were able to book it. The £25 seats looked so terrible it hardly seemed worth going and I wasn’t interested in paying £60 - £81 for the dress circle. Will wait and see.

[quote]I’m pretty sure an orchestra is still called an orchestra, even by the Blimeys.

You're quite wrong.

Bring. It. Back! I can't believe this show hasn't been on Broadway since 1989. I saw the last preview performance of the original run, and it was utter joy.

R574. I’m 100% sure that I’m correct. I am also 100% sure that you didn’t read the related post correctly, which did not distinguish between the orchestra section from the orchestra. I’m also 100% sure that you have no fucking sense of humor.

..you must be a Brit…

[quote]But I do find it strange that British Equity doesn't seem to require the producers to have a placard in the lobby with, at least the cast listing. If you didn't purchase a program you'd have no idea who you were seeing beyond the stars.

They always do the lobby placard thing in Australia, usually with photos of the cast as well as their names. Otherwise you do have to buy the program, even in the small subsidised theatres.

You’re wrong r543.

R578 is as pathetic as R574.

How cute. R576 thinks he has a sense of humor. We were talking about the orchestra section of a theater and he decided to make a “joke.”

r579 every time I go to F&F you , you’re already F&F’d. So F you.

Agree, r575, the original Ain't Misbehavin' is one of a handful of productions I think of as flawless. Cast, direction, design, everything.

The related post originally referred to said nothing about any “section.” It referenced the orchestra only.

No thanks…asinine queens who can’t read, but still whine, aren’t my go to.

R575 So. Agree. Just a great show.

[quote] The related post originally referred to said nothing about any “section.” It referenced the orchestra only.

No, shithead, the poster mentioned the stalls. Someone made a bad joke about stables, then you came around and took several shits on the thread. Are you sure you're not Teacake?

Will some of you *please* take a mood stabilizer???

R585 Are you OK? You seem off.

Sure r586!

I remember my first trip to London in 1980. I was 28 and not well-traveled. I was buying tickets to "Sweeney Todd" (appropriate given the locale, no?) and I had never heard of "stalls" before. I'm sure the clerk was amused by an ignorant American asking if buying a ticket for the stalls meant I'd have to stand up for the entire production. She kindly explained that they were what I'd call "the orchestra."

And your stalls ticket was probably £8.

So much stupidity here without any humor

Is Bloody Norma gonna transfer?

The Shubert Org. started the ticket wats in 1982, when they decided to charge $50 a pop to see "Cats". According to an article in The NY Times at the time, Gerry Schoenfeld claimed the high price was to pay for the renovation of The Winter Garden after the run was over. By September of 2000, when "Cats" closed, ticket prices for musicals went to $100, with "The Producers" hiking premium seats to $480 a pop by 2001.

^ticket wars.

New thread:

BAJOUR!

SUFFS!

BAJOUR!

SUFFS!

BAJOUR!