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Your South Florida Theatre's Production Pictures Here

Contact SFTN to find out how to get your production pictures posted here on our blog.

Your South Florida Theatre's Production Pictures Here

Contact SFTN to find out how to get your production pictures posted here on our blog.

Your South Florida Theatre's Production Pictures Here

Contact SFTN to find out how to get your production pictures posted here on our blog.

Your South Florida Theatre's Production Pictures Here

Contact SFTN to find out how to get your production pictures posted here on our blog.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Past Week In Theatre History (Dec. 26- 30)

The Past Week In Theatre History: December 26 -30

By Robert Viagas, David Gewirtzman, Sam Maher
Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley
 
1904 Maude Adams returns to Broadway with a revival of J.M. Barrie's The Little Minister which will run for just 73 performances. A year later she'll be back with a better Barrie play, the original Peter Pan.

1919 The Lafayette Players of New York, a black troupe, opens the newest theatre in Philadelphia, the Dunbar (named for poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar) seats 1,400 and devotes itself to black productions for black audiences. The name will later be changed to the Lincoln Theatre and produce plays until the 1950s.

1920 Brock Pemberton's Miss Lulu Bett opens today at the Belmont Theatre. It will run 198 performances and win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

1924 London drama critic-playwright William Archer dies today. He contributed to Figaro,the World, Tribune, and the Nation. His translations of Henrik Ibsen were produced in the 1890s. In 1923 his melodrama, The Green Goddess, was produced at St. James' Theatre.

1925 Walter Hampden and Ethel Barrymore appear in The Merchant of Venice at Hampden's Theatre in New York. It will run less than seven weeks.

1925 Queenie Smith is featured in Tip Toes, the George and Ira Gershwin musical about a vaudeville trio stranded in Florida. It introduces the song "Sweet and Low Down, and runs 192 performances at the Liberty Theatre.

1926 With pressure from both New York Governor Alfred E. Smith and Mayor James Walker regarding a reformation by theatre owners of the moral quality of certain productions, a committee is formed to view "morally questionable" shows. Made up of actors, authors and producers, the committee surveys current shows and comes up with the NY District Attorney's list of such titles. Some of the winners are Sex, The Virgin Man and the less obviously titled An American Tragedy.

1926 Chicago, Maurine Dallas Watkins' tale of a fast-living woman who shoots her husband will run at the Music Box Theatre for 22 weeks. George Abbott and Francine Larrimore are in the cast. Forty-nine years later Bob Fosse will set this story to the music of Kander and Ebb. In 1996 the newest incarnation began its smash run.

1926
Rodgers and Hart's Peggy-Ann opens today at the Vanderbilt Theatre. Despite its 333-performance run, it is one of most rarely revived of the team's musicals. Twenty-four hours after opening the hit, Peggy-Ann, Rodgers and Hart have one of their biggest flops with the musical Betsy, a vehicle for vaudeville performer Belle Baker, which bows tonight at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and creeps out again 39 performances later. Producer Florenz Ziegfeld reportedly didn't like his own show, and expressed his opinion of the score by interpolating an Irving Berlin tune that became a standard: "Blue Skies."
 
1926 Devil in the Cheese (yes, it's a comedy), written by Tom Cushing, features Bela Lugosi as a Greek priest. An archaeologist eats some ancient cheese and suddenly understands his lovesick daughter. The Charles Hopkins Theatre in NY hosts the engagement.

1927 The intricate lives of people living on a Show Boat come to life at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II from Edna Ferber's novel, with music composed by Jerome Kern including what will become classics, "Ol' Man River" and "Make Believe." The cast includes Helen Morgan, Norma Terris, Charles Winninger, and Jules Bledsoe.

1931 George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind create Wintergreen, the presidential candidate running on a platform of love [sounds painfully familiar]. Of Thee I Sing, the Pulitzer Prize winning musical with music and lyrics by the Gershwins, stars William Gaxton, Grace Brinkley, and Victor Moore. The campaign runs for 441 performances at the Music Box Theatre.

1934 Birthday of actress Maggie Smith, who will bring a majestic presence to stage and film roles on both sides of the Atlantic. Her Broadway experience begins with New Faces of 1956 and will include Private Lives, Night and Day and Lettice and Lovage the latter of which won her the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play. She will be given a title by Queen Elizabeth II, and will sometimes be referred to as Dame Maggie Smith.

1938 Thornton Wilder has a flop with his comedy The Merchant of Yonkers, which closes after just 39 performances. He'll have more success with the revised version, retitled The Matchmaker in 1955, and even more success when the latter becomes a musical, Hello, Dolly! in 1964.

1948 U.S. premiere of Jean Giradoux's fantasy allegory The Madwoman of Chaillot at the Belasco Theatre, starring Martita Hunt as Countess Aurelia. It will run 368 performances and later be adapted as the musical Dear World.

1954 Clifford Odets paints a comic picture of the Biblical Noah (of Ark fame) and his wife and kids as a bickering middle-class Jewish family. Menasha Skulnik plays Noah. It will run 135 performances at the Belasco Theatre and be adapted as the musical Two by Two by Martin Charnin and Richard Rodgers. It's Odet's final Broadway play.

1960 Phil Silvers stars as a guy who's latest get-rich-quick scheme involves jukeboxes in the musical Do Re Mi from Jule Styne, Garson Kanin, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Nancy Walker plays Silvers' long-suffering wife, who stops the show with the song, "Adventure." It runs 400 performances and introduces the standar, "Make Someone Happy."

1965 Broadway is mesmerized and scandalized by Peter Brook's staging of Peter Weiss' long-titled drama, The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, also known as Marat/Sade, one of the first plays on the American stage to offer full frontal nudity. It will win the Tony Award as Best Play, and runs 145 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1966 The most historic thing about today is what didn't happen. Producer David Merrick closes the musical Breakfast at Tiffany's in previews just before tonight's scheduled opening. Richard Chamberlain doesn't get to open as Jeff, and Mary Tyler Moore doesn't get to make her Broadway debut as Holly Golightly.

1969 James Coco is the Last of the Red Hot Lovers. Neil Simon's comedy exposes a married man worrying that the sexual revolution is happening without him. It will run for 706 performances.

1973 Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst star in a revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Morosco Theatre. it runs 313 performances and the performances become definitive for a generation.

1979 Richard Rodgers, who collaborated with Lorenz Hart on such shows as Babes in Arms, The Boys From Syracuse, and Pal Joey; with Oscar Hammerstein II on shows including Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music and The King and I; and Stephen Sondheim on the musical Do I Hear a Waltz? dies today at age 77.

1979 The life of Piaf takes the stage at London's Aldwych Theatre. Pam Gems scripted this Royal Shakespeare production about the French chanteuse Edith Piaf. Jane Lapotaire stars.

1998 The Broadway-bound revival of Annie Get Your Gun, starring Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat, begins performances tonight at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center engagement is the production's only pre-Broadway stop. Annie Get Your Gun will go on to win two Tony Awards and run for more than 1,000 performances.

1999 Broadway's long-running Phantom of the Opera celebrates an impressive 5,000 performances on this date in 1999, on its way to becoming the longest-running Broadway show ever.

2002 The film adaptation of Kander & Ebb's Chicago opens in major markets today. Rob Marshall directed the film version of the 1975 musical, which will go on to win the 2003 Academy Award for Best Picture -- the first musical to do so since Oliver! in 1968.

2003 Isabelle Stevenson, chair of the American Theatre Wing and a tireless champion of Broadway, the theatre in general, and the Tony Awards in particular, dies at age 90.

2004 Susan Sontag , 71, renowned American intellectual and essayist, and an occasional playwright and theatre director, dies today of acute myelogenous leukemia at New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

2004 Jerry Orbach, the Tony Award-winning star of Promises, Promises and other musicals, dies at age 69. Widely known as gruff detective Lennie Briscoe on TV's "Law & Order," he created many famous roles in stage musicals, starting as the original El Gallo in The Fantasticks. Other roles would include Billy Flynn in the 1975 Chicago and Julian Marsh in the original 42nd Street.

2004 Sylvia Herscher, 91, Broadway agent, general manager, music publisher and producer, who received a special 2000 Tony Award honor for her life's work, dies today in New York.


More Birthdays This Week: Dion Boucicault 1822. Sydney Greenstreet 1879. Charles Dingle 1887. Milton Shubert 1901. Marlene Dietrich 1901. Oscar Levant 1906. Lou Jacobi 1913. Richard Widmark 1914. Hildegarde Neff 1925. Tommy Rall 1929. Donald Moffat 1930. Mabel King 1932. Tovah Feldshuh 1952. Denzel Washington 1954. Tracey Ullman 1959. Joe Mantello 1962. Malcolm Gets 1963.


This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that happen this week in theatre history, that post would be WAY longer than this one. To see more check out the "Today in Theatre History" blog posts on Playbill.com.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Blog Watch: South Florida Theater Year in Review


In lieu of this week's Blog Watch here are 3 "Year in Review" articles from around South Florida.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

New show reviews for the week of Dec. 26

Rod Stafford Hagwood from the Sun-Sentinel gives us his impressions on Cirque Dream Holidaze
 

As everyone knows, circus music sounds like a calliope.  You would no longer listen to it than you would try to Google the title of that peppy tune you once heard on a carousel. Jill Diane Winters wants to change that. The Wellington-based composer has been writing music and lyrics for the last five Cirque Productions, including "Cirque Dreams Holidaze" coming to Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Tuesday through Jan. 1.
And heres Bill Hirschman's review of Cirque Dream Holidaze
They have a formula or recipe: take classic circus acts (heavy on the acrobats, tumblers and clowns) clothe them in as much new age music, lush costumes, spectacular sets and quicksilver light changes as possible, all barely unified by an amorphous theme. All of the performers double and triple as the background in other acts giving you a sense of community.



Howard Cohen from the Miami Herald reviews the touring show Million Dollar Quartet
Million Dollar Quartet, named for an off-hand comment made by Sun’s visionary founder, Sam Phillips, about the gathering on Dec. 4, 1956, features some of the world’s greatest rock and roll: Blue Suede Shoes, Folsom Prison Blues, Brown Eyed Handsome Man and 18 more classics of the era, played live by the four lead actors. The cast is joined by an exceptional rhythm section featuring Chuck Zayas on bass and Billy Shaffer on drums.

Bill Hirschman at Florida Theater On Stage also has a review Million Dollar Quartet
Certainly, this jam session is a glorified jukebox musical with all the inherent weaknesses of the genre....But from the opening notes of “Blue Suede Shoes “(One for the  money, crash; two for the show, slam; three to get ready, slap; now, go, cat, go) Million Dollar Quartet is usually an express train joyously running out of control.



Bill Hirschman also has a review of Mad Cat's "Macbeth and the Monster"
Mad Cat Theatre Company is quite right to warn that their new production of Macbeth & the Monster is not children’s theater, although children may enjoy the nonsensical anarchy.  It’s theater about being children, trying in theatrical terms to tell a story with a child’s delightful disregard for the constraints of logic, convention or even common sense.



Have not been able to find any reviews of Broward Stage Door's production of Annie yet.  We shall include them in next weeks review round-up.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Current Productions for the week of December 26, 2011

An international cast of over 30 multi-talented and brilliantly costumed artists come to life and perform astonishing feats of disbelief. Experience gingerbread men flipping mid air, toy soldiers marching on thin wires, snowmen daringly balancing, icemen powerfully sculpting, penguins spinning, puppets dancing and reindeer soaring high above a landscape of holiday wonderment.


Million Dollar Quartet
at Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Until Jan 1
On December 4, 1956, four young musicians (Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins) were gathered together by Sam Phillips, the ''Father of Rock 'n' Roll'' at Sun Records in Memphis for what would be one of the greatest jam sessions of all time. Don't miss your chance to be a fly on the wall of fame for one unforgettable night.


at Actor's Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre Until Jan 1
Move over Scrooge, its time for Jacob Marley to tell his story! Jacob Marley desperately attempts to free himself and escape his own chains, but first he must redeem Scrooge. Filled with laughter and terror, redemption and renewal, this wonderful play is irreverent, funny, and a deeply moving twist on Dickens’ classic, told with warmth and infectious zest.


Macbeth and the Monster
at Mad Cat Theatre Until Jan 8
All little Macbeth wants is a bedtime story to help him fall asleep. But when his mom tell his him the scary story of Macbeth and the Monster, he gets more than he bargained for.


 Irving Berlin's - I Love A Piano
at Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Jan 8
Join us for a nostalgic journey that spans seven decades of American history as seen through the eyes of legendary songwriter Irving Berlin. Including timeless classics such as “White Christmas,” “God Bless America,” “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” I Love a Piano does more than define the music of a generation - it defines the music of our country. 


August: Osage County
at The Waterfront Playhouse in Key West Until Jan 14

It’s August in Oklahoma.  You are cordially invited to one bitch of a family reunion.  A father is missing, a mother is in the grip of addiction, a marriage is unraveling, and lies are being exposed.  This raucous dark comedy transforms one family gathering into an evening filled with sex, secrets, and really inappropriate behavior.  August: Osage County is a can’t-miss, hilarious and stinging look at the American family.


Annie
at Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Jan 29

In this Tony Award Winning musical , an orphan, Annie, and her dog Sandy are placed in the lap of luxury as a part of a publicity campaign for Oliver Warbucks. Annie's stay turns out to be much more than anyone had bargained for as she works her way into everyone's hearts 

Monday, December 26, 2011

Macbeth and the Monster

Mad Cat Theatre Presents
Macbeth and the Monster
Written by Angela Berliner
Dec 28 – Jan 8

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Blog Watch for the week of Dec. 19, 2011

This weeks Blog Watch has a post from the blog "Unscripted" about self-empowerment, and from the "Stage Theatre Blog" over at The Guardian we have two: one is about using puppets in your plays and the other is about using child actors.

 
Ann Hu at Unscripted - A Blog for Actors writes words of self-empowerment over the holidays in the blog post: A Hollywood Holiday Moment...
On my way back to my car, I heard another actress, walking behind me, rehearsing the lines over and over again to herself. I could see that she was on the edge of tumbling down, like Alice, into an imaginary quagmire of her own thoughts over something she no longer had control over.


The Stage Theatre Blog over at The Guardian, based in the United Kingdom, has an article about why puppets are becoming used more and more in theatre: Puppet theatre: why it's anything but wooden
The power of the puppet is undoubtedly surging – and in many ways it's downright baffling. They're just prettily decorated wooden sticks, dammit; how can they bring a story to life?And yet, when they work well, puppet shows are often heartfelt, profoundly moving experiences.

Also from the Stage Theatre Blog is this article about casting young actors; Childs Play: In Praise Of Young Actors
When Tom Morris, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, asked Melly Still to revive Coram Boy in Bristol, one of the first major decisions she made was to cast the children's parts with children. But could this really work? Melly knew she wasn't just dealing with characters who were children but with characters who were, as children, part of a deeper, darker scenario. What's more, they needed to be able to sing as well as act, and to take on board the adult issues in which the children were implicated. The casting choices, therefore, could be eyebrow-raising in a different way.

The Past Week In Theatre History (Dec. 19 - 23)

The Past Week In Theatre History: December 19 -23

By Robert Viagas, David Gewirtzman, Sam Maher
Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley


1858 Birthday of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), Italian composer whose works include La Bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly, including several based on the plays of American David Belasco.

1893 Birthday of dancer Ann Pennington (1893-1971), who would display her fabled dimpled knee in many editions of The Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals from 1913 to 1928.

1902 Actor Ralph Richardson is born today in Gloucestershire, England. He will make his stage debut in 1921 as Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice, and go on to become one of the major actors of Great Britain in the post-World War II period.

1909 On the opening night of Clyde Fitch's play The City, the author (or someone closely resembling him) startles the opening night audience by coming on the stage and taking a bow. Why is the audience startled? Because Fitch had died some three months earlier. It goes down as one of the best-documented apparent mass ghost sightings in Broadway history. It isn't the first shock the audience gets that night. The play's themes of drugs, incest, and corruption don't cause the biggest stir; it's the line "You're a goddamn liar!" When the play tried out in New Haven, two women fainted upon hearing it.

1910 Jean Genet, a male prostitute and thief who turned to writing plays and novels about society's outcasts is born today. His works include The Maids, The Balcony, The Screens and The Blacks, the latter of which had a long Off-Broadway run in the 1950s. He lives until 1986.

1934 Katharine Cornell produces a starry Romeo and Juliet at the Martin Beck Theatre. She stars alongside Basil Rathbone, Orson Welles, Brian Aherne and Edith Evans. It runs 77 performances.

1942 Katharine Cornell opens a wartime revival of Chekhov's Three Sisters with herself as Masha, Judith Anderson and Olga, and Ruth Gordon as Natalya. Making his Broadway debut in the tiny role of The Orderly is future Hollywood star Kirk Douglas.

1951 Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh have a high-profile flop with Shakespeare's Caesar and Cleopatra at the Ziegfeld Theatre for 67 performances.

1957 Robert Preston and Barbara Cook make musical theatre history in The Music Man which opens today at the Majestic Theatre. Meredith Willson triple headers writing the book, lyrics and score from a story he and Frank Lacey devised. It marches on for 1,375 performances.

1968 Bernadette Peters and Tamara Long are Dames at Sea at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre. George Haimsohn and Robin Miller's book and lyrics spoof old musical films. Jim Wise provides the score.

1974 David Mamet, Patricia Cox, Steven Schachter, and W.H. Macy found the St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago. The christening show is the wold premiere production of Mamet's American Buffalo.

1979 Gregory Hines plays a Harlem Ebenezer Scrooge in the musical Comin' Uptown!. It runs 64 performances at the Winter Garden.

1981 Michael Bennett's Dreamgirls opens on this date. With book and lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger, the production will serve as a star vehicle for Jennifer Holliday, whose legendary performance of Effie won her a Tony Award. The musical will run more than 1500 performances.

1989 Dustin Hoffman plays Shylock in a major revival of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Notable moment, one of Shylock's tormentors spits on him full in the face.

1991 Patrick Stewart introduces his one-man holiday reading/performance of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which Stewart plays all the parts.

1997 Marie Osmond makes her Broadway debut tonight as Mrs. Anna in The King & I. Osmond is replacing Faith Prince, who was the first replacement after the original Anna, the Tony Award-winning Donna Murphy.

2001 Barely three months after the 9/11 attacks, Pulitzer-winner Tony Kushner opens his play about Afghani politics and terrorism, Homebody/Kabul Off-Broadway.

2007 Michael Kidd, the stage and film choreographer and director who won five Tony Awards and an Honorary Academy Award and whose choreography credits include Guys and Dolls on stage and screen, dies of cancer at 92 at his home in Los Angeles.

2008 Dale Wasserman, who wrote the book for the 1966 Tony Award-winning musical Man of La Mancha, dies of heart failure at age 94. Mr. Wasserman also penned the stage version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was based on the novel by Ken Kesey.

2010 Marcia Lewis, the brassy and beloved musical star of hit Broadway revivals of Grease! ("Miss Lynch") and Chicago ("Matron 'Mama' Morton"), dies in Nashville, where she lived, at age 72. Additional Broadway credit included the comically evil Miss Hannigan in the original run of Annie.


This Week’s Birthdays: Elsie DeWolfe, 1865. Irene Dunne Frances Goodrich 1890. 1898. George Roy Hill 1921. Mark "Moose" Charlap 1928. Mel Gussow 1933. Jane Fonda 1937. Larry Bryggman 1938. Elaine Joyce 1945. Lynn Thigpen 1948. Ralph Fiennes 1962.


This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that happen this week in theatre history, that post would be WAY longer than this one. To see more check out the "Today in Theatre History" blog posts on Playbill.com.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Rising Action Theatre closes to make way for a new company.

For the full article head over to Florida Theater On Stage.

Rising Action Falls; Island City Stage Planned To Take Its Place

By Bill Hirschman

Rising Action Theatre, one of South Florida’s few theaters devoted primarily to gay-themed plays, is closing mid-season; but some staffers plan to replace it next fall with a new company, Island City Stage, said Andy Rogow, artistic director for both ventures.

Island City Stage will continue to present shows focusing on LGBT issues, but expand the appeal to a wider audience through the plays selected, Rogow said Thursday.

“While we will maintain our gay mission, we want to be much broader – be the regional theater for people in Wilton Manors, Oakland Park and the beaches who don’t want to travel” as far west as Mosaic Theatre in Plantation, he said. One of several scenarios being considered is to offer gay-centric works as a second subscription.

Producer/director David Goldyn created the company in 2006 to nurture theater that promotes “diversity and tolerance.” Its seasons have steadily focused on comedies and dramas about homosexuality, were penned by a gay playwright or were of special interest to gay men and lesbians. Many productions have been locally produced and directed by Goldyn. Others were traveling shows booked into the theater.

Goldyn handed over the operational reins last summer to Rogow, a well-respected director and producer, and this fall announced he was moving to New York.

But there has always been a reputation to cope with. Rogow said this fall, “I think what we have to do is let the past go and let the community know that we’re operating differently. We’re going to be better organized; there will be more planning ahead rather than by the seat of our pants.”

Million Dollar Quartet

Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Presents
Million Dollar Quartet
Dec 27 – Jan 1


Cirque Dreams Holidaze


Cirque Dreams Holidaze
Dec 27 – Jan 1

Monday, December 19, 2011

Annie

Broward Stage Door Theatre Presents
Annie

Dec 23 – Jan 29

Current Productions for the week of December 19, 2011

Zoetic Stage at Adrienne Arsht Center Until Dec 23
A blisteringly funny evocation of Christmas Hell. One man’s hysterical and often insightful look at the humilities, frustrations and joys of working as an elf at Macy’s Santaland. This holiday classic is David Sedaris at his biting best and a reminder of why Sedaris is one of the greatest humorists of our time.


Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol 
at Actor's Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre Until Jan 1
Move over Scrooge, its time for Jacob Marley to tell his story! Jacob Marley desperately attempts to free himself and escape his own chains, but first he must redeem Scrooge. Filled with laughter and terror, redemption and renewal, this wonderful play is irreverent, funny, and a deeply moving twist on Dickens’ classic, told with warmth and infectious zest.


Irving Berlin's - I Love A Piano
at Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Jan 8
Join us for a nostalgic journey that spans seven decades of American history as seen through the eyes of legendary songwriter Irving Berlin. Including timeless classics such as “White Christmas,” “God Bless America,” “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” I Love a Piano does more than define the music of a generation - it defines the music of our country. 


August: Osage County
at The Waterfront Playhouse in Key West Until Jan 14
It’s August in Oklahoma.  You are cordially invited to one bitch of a family reunion.  A father is missing, a mother is in the grip of addiction, a marriage is unraveling, and lies are being exposed.  This raucous dark comedy transforms one family gathering into an evening filled with sex, secrets, and really inappropriate behavior.  August: Osage County is a can’t-miss, hilarious and stinging look at the American family.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Blog Watch for the week of Dec. 12, 2011

My reader suffered a nervus breakdown this week so I was not able to read all of the blogs that I follow so I only have two blogposts for you guys this week. One is about the challenge of motivating yourself and the other is on how theatres can punish reward....disloyalty??? Wait that can't be right...

Afterwards we be some quotes I've found on line on various blogs.


The Past Week In Theatre History (Dec. 12 - 16)

The Past Week In Theatre History: December 12 -16

By Robert Viagas, David Gewirtzman, Sam Maher
Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley


1885 Birthday of Brock Pemberton (1885-1950), producer of many Broadway plays and comedies during a 30-year career, including the original Harvey, Miss Lulu Bett, Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Ladder and Janie.

1899 Noel Coward is born. He authored plays such as Hay Fever, Design for Living and Private Lives, many of which he performed in; scripts for the films "Brief Encounter" and "This Happy Breed," and more than 500 songs, including "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." Coward made his Broadway debut in 1925 in his own The Vortex. A first-time Broadway mounting of Waiting in the Wings, starring Lauren Bacall, marked the 100 year anniversary of Coward's birth when it opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre, Dec. 16, 1999.   (More On This Show Below)

1925 Birthday in West Plains, MO, of actor Dick Van Dyke, who will appear on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and The Girls Against the Boys, and create memorable TV and film roles in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

1927 Birthday of Christopher Plummer, star of Broadway's J.B., The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Cyrano, Arturo Ui, Othello, Barrymore and King Lear, and memorably on film as Capt. Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.

1932 Birthday of George Furth, author of librettos to musicals Company, The Act, Hot Spot and Merrily We Roll Along, and of his own plays, including Twigs.

1932 Eva Le Gallienne stages a landmark adaptation of Alice in Wonderland at the Civic Repertory Theatre with Burgess Meredith, Joseph Schildkraut, and Le Gallienne herself as the White Queen. Lavishly designed by Irene Sharaff based on Tenniel's illustrations, the production runs 127 performances.

1934 Opening night of musical revue Calling All Stars, featuring Mitzi Mayfair, Phil Baker and, in her Broadway debut, comedienne Martha Raye.

1954 Agatha Christie returns to Broadway with her third, and most successful, thriller: Witness for the Prosecution, about an attorney who has survived a near-fatal heart attack only to take on a murder case that turns up the pressure when his client's wife becomes a witness against him. It runs 645 performances at Henry Miller's Theatre. Francis L. Sullivan plays the stressed-out attorney.

1970 Maureen Stapleton is The Gingerbread Lady in Neil Simon's first drama. This story of an alcoholic singer's decline is staged by Robert Moore at the Plymouth Theatre. The production will run for 193 performances.

1972 Julie Harris plays the emotionally fragile First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in James Prideaux's The Last of Mrs. Lincoln. It will run 63 performances at the ANTA Theatre, and earn Harris the fourth of her five Tony Awards as Best Actress in a Play.

1979 The Negro Ensemble Company presents Home by Samm-Art Williams, who is also in the cast. This show, about a young black man's resistance to fight in the Vietnam war, plays as the St. Marks Playhouse for 82 performances.


1985 The long-running off-Broadway hit, Nunsense, opens tonight at the Cherry Lane Theatre.  Nuns and priests comprise a large part of the audience tonight as this Dan Goggin-directed (and composed) musical makes its debut.  Sister Mary Amnesia is played by Semina De Laurentis. This production will run a whopping 3,672 performances.

1987 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a program designed to help fight the threat of the AIDS virus, is launched on this day.

1989 Jay Allen's Tru, which recounts the life of Truman Capote in his own words, opens tonight at the Booth Theatre. The writer is played Robert Morse, who will win a Tony Award. This production will run 295 performances.

1994 Slavs! opens at New York Theatre Workshop tonight. This Tony Kushner play is the self-proclaimed "coda" to his Broadway successes, Angels in America I & II. This production starred Marisa Tomei and Joseph Wiseman and ran 64 performances.

1997 Livent producer Garth Drabinsky invites a host of performers, designers, and writers to the official christening of the new Ford Center for the Performing Arts tonight. Ragtime begins previews at the theatre on Dec. 26.

1998 Nicole Kidman makes her Broadway debut in David Hare's The Blue Room, a transfer from London's Donmar Warehouse. Though nudity is brief for her and co-star Iain Glen, UK critics panted over the production's sexual wattage, one scribe going so far as to call the show, "pure theatrical Viagra."

1999 Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings gets its posthumous Broadway debut, with a cast of great doyennes, including Rosemary Harris, Lauren Bacall, Dana Ivey, Elizabeth Wilson, and many more. Sadly, it's also the last of more than 100 Broadway shows produced by titan Alexander H. Cohen, who dies the following April while the show is still running. It ends up playing 198 performances.

1999 Screen star Ally Sheedy takes over the role of Hedwig Schmidt in the Off- Broadway rock musical about a sex-change operation gone wrong, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Sheedy's portrayal of Hedwig is the first and last time a woman plays the title role in the OB production. Sheedy remained with the show for only a few stormy weeks, until Matt McGrath assumes the role on Jan. 6.

2004 Disney and Cameron Mackintosh join forces to present a stage adaptation of the film classic Mary Poppins, which opens in London today. Laura Michelle Kelly stars as the magical nanny.

2006 Taliep Pietersen, 56, a successful South African producer and writer of musicals whose Kat and the Kings was seen on Broadway, is killed in a robbery at his home in Athlone township outside Cape Town.

2008 DreamWorks Pictures makes its first foray into Broadway producing as the stage adaptation of its popular animated film "Shrek" opens at the Broadway Theatre. Shrek The Musical stars Brian d’Arcy James as the green ogre of the title, Sutton Foster as the princess he saves, and Daniel Breaker as his donkey sidekick. Jason Moore directs the show, which has music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire.

2009 Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music returns to Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones making her Broadway debut as Desirée Armfeldt, and Angela Lansbury as her mother Madame Armfeldt. Directed by Trevor Nunn, the production was previously seen at London's Menier Chocolate Factory and in the West End.

This Week's Birthdays: Edward G. Robinson 1893. Van Heflin 1910. Nancy Andrews 1920. George Schaefer 1920. John Osborne 1929. Lee Remick 1935. Liv Ullmann 1939. John Davidson 1941. Patty Duke 1946. John Du Prez 1946. Robert Lindsay 1949. Cathy Rigby 1952. Alice Ripley 1963. Anne Marie Bobby 1967. Tammy Blanchard 1976.




This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that happen this week in theatre history, that post would be WAY longer than this one. To see more check out the "Today in Theatre History" blog posts on Playbill.com.

August: Osage County

The Waterfront Playhouse in Key West Presents
August: Osage County
Book by Tracy Letts
Dec 20 – Jan 14

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

New show reviews for the week of Dec. 12

Last week we brought you a review of Twain and Shaw do Lunch, at New Theatre, by Bill Hirschman from Florida Theater On Stage.  Now we have a review by Christine Dolan from the Miami Herald. Her take on the play seems to be the same. Fine acting, lack luster script.
Solidly researched and crafted in part from the literary giants’ own words...It is easy to imagine that Samuel Clemens and George Bernard Shaw shared some fascinating conversation over a meal one day long ago. But imagining that their interaction even vaguely resembled what we see in Twain and Shaw Do Lunch is much, much harder.



Also last week we brought you a review of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, at The Maltz Jupiter Theatre, from Florida Theater On Stage.  This week we have two more.  The first one one is by John Lariviere from the Talkin Broadway: South Florida Edition.
The production features imaginative costumes, colorful sets, carefully executed lighting, sound and music, and an extraordinarily strong supporting cast.
The second review is by Hap Erstein of the Palm Beach Arts Paper.
Back in 1968, as an exercise for a prep school, Andrew Llyod Webber and Tim Rice devised a frothy entertainment from an Old Testament yarn, full of tongue-in-cheek songs in anachronistic pop styles.  The show eventually get inflated with spectacle and star power on Broadway. But the Maltz Jupiter Theatre gets the scale just right -- a bit of glitz and flash, offset by winking, puckish charm.



Zoetic Stage presents The SantaLand Diaries, David Sedaris' blisteringly funny evocation of Christmas Hell, at the Adrienne Arsht Center. First up we have Christine Dolan's review from the
The SantaLand Diaries isn’t for those who revere Christmas, nor is it suitable for the kiddies. But if you can laugh at the idea of parents art directing their childrens’ Santa photos, a lusty older elf coming on to all those mommies or kids who have to hurl before they even get close to Santa’s lap, well, SantaLand may just be your cup of spiked eggnog.
The next review is by Bill Hirschman from Florida Theater On Stage.
The satirical monologue of a would-be actor slaving as an elf in Macy’s SantaLand is a wry, acerbic riff on the desensitizing corporate commercialization not just of the holiday, but of genuine sentiment as well. Michael McKeever, one of the region’s most popular thespians, is inspired casting, not just because of his slight stature, but because of his blend of genial charm and beleaguered helplessness at the absurdities that the temp job heaps upon his sensibilities.
And we have Chris Joseph reviewing for the Miami New Times
The Santaland Diaries, is the perfect antidote for the saccharin-filled Holiday themed cheeriness that bombards our every day existence in movies, television, plays, parks and, most of all, the cathedral of mawkish X-Mas merriment: The Shopping Mall...with tongue prsssed firmly in cheek.



Last, but by no means least, we have 2 reviews for Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol at the Actor's Playhouse.   The first review is by Bill Hirschman from Florida Theater On Stage.
Both narrator and stand-in for the 17-member cast of characters, Clement is a master storyteller enthralling us around an invisible campfire with playwright Tom Mula’s 90-minute alternate take on Charles Dickens’ classic that many people have grown weary of.

The show was also reviewed by Christine Dolan from the Miami Herald.
Tom Mula’s one-man play takes something familiar and comes at it from fresh directions. So while the work is resonant and easy to grasp, it’s never boring. Much of the credit for that “never boring” assessment goes to actor Ken Clement, now on stage at Actors’ Playhouse as Scrooge’s 7-years-dead business partner and 17 other characters — 18, if you count his contribution as the show’s storytelling narrator.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Current Productions for the week of December 12, 2011

This morality play about the cost of lying and the price of truth-telling examines a troubled family and a father who placed duty to his family above the lives of others, and now must face the consequences.


Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat 
at The Maltz Jupiter Theatre Until Dec 18
This colorful, family-friendly retelling of the story of Joseph, his coat of many colors and his amazing ability to interpret dreams is a musical blockbuster of Biblical proportions! Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s award-winning musical parable features a delightful array of musical styles, from country-western and calypso to bubble-gum pop and rock 'n' roll, entertaining your entire family.


Twain and Shaw Do Lunch
at New Theatre Until Dec 18
This witty and based-on-truth play is set in 1907 when the world's two greatest living writers, Mark Twain & George Bernard Shaw, had lunch together. This, their first meeting, was monumental. It would be Mrs. Shaw's job to make sure they didn't destroy each other.


Avenue Q
at The Area Stage Compnay Until Dec 18
AVENUE Q: part flesh, part felt and packed with heart. Don't miss out on this chance to see this long-running Broadway hit! AVENUE Q is a laugh-out-loud musical that tells the timeless story of a recent college grad named Princeton who moves into a shabby New York apartment all the way out on Avenue Q, where he meets Kate, Rod Trekkie, Lucy the Slut and other HELPFUL characters who help him discover his purpose in life! If this were a movie it would be rated PG-13. 


The Santaland Diaries Presented by
Zoetic Stage at Adrienne Arsht Center Until Dec 23
A blisteringly funny evocation of Christmas Hell. One man’s hysterical and often insightful look at the humilities, frustrations and joys of working as an elf at Macy’s Santaland. This holiday classic is David Sedaris at his biting best and a reminder of why Sedaris is one of the greatest humorists of our time.


Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol 
at Actor's Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre Until Jan 1
Move over Scrooge, its time for Jacob Marley to tell his story! Jacob Marley desperately attempts to free himself and escape his own chains, but first he must redeem Scrooge. Filled with laughter and terror, redemption and renewal, this wonderful play is irreverent, funny, and a deeply moving twist on Dickens’ classic, told with warmth and infectious zest.


Irving Berlin's - I Love A Piano
at Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Jan 8
Join us for a nostalgic journey that spans seven decades of American history as seen through the eyes of legendary songwriter Irving Berlin. Including timeless classics such as “White Christmas,” “God Bless America,” “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” I Love a Piano does more than define the music of a generation - it defines the music of our country.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Blog Watch for the week of Dec. 5, 2011

This weeks Blog Watch has quite a bit of content and all are real good so please check them out.

In this weeks list has two post about social networking, theatre critics talk about their towns and their changing roles, creative problem solving, and what a blogger has learned during her three years of blogging.


Friday, December 9, 2011

The Past Week In Theatre History (Dec. 5 - 9)

The Past Week In Theatre History: December 5 -9

By Robert Viagas, David Gewirtzman, Sam Maher
Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley


1896 Birthday of Ira Gershwin (1896-1983), one of Broadway's most sterling lyricists, mainly in collaboration with his brother George. Ira's musicals will include Porgy and Bess; Of Thee I Sing; Lady, Be Good; Funny Face; Oh. Kay!, Girl Crazy, Lady in the Dark and in adaptations after his death, My One and Only, Crazy for You and Never Gonna Dance.

1902 Birthday of actress Margaret Hamilton, who will appear on Broadway in plays including The Farmer Takes a Wife, The Dark Tower, Goldilocks and a revival of Our Town, but who will forever be remembered as The Wicked Witch of the West in the MGM film The Wizard of Oz.

1903 U.S. premiere of George Bernard Shaw's drama of the Life Force, Candida, starring Dorothy Donnelly and Arnold Daly at the Princess Theatre.

1911 Birthday of actor Lee J. Cobb (1911-1976), who will create many memorable roles in the 1930s to 1950s, most notably Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

1918 It's a Scandal at London's Strand Theatre. This Cosmo Hamilton comedy exposes a woman pretending to be married to a gentleman. Kyrle Bellew and Noel Coward star.

1925 "Why a duck?" The ineffable question is first asked on Broadway today, the opening night of the George S. Kaufman/Irving Berlin musical The Cocoanuts at the Lyric Theatre with four young stars who overshadowed even the august writing team: The Marx Brothers, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo. The anarchic nonsense about the Florida land rush runs 377 performances and is made into a classic film (minus most of the songs).

1925 Also: Birthday of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990), who will begin in small clubs and rise to become a Las Vegas headliner, film star and member of the "Rat Pack" of 1950s swingers. His Broadway work will include starring roles in Mr. Wonderful and the musical Golden Boy.

1930 Cole Porter scandalizes Broadway with the streetwalker's lament, "Love For Sale," in the musical The New Yorkers, which opens tonight at B.S. Moss's Broadway Theatre for a run of 168 performances. Included in the huge cast are Jimmy Durante and Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians.

1931 Birthday of Ellen Stewart, whose LaMama Experimental Theatre Club will serve as one of the cornerstones of the Off-Off-Broadway movement.

1946 Laurette Taylor dies today. Her career spanned almost 40 years. Two of her more memorable performances were in Peg O' My Heart, created by her husband J. Hartley Manners; and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.

1949 Carol Channing blinks her big round eyes and warbles "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" on the opening night of the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Ziegfeld Theatre. It will run 740 performances and make Channing into an icon.

1979 Today's Saturday matinee of Grease is the 3,243 performance, making it the longest running show in Broadway history to that point. Grease passes Fiddler on the Roof, which had overtaken Life With Father in 1972, when this production of Grease was 128 performances into its pre-Broadway run. The long-run title is now held by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.

1996 The epic musical Ragtime, with a book by Terrence McNally and a score by Ahrens & Flaherty, has its world premiere in Toronto. Reviews are strong for the show's subsequent Broadway mounting, but the show's high cost, coupled with other financial woes, would eventually wreck its producing organization, Livent. SFX Productions would buy what remained of the company, only to be taken over itself by Clear Channel.

1999 Ann Hampton Callaway, Everett Bradley and Laura Benanti star in Swing!, a musical revue featuring swing music by various composers such as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. The lively show opens tonight and will go on to run for a substantial 461 performances and receive six 2000 Tony Award nominations including one for Best Musical.

2001 Less than three months after the 9/11 attacks, the downtown Manhattan Bat Theatre Company opens a new play about a fire chief trying to compose eulogies for his dead men. The Guys will become a long-running hit, and be adapted for film.

2001 Also: A little-heralded in-development new musical called Hairspray begins open casting calls in -- where else? -- Baltimore. It will go on to win the 2003 Tony Award as Best Musical.

2002 Baz Luhrmann's staging of the opera La Boheme opens on Broadway today, with a directorial concept that makes it resemble a Broadway musical. The show will run 228 performances and win a special Tony honor for its three rotating casts of leads.

2002 Also: One of the most memorable flops of the new century opens at the Minskoff Theatre: Dance of the Vampires, a campy musical about vampires stalking the European village of Lower Belabartokovich. Jim Steinman, who wrote many songs for rocker Meat Loaf, rolls out his first full Broadway score. The production had been a long-running hit in Austria and Germany, but after six weeks of previews on Broadway it will stagger on for 56 performances after critics hammer stakes into its heart. The show marks the (brief) return to Broadway of Phantom of the Opera star Michael Crawford as the bloodthirsty Count von Krolock.

2007 Mark Twain's 1890's farce Is He Dead? gets its LONG-delayed Broadway debut after the manuscript is rediscovered by a researcher, and playwright David Ives does a contemporary adaptation. Norbert Leo Butz, Jenn Gambatese, Byron Jennings, Michael McGrath and John McMartin are featured in the cast.

2008 The Olivier Award-winning Slava's Snowshow, already an Off-Broadway hit known for its climactic blizzard and its wordless clowns who roam a wintry landscape, opens at the Helen Hayes Theatre. The show features a cast of ten, including creator Slava Polunin.

2009 Playwright David Mamet confronts the issue of racial prejudice in America with his drama Race, which opens on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington and Richard Thomas star in the play about a law firm with one white partner and one black partner who take the case of a white man charged with a sex crime against a black woman.




More Birthdays: William S. Hart 1864. Lynn Fontanne 1887. Agnes Moorehead 1900. Quentin Crisp 1908. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. 1909. Broderick Crawford 1911. Wally Cox 1924. Dina Merrill 1925. Dick Van Patten 1928. Bobby Van 1928. Eli Wallach 1931. Ellen Burstyn 1932. David Carradine 1936. Buck Henry 1939. Judi Dench 1934. A.J. Antoon 1944. Michael Nouri 1945. James Naughton 1945. John Rubinstein 1946. John Malkovich 1953. Donny Osmond 1957. Mario Cantone 1959.


This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that happen this week in theatre history, that post would be WAY longer than this one. To see more check out the "Today in Theatre History" blog posts on Playbill.com.

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