The Past Week In Theatre History (June 18 – June 22)

PLAYBILL VAULT'S Today in Theatre History: JUNE 18 – 22

By David Gewirtzman, Doug Nevins,
Ernio Hernandez and Robert Viagas
18 Jun 2012

   

1903    Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) is born today. His distinctive looping line drawings will capture the essence of Broadway shows from the 1920s through the early 2000s. The Martin Beck Theatre will be renamed the Al Hirschfeld in 2003, just months after his death at age 99.

1905    Birthday of playwright Lillian Hellman (1905-1984), who will go on to write The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes, Another Part of the Forest, Watch on the Rhine and the book to Candide.

1906    See-see, described by its authors as a "Comic Chinese opera," opens at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London. The musical boasts a book by Charles Brookfield and a score by Sidney Jones and Adrian Ross. Denise Osme performs the title role. See-see will run 152 performances.

1910    In a strike against racial prejudice, Florenz Ziegfeld opens the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, with actor Bert Williams as co-star, marking the first time white and black entertainers have appeared on stage together in a major Broadway production.

1920    Opening night of the starry Ziegfeld Follies of 1920 at the New Amsterdam Theatre, featuring performances by Fanny Brice, W.C. Fields and Moran & Mack; and music by Irving Berlin, Harry Tierney and Victor Herbert. It will run 123 performances.

1921    Birthday of Joseph Papp (1921-1991), founder and longtime executive director of the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre. Aside from the annual free productions of Shakespeare in New York's Central Park, NYSF will present annual subscription seasons of works by two generations of theatre artists, with a special emphasis on work by and about minorities. Productions under his auspices included A Chorus Line, Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Pirates of Penzance and That Championship Season.

1921    Future stage and screen star Judy Holliday is born today. By the time of her untimely death in 1966 Holliday will have won the 1951 Academy Award for best actress for her performance in "Born Yesterday," a role she has already done on Broadway. She will also win a Tony Award as best leading actress for her performance in the Jule Styne-Betty Comden-Adolph Green musical, Bells Are Ringing.

1929    The musical revue Hot Chocolates opens a 219-performance run today at the Hudson Theatre, featuring some of the great stars of Harlem nightclubs, including the Broadway debut of Louis Armstrong, and a score by Fats Waller, Harry Brooks and Andy Razaf.

1937    Laurence Housman's Broadway smash Victoria Regina opens at London's Lyric Theatre. The historical drama, which proved to be a personal triumph for star Helen Hayes on Broadway, now stars Pamela Stanely as the 19th-century British Queen. The show will run 42 weeks.

1951    Audience members are taken back to Indianapolis circa 1907 as Seventeen opens at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, the new musical features a book by Sally Benson. Singing the Walter Kent-Kim Gannon score are leads Ann Crowley and Kenneth Nelson. The show will run 23 weeks.

1956    The Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario kicks off its season with productions of Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. Also included are productions of three Moliere comedies.

1962    A New York theatregoing tradition is born as the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park first opens, with a production of The Merchant of Venice starring George C. Scott. The construction of the famed home of free Shakespeare is made possible by a $400,000 donation from George Delacorte of Dell Publishing.

1963    The 1876-vintage Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, reopens after an extensive renovation as a headquarters for musical revivals and new musicals. The first show in the new series will be Oh Lady, Lady. Among Goodspeed Musicals productions to land on Broadway will be Man of La Mancha, Shenandoah and Annie.

1965    Actor Sydney Chaplin leaves the Broadway production of Funny Girl after settling with the producers. Despite rumors that Chaplin has left the show because of some friction between himself and co-star Barbra Streisand, the official reason given for his early departure is that Chaplin has had disagreements with the show's producer, Ray Stark.

1965    A musical classic returns to the New York stage as the Music Theatre of Lincoln Center revives Kismet at the New York State Theatre. Alfred Drake returns to the role he originated in the Broadway production of the musical for the length of this six-week run.

1966    Stage and film actor Ed Wynn dies at age 80. After starting out with a career in Vaudville on the Orpheum-Keith Albee vaudeville circuit, Wynn became a staple on Broadway (Simple Simon, The Laugh Parade) and in Hollywood ("Mary Poppins," among many other Disney films). Wynn also received much acclaim for his performance in the film version of "The Diary of Anne Frank."

1976    Godspell, the third longest-running show in Off-Broadway history ends its run at 2,124 performances to transfer to Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre, where it will open tonight. The Stephen Schwartz musical directed and conceived by John-Michael Tebelak is based on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. It will close after switching to the Plymouth Theatre and end at Ambassador Theatre Sep. 4, 1977.

1978    The gay-themed revue, Crimes Against Nature, begins a 10-week engagement at the Actors Playhouse in New York. Created by the Gay Men's Theatre Collective of San Francisco, the show deals with both current events and more personal homosexual concerns.

1978    Carol Hall's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, starring Carlin Glynn, opens on Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre. The musical directed by Peter Masterson and Tommy Tune will garner seven Tony nominations and win two; for Glynn and co-star Henderson Forsythe.

1984    David Rabe's play Hurlyburly opens Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre. The original cast from Chicago's Goodman stays intact, including William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Jerry Stiller, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, and Judith Ivey. The play will run 45 performances, then transfer to Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

1987    Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling's smalltown drama transfers from Off-Broadway's WPA Theatre to Off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre where it will play 817 performances. The play features Kate Wilkinson under the direction of Pamela Berlin.

1987    Fred Astaire, one half of Hollywood's Astaire-Ginger Rogers dancing duo, dies today. As a Broadway dancer, Astaire appeared on Broadway in such musicals as The Band Wagon, opposite his sister, Adele, and Gay Divorce. Among the many Hollywood musicals in which he danced opposite Rogers was 1935's "Top Hat."

1989    A musical version of Death of a Salesman? That's what the Jewish boy in The Loman Family Picnic dreams of writing while his family stresses about his bar mitzvah. The play by Donald Margulies opens at the Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage 2.

1992    It is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber now, as the famed musical theatre composer is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Andrew's many musical credits include Broadway's longest-running musical, The Phantom of the Opera, and the international phenomenon, Cats. He'll later be elevated to the peerage as Lord Lloyd Webber.

1997    Though Cats, Broadway's longest-running musical opened to mixed reviews October 7, 1982 and its slogan, "Now and Forever," seemed a bit presumptuous, the show has officially become the longest-running musical in Broadway history. Its record-breaking 6,138th performance plays tonight.

1998    Seven playwrights, commissioned by the New York-based Acting Company, see their Love's Fire open at Off-Broadway's Joseph Papp Public Theatre. John Guare, Marsha Norman, Eric Bogosian, William Finn, Tony Kushner, Ntozake Shange and Wendy Wasserstein were all asked to contribute one-act plays inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets. The result, directed by Mark Lamos, plays a limited run through July 5.

1998    A New Brain, the latest work from Falsettos composer William Finn, opens at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in New York's Lincoln Center. The musical, about a composer who faces the possibility of death from a brain tumor, stars Malcolm Gets, Mary Testa, Kristin Chenoweth, Chip Zien and Penny Fuller.

2000    Solo performer Sarah Jones brings her Surface Transit to New York City's downtown mecca Performance Space 122 starting today. The show headlines the First NYC Hip-Hop Theatre Festival produced by and also starring Danny Hoch (Jails, Hospitals, & Hip-Hop). In the piece, Jones embodies eight widely varied characters that range from a raving bag lady to a widowed Russian mother to a narrow-minded Jewish grandma to a recovering hip-hop rhyming addict turned-slam poet. She will later use this experience as a springboard to her 2006 Tony-winning play Bridge & Tunnel.

2000    Composer-lyricist-librettist Kirsten Childs' musical about Viceca "Bubbly" Stanton, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin gets its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons. Wilfredo Medina directs and A.C. Ciulla choreographs the musical memoir starring LaChanze.

2000    Josh Brolin and Elias Koteas replace Tony-nominated stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in Sam Shepard's True West on Broadway. The drama, in which two brothers change personalities, made for an interesting twist as the two actors would switch lead roles every few performances. The replacement players will follow in the same fashion until the Matthew Warchus directed show closes July 29.

2002    A.R. Rahman and Don Black's Bombay Dreams, a musical about a love story set in India, opens at London's Apollo Victoria. The producer is Andrew Lloyd Webber. It will open on Broadway in 2004.

2003    George Axelrod, the playwright, director and screenwriter who penned the stage comedy, The Seven Year Itch, about a Manhattan man who lusts after his comely neighbor while his family is away for the summer, died today at age 81. Axelrod also penned the Broadway plays Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?? (1955) and Goodbye, Charlie (1959), which he also directed; and the films "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

2003    Bounce, the first musical collaboration between composer Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince in more than two decades, opens a tryout in Chicago. It will move on to Washington DC and play out a limited run without moving to New York. In 2008, John Doyle will direct a revised version of the musical at Off-Broadway's Public Theater under the title Road Show.

2004    Tony-winning musical Thoroughly Modern Millie closes after a run of 32 previews and 904 regular performances at the Marquis Theatre.

2006    The north half of Times Square becomes a construction zone as the building at the corner of 46th Street and Seventh Avenue, which for decades housed a Howard Johnson’s restaurant and the Off-Broadway Duffy Theatre, is torn down and the 1974-vintage TKTS discount ticket booth in Father Duffy Square is dismantled. TKTS moves to temporary space in the ground floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The landmark statue of George M. Cohan is encased in plywood for the duration.

2010    The City Center Encores! Summer Stars production of the Charlie Smalls-William F. Brown musical The Wiz, which boasts R&B artist Ashanti as Dorothy, officially opens at the famed New York venue. Directed by Thomas Kail, the cast also includes Orlando Jones at The Wiz, LaChanze as Glinda and Tichina Arnold as Evillene.

This Week’s Birthdays    Philip Barry 1896.  Dorothy Stickney 1896.  Moe Howard 1897.  Jack Whiting 1901.  David Burns 1902.  Mack Gordon 1904.  Katherine Dunham 1909.  Michael Todd 1909.  Keye Luke 1904.  Mildred Natwick 1905.  Billy Wilder 1906.  E. G. Marshall 1910.  Mary McCarthy 1912.  Martin Gabel 1912.  Sammy Cahn 1913.  Louis Jourdan 1919.  Gower Champion 1919.  Jane Russell 1921.  Maureen Stapleton 1925.  Michael Blakemore 1928.  Ralph Waite 1928.  Nancy Marchand 1928.  Gena Rowlands 1930.  John Cunningham 1932.  George Hearn 1934.  Mariette Hartley 1940.  Elizabeth Franz 1941.  Maria Tucci 1941.  Michael Gross 1947.  Phylicia Rashad 1948.  Meryl Streep 1949.  Carol Kane 1952.  Cyndi Lauper 1953.  Kathleen Turner 1954.  David Marshall Grant 1955. Kerry Butler 1971.

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Reviews of La Cage Aux Folles at The Broward Cener

The national tour of La Cage Aux Folles is currently at the Broward Center for the Performaing Arts until June 24.  Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, book by HarveyFierstein.  Directed by Terry Johnson.  Starring: George Hamilton, Christopher Sieber, Dale Hensley, Michael Lowney, Jeigh Madjus, Gay Marshall, Allison Blair McDowell, and Todd Lattimore.

 

Christine Dolen reviewed the show for the The Miami Herald:

An actor’s magnetic performance powers ‘La Cage’

That story centers on a family crisis for Saint-Tropez nightclub impresario Georges (George Hamilton) and his longtime partner and star Albin, aka Zaza (Christopher Sieber). The son they raised together, Jean-Michel (Michael Lowney), has come home to introduce his fiancée Anne (Allison Blair McDowell) and her parents to his folks. But he’s embarrassed by the flamboyant Albin, the only “mother” he’s ever known, because Anne’s judgmental Papa is a pro-family, anti-gay politician who has vowed to wipe out clubs like La Cage.

Sharper than a serpent’s tooth, Jean-Michel asks Georges to ask Albin to vanish for a day. That emotionally devastating request sets up the musical’s most powerful number, the prideful anthem that closes the first act. And to hear Sieber — dressed in glamorous drag as Zaza but singing as the deeply wounded, fierce Albin — perform I Am What I Am is genuinely transcendent theater.

Georges is supposed to be different from Albin, a bit more controlled, a lot less dramatic. But Hamilton and Sieber are a mismatch. The movie and TV veteran is a strikingly handsome, smiling, charming presence who doesn’t look 30 years older than Sieber, though he is. His singing voice and dance moves are passable, but the real trouble lies in his too-small, too-subtle acting. Performing in a musical, particularly one as bold and comedically bawdy as La Cage aux Folles, demands bigger, more powerful choices than the ones Hamilton makes.

Quick-thinking cast member Todd Lattimore, done up like a ‘40s Fort Lauderdale pinup girl, does a hilarious pre-show warmup that gets the audience in a happy, receptive mood before the curtain goes up.

Mary Damiano reviewed the show for Florida Theater On Stage

This Bird Flies: Touring Show of La Cage aux Folles Perches at The Broward Center

Based on a 1973 French play that was re-made as a successful French film, La Cage aux Folles came to Broadway in 1983, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein.  It was made into the American film The Birdcage in 1996, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

This version of La Cage aux Folles is scaled back, and feels smaller than previous renditions.  The musicians have been raised from the orchestra pit to theater boxes above the stage, a design that brings the audience further into the intimate world of a nightclub. Some of the production numbers by Les Cagelles have a darker edge to them, more Cabaret than classic, colorful La Cage. But it works, largely due to the exceptional performance by Sieber.

Sieber, who was nominated for Tony Awards for playing Lord Farquaad in Shrek: The Musical and Sir Dennis Galahad in Monty Python’s Spamalot, is the heart and soul of the show.  What’s most impressive is that Sieber excels at turning this old chestnut of a role into his own special creation through little nuances and laugh-out-loud bits.  His flamboyance hits new heights on the drama queen scale, but he also nails the more poignant moments of the show.

While Sieber is the workhorse of this production, Hamilton brings the star power. Playing a charming nightclub host and master of ceremony is no real stretch for Hamilton, whose affable manner is as ingrained as his electric white smile and bronze perma-tan. And while his acting style is better suited to the screen than the stage, his low-key performance allows his co-star to shine all the more. 

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Current Productions for the week of June 18, 2012

AVENUE Q by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty
At The Andrews Living Arts Studio Until June 23
AVENUE Q is an "Autobiographical and Biographical" coming-of-age parable, addressing and satirizing the issues and anxieties associated with entering adulthood. Its characters lament that as children, they were assured by their parents, and by PBS's Sesame Street, that they were "special" and "could do anything"; but as adults, they have discovered to their surprise and dismay that in the real world their options are limited, and they are no more "special" than anyone else.
Warning: This Show Contains Puppet Nudity

Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays

Presented by City Theatre

At The Broward Center Until June 24

Experience an exciting, provocative evening of new short plays read by a dynamic, celebrity cast and written by some of America’s most illustrious playwrights.  Dealing in a personal way with same-sex marriage and equality, these American writers have created an evening that is at once as insightful and stirring as it is funny and heartwarming.  Celebrate post-show at a wedding reception complete with music and wedding cake!  A portion of all proceeds will be donated to Equality Florida.


Small Membership by Mark Della Ventura
At The Alliance Theatre Lab Until June 24
Matt, a big boy with a small problem, is 26 years old and seeking attention and guidance from a group of strangers.  The show centers on male insecurity and through a series of flashbacks we see his childhood and adulthood struggles with puberty, sexual orientation, anxiety, true love, heartbreak and self-determined celibacy.


A Bicycle Country by Nilo Cruz
At New Theatre Until June 24
Three characters, whose lives seem to be moving nowhere, set out to build a dream even if that dream seems perilous.  This stirring portrait of three Cuban exiles and their harrowing journey across the Caribbean Sea, in the play by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz,  examines the universal themes of freedom and oppression, hope and survival.


La Cage Aux Folles Staring George Hamilton
The Broward Center for the Performing Arts Until June 24
LA CAGE tells the story of Georges, the owner of a glitzy nightclub in lovely Saint-Tropez, and his partner Albin, who moonlights as the glamorous chanteuse Zaza. When Georges' son brings his fiancée's conservative parents home to meet the flashy pair, the bonds of family are put to the test as the feather boas fly!


The Edge of our Bodies by Adam Rapp
At Mosaic Theatre Until July 1
The Edge of Our Bodies was a tremendous hit at this year's Humana Festival and features Bernadette, sixteen, on the train from her New England private school to New York City to give her boyfriend some big news. Achingly articulate about all she can't know or control, this play captures a young woman at the threshold of vulnerability and experience.


DeathTrap by Ira Levin
Miami Beach Stage Door Theatre Until July 1
The trap is set… for a wickedly funny who’ll-do-it. Broadway’s longest-running mystery is a classic pulse-pounding thriller with devilishly wicked characters and multiple twists. The plot thickens as a once famed playwright, now living on his laurels, is sent a more-than-promising manuscript from an aspiring playwright. His dilemma: Can he get the young author to collaborate with him?  If not – is murder an option?  Of course it is.


Love Scenes by David Pumo
At Emire stage Until July 1
Six, individual scenes.  Each with it's own flavor and perspective.  Each depicting a different type of relationship in gay america.  Each unique chacrter as different as six random people you would meet on the street.  All played by one actor.
Warning: Nudity and adult themes.

Xanadu by Douglas Carter Beane, Jeff Lynne and John Farrar
At Slow Burn Theatre Co. Until July 1

XANADU follows the journey of a magical and beautiful Greek muse, Kira, who descends from the heavens of Mt. Olympus to Venice Beach, California in 1980 on a quest to inspire a struggling artist, Sonny, to achieve the greatest artistic creation of all time – the first ROLLER DISCO This tale of endless fun will keep you in stitches, while the legendary chart-topping tunes will lift you out of your seat. You’ll want to keep the music in your head, and XANADU in your heart, forever.

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Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays

City Theatre and The Broward Center Presents

Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays

June 21 - June 24

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Xanadu by Douglas Carter Bean, Jeff Lynne and John Farrar

Slow Burn Theatre Co. Presents
Xanadu
Music and Lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar
Book by Douglas Carter Beane
June 22 – July 1

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The Past Week In Theatre History (June 11 – June 15)

The Past Week In Theatre History (June 11 – June 15)

By David Gewirtzman, Ernio Hernandez

Anne Bradley, Robert Viagas, and Doug Nevins

1894    Birthday of Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), orchestrator of Broadway classics including the original Sunny; Show Boat; Anything Goes; Oklahoma!; Annie Get Your Gun; Kiss Me, Kate; The King and I, My Fair Lady, Camelot and The Sound of Music. He was honored with a special Tony Award on the anniversary of his birthday in 2008.

1929    Birthday of Broadway composer Cy Coleman, (1929-2004) whose multidextrous scores for shows like Sweet Charity, I Love My Wife, On the Twentieth Century, The Will Rogers Follies, The Life and City of Angels will show him to be equally adept with jazz, operetta, Big Band, country and R&B.

1955    The American actor-manager Walter Hampden dies in Hollywood at age 75. In 1925 he leased the Colonial Theatre and played in revivals of Ibsen and Shakespeare. Cyrano de Bergerac was his most memorable role.

1956    The revue New Faces of 1956 showcases the talents of future stars Maggie Smith, Jane Connell, Tiger Haynes, Viginia Martin, Bill McCutcheon and Inga Swenson. The show offers sketches by Neil and Danny Simon, Paul Lynde and Louis Botto, and songs by Marshall Barer and Ronny Graham, among others.

1961    Bye Bye Birdie opens at London's Her Majesty's Theater. Chita Rivera, the star of the original Broadway production, reprises her role opposite Marty Wilde, Peter Marshall and Angela Baddeley. The West End staging of the Charles Strouse-Lee Adams musical will last 268 performances.

1961    American ideals and and practices are put on trial as The Red Eye of Love opens at New York's Living Theatre. The satire by Arnold Weinstein will last 169 performances.

1963    Stage actor Howard Da Silva finds himself at the other end of the spectrum: as director of a Lewis John Carlino double bill. Shelley Winters and Jack Warden star in the two one acts, Snowangel and Epiphany. The production will run 22 weeks.

1965    Legendary theatre is made when the husband-and-wife team of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy open in The Cherry Orchard at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Variety hails this latest production as "the outstanding presentation of the Chekhov classic in a lifetime of theatregoing and would be a credit to any company." Cronyn and Tandy will continue to grace the stage together for many years to come in such productions as Foxfire and The Gin Game.

1966    The New York Shakespeare Summer Festival is under way as Central Park's Delacorte Theater opens for its summer season. Among this year's productions: All's Well That Ends Well and Richard III, featuring such talents as Christopher Walken, Barbara Barrie, and Richard Jordan.

1966    Audiences can't help but laugh as The Kitchen opens at the 81st Street Theater in New York. The raucous comedy, set in the kitchen of a popular restaurant at dinner time, featured Rip Torn, Constance Clarke, and Sylvia Miles. After opening night, dinner will continue to be prepared on stage for 136 more performances.

1967    Michael Langham stages his final season as artistic director of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His final production with the Festival is a new staging of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra.

1970    Parliamentary history is made as Sir Laurence Olivier becomes the first actor to be seated in Britain's House of Lords when he is named a life peer. At the time, he is playing Shylock in a National Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice.

1974    The World of Lenny Bruce, opens at the Players Theatre. Frank Spieser's one-man show, in which he impersonates the satirist Lenny Bruce, will run for 17 weeks.

1979    Flowers for Algernon, a new musical by Charles Strouse and David Rodgers, opens at London's Queen's Theatre. Based on the novel by Daniel Keyes, the show stars a pre-Phantom Michael Crawford as mentally handicapped Charlie Gordon, the same role that won Cliff Robertson an Oscar for "Charly," the film version of the novel. Cheryl Kennedy co-stars in the musical, which will run 28 performances and spawn an ill-fated Broadway production.

1979    Film star Al Pacino (already a household name thanks to the "Godfather" films and "Dog Day Afternoon") returns to his Broadway roots as the title role in Richard III. The production of the Shakespearean tragedy, staged at the Cort Theater, does not garner strong reviews for its leading man, whose persona is deemed unsuitable for the role.

1980    The life and loves of Frank Harris are set to music in the musical Fearless Frank which opens at the Princess Theatre tonight. The short-lived homage runs only 12 performances.

1983    Samuel Beckett is examined in three parts as his Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe and What Where are presented Off Broadway at the Harold Clurman Theatre. The evening of one-acts will run 350 performances until it closes April 15, 1984. Alan Schneider directs a cast that features David Warrilow, Rand Mitchell, Donald Davis, Daniel Wirth and Margaret Reed.

1985    Neil Simon's The Odd Couple gets a revised and reversed revival at the Broadhurst Theatre. Gene Saks directs Rita Moreno as Olive Madison and Sally Struthers as Florence Unger in the play that was originally written for men. The production will play 295 performances before closing on Feb. 23 of the following year.

1986    Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist and librettist of a number of musicals, dies today at the age of 67. Frederick Loewe, his long-time collaborator, and he produced such shows as Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, Camelot and Gigi.

1987    Actress Geraldine Page dies of a heart attack at the age of 62. The stage star of Sweet Bird of Youth and Agnes of God was performing in a revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at the time of her death. As a screen actress she was honored with seven Academy Award nominations before finally winning Best Actress for her turn in "The Trip to Bountiful." She also earned two Emmy Awards for roles in TV movies and, though nominated thrice for Tony Awards, was never awarded one.

1988    Director Jose Quintero helms a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night at Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre. Jason Robards stars as James Tyrone and Colleen Dewhurst as his wife Mary in the production that runs in repertory with another O'Neill play, Ah, Wilderness!.

1990    Actor Charles Grodin knows the Price of Fame as his show opens Off-Broadway. The Roundabout Theatre Company production features Grodin, Lizbeth Mackay, Jace Alexander, Joseph R. Sicari and Michael Ingram under the direction of Gloria Muzio.

1995    Michael John LaChiusa makes his Broadway debut writing additional music to Bob Telson's score to Chronicle of A Death Foretold, a musical directed by Graciela Daniele, based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez. It runs just 37 performances, but gets nominated for Best Musical in the 1996 Tony Awards.

1996    The world of pornography enters the theatre as Ronnie Larsen's Making Porn plays at the Actor's Playhouse. The erotic comedy-drama, in which a straight man becomes a porn star in the gay adult video industry, stars Rex Chandler. Larsen directed and also co-starred in the production, which ran 395 performances.

1998    The Jello Is Always Red, a musical revue of his songs and sketches by Clark Gesner, who created You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, plays Off Broadway at the York Theatre Company. James Morgan directs the production starring Celia Gentry, Neal Young and Gesner himself.

2000    Tony takes its toll as two shows close one week following the Awards. Elaine May's Taller Than a Dwarf, which opened on April 24 at Broadway's Longacre Theatre, did not receive any Tony nominations and Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party, which received seven noms, were both shut out and subsequently shut down.

2001    Six years after the untimely death of its composer, tick, tick...BOOM!, the autobiographical musical by Rent author Jonathan Larson, is rescued from his trunk and opens Off-Broadway.

2002    The Phantom of the Opera plays its 6,000th performance on Broadway.

2002    Future Tony-winning musical Hairspray begins a triumphant tryout at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theatre.

2002    Robert Whitehead, who, over a 50-year career produced landmark stagings of everything from Arthur Miller to Euripides to Terrence McNally, dies at age 86, just two weeks after receiving a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.

2003    After touring North America consistently since 1988, the third national company of Les Misérables, the Cameron Mackintosh-produced musical, takes a summer hiatus after its Utah engagement ends today.

2011    Following the longest preview period in Broadway history — performances began Nov. 28, 2010 — Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark officially opens at Broadway's Foxwoods Theatre. Over the course of its 182 previews, original director/librettist/designer Julie Taymor is replaced by creative consultant Philip Wm. McKinley and librettist Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who make changes to the musical during a monthlong hiatus in April/May 2011. Reeve Carney stars as the superhero with the powers of a spider in the show which cost a reported $75 million, by far the most expensive in Broadway history.

2011    Lend Me a Tenor The Musical, based on the hit Ken Ludwig stage comedy, opens in London at the West End's Gielgud Theatre. The musical features book and lyrics by Peter Sham and music by Brad Carroll.

More of This Week’s Birthdays:  Ben Jonson 1572. Richard Strauss 1864. Basil Rathbone 1892. Burl Ives 1909. Bernard B. Jacobs 1916. Dorothy McGuire 1916. Gene Barry 1919. Uta Hagen 1919. Rex Everhart 1920. Paul Lynde 1926. Athol Fugard 1932. Gene Wilder 1933. Daniel Sullivan 1940. Lorraine Serabian 1945. Laurie Anderson 1947. Richard Thomas 1951. Julie Hagerty 1955. Polly Draper 1956. Helen Hunt 1963. Jere Shea 1965. Neil Patrick Harris 1973.

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