To anyone wondering about this blog...

South Florida Theatre News has been silent for quite some time now and some of you have been wondering why.  Let me just say first that SFTN has no plans of going away.  The more outlets the South Florida Theatre Community has to get information out to the public the better. 

As anyone who reads this blog and/or the "What I've been doing..." tab on the right hand side knows, I am also a sound designer and theatre tech in the community.  The amount of work that I have been getting over the past year has steadily been growing.  And with the 2012-2013 theatre season upon us, I am busier then I have ever been.  Just this past week I opened up two great shows (How I survived this is beyond me): "Sylvia" for the Boca Raton Theatre Guild and "The All American Genderf*ck Cabaret" for Thinking Cap Theatre.  Both are great shows and I encourage you to see them.  The "Cabaret" one I am running so say hi to the guy in the booth if you come by.

It is great doing what I love with so many talented theatre companies.  However, with my day job and family life, it leaves virtually no time left over to get posts ready for this blog.  For that I apologize.

I do not plan on going away and neither should you.  The going will be slow as I try to integrate posting back into my routine, but I do hope to get back on to a more consistent schedule in the foreseeable future.  I will also update the side tab more frequently to keep you up to date with all of my current projects.

Thank you for reading South Florida Theatre News.  And remember that you are our most valuable patron.  Without you, we wouldn’t be here.

David W. Hart

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The Past Week In Theatre History (Aug 20 – Aug 24)

PLAYBILL VAULT'S Today in Theatre History: AUGUST 20-24

By Ernio Hernandez, David Gewirtzman
and Robert Viagas, Doug Nevin

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Current Productions for the week of August 20, 2012

Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill
At Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Aug 26
It’s 1959 and legendary musical performer Billie Holiday is just four months away from death as she steps to the microphone in a seedy bar in Philadelphia for one of her final performances. Though she is there to sing, the audience will find she has a lot more on her mind than music. In addition to featuring a dozen of her hits, Holiday tells the tale of who she is, in her own original style.


The Twentieth Century Way by Tom Jacobson
At Empire Stage Until Sept 9
Presented by Island City Stage
Awarded the 2011 PEN Award for Drama and the 2010 NY International Fringe Festival Award for Overall Excellence in Production of a Play, The Twentieth Century Way is based on a little-known incident in history.  This theatrical thrill ride explores the collision of reality and fantasy as two actors, auditioning for a film, end up juggling roles that eventually lead to entrapment of homosexuals for "social vagrancy" in the Long Beach, California of 1914.

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Reviews for the week of July 30, 2012

The Naked Stage presents The Turn of the Screw written by Jeffrey Hatcher.  Directed by Margaret M. Ledford and Staring: Matthew William Chizever and Katharine Amadeo. 

Design Team:  Lighting Design – Margaret M. Ledford;  Sound Design – Matt Corey;  Costume Design – Leslye Menshouse;  Set Design – Antonio Amadeo.

Bill Hirschman reviewed the show for the Florida Theatre On Stage.

Naked Stage’s Turn of the Screw Is Superbly-Crafted Ghost Story

Gather round the campfire whose glow barely keeps the darkness at bay and listen to master storytellers spin you a summer night’s ghost story.  There are no special effects, no makeup, no chainsaws, nothing but two actors, a couple of candles and the chilling truth that horror lies not in the sight of a blood-soaked maniac, but in the interior terror of the mind.

With the skill of an orchestra conductor, director Margaret M. Ledford has deftly wrought a world of half-shadows and whispers. She paces the evening masterfully, from Chizever’s slow delivery of passages like a connoisseur savoring the bouquet of a fine wine, to rapid-fire exchanges between angst-engorged characters, to the terror-fueled crescendo of  souls and minds twirling on the precipice of damnation and insanity.

Katherine Amadeo, as a sexually-repressed governess in 1872 England, smoothly traces the governess’ arc from a naïf confidently eager to meet a challenge to a terrified unhinged victim. As she descends, her visage and quavering voice mirror her imperiled soul under attack, exuding both strength and fragility.

Chizever pulls off the difficult trick of portraying four different characters. Several local actors have transformed from one personality to another in a split second. What Chizever accomplishes is making each so credible that you stop marveling at the acting and just forget it’s a young man playing a middle-aged domestic or a deeply disturbed boy.

Naked Stage, which has had so little finances that it has had to scrap some productions, makes a little go a long way. Nowhere is this more evident than in how Antonio Amadeo designs evocative settings in Barry University’s shoebox of a theater. Working in tandem with Ledford’s lighting, Amadeo has taken some molding, empty picture frames, an armchair and a staircase that leads nowhere to create a fully-realized world.

There is only one misstep. Chizever provides the sound effects of disembodied wails, the whoosh of a sudden draft and the ominous tolling of a clock’s gong. His sonorous baritone serves him well all night, even when imitating women and children. But for some reason, his noises ring so manufactured that they nearly elicit laughs.

 

Christine Dolen reviewed for the The Miami Herald:

Katherine Amadeo and Matthew William Chizever go gothic in ‘Turn of the Screw.’

Jeffrey Hatcher’s stage adaptation of James’ 1898 novella, first staged locally at New Theatre in 1998, utilizes just two actors, one to portray the ghost-haunted governess, the other in multiple roles.

The housekeeper, the governess, Miles and his mute younger sister Flora are ostensibly alone at Bly, the story’s gothic mansion. But all too soon, the governess begins spotting a man and a woman, as the children grow increasingly agitated. Is the woman Miss Jessel, the dead former governess? Is the man Peter Quint, Jessel’s sadistic lover, a man also among the departed? Or is the new governess inching toward madness?

For the audience, the answers to those questions barely matter. Turn of the Screw is all about atmosphere, mood and goosebumps. Director and lighting designer Ledford conjures all those things, in collaboration with Antonio Amadeo, whose predominantly gray period set keeps the focus on the expressive faces of the actor-storytellers; Leslye Menshouse, whose dark costumes do the same; and Matt Corey, whose sound design dials up the tension at key moments.

Michelle Petrucci reviewed the show for Broadway World  

The Naked Stage's THE TURN OF THE SCREW Haunts The Pelican Theatre

As eerie candlelight dances across dark walls, two actors create an intensely creepy world that extends past the fourth wall and lures the audience into its chilling tale. With great use of theatrical magic, The Naked Stage manages to transform a tiny black box theatre into a grandiose haunted mansion with the use of slight shifts of light, simple blocking patterns and the dynamic believability of both actors.

The result is an absolute must-see piece of theatre. The Pelican Theatre is located on the campus of Barry University in Miami Shores and “The Turn of the Screw” runs through August 12^th. 

The Mad Cat Theatre Company presents The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show by Jessica Farr and Paul Tei.  Directed by Paul Tei and Staring: Ken Clement, Troy Davidson, Giordan Diaz, Jessica Farr, Carey Brianna Hart, Christopher A. Kent, Emilie Papp, Theo Reyna, and Brian Sayre.

Design Team: Lighting Design – Melissa Santiago Keenan;  Sound Designer and Composer – Matt Corey;  Costume Design – Leslye Menshouse Davidson;  Set Design – Sean McClelland.

Christine Dolen reviewed for the The Miami Herald:

Playwrights Jessica Farr and Paul Tei reinterpret ‘Hamlet’ for 21st century audiences

The bones of William Shakespeare’s great tragedy are visible in The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show, Jessica Farr and Paul Tei’s ambitious deconstruction of a world theater classic. Yet this Mad Cat Theatre Company take on Hamlet has had so much work done – the dramatic equivalent of Botox, a facelift, some anti-aging human growth hormone – that the play at its core is sometimes buried under an avalanche of ideas.

The script by Tei (who has staged the production) and Farr (who plays German playwright Heiner Müller as a Cabaret-influenced manipulative narrator) is actually a mash-up of Shakespeare, Müller’s postmodern 1977 drama Die Hamletmaschine ( The Hamletmachine) and the Mad Cat duo’s 21st century take on the drama’s characters and ideas. It incorporates a DJ (the recorded voice of Dave Corey), a Skype version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Erik Fabregat and Ralph de la Portilla), live musicians (Christopher Kent playing guitar and bass, Brian Sayre on percussion), singing, texting, a snippet of a poetry slam and the roaming, disembodied voice of Hamlet’s dead father (James Samuel Randolph).

The emotionally deadened Hamlet (Troy Davidson) is now the nephew/stepson of the American President Claudius (Ken Clement). He’s the guy who murdered Hamlet’s father and married Hamlet Sr.’s newly widowed Gertrude (Carey Brianna Hart). Claudius’ advisor Polonius, the vice-president, is a hand puppet operated and voiced by Clement, who utters those lines in a bad Cuban-accented English. Ophelia (Emilie Paap), Polonius’ flame-haired adopted daughter, is the moody object of Hamlet’s affections. Her bro Laertes (Giordan Diaz) is clearly crushing on her too. Hamlet’s best bud Horatio (Theo Reyna) and various minor characters like a hot-shot actor and an Irish gravedigger (Kent plays those and others) round out the cast.

Bill Hirschman reviewed the show for the Florida Theatre On Stage.

Mad Cat’s Hamlet Dog and Pony Show Makes You Laugh, Think and Scratch Your Head

Theater should not be safe, comforting and familiar; it should be an unsettling stimulus for a fresh examination of life and society. Conventional expectations be damned.

This Hamlet is a stylized mashup of Shakespeare, Brecht and 21^st Century performance art that examines existentialism versus nihilism by setting the vacillating Dane in a fantasia of modern American politics and power.

Like an atom careening around a chain reaction, it is by turns inventive, self-indulgent, exciting, boring, and, above all, sometimes insightful, sometimes incomprehensible. In other words, it’s a mess. An undeniably entertaining mess, a decidedly thought-provoking mess, but a mess.

Farr and Tei deserve laurels for shoving past mainstream strictures with intelligence and a unique artistic sensibility. Doubtless, Farr and Tei can explain the relevance of every moment to its themes. But the relevance isn’t vaguely perceptible to the audience in many moments and even long stretches. Perpetual clarity is hardly a necessary element of theater, but for this dinosaur of a critic, the audience’s comprehension even on an unconscious or visceral level is part of the artistic equation if you want them to connect to your piece.

For instance, one scene features a Cuban-American Laertes whipping up a crowd at a street rally in Miami attended by the Anglo Horatio. The two argue through bullhorns whether Spanish women received proper credit for financing the American Revolution, illustrating a clash of xenophobias. That’s a fascinating historical tidbit and a rare depiction of interracial politics in modern Miami. But it’s relevance to this specific play is murky and goes on far too long if all it’s doing is reflecting a tumultuous social background.

Many of the staging ideas are delicious, such as Hamlet texting his “doubt truth to be a liar” love letter to Ophelia’s cell phone. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Skyped in. Secretary of State Polonius is a hand puppet operated by the venal President Claudius. Some ideas, though, go too far such as burying the German emcee under an accent so thick that we can’t understand her.

 

Ron Levitt reviewed the show for ENV Magazine

THEATRICAL, INTELLECTUAL INSIGHT COLLIDE IN MAD CAT’S CREATIVE LOOK AT HAMLET 2012

There are several words which come to mind in order to fairly critique Mad Cat Theatre’s world premiere of The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show, the 2012 version of Shakespeare’s great tragedy brought to life here by playwrights Jessica Farr and talented South Florida writer/actor Paul Tei. The first is “theatre” and the second is “intellectual.”

As “theatre” this two and a half hour show meets a lot of the criteria to entertain with a galaxy of unexpected items -music, sound, video projections, irreverent lingo, the use of cellphones, puppets; –you name it! Tei , who also directed and Farr, who has a major role among the acting crew, utilize just about everything theatrical as they deconstruct Shakespeare and attempt to bring the Bard’s hero from Elsinmore into the current decade. From, the very beginning, the audience is aware that all of the action is taking place in a big tent, reminiscent of a circus, Even, the final moments of the play are unexpected and laugh-inducing as a movie show lists the “screen credits.” There is little doubt the playwrights are attempting to put the Great Dane into our Century and amidst American politics with references to Bush’s “NO (insert a word) BE LEFT BEHIND,” the second amendment guarantee allowing anyone to carry a gun, other U.S. Constitutional and legal rights, the Cuban influx to Miami and a variety of euphemisms and local connections.

Yes, theatrically The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show has something for almost everyone!

On the other hand, comes the subject of intellect. Just how much of Hamlet must one recall from his or her high school or college literature class? You may recall the characters’ names, even some ofthe plot, but is this enough to keep its audience in memory mode? And even if you recall the Bard’s character, do you know anything about Heiner Mueller, who (along with Shakespeare) inspired Farr/Tei to write The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show. The playbill actually spelled his name Muller (without the Eor simple E WITH A DOUBLE PERIOD ATOP -rare on most American typewriters to be fair),ls it a possibility they purposely misspelled the name of their inspiration? Mueller (with an E) was a lending 20th century German writer/essayist/dramatist who wrote the mind-bending The Hamletmachine, and gained fame among the literary/political set for his power packed resistance to what was happening in his homeland some 30 years before the reality ofthe pre-world war Eurostate.

Certainly, some knowledge of Mueller would be helpful in understand what Farr/Tei had in mind when they created The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show. (Mueller also used music, sound, double and triple entendres, and references to make his points explosively while using the Hamlet connection.) Credit Farr/Tei for following in such respected feet, But, seriously, will the audience get it? Maybe I underestimate the intellect ofthe local aUQience! …. The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show wraps up Mad Cat Theatre’s 12th season since its founding by the irreverent genius TeL His press material says this play asks the age old question -To Be or Not To Be? -how valid is today’s society in dealing with its problems.

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Current Productions for the week of July 30, 2012

Peter Pan Staring Cathy Rigby
At The Kravis Center Until Aug 5
Tony® Award nominee Cathy Rigby takes flight in an all-new production of Peter Pan. Discover the Magic all over again of this two-time Emmy® Award-winning and two-time Tony® Award-nominated production. The New York Times says “Rigby still carries off the flights, fights and acrobatics that make Peter Pan audiences mesmerized.”


Baby GirL by Kim Ehly
At Empire Stage in association with
The Kutumba Theatre Project Until August 5
What if you were conceived twice in one lifetime: once by the illegitimate passionate sex of a young couple and then by a "missionary position" lovemaking, conservative couple who long to have a child.  What if you were adopted by the married couple, only to find out you are everything they can't stand...I mean, understand? After being coming out as a lesbian and being alienated by her adoptive family, Ashley, a spirited young daydreamer, goes on an extraordinary journey to find love and a place to call home.


Race
At The Gable Stage Until August 5
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards. This probing work about the resilience of the human spirit during times of war is a searing variation on Brecht's Mother Courage, translated to a brothel in the conflict-torn Congo. By the author of Intimate Apparel, a GableStage hit in 2006.


Hair
At The Andrews Living Arts Studio Until August 5
Hair tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active, long-haired hippies during the "Age of Aquarius" living a bohemian lifestyle in the City of New York; fighting against the Vietnam War and the traditional values of the “Establishment”. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends, Woof Hud, Jeanie Crissy along with other “Tribe” members struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution while rebelling against the war, their conservative parents and society. 


The Turn of the Screw
At The Naked Stage Until August 5
A young governess journeys to a lonely English manor house to care for two recently orphaned children.  Her predecessor, Miss Jessel, drowned herself when she became pregnant by the sadistic valet, Peter Quint, who was himself, found dead soon after the mysterious circumstances.  Now, the new governess has begun to see the specters of Quint and Jessel haunting the children.  She must find a way to stop the fiends before it is too late.  But are the ghosts real?


The Fantasticks by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt
Palm Beach Dramaworks Until August 5
In this captivating love story about a boy, a girl, two fathers and a wall, the narrator, El Gallo, creates a world of moonlight and magic, then pain and disillusionment, until the boy and girl find their way back to each other. The score, which includes "Try to Remember," is as timeless as the story itself!


REAL MEN SING SHOW TUNES...and play with puppets
At The Actors Playhouse Until August 12
GET REAL! And GET READY for a song-filled adult comedy about Real Men behaving like, well...REAL MEN. Get an inside glimpse of what it takes to be a man in a modern world shared with women, children, and yes, even puppets. Real Men, who make a habit of juggling their balls every day; fatherhood, mid-life crisis, dating, marriage, potency, sexuality, and the lack of it. REAL MEN answers the one pertinent question that’s on everyone’s mind... “Do Real Men sing show tunes and play with puppets?”.


The Donkey Show
At The Adrienne Arsht Center Until August 12
In the spirit of Studio 54, come party on the dance floor to all the '70s disco hits you know by heart as the show unfolds around you! Get the bouncer's attention—and you'll hustle right in! Get down and boogie with the star-crossed lovers, or watch from the sidelines - if that's the way you like it. And don't stop til you get enough! You can party into the night and live out your own fabulous disco fantasy.


Closer by Patrick Marber
At The Main Street Players Until August 12
This play is a brutal anatomy of modern romance, where a quartet of strangers meet, fall in love, and become caught up in a web of sexual desire and betrayal.  It was one of the best plays of the 1990’s and won the Olivier Award for best new play as well as the New York Drama’s Critic Circle Award for best foreign play.  It is one of the best plays of sexual politics in the language.
CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE & ADULT CONTENT.


The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show by Jessica Farr and Paul Tei
At the Mad Cat Theatre Until August 12
The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show is an abbreviated and psychedelically exaggerated sample of the Hamlet tragedy.  A layered semi-musical deconstruction that touches upon Heiner Muller’s HamletMachine and his use of sampling, Prince’s Purple Rain, OFWGKTA, fear of death, the seeds of hate, depression and the implications of current day political and social figures in America, more specifically, on the campaign trial.


Divorce Party: The Musical
At The Kravis Center Until Aug 19
Still reeling from her divorce, Linda is rescued by her three friends who have come to turn her despair into a weekend of hilarity. Using popular songs with clever new lyrics, the ladies sing and dance their way through the wildest divorce party ever. From the Producer who brought you the off-Broadway hit Menopause the Musical, it’s the ultimate Girls’ Night Out, coupled with a healthy dose of comic mayhem and a touch of “naughty.”

Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill

At Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Aug 26

It’s 1959 and legendary musical performer Billie Holiday is just four months away from death as she steps to the microphone in a seedy bar in Philadelphia for one of her final performances. Though she is there to sing, the audience will find she has a lot more on her mind than music. In addition to featuring a dozen of her hits, Holiday tells the tale of who she is, in her own original style.

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Peter Pan Staring Cathy Rigby

The Kravis Center Presents
Peter Pan Staring Cathy Rigby
Aug 1 - Aug 5

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The Past Week In Theatre History (July 23 – July 27)

PLAYBILL VAULT'S Today in Theatre History: JULY 23 – 27

By David Gewirtzman, Ernio Hernandez, Doug Nevin and Robert Viagas

1853    Birthday of Broadway impresario David Belasco, namesake of the Belasco Theatre, who wrote and/or produced dozens of plays including The Return of Peter Grimm and Laugh, Clown, Laugh!, and two that inspired great operas, Madame Butterfly and Girl of the Golden West. His ghost is believed to haunt the Broadway theatre that bears his name.

1856    A Dramatic genius is born today in the person of George Bernard Shaw. Among Shaw's many playwriting credits will be Pygmalion, Man and Superman and Saint Joan. The former play, a comedy about one Professor Henry Higgins determined to turn a cockney flower girl into a "lady," would become the basis for the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe masterpiece My Fair Lady.

1920    Producer Alexander H. Cohen, known for bringing quality plays to Broadway for six decades, is born today. Lastly represented on Broadway by the Noel Coward play, Waiting in the Wings, starring Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris, he will produce 101 Broadway shows, including the 1964 Hamlet starring Richard Burton, Harold Pinter’s drama The Homecoming, Peter Brook’s Tony Award-winning La Tragedie De Carmen, James Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown starring Zero Mostel, Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Long Day's Journey Into Night and Ah, Wilderness!, both starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst. He will live to age 79.

1938    Helen Hayes is named the stage's greatest performer when the New York Sun prints its list of great performers today. Compiled after polling 150 notable people, mostly in the theatre industry, the list names Katharine Cornell as runner-up. The pair of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne is third and others on the list include John Barrymore, Maude Adams and John Gielgud.

1955    The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company presents King Lear. Sir John Gielgud, Helen Cherry and Claire Bloom star in this latest production of the Shakespearean tragedy.

1962    Comic actor Victor Moore dies today at age 86. Moore clowned around opposite straight man William Gaxton in seven original Broadway musicals, including Anything Goes, Of Thee I Sing, and Louisiana Purchase. As a dramatic actor, Moore appeared in a revival of On Borrowed Time and in the Hollywood film "Swing Time."

1975    After a smash run at The Public Theater in New York City, the Marvin Hamlisch-Edward Kleban musical A Chorus Line makes the move uptown to Broadway's Shubert Theatre. The Michael Bennett-helmed show, including such songs as "What I Did for Love" and "One," features Donna McKechnie, Kelly Bishop and Robert LuPone. A Chorus Line will truly prove to be, as its lyrics say, "one singular sensation," racking up 6,137 performances to become Broadway's longest running show up to that time. (In June 1997, Cats will break that record.) A 1985 film version of A Chorus Line, directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, will feature Michael Douglas and Terrence Mann in its cast.

1982    Little Shop of Horrors begins a 2,209-performance run today at Off-Broadway's Orpheum Theatre. Based on the Roger Corman cult classic about a man-eating plant, this Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical stars Lee Wilkof and Ellen Greene. The 1986 film version of the musical, directed by Frank Oz, will star Rick Moranis, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, John Candy, and Greene reprising her stage role as Audrey.

1985    Film buffs will be interested to know that up until this day in 1985, Tony-winner Mandy Patinkin was to star opposite Meryl Streep in the Mike Nichols film Heartburn. After this one day of shooting, however, Patinkin is replaced on the project by Academy Award-winner Jack Nicholson. The Evita star's future film credits will include 1987's "The Princess Bride" and 1990's "Dick Tracy." He will return to Broadway in fall 1998 with his one-man show Mamaloshen.

1992    Broadway star Alfred Drake, 78, dies today. Born Alfred Cappuro, Drake went on to star in the original productions of such Broadway musical classics as Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate, and Kismet. For a time in 1953, Drake replaced Yul Brynner as the King of Siam in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's The King and I, a role he had turned down when the show was first being produced.

1996    Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's musical The Fantasticks, which opened Off-Broadway May 3, 1960 plays its 15,000th performance. The story about two young neighbors whose stars are crossed purposely by their fathers' fake feuding runs at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City's Greenwich Village. It will close in January 2002.

1996    Tony Award-winning musical star Patti LuPone returns to the Broadway stage tonight in Terrence McNally's Master Class. Taking over the reins from the play's original Tony Award-winning star, Zoe Caldwell, LuPone is said to speed up the evening's proceedings significantly, due to her fast-paced interpretation. When LuPone finishes her run as opera diva Maria Callas in this Tony-winning play, stage and television star Dixie Carter will become the third -- and final -- actress to play Callas in the production. Faye Dunaway will play the part on tour.

1997    After 738 performances, the Broadway production of Victor/Victoria will terminate its run after today's matinee performance. Based on the 1982 Blake Edwards film of the same name, the Edwards-helmed stage version of Victoria opened in fall 1995 at the Marriott Marquis with stage and screen legend Julie Andrews in the leading role(s). Andrews had also starred in the film version, earning an Academy Award nomination for her performance. During the first year of the show's run, Andrews and the show became the center of a Tony nomination controversy. When Victor/ Victoria failed to garner any nominations other than the goes-without-saying citing for Andrews, the actress announced she would decline that honor in protest of the nominating committee ignoring all other members of what she called an "egregiously overlooked" company. Subsequent stars of the Broadway production were Liza Minnelli, who filled in for several weeks while Andrews took a vacation, and Raquel Welch.

1997    Following a sold-out limited run at Greenwich House, Douglas Carter Beane's comedy, As Bees in Honey Drown, begins a commercial Off-Broadway run today at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Although Bo Foxworth has taken over the lead role from Josh Hamilton, who must leave to honor a film commitment, most of the cast, including J. Smith-Cameron, T. Scott Cunningham, Sandra Daley, and Mark Nelson, remains intact.

1999    Cross-dressing British comedian Eddie Izzard begins previews for Lenny, the biopic on the life of American shock comedian Lenny Bruce. The production, directed by Sir Peter Hall, plays at the Queen's Theatre in London. Izzard is best known for his touring comedy shows and videos such as Dress to Kill and Glorious.

1999    Andrea Martin is The Cat in the Hat in the workshop of the new Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical, The Seussical (later known as Seussical the Musical, and then just Seussical) in Toronto. Director Frank Galati helms a cast that includes Kevin Chamberlin, Jason Fuchs, Janine LaManna, David Lowenstein, Michele Pawk, and others. The musical based on the work of late children's author Dr. Seuss (real name: Theodore Geisel) will open at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre Nov. 30, 2000 — but with David Shiner as the Cat.

1999    Writer-performers David Collins and Shane Dundas join the likes of Metallica, Alanis Morisette, the Dave Matthews Band, Rage Against the Machine, Buckcherry and Sheryl Crow as they perform at Woodstock '99 in Rome, New York. At the time, the duo, better known as The Umbilical Brothers, also perform their Off-Broadway show Thwak at the Minetta Lane Theatre.

2000    Tony Award-winning director Joseph Hardy returns to San Diego's Old Globe with Alan Ayckbourn as he helms Things We Do for Love, which begins performances tonight. Charlotte Booker, Monique Fowler, Tom Lacy and Dennis Parlato star in the romantic comedy as the tenants of a Victorian home-turned boarding house.

2000    Thrice extended at Chicago's Goodman Studio Theatre, Rebecca Gilman's comedy Spinning Into Butter officially opens in New York City at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Directed by Daniel Sullivan, the show featuring Hope Davis and Daniel Jenkins exposes the cosmetic and sometimes destructive political correctness that erupts on a small Vermont college campus when an African-American student finds several racist notes pinned to his door.

2000    Nathan Lane stars as Sheridan Whiteside and Jean Smart stars as Lorraine Sheldon in the revival of the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play, The Man Who Came to Dinner, which opens tonight at the Roundabout Theatre Company's new Broadway house, the American Airlines Theatre. Lane will probably be remembered more for his second starring role of the season, as Max Bialystock in The Producers which won him the Tony for Best Actor. The American Airlines Theatre is the refurbished and rechristened Selwyn Theatre on 42nd Street.

2001    Alan King's solo show, Mr. Goldwyn debuts at New York Stage & Film at Vassar College. The production later transfers to Off-Broadway.

2001    Director-choreographer Graciela Daniele's revival Annie Get Your Gun, celebrates its 1,000th performance at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. Leads on that date are Crystal Bernard and Tom Wopat.

2001    Mike Nichols' starry production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull begins performances at Central Park's Delacorte Theatre. Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline head the cast as Arkadina and Trigorin. Also in the cast are Marcia Gay Harden as Masha, Natalie Portman as Nina, Christopher Walken as Sorin, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Konstantin, John Goodman as Shamrayev, Debra Monk as Polina, Stephen Spinella as Medvedyev and Larry Pine as Dorn.

2002    Clark Gesner, the composer of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, one of the most simple-hearted and frequently-produced musicals in the history of the American theatre, dies at 64. He is visiting the Princeton Club in Manhattan when he suffers a fatal heart attack.

2003    Actor and comedian Bob Hope dies at age 100. Though he's known primarily for his film career, he appeared in eight Broadway musicals in the late 1920s and early 1930s, notably Jerome Kern's Roberta, Cole Porter's Red, Hot and Blue! and Vernon Duke's Ziegfeld Follies of 1936.

2004    Like an open vein, water from a burst pipe spurts into the stage left wing of the Belasco Theatre, halting rehearsals for Dracula, the Musical two days before its first preview. Due to the spillage, the show will eventually start July 30.

2008    Bruce Adler, the scion of Yiddish theatre family who went on to have much success on the Broadway stage, winning two Tony Award nominations, dies at age 63. He had been battling liver cancer for several years. Adler, in the mid-1990s, played to huge success with a series of shows in the theatres of South Florida, from the Palm Beaches to Ft. Lauderdale to Miami.  His shows paid tribute to the performers who had shaped his own style including Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis, Jr., Red Buttons, Cab Calloway and Jimmy Durante, among others. Bruce Adler's first marriage ended in divorce in 2002. He married director/actress Amy London in 2003. In February 2007, he and London had their only child together, Jacob Hayden Adler.

2008    I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, which opened at the Westside Theatre Aug. 1, 1996, plays its final performance at that Off-Broadway venue. The musical revue played a total of 20 previews and 5,003 regular performances, making it the second longest-running musical in Off-Broadway history.

2008    Stuart W. Little, who for three decades covered the New York theatre as a reporter and author, dies at age 86. He wrote a theatre column for the New York Herald Tribune from 1958 until the newspaper closed in 1966. Thereafter, he became known for a series of books that examined the inner workings of the theatre business.

2009    Merce Cunningham, the American choreographer who was one of the most important and influential forces in the dance world during the 20th century, dies at age 90.

2011    Jane White, a stage veteran who created the role of Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, dies at age 88. Ms. White, a New York City native who grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem and attended Smith College and the New School, also appeared on Broadway in Strange Fruit, Take a Giant Step and the 2001 revival of Follies.

Today's Birthdays: Alexandre Dumas, fils 1824.  William Gillette 1853.  Nat C. Goodwin 1859.  Montague Glass 1877.  Lord Dunsany 1878.  Arthur Treacher 1894.  Aldous Huxley 1894.  Gracie Allen 1895.  Herbert Fields 1897.  Jack Gilford 1908.  Vivian Vance 1909.  Helen Martin 1909.  Keenan Wynn 1916.  Blake Edwards 1922.  Jason Robards, Jr. 1922.  Estelle Getty 1923.  Barbara Harris 1935.  Chris Sarandon 1942.  Santo Loquasto 1944.  Helen Mirren 1945.  Larry Shue 1946.  Maureen McGovern 1949.  Simon Jones 1950.  Kevin Spacey 1959.  Woody Harrelson 1961.  Jeremy Piven 1965.  Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967.  Kristin Chenoweth 1968.  Tamyra Gray 1979.

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