“If you'd been any prettier…”“…it would have been
Florence of Arabia!”
- Noel CowardPeter Seamus O'Toole
2 August 1932 - 14 December 2013

a new twist, it seemsSondheim Working on a
Revised Version of Company
Patrick Healey

The acclaimed composer Stephen Sondheim and the Tony Award-winning director John Tiffany (Once) are collaborating on a major revision of Mr. Sondheim's celebrated 1970 musical Company, a project that Roundabout Theater Company is eyeing for a possible production, ( Read more... )

I'm extremely happy, but…

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=

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Dear Mr. & Mrs. Weissler et al.:
“Choreography in the style of Bob Fosse” and “Choreographed by Bob Fosse” really should be two different things.

That's not a knock, actually, it's more a nitpick about semantic accuracy.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to see a show so closely identified with Fosse without his ( Read more... )

bow downDame Helen Mirren, as Queen Elizabeth II
after a performance of Peter Morgan's The Audience
with tea guest, cancer patient Oliver BurtonHelen Mirren is Queen of Every Fucking Thing.
And don't you fucking forget it.

monday's silly fanboy, part 2
Hmmm.

An adequate performance in an otherwise lackluster episode.  And the quality of the whole show can't be blamed on the lack of air conditioning in the studio, it's all about mediocre song choices, either made or approved by the coaches.

If Sasha really wants to get away from “The Broadway Thing” and move more towards ( Read more... )

Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Sasha Allen as Ismene from The Gospel at Colonus, the first theatrical excerpt from Camp.

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(with Steven Cutts as Oedipus.)
Such a voice, right?

And then there's Dionne:

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Like her friend Amanda Brown, Sasha Allen is too damn good for The Voice, but hey, if that's what she wants to do, I'll vote for her every goddamn week.

Okay, so I'm behind.

This is the gay Dreamgirls excerpt that's been bouncing around on the net for a couple of days.  You know, the one from the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefit.  I'm still deciding.

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Apart from the whole “bringing the song down a third” thing (doing otherwise is an unreasonable expectation for most male singers short of ( Read more... )

I used to think that my problem with going to the theater was that I knew too many people within the local theatrical community for me to be able to watch shows subjectively.  The curve buster is that I still seem to have a heightened critical tendency even with programs where I don’t know anyone involved, cast or crew.

I think I figured it out, ( Read more... )

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Yeah, I know.  Every urban black theater company has taped performances of both The Colored Museum and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,  Don’t much care about that.

I have been quite annoyed by being unable to find my VHS recording of the 1991 television adaptation of the former for “Great Performances.”  Not ( Read more... )

The high point of my time-wasting Monday night:

Cynthia Nixon and John Benjamin Hickey, reunited on a different show and network, yet again sexing heterosexually in Laura Linney’s laundry room.

Or as Jacob Clifton so delicately put it: “And then there's Sean and Rebecca fucking in the basement with the kind of sizzling chemistry only two theatre- ( Read more... )