In the Carlyle Hotel’s Royal Suite, Tiffany’s iconic crack-of-dawn window-shopper was having her theatrical coming-out party. We’re talkin’ Broadway here—the belated stage bow of Breakfast at Tiffany’s—and Sean Mathias, the British director who’ll bring it to pass March 20 at the Cort, was holding forth.
“This will be like seeing a new play,” he promised Read More
It was not the sort of applause that generally greets a star. It was that more rarefied kind reserved for somebody truly beloved. Last December, when Judith Light took to the stage of the New Amsterdam at The 24th Annual Gypsy of the Year competition to do what has become her regular moment-of-silence spot for those lost to AIDS, there was a massive outpouring of affection. A longtime Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS standard-bearer, she couldn’t be better cast for the bit, her voice ringing with dignity and compassion. But that reception set off in me a wave of jealousy, along with the toxic thought, “Damn! They love her as much as I do!” Read More
Douglas Carter Beane is aflutter these days, flitting from one fairyland to another like a hummingbird in heat. These are fairylands of his own making or, in the case of his Cinderella, which is bowing March 3 at the Broadway Theatre, remaking; his from-the-ground-up original play The Nance follows suit April 15 at the Lyceum. Read More
Holland Taylor has had it with these people who order “painfully dry vodka martinis.” Pa-lease! “First of all, that’s not a martini because a martini is gin,” she pointed out in a recent interview. “Not that I’m a person very opinionated about it, but the original ratio of gin to vermouth in a martini was one to three. Now, people swish it around in a glass, throw it out and call that a martini. The whole thing is the interaction of the vermouth with the gin. It’s a chemical interaction. When I taste a well-made martini, I think, ‘If I could just hold on to this taste forever, it’d be great.’” Read More
They call him “The Actor Whisperer,” this soft-spoken Scot who finesses quality work from his casts, more often than not without them ever being aware of the strings he pulls or the buttons he pushes. John Doyle’s directing is subtle sleight-of-hand stuff, and it doesn’t get nearly the amount of press as his signature mannerism—turning his actors into his orchestra by having them play musical instruments as well as roles.
That’s how he bowed on Broadway, with Patti LuPone doubling on meat pies and tuba in 2005’s Sweeney Todd. He followed that with Raul Esparza on piano in 2006’s Company. The first got him a Best Director Tony, the second a Best Musical Tony. Read More
In May of 1999, at the cast party that followed the final “Encores!” presentation of Do Re Mi at City Center, Betty Comden and Adolph Green stepped up to the mic—beaming brightly—to thank all the miracle workers who’d made the show happen.
“Adolph and I really never thought we’d see this show again in our lifetime, and here it is,” Ms. Comden confessed with a grand sweep of her left arm, following that up just as quickly with an equally grand sweep of her right arm, “and there it was.” Read More
Shirtless, shiftless drifter Hal Carter swaggers into a small Kansas burg one Labor Day weekend, inflames libidos right and left and, by the time everybody’s ready to return to work, has made off with the heart of the prettiest girl in town, Madge Owens, a five-and-dime clerk earmarked for Easy Street once she weds Hal’s old frat buddy Alan Seymour, the factory owner’s son. But Hal has high hopes he’ll land a job bellhopping in Tulsa—he tells her as he races after a passing freight train—and that’s enough for her to hop the next bus out of town. Love will find a way, right? Read More
THERE WAS AN Annie before the original 1977 Annie we all know and love—before its much-hyped 1990 sequel, Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge, crashed on takeoff and burned out of town at the Kennedy Center in 1990; before Annie Warbucks rose from those ashes for a redeemably respectable run Off Broadway three years later; before it celebrated its 20th anniversary Broadway revival with Nell Carter (and some newbie named Sutton Foster playing A Star to Be); and before its current resurrection starts previews today for a Nov. 8 premiere at the Palace, starring Katie Finneran as horrible Miss Hannigan. Read More
Anytime anybody mentions Michael Shannon, the first reaction is, ‘That guy’s an amazing actor’—I mean, universally, everyone knows this to be true, because it is.”
That’s Paul Rudd waxing rhapsodic about the man he will start sharing the stage and marquee of the Cort Theatre with Sept. 13 when previews begin for Craig Wright’s Grace—and, even in that euphoric description, you can hear the “but” coming. “The second thing I seem to hear from people,” he gingerly post-scripted, “is, ‘Jesus, he’s scary! He’s so intimidating!’” Read More
Sir Charles Spencer “Charlie” Chaplin packed a lot into his 88 years. Had he only been the premier comic genius of the 20th century; had he only been, in his heyday, the best-known and wealthiest person on planet earth; had he not been a divining rod for political controversy, no matter what time or cause; had he not been such a rabid womanizer that he married four times to kick the habit; had he not been, after all of those years of American productivity, still a British citizen and thus forced into exile for decades of unpaid taxes, it might have been easier to make a musical out of his story. But he was all of those things—and only Evelyn Wood could fit such a full life into two hours. Read More
