Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Do we have the Beatles to thank -- or blame-- for John Doyle’s concept of having actors play instruments in musicals? The director actually thought of the convention in the early &lsqu…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMMonday, September 12, 2011
By Peter Filichia --
We might not have had Avenue Q, A Chorus Line, Nine, Once on This Island and Ragtime and plenty of other excellent musicals without him.
He was Lehman Engel, who was t…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:50PMAt this time of year, I always think of Jeffrey Landman, an actor whom I’ve admired since he was a kid. We met in 1993, when he performed at a press event for Ahrens and Menken’s…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:01AMFriday, September 9, 2011
Roy GroethingLiz Wisan left, cradles Kayla Maisonet in the Premiere Stages production of the new drama, "Hannah." It’s one of the most poignant moments that the New Jersey stage …
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:50AMMichael Cumpsty will play Benedick at Two River Theater Company No, Michael Cumpsty didn’t moan when he heard the news. Of course, he was thrilled when his life partner John Dias was named…
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:43AMLike so many of us, Mark Winkler doesn’t like jukebox musicals, either. So seven years ago, when his pal Larry Dean Harris offered to create a musical from his 10 albums worth of jazz …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMWednesday, September 7, 2011
Family members talk about Sept. 11, 10 years after the event, in the new play, âSweet and Sad,â in New York. On Sept. 11, 2001, all theaters went dark in New Jersey and New York. B…
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:13AMFILE PHOTOJane Krakowski Homecoming queen Jane Krakowski will return to her Jersey roots and do a concert: “An Evening With Jane Krakowski” plays Oct. 1 at Enlow Recital Hall, 215 North …
SOURCE: NJ.com at 06:58AMSiouxsie Suarez From left, Jen Ring, John P. Keller and Kiley Oram in the William Shakespeare comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." People are always complaining about the price of …
SOURCE: NJ.com at 06:43AMSo I just heard the closing number from Rebecca, and it's terrific. All right, it's not the finale of the musical version that's been promised for Broadway next spring. Instead, it's the ope…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMTuesday, September 6, 2011
It all started in rural Illinois when she was three. “My great aunt was a honky-tonk pianist,” says Marianne Challis. “And soon I was in front of people singing ‘Twen…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 09:30AMWhen you watch a video or DVD at home, do you routinely press the subtitles button? I do – and not because I have any particular hearing deficiency. I just like to see how subtitlers i…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 09:30AMWell, we made it to the New Year. The worst any of our tombstones will state as our death date is 2011. Will it be the year that Perfect Crime finally dies, too? On Jan. 5, it hits its 9,700…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 09:30AMMonday, September 5, 2011
By Peter Filichia --
There are many wonderful aspects to the “40th Anniversary Celebration” of Godspell. How often is an original cast album (of the landmark 1971 off-Broadway productio…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:47PMWhen speaking to Thomas McCormack, I suddenly thought about my favorite moment in Moss Hart’s Act One. It took place in 1929, when Hart was then a nobody who’d only written a pla…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMFriday, September 2, 2011
Joe GeinertThe Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey ushers in the fall portion of its 2011 season with the Bardâs take of implacable jealousy, âOthello,â featuring a cast of Shak…
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:24AMHere I go, helping to prove my pal Howard Gradet’s theory that the average American is destined to run into a The Wizard of Oz reference at least once every 48 hours. But how can one n…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMWednesday, August 31, 2011
It was the month that I once again served on the ASCAP Awards Panel. We annually give out money to ambitious songwriters – be they composers and/or lyricists in the jazz, pop, hip-hop,…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMMonday, August 29, 2011
By Peter Filichia
I hate to see a great cast album suffer because of a hurricane.
During the last two weeks of August, Irene became a dirty word in the northeast. But no one should take …
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:45PMCongratulations to Peter Alfano, Anya Toes, John Atkins, Susan Berlin, Brigadude, Ellen Dweck, Laura Frankos, Martin Geiger, John Griffin, Marc Grossberg, Brian Hesse, Cathy Jones, Jack Lech…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:01AMFriday, August 26, 2011
I’m off to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, but flying to the Beaver State means stopping in Phoenix first. With 2,500 miles or so in front of me, I’ve got to take ple…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 02:31PMBefore I go to see William Inge’s 1955 hit, Bus Stop, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I decide to take in the pre-show noontime talk-in-the-park. I get there a few minutes before i…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 02:31PMActually, I’m worried for the married couple who came all the way from San Francisco to Ashland, Oregon. We met two days ago, in the shuttle bus that took us from our hotel to the Oreg…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 02:31PMLiz Wisan and Alan Coates in a rehearsal of "Hannah," which opens Thursday at Premiere Stages at Kean University in Union. Anne Frank is famous today for the diary she kept, chroni…
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:52AMGiven that this is the week that Chicago passes A Chorus Line in number of performances (6,138-plus), I thought I’d see how far the Kander-Ebb-Fosse musical has come in the last 38 yea…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:00AMWednesday, August 24, 2011
There was a time when we would have never predicted that Cher would win one Oscar or that Sally Field would win two. And right around the time when Pete Rose seemed as if he would be a lock …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMMonday, August 22, 2011
By Peter Filichia --
These days, there are some small recording companies that occasionally record cast albums for musicals that last a week or less. But paradoxically, in the Golden Age o…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:37PMWould you take your nine-year old to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Never mind the “adult themes.” Wouldn’t you also fear that your kid would be bored, and that he’d fore…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:09AMFriday, August 19, 2011
Musical follows the ups and downs of a 50-year marriage
SOURCE: NJ.com at 07:51AMYou’ve undoubtedly seen the 1959 movie musical of Collette’s Gigi. You may have seen the 1949 French non-musical movie, too; then again, you may not have, for soon after its Amer…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:02AMWednesday, August 17, 2011
When the character that the program identifies as Laura Wingfield briskly walks into the room, you know you’re not seeing The Glass Menagerie. But the program also tells us we’ll…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:01AM 
