Category Archives: Broadway

Arthur Laurents, Legendary Librettist, Playwright, Screenwriter and Director, Dies at 93 – Playbill.com

One of the giants of the American Musical Theatre has passed…

Rest well, Arthur Laurents.  You’ve left us some great gifts…

I’ll even forgive you for allowing Patti Lupone’s Mama Rose in “Gypsy”, since you created that amazing character for so many other incredible performers.

Arthur Laurents, the irascible, enduring Man of the Theatre who wrote plays and screenplays and enjoyed a significant career as a director — but who made his lasting mark as the librettist to two landmark musicals, West Side Story and Gypsy — died May 5 at his Manhattan home after a short illness, his agent Jonathan Lomma confirmed. He was 93 years old, and died peacefully in his sleep.

via Arthur Laurents, Legendary Librettist, Playwright, Screenwriter and Director, Dies at 93 – Playbill.com.

And he directed the original La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway:

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Happy Birthday, Ella Fitzgerald

What is it with so many great singers/performers having their birthdays so close together??

There must be something to astrology after all….

The late, great Ella Fitzgerald would have been 93 today.

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Happy Birthday, Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine

Two icons were born today:  Barbra Streisand is 69 and Virginia’s own Shirley MacLaine is 77….

Of course, I have to put up a couple of clips:

A little prime Streisand:

And a little MacLaine:

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Easter Parade: Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine

A great version of this song….

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Judy Garland: Over the Rainbow, and Then Some!

In recognition of her Carnegie Hall Concert 50 years ago tonight, there’s a lot of new interest in Judy Garland.

Here is a great article from this month’s Vanity Fair:

In December 1959, Judy Garland, only 37 but with a quarter-century of hard living behind her, lay near death in New York’s Doctors Hospital. Alcohol and pills were the culprits. When in reasonably good health, Garland, who stood an inch under five feet, weighed 100 pounds. Now she weighed 180. Her tiny frame was grotesquely swollen with fluid and her liver severely compromised. Her eyes were glazed; her memory was failing; her body was shutting down. Walking by Garland’s hospital room, a close friend overheard a clutch of doctors discussing her condition. One of them turned to the friend. “I have to tell you the truth,” the doctor said. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”

She made it. “She had the constitution of an army,” Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft says. “She just knew she had to keep going.” But three weeks later, after 20 quarts of fluid had been drained from her body, her lead physician told Garland, “For the rest of your life, all your physical activity must be curtailed. You are a permanent semi-invalid.… It goes without saying that under no circumstances can you ever work again.”

Garland fell back onto her pillows. “Whoopee!” she cried, weakly.

More:  Over the Rainbow, and Then Some! | Vanity Fair.

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50 Years Ago Tonight: Judy at Carnegie Hall

Judy Garland’s legendary Carnegie Hall Concert was 50 years ago tonight…

There is a new documentary about the night, “Stay All Night” currently in production.

Here is a another clip about that night:

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Happy Birthday, Patti Lupone

Broadway’s original Evita is 62 today….

Here are a couple of clips of her at her best….

Here she is in her first Tony Award winning performance in “Evita 32 years ago…

I won’t post her second Tony Award winning performance as Moma Rose in “Gypsy” because I just hated her performance….

She was on a total ego trip in that show….It was over the top and out of control.

But I have also seen her in concert and found her  quite charming…

But here is a taste of her in better form today…

Say what you will, the woman sure knows how to own the stage….

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I’m sorry, but no man can look but so butch in espadrilles….

Not even John Wayne…

Pictures like this and films like “Red River” are why the gay whispers never die out about The Duke…

A new look for the conservative Icon:

John Wayne in espadrilles and other beach attire...

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To sir, with love: How ‘Glee’ turned Matthew Morrison from Broadway stalwart to international star -The Independent

One of the many things I love about “Glee” is that it’s given so many Broadway people a wider audience and bigger paychecks.

We saw several younger members of the cast on and off Broadway in “Spring Awakening”.

We also knew Matthew Morrison from Broadway.  We had seen him in “Light in the Piazza” and maybe a couple of other things.  I hated that he had left “South Pacific” by the time we got to see it as we had been looking forward to seeing his Lt. Cable.

So I’m quite pleased to see him making it big now.  We already have our tickets to see him live, again, when he comes to Greensboro this summer.

Here is an interesting article about him I thought I would share…

 

Morrison is Glee’s break-out male star, and not just because he gets to share screen time and vicious dialogue with the best female character, comedy nasty cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch). On the set he’s known as “Triple Threat”: he can sing, he can dance, he can act. So, after rigorous training, can most of the other cast members. But not with the natural-born – and professionally honed – savvy of Morrison.

Prior to Glee, he was a Broadway stalwart with a decade of well-regarded, award-winning performances behind him, in shows including Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific – he was the male lead in the latter when Glee creator Ryan Murphy cast him in the show. He went from earning “something like 10 grand a week” to a figure he can describe only with a cat-that-got-the-cream smile.

With seven to 10 years’ age on most of his castmates, he is also a little more sanguine about the hoopla surrounding what has become one of the biggest TV shows in the world. “I’m so happy I got to live out my twenties in New York and be free to do whatever I wanted to do, not under that public eye and that scrutiny,” he says. “I feel bad for the rest of the guys that they’ll never experience that.”

via To sir, with love: How ‘Glee’ turned Matthew Morrison from Broadway stalwart to international star – Profiles, People – The Independent.

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Why are British and American Theatre Audiences So Different?

Great article from Christopher Shinn, a playwright who’s work I much admire, in The Guardian.  I’ve been lucky enough to see a couple of his plays in New York…

I’ve seen a fair amount of theatre in London and a lot of theatre in New York….

There are definitely differences in both the audiences and how work is presented…

Generalisations all, but perhaps with a grain of truth. Maybe, too, American actors and directors know that their theatregoers are impatient. They sense a reluctance to give themselves over to someone else’s self-expression – whereas in London, the greater ease at being a part of a group means the actors and director assume a generous audience, not an always-potentially-dissatisfied one.

via Why are British and American theatre audiences so different? | Christopher Shinn | Stage | guardian.co.uk.

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