Archive for April, 2009
Not the best way to get out of jury duty…
In no uncertain terms, a Montana man tells judge why he won't serve
Northwestern University’s 78th annual Waa-Mu show opening this weekend
78th Annual Waa-Mu Show a Musical Page Turner
“Waa-Mu 2009: One for the Books,” Northwestern University’s 78th edition of the Waa-Mu show, will feature original songs, dances and comedy sketches based on the timeless tales of princesses, the adventures of Curious George, the trials of Holden Caulfield, and the poetry of e.e. cummings and Walt Whitman.
Under the direction of School of Communication Theatre Professor Dominic Missimi, this year’s Waa-Mu show will feature special guest appearances by such beloved fictional characters as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Prince Charming, Rapunzel, the elusive Waldo, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Tarzan and Jane and many others. Missimi has directed Waa-Mu for the past 16 years, not including the two additional years he co-directed the show with former theatre faculty member and longtime Waa-Mu director Tom Roland.
World’s funniest scene change!!
I think this would qualify for the world’s funniest and fastest scene change!
Broadway star Matthew Broderick to add twins to his resume
Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker prepare for twin girls (via surrogate)
Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick will be taking on new roles: parents of twin girls.
The “Sex and the City” star and her actor-husband are expecting twins through a surrogate pregnancy, representatives for the couple said Tuesday.
Parker, 44, and Broderick, 47, “are happily anticipating the birth of their twin daughters later this summer with the generous help of a surrogate. The entire family is overjoyed,” said a statement from the publicists.
The couple has a 6-year-old son, James Wilkie Broderick, and will mark their 12th wedding anniversary next month.
Parker starred in the “Sex and the City” TV series and the hit movie of the same name. Broderick’s credits include the films “Glory” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (filmed in Chicago) and the Broadway musical The Producers. (which held its world premier and pre-Broadway run in Chicago in 2000)
Matthew Broderick’s stage credits include:
2009
The Philanthropist
2008Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words
2005The Odd Couple
2004The Foreigner
2001The Producers
2000Taller Than A Dwarf
1999Night Must Fall
1997The Death Of Papa
1995How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
1992A Suffering Colonel
1990Love Letters
1986The Widow Claire
1985Biloxi Blues
1983Brighton Beach Memoirs
1981Torch Song Trilogy
1979On Valentine’s Day
* stage credit list courtesy of matthewbroderick.net
Theater Thursday: Tony Kushner’s "The Illusion" at Northwestern University
The Illusion by Tony Kushner
Thursday, April 30th, 7pm
| Theatre and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University Josephine Louise Theater, 20 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston |
Join us for a pre-show reception featuring the delectable catering of Evanston’s own Rollin’ in Dough, as well as a fun-filled performance by a strolling magician! Then stay for the magic, merriment and mystery of The Illusion, by Tony-award winning playwright Tony Kushner, followed by a post-show discussion with director Kathryn Walsh and members of the cast. An unyielding father is filled with regret after giving his son no alternative but to flee the family home. Through the help of a magician, he is allowed to view three scenes from his son’s life, only to learn his remorse may have come too late. Or maybe not. Freely adapted from Pierre Corneille‘s 17th century classic L’Illusion Comique, The Illusion takes us from mayhem to magic and back again as it questions what it really means to love, and the obligations that may come with that emotion. The Illusion has a lighter mood than Kushner’s most famous play, Angels in America, but the two plays share a love of poetic dialogue and theatricality.
Event begins at 7 p.m. Show begins at 8 p.m.
TICKETS ONLY $25
For reservations call 847.491.7282 and mention “Theater Thursdays.”
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All Theater Thursday postings sponsored by this fine entertainment accessory retailer.
"History Boys" Reviews – TimeLine delivers a triumph!
The Chicago-premiere of the Tony-Award winning play The History Boys , by Alan Bennett, held its opening night this past Saturday, and I can personally say that it was a highly-imaginative, stellar production of an enthralling, rambunctious play. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Pictures and a compendium of reviews (as they are produced) follow:
Dennis Polkow, NewCity
I don’t know what kind of techniques director Nick Bowling might have employed to have the eight-ensemble cast seem as if they know each other as well as a group of students who have been together in class together for what always seems like an eternity while it is happening, but the way these young men interact is extraordinary. No less an accomplishment is that the teachers and the headmaster who are preparing these students for their Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams also interact with the students and each other with the needed familiarity necessary for Alan Bennett’s witty and thought-provoking play to work its special charms. Recommended (Full review here.)
Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times:
TimeLine fills your head: Actors revel in the wit and energy of ‘History Boys’
Enter TimeLine Theatre – where The History Boys, Alan Bennett’s Tony-Award-wining play is receiving one of those Chicago productions that exults in the glory of the ensemble – and you instantly become part of its hothouse world.
At issue here is the whole notion of education – intellectual, emotional, sexual. The veteran literature teacher, Hector (Donald Brearley, in a remarkable mix of subdued passion, volatility and self-loathing), believes in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, even if that include groping his favorite students. As he notes: “The transmission of knowledge is itself an erotic act.” (Full review here)
Artistic Director PJ Powers comments:
“Alan Bennett’s provocative script tackles essential questions we regularly grapple with as we explore TimeLine’s unique mission — ‘how do we benefit by dissecting, studying and examining history?’” Powers said. “Whether audiences have seen this production in London, on Broadway or on film, or are coming to it for the first time, The History Boys will have a fresh and powerful impact at TimeLine’s intimate theater.”
Related articles and files:
- TimeLine’s “History Boys” study guide (amazing!) – prepared by TimeLine’s dramaturg, Maren Robinson
- New City blog: History in the Making: How TimeLine Theatre landed the Chicago premiere of a Tony-winning play, and what they are doing with it
- Hedy Weiss: TimeLine on a hit parade roll with “The History Boys”
Aside: This Chicago ticket broker offers a great selection of tickets in the city – Purchase tickets for Blue Man Group in Chicago and Chicago Jersey Boys tickets – which is now celebrating its second year of sellout performances!
Sunday Night Sondheim: Sondheim teaches "My Friends"
This clip featuring Stephen Sondheim teaching “My Friends” from Sweeney Todd is great fun and exciting to watch Sondheim’s genuis mind at work. (fyi: Sweeney happens to be my favorite Sondheim musical – I even used a monologue from the piece for a high school speech competition, and then went on to music direct it at Northwestern University).
Some “interesting” comments on YouTube:
aah, sondheim is a GENIUSHOLYCRAP. so articulate. so GOOD. and he makes adorable faces…
My sense is that these people were not cast in an actual show/production of the show, but rather they were probably given songs by their voice instructors, and had to prepare it as best they could. This guy would never be cast as Sweeney Todd in real life. Anthony, perhaps. But not Todd.
OMFG.
What Is She Doing??
I Cant Believe She Is Actually Dumb Enough To Sing Like That When In The Presence Of Someone Like Stephen Sondheim.
What Is Wrong With Her?!!
The singer here really doesn’t seem into the part. But did it occur to anyone else how well Johnny Depp in the film (probably because he’s a professional actor), did with regards to the advice Sondheim is giving here- the hypnotic quality, the pronunciation of the ‘s’ words, the tonal changes, his addressing the razor? According to Sondheim he did a perfect job it would seem.
Bea Arthur dies at 86
Though best known for her roles in “Golden Girls” and “Maude” (a spin-off from from All in the Family), Beatrice Arthur was also a talented and prolific stage actor, winning a Tony Award for best-supporting actress in the 1966 musical “Mame”, alongside Angela Lansbury.
From her obit:
Arthur was born Bernice Frankel in New York City in 1922. When she was 11, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., where her father opened a clothing store. At 12 she had grown to full height, and she dreamed of being a petite blond movie star like June Allyson. There was one advantage of being tall and deep-voiced: She was chosen for the male roles in school plays.
Bernice — she hated the name and adopted her mother’s nickname of Bea — overcame shyness about her size by winning over her classmates with wisecracks. She was elected the wittiest girl in her class. After two years at a junior college in Virginia, she earned a degree as a medical lab technician, but she “loathed” doing lab work at a hospital.
Acting held more appeal, and she enrolled in a drama course at the New School of Social Research in New York City. To support herself, she sang in a night spot that required her to push drinks on customers.
During this time she had a brief marriage that provided her stage name of Beatrice Arthur. In 1950, she married again, to Broadway actor and future Tony-winning director Gene Saks.
After a few years in off-Broadway and stock company plays and television dramas, Arthur’s career gathered momentum with her role as Lucy Brown in the 1955 production of “The Threepenny Opera.”
In 2008, when Arthur was inducted in the TV Academy Hall of Fame, Arthur pointed to the role as the highlight of her long career.
“A lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt, `Ah, yes, I belong here,’” Arthur said.
More plays and musicals followed, and she also sang in nightclubs and played small roles in TV comedy shows.
Then, in 1964, Harold Prince cast her as Yente the Matchmaker in the original company of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Arthur’s biggest Broadway triumph came in 1966 as Vera Charles, Angela Lansbury’s acerbic friend in the musical “Mame,” directed by Saks. Richard Watts of the New York Post called her performance “a portrait in acid of a savagely witty, cynical and serpent-tongued woman.”
She won the Tony as best supporting actress and repeated the role in the unsuccessful film version that also was directed by Saks, starring Lucille Ball as Mame. Arthur would play a variation of Vera Charles in “Maude” and “The Golden Girls.
Between series, Arthur remained active in films and theater. The plays included Woody Allen’s “The Floating Light Bulb” and “The Bermuda Avenue Triangle,” written by and costarring Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. During 2001 and 2002 she toured the country in a one-woman show of songs and stories, “… And Then There’s Bea.”
Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned.
Tony-award winner Bea Arthur died at the young-at-heart age of 86. She will be deeply missed in the TV and theatre world.
Bea Arthur and Rock Hudson: Watching the video below is like entering some gay bizarro meta-verse where carefree socialites harmonically chortle about amyl nitrate, and U.S. television networks broadcast it into your home. Except evidently at one brief, brilliantly weird point in history, this world actually existed. It’s but one more example of just how singular a figure Bea Arthur cut into the pop culture firmament, and why she’ll be so deeply missed.
What the Shrek? Regis Philbin promotes ‘Shrek the Musical’ (and his upcoming TV show)
Regis Philbin was seen dressed up in the Broadway musical Shrek costume used in the production playing down the street to pick up some laughs on David Letterman‘s show last Wednesday night. The entire “presentation” ingeniuously was a two-fold promotion: not only does Shrek: The Musical get some publicity, but so does Regis, who will be hosting a network revival of Who Wants to be a Millionaire this summer on ABC.
FYI: Shrek the Musical is set to begin its national tour here in Chicago.
Think Fast: Talk Like Shakespeare, Oz Ball, iPhone theatre
In honor of “Talk Like Shakespeare Day“, Chicago Public School students talk like Shakespeare…..
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