The Great World White Way

by Gray on March 10th, 2008

or, : From Broadway to Virginia to Melbourne to Hometown, USA in search of a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

I had expected to write, today, about the revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, featuring Tony-award winning actors such as Phylicia Rashad, James Earl Jones, and Anika Noni Rose (all of whom are also TV and movie stars, but it does my luddite heart good to only list them as being paragons of the theatre). It’s a production that has sparked some controversy due to the cast being entirely African American. However, living in the midwest, I can’t actually go and see it - so I was going to look online for some reviews and such.

Podcasting and Time-Shifting

There’s a great show on CUNY called Theatre Talk which interviews Broadway stars and producers and directors and in general indulges in punditry about the craft of the show. I noticed, via the Barksdale Theatre Blog, that there was going to be an episode where actress Elizabeth Ashley and critic Tom Lahr discuss the implications of the casting of Tennessee Williams‘ play. Unfortunately, not only do I tend to be sleeping at 7:30am EST (when the show was on), but I also don’t get CUNY on my cable channels.

Conveniently enough, though, there is a podcast version of the show offered, so that I’ll be able to hear the show later on (and probably write about it; I do, believe it or not, prefer to write about things that I’ve some familiarity with). While on the iTunes subscription page, though, there’s also a little sidebar listing what “Other listeners to this podcast subscribe to…”

Going Down Under

One of the shows that caught my eye was “Broadway at Bedtime“, a show from JOY 94.9 in Melbourne, Australia. It had nothing to do with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof…but I did notice that a recent episode covered the opening of Spamalot in their city, which is why right now I’m listening to King Arthur sing about the round table with a team of cheerleaders. I see other episodes include bits with Chazz Palmintieri, one of my other favorite actors.

Prior episodes of Theatre Talk feature guests like the playwrights Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee, actors Ian McShane and Raul Esparza…it just goes on. The wealth of material freely available online is mind-boggling, and enables anyone to feel connected to the shows in spite of distance, time, or financial limitations.

Try them out: Theatre Talk and Broadway at Bedtime.

b5media.com

Fame or Famine