Everyone was happy and excited for Bailey Hanks, winner of MTV’s Legally Blonde reality competition. She beat out the other legal blondes and landed her leading role, which she premiered last Wednesday. The other contestants went home, heads hung low, bitter and defeated, right?

Well, not so much.

Surprise! You’ve Got Contracts!

As it turned out, the producers had jobs in mind for all four of the top contestants in the show.

• Rhiannon Hansen will play Margot, Elle’s best friend, in the touring company of Legally Blonde
• Autumn Hurlbert will join the Broadway cast as Elle’s understudy
• Lauren Zakrin will not only join the touring company in the ensemble but also act as a second understudy for the Broadway show.

So all four top contestants won contracts, and all four seem to be pretty happy about it. “I couldn’t be at a better place; this is better for me now and this is where I’m supposed to be,” Rhiannon told the Deseret News.

I think this is a piece of brilliance on the part of the producers, and could change the way people get cast in these shows. They came out of this with (I’m presuming) a profit from the MTV show, four solid leads for their main star, and everybody’s happy.

Could this be the end of the Cattle Call?

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Image details: Cast Members From "Rent" Perform At Broadway For Life served by picapp.com

The question becomes, then, why does it have such appeal outside New York? If it’s too unrealistic to people who live there now, what is it that makes it appeal so much to people like my daughters (who in fact introduced me to the songs and story, and who have seen it on Broadway)?

I suppose part of it, at least, is that it’s not an original story – the theme was borrowed directly from La Boheme, and that’s not to impugn the immense talent of Jonathan Larson at all. As Robinson notes in his article, RENT captures the flavor and spirit of New York in a way that makes it, now that the wheel of time has moved on, almost a historical narrative, as accurate as any text by Herodotus. As a cultural memento of the way a microcosm of culture reacted to crisis…it is a monument as well as a work of art.

So I bid it farewell as it leaves Broadway, knowing that while I’ll never see it there, my children have, and so we, too, are a part of that cultural icon.

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I wasn’t able to swing a ticket during my recent trip to NYC, so imagine my crestfallen look when I read that I’m partly to blame for the show closing on July 20th. However, Spike Lee to the rescue! He’s going to be filming the July 19th showing, with an eye towards working it into a larger film project later.

Image details: 2008 Summer TCA Tour – Day 3 served by picapp.com

This bodes well for the future, as people like me can experience it – who knows, maybe Stew will take it on the road? Or perhaps it will simply open the doors to future endeavours. Either way, it’s a nice way for the screen to help the stage and preserve the art for the future.

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Even though it’s technically still the 19th here at Fame or Famine Central, I’m starting the Blog Off now because in England the clock just ticked over to the 20th, the day we are going for one blog post per hour. We have a few different bloggers set to guest post here, including a wonderful in-depth article about the Screen Actors Guild.

But let’s start with something completely different: a backstage tour of the London production of Spamalot! Nina Söderquist takes you on a tour similar to the one that Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Nina is the Swedish singing waitress who plays the Lady of the Lake in the London production (yes, ironic, that). Here’s a hilarious excerpt from a BBC tv show about her:

Blog-off posts: one down, twenty four to go (three, sire) twenty three to go!

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Visit the Heights

Broadway.com has a charming little video where Lin-Manuel Miranda takes you backstage of In the Heights for a very personal tour backstage. He doesn’t do the normal “We’re so happy to be here, blah blahblah.” Instead he shares the video games he likes, the personal notes from people, his own personal image issues (“I think this mirror makes me look fat!”).

Some of it’s heart rending, such as the tragedy he found out about opening night (no, I’m not going to tell you, go watch it yourself!), the difficulties of doing 8 shows a week and basically living in the theatre.

He talks with some of the cast like Olga Merediz, who seem a little less natural than he does…but let me tell you, it’s making me really want to see the show. I think that he goes a little overboard in talking about bits and pieces of the set – at times it seems that he’s really stretching for material – but it’s all authentic, and that’s what counts.

Check it out. Tell me it doesn’t make you want to be there too.

 image courtesy of newscom

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Passing Over Passing Strange

One award: best book of a musical. Now, don’t get me wrong – Stew is probably quite pleased to have gotten that. He’s on record as saying that he considers himself first a musician, and that the idea of getting a Tony is pretty far removed from most musicians.

Maybe that’s why I wanted him to sweep the Tony’s. Something to do with the underdog, the newcomer, something capturing the imagination rather than dominating to distraction with some huge Disneyesque production. Yes, yes, I know that Miranda winning Best Musical for The Heights is also an underdog, a tale of a young kid coming out of nowhere making it big on the Great White Way…but The Heights was a more traditional musical, and I was kind of rooting for something new to shake things up. Must be my performance art background.

Living in the Past

I have to confess that I’m also quite disappointed that the lion’s share of the awards (and some of the performances, to boot) went to established, safe musicals. Look, it’s all well and good to have Gypsy and South Pacific still playing – though I really dislike the latter, Gypsy has lots of charm. But the thing is: they’ve both been done for decades. It’s not that there isn’t anything new to do with them – I fully respect the art of the Revival. But because they’ve been around so long, a lot of the dead ends and mistakes have been made. In some ways, putting these actors and crew in the same race as some new piece like August: Osage County (which didn’t too shabbily, either, adding Best Play and four other awards to the Pulitzer already on the shelf) seems like having a high school basketball star playing alongside Kobe Bryant – no matter how good the kid does, experience will tell.

I did take secret delight in Katrina Lindsay winning best Costume Design- Play for her work on the period piece “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” I know, that completely makes the previous paragraph hypocritical – but I dated a costume designer who specialized in that period of costume, and it holds a soft spot in my heart.

Taking Suggestions

Then again, I’m just grumpy because the Tonys – always a great advertisement for Broadway – is a reminder of the shows I wish I were seeing. But I’ll get my chance…in a few weeks I head out to NYC for a couple of days. If I could only see one show: what should I see?

Image Courtesy of Newscom

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More Than GenX

I got introduced to it by my daughter, believe it or not, who is as big a Renthead as you can get. The producers of Rent, along with composers/lyricists Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, put together a series of songs such as “The Internet is for Porn” and “Everybody’s a Little Bit Racist,” and then got Jeff Whitty to write the book.

He created characters that my generation easily identified with – like “Trekkie Monster.” “”The joke of the show is, this is a primer for those years — like ‘Sesame Street’ is a primer for your childhood,” he said.

The Impermanent Generation

Heidi Miller, a friend of mine who recently saw it, agrees. “It is the sung representation of absolutely everything that Gen X’ers believe and have been through…The characteristics of Gen X’ers include a disbelief in stability…They have no believe in permanence. If you ask them for their 10-year plan, they will stare at you blankly.”

All conveyed, believe it or not, through hand puppets, manipulated by actors who have been through “puppet school,” and have to become a sort of quadruple threat: singing, dancing, acting, and puppeteering. But for a generation raised on Sesame Street, this serves as a sneaky back door into the subconscious of our minds. As Heidi notes, the puppets “come together, tear apart, find jobs, lose jobs, lose homes, find love and find purpose…” A better definition of theatre could not be made.

The tour may be coming to a city near you; it’s certainly worth the money. And Mr. Whitty is not sitting on his laurels – he’s hard at work adapting Armistad Maupin’s Tales of the City into a musical, with Jake Shears and John Garden, of the Scissor Sisters, composing. “I just feel if they could turn Les Miserables into a musical, we can do it with ‘Tales of the City.’ ”

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OK, actually it (reputedly) suffered reviews such as “pervasive lack of characterization” or a score that “doesn’t enhance the story.” It had a “try-out” period that was actually longer than the actual Broadway run, and wet through many, many revisions. In spite of this, it has a huge fan base, even a role-playing group dedicated not to the story but to the musical.

Even the Sun-Times recognizes that “there are still problems with the book, pacing and characterization that only a massive re-write would fix,” but concludes that the BoHo’s staging of the show is just “clever enough” to overcome that for a truly exhilarating theatrical experience.

Friends in Low Places

I got clued into this through a friend who is working the show backstage, a theater veteran of musicals and dance who is absolutely thrilled to be part of this show. “This is a reconceptualization that addresses a lot of the issues and slow points in the original musical. We have a phenomenal cast, with amazing voices, and an absolutely brilliant actor is performing as both Jekyll and Hyde. I promise you, no David Hasselhoff. Instead, I give you….captain tightpants.” (That’s a reference to the uber-hot Nathan Fillion, for those who might not know, better known as a cop on LOST and in his signature role as Captain Malcolm Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Not that he’s playing the role, but that the actor who is (Courtney Crouse) is just that hot.)

Anyway, she also says that if you want to see it, better buy tickets early, because the show has been called “Jeff-worthy” (Chicago’s equivalent of the Tony’s) and will likely sell out as the season goes on. As always, my busy schedule and scarcity of funds will probably prevent me from seeing it…but if you go, please drop a comment here and let me know how it was!

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Ariell Jacobs as Gabriella Montez

Though the role was originated on TV by Vanessa Hudgens, the nerdy star of the broadway show has been aptly originated by Arielle Jacobs. Considering how much HSM has become a worldwide phenomenon, in some ways her job as part of the touring company is even harder, bringing the show to a wider audience than just those who are able to make it to Broadway.

Even better is the blog that she’s keeping of her time on tour. Ranging from the reaction of Canadian audiences to funny stories about her cast members, it’s a personal and very engaging look behind the scenes. You can even email her questions at GabriellaSpeaks@gmail.com

I’m looking forward to see how she answers some of the questions posed on the Mercury News blogs, and I would recommend her own as a regular read. Among other things, it will turn you on to music she likes, such as this one: Green to Gray, by Gavin Creel:

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Stew Gets an Obie for Passing Strange

I wrote recently how musician and auteur Stew had garnered no fewer than seven Tony nominations – but there’s more out there than Tony. The Village Voice also gives out its own theatre award, the “Obie”, and Passing Strange has secured Best New Theatre Piece. I’m a little amused, though, because part of the prize is $1,000 – to be split between Stew, co-author Heidi Rodewald and director Annie Dorsen – which I think is just about enough to go out to dinner there in New York…

Katie Holmes Secures Her Role in “Fathers and Sons”

OK, it’s been called “Broadway’s worst kept secret,” but Playbill confirms that Katie Holmes is going to be starring in the Arthur Miller play (for which he also garnered a Tony Award). What I find a little dismaying is that the headlines are all talking about Ms. Holmes – and it’s her debut. She may not be good. There’s no shame in not being good at stage acting.

But shouldn’t the real news be the rest of the cast? John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, costumes and sets by Tom Pye, and directed by Simon McBurney – between them all they could furnish an entire house with Tony’s and Obie’s. I think it’s a real tribute to their dedication to the theatre that instead of going for the easy mega hit they’re devoting their time to a straight play and keeping the genre alive.

Mamma Mia Passes My Fair Lady

No, this is not about the upcoming film adaptation of Mamma Mia! (though seeing Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan will be quite a treat). No, this is a different kind of record, and just kind of a fun one: the Broadway stage production of Mamma Mia! recently supplanted My Fair Lady as the 17th longest-running musical of all time. We talk a lot about stage-to-screen and vice versa, but this is sort of vinyl-to-stage-to-screen, since the entire musical is based off of ABBA songs.

If you do go see the movie (and why wouldn’t you?) don’t hesitate to see the touring musical as well. The costumes are sacrificed in the film version, and it’s a pity…the neon outfits really make it the Speed Racer of musicals.

Ok, fine, here’s the preview to the movie, too.

images courtesy of Newscom

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