Fame or Famine

Laura Linney, shown here at curtain call, is part of an all-star cast in the revival of Les Liasons Dangereuse. She plays La Marquise de Merteuil, a scheming and conniving woman who plays with peoples affections and lives for her own amusements. Her opposite number in the play is Le Vicomte de Valmont, played by Ben Daniels, is equally a manipulator and cad, preying on the innocent and defiling and corrupting simply for the pleasure of seeing them fall.
Many movie goers would recognize the story from Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glen Close and John Malkovich , but many people would …read more

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“I’ve made it a mission of mine to not apologize for these things anymore. I think I’ve been around long enough that I don’t want to hide or suppress my different backgrounds. These are all the different facets of the way I am…“- Idina Menzel
She made her first splash in RENT. She went on to immortalize the character of Elphaba in Wicked. Not content with the lot of a Broadway star, she then took to the screen, and not only in screen versions of the characters she developed – no, …read more

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Don’t get your hopes up, as I did. It was just a backstage benefit/tribute honoring Disney Studio executive Robert Iger and star Annette Bening. The focus was entirely on them that night at the Geffen Playhouse in Chicago.
Still, there is something very poignant and wonderful about Julie Andrews (who chaired the event) and Dick Van Dyke being in the same theatre. All the moreso when Van Dyke chooses to get up on the stage and reprise Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious with Ashley Brown and Sierra Boggess, stars of the current Disney Broadway shows Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid.
Apparently he even kept a …read more

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When I was waxing rhapsodic about Raul Esparza’s lead in the PBS special of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, I neglected to really focus on the fact that he was also supported by a stellar cast.
Thankfully, BroadwayWorld.com has made up for it, with a fantastic interview with Barbara Walsh. A true gypsy who started in the kind of dinner theatre where “you rehearsed a show in the daytime, did another show at night, and did things like paint and move scenery.”, she went on to a stellar career being in shows such as:

Chess
Some Men
Falsettos
Blood Brothers
Hairspray
Ragtime
Big, the Musical
Ragtime
Company (as captured in Great Performances …read more

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Dancer, Choreographer, Former U.S. Marine, and founder of the Giordano Dance Company of Chicago died yesterday morning of pneumonia. He was 84. One of the great pioneers of jazz dance in this country, he studied with Hanya Holm, Katherine Dunham and Alwin Nikolais, as well as appearing on Broadway in Wish You Were Here and Paint Your Wagon.
Semper Fi, Gus, and thank you.

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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 …read more

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Season three finalist Mario Lopez has signed on with A Chorus Line on Broadway. How cool is that? Starting April 15 he’ll be in the non-singing role of Zach, the director, but in the stage version (unlike the movie, where Michael Douglas sat in the audience the entire time) he has to teach everyone the routines. So there will be a lot of dancing for the actor and host to learn.
Here he is dancing the paso doble on Dancing with the Stars:

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This was going to be an entry about Janine Jansen, the virtuoso violinist reviewed in this article. I was excited by the fact that she seems to be leveraging the power of the web (“…downloads count for 75% of my Vivaldi recording’s sales.”) into supporting her career.
Then this statement caught my eye:
“…while Jansen won’t make a prurient spectacle of herself, we’re reminded that she could (and pull it off, visually, like Mae did) if she wanted to.”
This is apparently in comparison to Vanessa Mae, another concert violinist who has the audacity to blatantly take advantage of the fact that she …read more

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I’ve written before about how the real training for an action star should be in dance. The new Batman? Christian Bale, a trained dancer. Jackie Chan? Dancer in the Chinese Opera. And if, like me, you were in love with Joss Whedon’s Firefly, you thrilled to see Serenity, where Summer Glau gave more than a glimpse of the virtuosic control she has of her body.
But all of these examples are not really examples of dancing for the camera; they’re examples of people who have used their dance training to augment the fight choreography of their scenes in movies. Of course, …read more

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I confess, I have as much trouble as anyone taking seriously someone named P Diddy – but Sean Combs seems to be the king of re-invention, going from rapper to clothing designer to yes, Broadway actor.
In 2004 he starred in the revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic, Raisin in the Sun, which garnered Tony awards for co-stars Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. It’s a powerful play about the struggles of an inner city black family, and other great actors including Sidney Poitier, Danny Glover, and Lou Gossett Jr. have played roles in the past.
While Combs’ acting skills were deemed less than …read more

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