December - 2017

"UP IN THE CHEAP SEATS"

Theatre yesterday and today

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ANGELS AMONG US

ANGELS AMONG US

JASON ROBARDS: ACT ONE

JASON ROBARDS: ACT ONE

THE DAY THEY TOOK BIRDIE AWAY

THE DAY THEY TOOK BIRDIE AWAY

THE PHANTOM THREAD

THE PHANTOM THREAD

THE WIZ

THE WIZ

MACK & MABEL, PART I: "Tap Your Troubles Away."

MACK & MABEL, PART I: "Tap Your Troubles Away."

THE KNIGHT I MISSED

THE KNIGHT I MISSED

TRY TO REMEMBER

TRY TO REMEMBER

HARRY POTTER AND THE JOY OF THEATRE

HARRY POTTER AND THE JOY OF THEATRE

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ON THE TOWN, PART 3

ON THE TOWN, PART 3

When the original stage production of On the Town opened on December 28, 1944, its biggest financial backer was MGM. So it should be no surprise that the studio would make a film of it, utilizing their sizable stable of talents such as Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Ann Miller. It wasn’t released until 1949, five years after the show’s opening night on Broadway. And with it set four years after the war ended, it was far less moving, particularly at its finish. W

ON THE TOWN, PART 2

ON THE TOWN, PART 2

"It was very hard for any of us on opening night to have a clear idea of what our show was really like. World War II was on, and the theme of young people caught in it, and the urgency of their desperately trying to cram a lifetime of adventure and romance into a moment, seemed to move the audience, and give the show an underlying poignancy, while never having to ask for sympathy." Those words from Betty Comden and Adolph Green give some idea of what it was like when On the T

ON THE TOWN, PART 1

ON THE TOWN, PART 1

It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to have been in the audience of the now-demolished Adelphi Theatre on December 28, 1944: the opening night of On the Town —the show that introduced Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green to Broadway. With World War II still raging (and no end in sight), every theatregoer had highly personal experiences with which to relate to everything that transpired on stage. First-nighters who approached the Adelph

DO RE MI

DO RE MI

No, this isn’t an article about The Sound of Music. It’s about a wonderful musical called Do Re Mi, which opened on this date (the day after Christmas), in 1960 at the St. James Theatre, a collaboration of composer Jule Styne, lyricists Betty Comden & Adolph Green and author/director Garson Kanin. The show was based on a 1955 novella by Kanin, which explains why Comden & Green didn’t write the book for it; something they often did when taking on a lyric writing assignment. Be

IF YOU DON'T MIND MY SAYING SO

IF YOU DON'T MIND MY SAYING SO

I couldn’t let today go by without acknowledging that on this date 60 years ago, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre (I wrote about it last year on its 59th anniversary, and I’ll probably do it again on its 61st — so sue me). Though by no means the greatest musical ever written, it does count as my all-time favorite. How so? Let me count the ways. I readily admit that its charms are not universal. There are many who think it’s cornball

MAJOR BARBARA

MAJOR BARBARA

A Tribute to Barbara Cook took place earlier tonight at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at 5 p.m. She passed away at the age of eighty-nine last August, but it took awhile to pull this evening together. It was well worth the wait. I have been fortunate to attend gatherings such as these in Broadway theatres over the years. I was present when Jessica Tandy memorably performed one of Blanche's monologues at the memorial for Tennessee Williams at the Shubert in 1983. And it was only

“DOCTOR THEATER”

“DOCTOR THEATER”

George Grizzard (1928-2007) gave a half-century's worth of memorable stage performances, among them Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which he created the role of Nick. In an interview conducted when he was sixty-five, the elder Grizzard looked back upon his thirty-four year-old self with insight and clarity: “Virginia Woolf was a very painful part because I played Nick as if I were Nick. When they started sticking knives in me and the audience started laughi

CANADA'S GREATEST IMPORT: CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

CANADA'S GREATEST IMPORT: CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

The illustrious Christopher Plummer was born eighty-eight years ago today in Toronto, Canada. And on Monday, he received an early birthday present by way of a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for the yet unreleased All the Money in the World. He only committed to playing J. Paul Getty a few short weeks ago, when director Ridley Scott made the decision to film emergency reshoots to replace the disgraced Kevin Spacey. There's little doubt Pl

EDDIE G.

EDDIE G.

It would have been virtually impossible for me to have ever seen the actor Edward G. Robinson on the Broadway stage, as his last appearance, in Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, was in 1957—the year I was born. Renowned as a film actor, it's important to note, that like so many greats who first burst on the scene with the advent of talking pictures, Robinson was a major stage actor before he came to Hollywood in 1929. At that point, he had twenty-nine Broadway plays to h

2017 TEN FAVORITES LIST

2017 TEN FAVORITES LIST

I’ve never much taken to the term “best,” especially as it pertains to the arts. It’s silly, right? Can you imagine citing a Best Painting of the Year? Yet, “best” is still the thing you see at year’s end in endless entries for film, television and theatre. Critics seem hell-bent on constructing these “Ten Best Lists” before December 31st, though when you come right down to it, these aren’t “bests,” but “favorites.” I’ve never in my life put one together before, but I felt co

THE BAND'S VISIT

THE BAND'S VISIT

One year ago tonight, The Band's Visit opened at the Atlantic Theatre Company's Linda Gross Theatre on West 20th Street. The musical, based on the screenplay by Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin's 2007 film of the same name, features a book by Itamar Moses and a score by David Yazbeck. Directed by David Cromer, rave reviews made it a difficult ticket to score, especially as the Gross is a small playhouse and the Atlantic has a well-attended subscription audience. But when

JOSEPH BULOFF

JOSEPH BULOFF

The actor Joseph Buloff, who was born on this day in 1899, provided me with one of the most remarkable afternoons I have ever spent in the theatre. It was in 1979 at the Harold Clurman Theatre on 42nd Street in a revival of Arthur Miller's 1968 drama The Price. Buloff was playing the juicy role of Gregory Solomon, the old furniture dealer. I had never seen Buloff in a play, even though by that point, he had been on the New York stage for the better part of fifty years. Of cou

SAY HELLO TO HARVEY

SAY HELLO TO HARVEY

"Don't musicalize works that don't need music," wrote Ken Mandelbaum in his wonderful 1991 book Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. Dissecting what went wrong with dozens of Broadway shows (some of which closed out of town), this particular section of the book includes a number of musicals that had no business being written in the first place, particularly when you take the source material into consideration.Gone With the Wind? Harold Rome, the gifted co

STREETCAR AT SEVENTY

STREETCAR AT SEVENTY

Today marks the anniversary of the opening night, when on December 3, 1947, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire premiered at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. To cite this as “a landmark” doesn’t begin to describe the shock and awe it presented audiences in its original Broadway production, nor how the power of its prose and poetry rendered by the raw emotional truth of its acting ensemble brought the American theatre to new heights. If all that sounds like hyperbole, no

HENRY FONDA ON ACTING

HENRY FONDA ON ACTING

Henry Jaynes Fonda was born in Grand Island, Nebraska on May 16th, 1905. Within the year, his father and mother moved the infant Hank (as he was called) along with his two sisters, two hours east to Omaha, where he would grow up. Omaha was the perfect setting for a man who would go on to become the quintessential American actor over the course of a long and distinguished career on stage and screen. And it wasn't a profession he sought out at first. He fell into it, as the Oma