SHOW SUSTAINED
BY LISTENER GIFTS


By Bud Wilkinson

Bud's Buzz

CD Reviews

Playlist

Stations

- - - -

DONATIONS NEEDED
TO SUSTAIN SHOW

HARWINTON, Conn. (January 8, 2008) - For more than nine years and for 480 performances, Broadway's Biggest Hits has served up two hours of "The Best of Broadway" every weekend for thousands of loyal listeners in the U.S. and Canada.

As producer and host, I've considered the show a labor of love, always being thrilled by positive feedback from listeners. More disheartening, though, has been the lack of consistent advertiser support. The result in 2007 was the loss of thousands of dollars.

While that's also been true in past years, it has now reached the point where the continued red ink has become financially unviable - despite all efforts at cost containment.

Unfortunately, some expenses cannot be trimmed or eliminated - such regular trips into New York City to interview guests and the distribution of the show to affiliates. There's also the cost of office supplies, telephones, studio equipment and the web site, and that doesn't account for the 15 or so man-hours per week to get a show recorded and out the door.

You get the idea.

Yes, Broadway's Biggest Hits seriously needs and would appreciate your financial support in 2008.

Yes, I'm asking listeners for non-tax deductible donations to help underwrite the continued success of Broadway's Biggest Hits.

Frankly, I've debated for a long time about asking for such support. For a "commercial operation" to beg for money struck me as tacky - until the owner of WJIB in Boston went to directly to listeners earlier this year with a similar appeal, and managed to get the station's annual operating costs covered in a short period of time.

WJIB is a one-man show, and so is Broadway's Biggest Hits. There's no big corporation backing the program, no big syndication company landing the show new affiliates and no rep firm selling the ads.

It's just one person trying to please everyone who tunes in.

If every listener gives $1, well, the show will be rolling in brass. But that certainly won't happen.

But if 1,000 listeners send $12 - that's $1 a month - that $12,000 would keep Broadway's Biggest Hits operating without a financial worry through our 10th anniversary in October.

Do the math. Is Broadway's Biggest Hits worth 25 cents a week?

Or is it worth maybe $1 a week to hear contemporary and classic Broadway songs that you can't get anywhere else on traditional radio?

Whether it's $1, $12, $52 or even more, all donations will go directly to sustaining the show, and making it and the web site better.

All I can offer in return is a vow to eliminate all "national" commercials from Broadway's Biggest Hits; that is, the ones that I've been selling. Local stations will continue to sell the commercial time that's allotted to them.

And I also promise to continue to present "The Best of Broadway" every weekend.

The address for donations by check is:

Broadway's Biggest Hits
227 Whetstone Road
Harwinton, CT 06791
Or you can pay through PayPal.

If you have a question or a comment or would like to discuss this appeal, please email me at budw@broadaysbiggesthits.com or call during business hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday) at 860-485-0700.

I'm committed to continuing to air Broadway's Biggest Hits and am convinced there are enough listeners across North America who want to hear it for years to come.

Thanks for listening.

- - - -

CASTING DIFFERENT
IN NEW "PYGMALION"

NEW YORK (October 28, 2007) - Who hasn't grown accustomed to the movie musical "My Fair Lady," which starred Rex Harrison as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, the lowly flower girl who gets plucked from a London gutter and molded into a lady?

It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1964, with Harrison claiming the Oscar for Best Actor, and has been a TV staple for decades, airing most recently a week ago on TCM.

Would you believe the two leads of the current Broadway revival of "Pygmalion," the George Bernard Shaw play that provided the basis for the Lerner and Loewe musical, which was a stage hit in London and on Broadway before being transferred to film?

"I have never seen the musical version," admitted Jefferson Mays, who stars as Higgins in the play that opened recently at the American Airlines Theatre. "It's a horrible confession to make and, obviously, culturally barren."

Mays sees his lack of knowledge as a benefit, though, in taking on the part. "I don't have Rex Harrison hanging over my shoulder, although I did grow up with the cast album," he said, explaining that "My Fair Lady" fans will see a character in "Pygmalion" that is quite different from the Higgins that Harrison portrayed.

"The Higgins that I'm trying to fashion with (director) David Grindley and everybody else in the company is sort of an anarchic schoolboy run wild," Mays continued when we chatted last month.

"He and Pickering have created this robot, this 'fembot' in their garage and are trotting it out to show to mom and to society at large, and then are astounded when the robot turns out to be a human being. I'd like to think that my Higgins is very sort of young and visceral and sort of a loose cannon."

Playing Eliza and making her Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company production is Claire Danes, who also reported that she has never seen "My Fair Lady," although she's fully aware of the musical's lofty status.

"People are much more familiar with 'My Fair Lady' than they are with 'Pygmalion.' I think they assume they have a more intimate understanding of the play than they do, but I think that will be enjoyable for them because they'll get to discover it," she said.

Also starring in "Pygmalion" are Boyd Gaines as Col. Pickering, a part played by Wilfrid Hyde-White in the movie, and Jay O. Sanders as Eliza's father, Alfred Doolittle, who was played by Stanley Holloway both on stage and in the motion picture.

Physically, the cast differs tremendously from that of the movie.

"David went after that quite specifically. He wanted to make it younger, more vital," Sanders reported. "I think it's very, very well cast, with the exception of me, of course. I think everybody fits what they're to do and their role and the interplay with each other, but it's not what you've seen before or what you expect, so it helps open the play itself. It kicks it in the butt, so to speak, and gets you to reconsider, and that's the best of what a revival can do."

No doubt even some knowledgeable theatergoers will attend "Pygmalion" with a subconscious expectation of hearing the classic "My Fair Lady" songs of Lerner and Loewe, such as "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," "Get Me to the Church on Time," "The Rain in Spain" and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"

"Shaw's original script is so well integrated into the musical that you do expect a great orchestral swell to happen when you utter some of the lines, but there is simply no music to follow," said Mays, touching again on his own lack of knowledge of the musical. "I think it must be an advantage; it must be, because Rex Harrison left such an indelible print on people's memories, so I think I'm living in blissful oblivion."

Gaines reported that an equally big difference between "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady" is the play's enhanced ambiguity and less definite ending.

"It seems a different beast altogether. It's much more dramatic. It's much darker, to its benefit. What I think is great about Shaw is that he creates these problems where everyone is right and wrong. He doesn't resolve them. He'll create an incredible strong argument for one thing and then another character will come along and create its equal opposite, and doesn't necessarily resolve them," said Gaines.

"The play, it seems to me, is a different beast altogether, much leaner and more muscular and certainly more ambiguous. Shaw deliberately left this somewhat hanging in the air and I think that's a more honest and realistic view what the circumstance would lead to."

Mays agreed. "It is indeed shocking. The ending is so abrupt and so ambiguous that I think the audience is going to be a bit gob-smacked by that," he said.

- - - -

"THE RITZ" CAUSES
BRUISES GALORE

NEW YORK (October 14, 2007) - What's black and blue and bruised all over? The stars of "The Ritz," the Terrence McNally farce that's currently playing at Studio 54. Kevin Chamberlin and Rosie Perez aren't complaining, not really, but their bodies are taking a beating in this comedy that's set in a gay bathhouse.

"The only problem with acting in a farce is that you get bruised a lot. I'm covered in bruises. I have to slide under beds and I'm not a thin guy," said Chamberlin, who plays Gaetano Procolo. The character owns of a sanitation company and finds himself in need of a safe haven when a mobster decides to make him the target of a hit.

"I find this out and I jump in a cab and I say, 'Take me to the last place in the world where anybody would think of looking for me' and the cab driver takes me to a bathhouse. I think it's a Jack LaLanne spa. The comedy ensues when I slowly realize it's a gay bathhouse filled with lots of colorful characters."

Perez plays one of those characters, torch singer Googie Gomez, who performs a nightclub act in the bathhouse and whose aspirations exceed her talent.

"She takes it very, very seriously. In her mind and in her world, she is a consummate professional that should be on Broadway," said Miss Perez. "She's completely committed to her life and her craft and the people around her. She mistakes Kevin Chamberlin's character for a Broadway producer and she will do anything - and I mean anything - to get on that stage."

That means accepting some bruises.

"I know I'm killing Kevin because I have to do a leg up over his shoulder. It's just horrible. I'm bruised from head to toe," she reported.

First staged on Broadway in 1975 and starring Jack Weston and Rita Moreno, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Googie Gomez, this revival of "The Ritz" retains the time frame and the dialogue of the original.

"We're doing it period - 1974. Everybody's growing their sideburns long and letting their hair grow," said Chamberlin, who was joined at a press event prior to the start of previews on September 14 by Perez and McNally, who has been advising the actors but not tinkering with the script.

"I resist any impulse to rewrite it because I think a playwright, probably if you left him to his own resources, could be in rehearsal with his first play the rest of his life because every day you're slightly different," said McNally.

Some changes were necessary when "The Ritz" originally tried out in Washington, D.C. for three weeks, most notably the addition of a prologue that explains why all of the characters are in the bathhouse.

"I wrote a scene, probably wrote it in 10 minutes, (and it) made such a difference," McNally recalled, adding that changes to the set were also made. "We repainted the set a very warm red. The original set was battleship gray and someone said it's very hard to get a laugh playing against this battleship gray set."

Chamberlin likes the three-level set that "The Ritz" employs. "It has the crumblings of an old art deco place, which is perfect for Studio 54 because Studio 54 is crumbling, literally," he said.

Perez, meanwhile, has taken a liking to McNally's words. "I like the way that he writes how people truly speak. It's very convoluted but yet it's very concise and the message and the heart that he wants to deliver, it's very direct," she said.

That said, "The Ritz" is still a farce, which means lots of energy and doors being slammed.

"A lot of comedy and a lot of really poignant stuff, too. My character goes through a really cool arc of being a very fearful man to really coming into his own," said Chamberlin, who is using his hiatus from the Lifetime television series "State of Mind" to return to Broadway where he received Tony Award nominations for "Dirty Blonde" and "Seussical."

Directed by Joe Mantello, "The Ritz" runs through December 9.

"There's nothing offensive in the show. It's an innocent farce. As with farces, there are broad primary colors that the characters are painted in. I think it's an equal-opportunity offender. There are stereotypical Italian mobsters. There's incredibly stereotypical gay men," said Chamberlin.

And bruises for all involved.

- - - -

BUNDY EXCELS
PLAYING ELLE

NEW YORK (Sept. 22, 2007) - In the Broadway musical "Legally Blonde," Laura Bell Bundy plays a fashion-conscious sorority sister with a lot more brainpower than anyone suspects. The character of Elle Woods, who gets dumped by her college sweetheart and then follows him to Harvard Law School, displays spunk and smarts, and they're traits that Bundy possesses as well.

Not only is the 26-year-old Kentucky native a Broadway star, she's an aspiring country singer with a recently-released CD and a knack for changing accents at a moment's notice, slipping from neutral to full throttle drawl. On the CD titled "Longing for a Place Already Gone," she's billed simply as "Laura Bell."

"I'm Laura Bell Bundy as an actress. I'm Laura Bell as a country singer. I did that on purpose because I didn't want one thing to stop me from doing the other," Bundy explained recently during an interview in her hot pink dressing room in the basement of the Palace Theatre.

"I wanted the reputation for the country music to stand on its own without the Broadway reputation. I didn't want the Broadway singing style to get in my way; for people to have a preconceived notion about the way that I sound because I'm singing one way on stage and one way on the album."

As the title suggests, the CD represents her past and, perhaps, her future.

"It's one of those CDs that doesn't really create a mood, it more like takes you on a journey. I call it 'Y'alternative' 'cause it's sort of indie country. It's a throwback to like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard. Those are like my big influences," said Bundy.

"I titled it 'Longing for a Place Already Gone' because I sort of long for music that was before my time or memories that have passed or decades that I was never even a part of; that I wanted to be a part of. I have an affinity for the past and generations that I wasn't a part of."

Bundy's recent past on Broadway has seen her originate the role of Amber Von Tussle in the musical "Hairspray" and play Glinda in "Wicked." Choreographing "Hairspray" was Jerry Mitchell, who made his Broadway debut as a director with "Legally Blonde."

"There's a little bit of codependency with my relationship with Jerry because he relies on me to tell the story and I rely on him to tell me whether I'm telling the story right, and if it's believable or not," said Bundy.

"When he cast me in this I think he trusted me from the beginning and really wanted me to play this part. His confidence in me strengthened my trust in him and vice versa, so there's a lot of trust in our relationship and there was a lot of freedom for me to explore, but he drew a great picture and guideline of what I should do."

While "Legally Blonde" with its frothy, upbeat music and girl-power theme can easily be dismissed for being yet another attempt by Broadway to cash in on a movie hit - Reese Witherspoon played Elle in the big screen - the musical does exhibit some fresh plot twists, some clever dance routines, and an infectious enthusiasm.

"There (are) a lot of things that are a little bit different from the movie. I actually think there's more emotional weight and there's a little bit more heart to our show. Some of the relationships are more developed than they are in the movie," said Bundy.

One major difference is the degree of growth of the character of Elle.

"There's so much I can do with her. I never leave stage so it's an opportunity for me to really dig in and go into her and her emotions and her experiences and try different things and immerse myself in the character and the emotions of the character."

All of those emotions and experiences will be on display before a much larger audience on September 29 when MTV - in what is a very rare occurrence for a Broadway show - will televise "Legally Blonde" in its entirety. It was on that same network on Sunday night that the MTV Video Music Awards managed to grab some headlines thanks to a performance by pop singer Britney Spears - who once understudied for Miss Bundy Off-Broadway in "Ruthless: The Musical."

Ruthless is the manner in which the tabloids and even some mainstream media have treated Spears in recent years, and Bundy is skeptical of much of what's been reported.

"The only thing we've seen of how this person has destroyed (her) life is what the media says. I don't believe any of it anyway. It's none of my business. I don't care," said Bundy, the emphasis in her voice revealed in her slipping into a natural Southern accent.

"It's a shame that every 'mistake' is in the public eye, but we all know that every mistake that we've ever made was actually one of the greatest lessons we've learned. And so, in that way, I say 'Make all your mistakes, mess your life up, make it as funky as you can because you will get more perspective and you will become a wiser person and you will grow.' It's easy to look at people and be happy for their suffering and I don't even know if she's suffering. We don't know if any of that's true and we shouldn't care."

What Bundy does care about is living life with gusto - just like Elle Woods. "I embrace life," she said. "I embrace the opportunities that come along in life and I think that we should embrace life and we should try anything and everything," she said.

That's her verdict.

- - - -

BROADWAY PREPS
FOR STRONG FALL

NEW YORK (Sept. 1, 2007) - Familiarity breeds box office on Broadway, especially with musicals. That's certainly why yet another revival of "Grease" opened recently and why the new Mel Brooks tuner "Young Frankenstein" and Disney's "The Little Mermaid" will appear by year's end.

"Grease" was first staged on Broadway more than 35 years ago and ran for eight years. It was revived in 1994 and lasted four years. The new version, starring Max Crumm as Danny Zuko and Laura Osnes as Sandy Dumbrowski, opened August 19 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

The reviews, which were mixed-to-bad, won't matter. Thanks to the TV reality show "Grease: You're the One That I Want," which aired on NBC for 12 weeks back in the winter and cast the lead roles, ticket sales had already reached the $8 million mark by the end of March - four months before previews even began. The advance has now reportedly hit $15 million.

"Young Frankenstein" is arguably Mr. Brooks' funniest movie - unless you favor "Blazing Saddles" - and the addition of more songs to lead up to "Puttin' on the Ritz" can only serve to pique interest in his follow-up to "The Producers."

Topping "The Producers," which took home a record 12 Tony Awards in 2001, will be difficult, but "Young Frankenstein" features a cast that includes such talented performers as Roger Bart, Megan Mullally, Sutton Foster, Shuler Hensley and Andrea Martin. It begins previews on October 11 at the Hilton Theatre and opens November 8.

"The Little Mermaid," which is based on the animated Disney movie, will occupy the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, recently vacated by "Beauty and the Beast." Previews begin November 3 with opening night set for December 6.

One other musical coming this fall is "Lone Star Love," starring Randy Quaid in his Broadway debut. "Lone Star Love" transplants Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to the Old West. Other stars include Robert Cuccioli and Dee Hoty. It begins previews at the Belasco Theatre on November 1 and opens December 3.

Drama will be represented this autumn in seven plays:

"Mauritius" - F. Murray Abraham, Dylan Baker, Bobby Cannavale, Katie Finneran and Allison Pill star in this Theresa Rebeck play that begins previews at the Biltmore Theatre on September 13. Opening night is October 4.

"Cyrano de Bergerac" - Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner, making her Broadway debut, will star in this limited-run production at The Richard Rodgers Theatre. Previews begin October 12 and opening night is November 1.

"The Farnsworth Invention" - This new play from Aaron Sorkin tells of the advent of television, which Philo T. Farnsworth developed and Radio Corporation of America head David Sarnoff claimed as his own. Hank Azaria will play Sarnoff and Jimmi Simpson will play Farnsworth. Performances at the Music Box Theatre begin October 15 for a November 14 opening.

"Rock 'n' Roll" - The new Tom Stoppard play transfers from London and begins previews at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on October 19. Opening night is November 4. Original London cast members Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell star.

"The Seafarer" - This Conor McPherson play also comes over from London with original cast members Conleth Hill and Jim Norton being joined by Ciaran Hinds, David Morse and Richie Coster. Previews begin October 30 at the Booth Theatre in advance of a November 15 opening.

"Cymbeline" - A cast of 26, topped by Michael Cerveris, John Cullum, Martha Plimpton, Phylicia Rashad and Jonathan Cake, will take the stage in Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Previews begin November 1 with the opening set for December 2.

"The Homecoming" - Raul Ezparsa, who most recently starred in the revival of "Company," will be joined by Ian McShane and Michael McKean in a limited run of this Harold Pinter play. Previews begin November 23 at the Cort Theatre. Opening night is December 9.

Comedy will also be found this fall:

"The Ritz" - Rosie Perez and Kevin Chamberlin will star in the Terrence McNally play that's set in a Manhattan bathhouse. Previews commence September 14 at Studio 54. Opening is October 11.

"Is He Dead?" - Norbert Leo Butz stars in this new Mark Twain comedy, adapted by David Ives. Previews begin at the Lyceum Theatre on November 8 with opening night on November 29.

"November" - Nathan Lane will play the president and Laurie Metcalf will star as his aide in this David Mamet play at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Previews begin December 20 with opening night planned for January 17, 2008.

Also on tap this fall will be a sixth Broadway staging of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," which was first presented on Broadway in 1914 and later adapted into the musical "My Fair Lady." Claire Danes will make her Broadway debut as Eliza Doolittle and Jefferson Mays will play Professor Henry Higgins. Previews begin September 21 at the American Airlines Theatre. Opening night is October 18.

Finally, also having a limited run will be Chazz Palminteri's "A Bronx Tale," with Palminteri making his Broadway debut. It begins performances October 4 at the Walter Kerr Theatre and opens October 25.

- - - -

"BEAUTY" ENDS
INCREDIBLE RUN

NEW YORK (August 3, 2007) - Belle was beautiful, the Beast was gracious, and Gaston was a lout, played one last time with glee by Donny Osmond. Amidst cheers, tears, and cast members snapping photos on stage during the curtain call, "Beauty and Beast" closed Sunday night at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre after more than 13 years and 5,464 performances. The Disney musical ranks as the sixth longest running show in Broadway history.

"It was crazy 'cause I flew in from London and I had just a minimal amount of the time for rehearsals, just to refresh my memory. It was like getting on a bicycle," reported Osmond at the post-performance party at Cipriani of stepping back into the cast to play the overbearing Gaston one last time. "There are certain things that I couldn't remember but I just threw myself into the role and had the time of my life tonight."

So did those in the audience, who stopped the show several times with standing ovations.

"It was really emotional. There was this kind of palpable energy in the audience. It was filled with love," said John Tartaglia, who played the candelabra Lumiere from last November through mid-May and who attended for the final performance.

"For so many people, including myself, 'Beauty and the Beast' has been a show that has always been there. We all appreciate the longevity of it. I was very emotional watching and knowing I was part of that legacy. By the end of show, I was a total wreck."

Also in the audience was former Belle and Milford native Christy Carlson Romano. "I definitely cried," she said. "At one point, Steve Blanchard, who plays the Beast, was getting a little bit emotional. I could sense that just because I know the man and I worked with him. I felt for him and I started crying then."

Blanchard, whose duty it was to introduce the creative team behind "Beauty and the Beast' after the final performance had finished, said he sensed the connection between those on stage and those in the darkened auditorium throughout the evening.

"It was extremely emotional and extremely heartfelt. You could tell the entire house of 1,500 people were just giving us everything and were so in love with us. It was an amazing experience 'cause we shared it with them," he said before reflecting on the experience of having played the Beast for eight years and more than 3,350 performances.

"Anybody can do a show for six months or a year, but when you do a show for that long, you discover so many different layers and facets of the character. Every single year I discovered something new and just got deeper and deeper and richer and richer, and that's what made me stay so long."

"Beauty and the Beast" grossed more than $425 million during its Broadway run, and provided memories not only for those who got to see it but for those who starred as well.

Tartaglia joined the cast after originating the roles of Princeton and Rod in the more adult puppet musical "Avenue Q."

"For me, it was a huge challenge to go from originating a role that I got to make my own and that I never had to prove to anybody because nobody had ever done it before to coming into a show that was so established, that had its cogs oiled and had its gears going," he recalled.

"It was definitely a different challenge but in some ways it was even more fulfilling because the story is so universal. 'Avenue Q' was for adults. To be able do a show for families and to be able to see so many five-, six-, seven-year-old kids. This was their first Broadway show and to look out every night and see that was really rewarding because I remember that experience - seeing my first Broadway show - how that changed my life."

For the record, Tartaglia listed the revival of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" as his first Broadway musical. "I remember going home that night and not being able to go to sleep because I was so excited by it," he said.

Anneliese Van Der Pol, who was the show's last Belle and who stars on the Disney Channel series "That's So Raven," acknowledged that emotions overcame her as well on closing night but was grateful for experiencing of the demands of working on Broadway. "Beauty and the Beast" marked her Broadway debut.

"As an actress, I've learned the steadiness of it and to go to bed early because you have work the next day," she said. "It's hard, hard work. It really is. I'm used to television where it's not such hard work."

Going into the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in the fall will be a new Disney musical, "The Little Mermaid." Performances begin Nov. 3 and opening night is set for Dec. 6.

The closing night party for "Beauty and the Beast" was a time, though, for warming feelings and happiness.

"It's more fun to do the closing show because no matter what happens people are there to have a party. That takes the pressure off immediately, so then you just go out and have a good time," said Osmond, whose career in entertainment has touched upon nearly all showbiz fields.

"With recording, you can perfect something. With television, you can perfect something. That's why Broadway, live performances period, will never go away because it is the ultimate test of an entertainer. What you do is what they get and you can't go back and rewind it and redo it. It's a real test of talent and if you can pull it off, good for you."

- - - -

SHAIMAN CREATES
"HAIRSPRAY" BEAT

NEW YORK (July 28, 2007) - Composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman had a solid clue back in early April that the new movie version of the musical "Hairspray" would be a hit after attending a test screening of what was then considered to be a work in progress.

"Normally then you go back and work on it some more and you have a second preview. Then you work on it just little bit more and you have a third preview. That is what's normal," Shaiman explained.

"Our first preview went so well that they canceled the rest of our previews. Our director says, 'That's what's called one and done.' The audience at that movie theater enjoyed it in the same way that the Broadway audience enjoyed it, so even though there are details that are different, the basic oomph of it is just like it is on Broadway. It has the same joy to it."

"Hairspray," the effervescent story of an overweight Baltimore teenager who yearns to be on TV dance show, has been a Broadway success at the Neil Simon Theatre for four years, grossing more than $200 million in that time.

The new movie raked in $27.5 million in its first weekend of release alone, the biggest opening ever for a musical, and more than double what the original John Waters motion picture version starring Rikki Lake as teenager Tracy Turnblad grossed during its entire run in 1988.

In the movie, Nikki Blonsky plays Tracy with John Travolta cast as her mother, Edna Turnblad. Marissa Jaret Winokur and Harvey Fierstein originated the two roles on Broadway.

Other stars in the movie include Christopher Walken as Tracy's father, Wilbur; Amanda Bynes as her best friend, Penny Pingleton; Allison Janney as Penny's mom, Prudy; Brittany Snow as Amber Von Tussle; Michelle Pfeiffer as Amber's mom, Velma; Queen Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle; Zac Efron as Link Larkin; Elijah Kelley as Seaweed; and James Marsden as TV dance show host Corny Collins.

Shaiman, along with lyricist Scott Wittman, infused "Hairspray" with the spirit of the early 1960s by writing such now familiar songs as "Good Morning Baltimore," "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now" and "You Can't Stop the Beat." He said it wasn't difficult replicating the sound of the era when music came on 45rpm records.

"I'm well versed in those records. I grew up in the '60s. I was born in October of 1959, so that music is just in my body and in my brain. And then I happened to work on many projects as a young adult that were about '60s music and '60s records, so by the time it came time to write 'Hairspray,' I had encyclopedic knowledge of every bass line, of every drum part, of every little tambourine fill. That was easy," he said.

"The thing for 'Hairspray' was for Scott and I to walk the tightrope of pop music vernacular and still write theater songs that keep an audience involved with the character and the story. On the other hand, it's perfect because the music of the '60s, Phil Spector and such, was so theatrical. Things like 'Leader of the Pack' (and) 'It's My Party.' These are story songs that had characters."

The movie version of "Hairspray" isn't identical musically to the stage version. "Before filming started, we wrote two new songs. We actually wrote a few new songs but only two made the cut," recalled Shaiman, who sat down on a couch in the 35th floor lobby lounge of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Central Park to talk about "Hairspray."

"There was one new song for Tracy and one new song for Link Larkin. Only the song for Link remains. The song we wrote for Tracy was for a spot that even on Broadway we always knew there's no time for her to stop and have her sing a whole song right now. We tried it for the movie and the same thing happened. The engine needs to keep going."

Besides musical differences, there are other cosmetic changes as well in the "Hairspray" movie.

"I hope people won't pick apart the little things, like 'Oh, why isn't she wearing a purple dress? Where is the spangled this or that?' There are some changes that just about the logistics of movie making," said Shaiman.

"Some of the changes are, for better or worse, sometimes about the scheduling of actors. Like Penny Pingleton's mother, as played by Allison Janney. The only way to get her was to work within her schedule and that schedule did not allow her to - like the show - to show up at the end."

The strong opening weekend showing of the movie "Hairspray" suggests that it had much broader appeal than movie experts anticipated, but Shaiman probably wasn't surprised.

"One of the greatest things about 'Hairspray' is just to go and stand near the front of the audience and look up at them during the last 15 minutes where you see people of all ages, colors, creeds, all with the exact same expression on their faces. It's the funniest thing to see. Scott calls it the 'kindergartners on crack' look. It's just so funny to see a 60-year-old man and a 10-year-old girl with the exact same expression on their face. That is a joyous experience that I wish everyone could have."

More satisfy, though, for Shaiman is the far-reaching impact of the Broadway show. "We've written a show that when junior high schools and high schools do it, the little fat girl finally gets the lead and the funny little boy gets to play another one of leads, albeit in a dress. These two outsiders are going to get the leads in their high school musical. I can speak for Scott and myself that it is ultimate dream come true for us."

- - - -

CULLUM RELISHES
"110 IN THE SHADE"

NEW YORK (July 21, 2007) - John Cullum's connection to "110 in the Shade" dates back more than 40 years to when he auditioned for the role of Starbuck, the mysterious stranger who promises to bring rain to a parched town in the Texas panhandle, in the original Broadway production of the musical.

He didn't get that role, but he has appeared in some two-dozen Broadway productions, taking home Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for "Shenandoah" in 1975 and "On the Twentieth Century" in 1978. He's also starred in "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" and "Urinetown."

Cullum's currently back on the stage playing family patriarch H.C. Curry in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "110 in the Shade," which continues at Studio 54 through July 29th.

"It was no-brainer when I found out that Audra was going to be doing it," said Cullum when we met recently in his dressing room following a Wednesday matinee. The Audra he refers to is Audra McDonald, who plays his unmarried daughter, Lizzie Curry.

"I said, 'Sure, that's enough for me,' but then when I read the play, I thought the book is better than the play. It's tighter. It makes the points it wants to make and doesn't go off on tangents."

"110 in the Shade" features a book by N. Richard Nash, who adapted his play "The Rainmaker" into the musical. Set in 1936, it centers on the character of Lizzie, who still lives at home and who frets about becoming, to use the term of the time, an old maid. The music came from Harvey Schmidt and lyrics from Tom Jones.

Cullum calls it's a "feel-good show" and it truly is. "It is a story of hope and it has a certain kind of almost mythological things that happen in it. You've got this strange character that comes out of the woodwork so to speak; the Starbuck character, that is almost magical and yet he's really just a conman," said Cullum.

"Because of his needs and because of Lizzie's needs coinciding at the same time and his ability to touch her and her ability to move him, you have a wonderful love story that begins, and it becomes a triangle with File, the sheriff. It's a wonderful story."

Steve Kazee plays Starbuck, while Christopher Innvar plays File. Chris Butler is cast as the elder of Lizzie's two brothers, Noah Curry, and Bobby Steggert plays Jimmy Curry.

The show opens with the song "Gonna Be Another Hot Day," and the cast drips with perspiration.

"Lonny Price, the director, wanted to get us to have a real feeling for the drought, a feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed by the heat, so he had us go to a big place where they have saunas and we sat in this big studio with a lot of steam heat. We sat there and talked about the play," Cullum recalled. "I went through that process and then they wanted to do that process (again) three weeks later and I said, 'No, no, if you've ever played Houston, as I have, for a couple of weeks you don't need to be reminded of what the heat can be in Texas.'"

While a period piece, "110 in the Shade" doesn't come off as feeling dated, perhaps because of the timelessness of the characters and perhaps because of the music. Cullum singled out the orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick.

"Jonathan Tunick has made musical arrangements that to my mind and memory are much better than the original," Cullum said. "The original actors were wonderful actors - I know all of them, all the people that were in that show, and I thought they were wonderful - but when you put Audra into this part, it's a different kettle of fish. She plays with such power and strength. She brings a different dimension to it and the cast around her (are) very strong people, so you get a little tougher production than the original."

Starring in the original production were Inga Swenson as Lizzie, Robert Horton as Starbuck, Stephen Douglas as File and Will Geer as H.C.

Cullum's character comes off as warm and wise, yet authoritative when the situation dictates. "People are on my side because they want Lizzie to be loved and they know that her father loves her with unconditional love and he believes in her. Finally, he's the one who turns out to be right, not the rest of them. The younger brother says she has to act like (town flirt) Lily Anne Beasley in order to get a guy and the older brother says she's plain and she's not ever going to get married. I'm the one who thinks that she's a really wonderful woman."

It is McDonald, a four-time Tony winner for "Carousel," "Master Class," "Ragtime" and "A Raisin in the Sun," who commands the most attention, and she cuts loose in the song "Raunchy," which she performed with Cullum on this year's Tony Awards telecast.

"She's an amazing performer and you have top watch yourself or you end up just watching her. You try to participate when you can. I think we work very well together," said Cullum.

While all actors can look back on parts that they never should have accepted, Cullum is building some fond memories doing "110 in the Shade."

"The more I do it, the more I think I made a very wise choice. It's a show that I like to come to the theater to do and it meets with a wonderful kind of response from the audience. I'm having a ball doing it," he said.

- - - -

ZIEMBA PULLS
THE "CURTAINS"

NEW YORK (June 23, 2007) - Unlike the character that she plays in the Kander and Ebb musical "Curtains," Karen Ziemba has never had to step into a lead role on stage due to the show's star suddenly being murdered during a curtain call. But, like most actors, she has had to unexpectedly rise to the occasion because of unforeseen circumstances.

There was that time back in the late 1980s when she was a chorus member in "Teddy & Alice," a short-lived musical in which Len Cariou played Teddy Roosevelt and Nancy Hume played the president's daughter, Alice. Ziemba was also understudying the part of Alice and, one day, Miss Hume lost her voice.

"I went on in the middle of the first act, for the first time, in her costumes. She was about 5-foot-3 and I'm about 5-foot-7. I was squeezed into her costumes but I did it and triumphed. It was fine," reported Ziemba, also recalling, "I was terrified but once I got on stage I was very comfortable."

Her assumption of leading a role in "Curtains" - actually, it's a role and a role within a role as "Curtains" is built around a musical within a musical - happens a bit more dramatically.

"Curtains" opens as the curtain comes down on the dreadful musical "Robbin' Hood," which is trying out at Boston's Colonial Theatre. The year is 1959. All is well, unless you consider that the leading lady can't sing a lick and gets murdered amidst the applause. This creates a backstage whodunit to be solved by police Lt. Frank Cioffi, played by David Hyde Pierce.

Everyone in the company, it seems, is a suspect.

There's the producer, Carmen Bernstein, played by Debra Monk; her husband, Sidney, played by Ernie Sabella; and her actress daughter, Bambi Bernet, played by Megan Sikora.

There's composer Aaron Fox, played by Jason Danieley, and his estranged lyricist partner and ex-wife Georgia, who get tapped for the lead role, played by Ziemba. There's dead star's understudy, Niki Harris, played by Jill Paice, with whom the detective is developing a crush.

There's also "Robbin' Hood's" director Christopher Belling, played by Edward Hibbert, and "Robbin' Hood's" leading man, played by Noah Racey, with whom Ziemba also shared a stage four years ago in the musical "Never Gonna Dance."

The list of potential murderers in the mystery musical goes on and on. As the action unfolds, the body count rises, despite the fact Lt. Cioffi has the theater under lockdown.

"'Curtains' is a show that's very surprising. You walk away from it just elated because it's fun," said Ziemba, chatting in her dressing room at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre before a matinee.

"It's very, very funny from beginning to end. You care about the characters. There's a murder mystery going on, so there's a lot to think about during it, but then all of a sudden you'll see this beautiful big dance number. It's got a little bit of everything. It just makes you feel good. For lack of a better phrase, you get your money's worth."

"Curtains" is the 11th show on Broadway that Ziemba's worked in over the past 32 years. Sh's a four-time Tony Award nominee, including one for "Curtains," and a one-time winner for "Contact."

"I think I have a reputation of 'Ask Karen Ziemba to do it and she'll at least try it once.' I'm one of these people that say 'yes' a lot and I'm always willing to work on new projects or try new things whether I'm getting $1.50 a week or an exorbitant amount," said Ziemba of the fact she often seems to have a job.

Or maybe it's because she followed some sound advice that she received at any early age.

"My grandmother, who sang for City Opera in the '40s and 50s, said to me, 'Never forget your ensemble - the people you're on stage with, because they're the people that make you look good and they're the people that share the stage with you and give you power and give you strength. Never treat them like they're lesser or not as important,' and that has served me."

What's striking about the cast of "Curtains" is the overall experience level. Pierce mostly recently starred in "Monty Python's Spamalot," was previously seen on the TV comedy "Frasier," and won a Tony Award this year for "Curtains." Monk has 13 Broadway credits on her resume and was a Tony winner in 1993 for "Redwood Curtain." Hibbert most recently appeared in "The Drowsy Chaperone."

"We're very fortunate," said Ziemba. "It's all about raising the bar for each other and giving each other that respect. Also letting each other make mistakes and picking up the pieces and jumping in when you need to do that, and taking care of each other, being responsible. These people know how to do that and want to do that."

While "Curtains" lacks is a truly memorable John Kander and Fred Ebb song, such as "All That Jazz" or "All I Care About" from "Chicago" or "Cabaret" or "Money" from "Cabaret," two of the team's other musicals, it does have songs that fit the moment. There's Lt. Cioffi lamenting his career as a detective when he'd much rather be a show doctor for musicals in "Coffee Shop Nights" and producer Mrs. Bernstein exhorting the troupe to continue with the show in "Show People."

"They do write very distinctive songs - Freddy being an incredible lyricist-poetic and John with his well known vamps," said Ziemba, referring to the catchy opening notes to many Kander and Ebb songs, such as "Roxie" from "Chicago."

"They really know how to build a song musically but also Fred Ebb would choose words that were very tasty and very surprising because he was so intelligent and clever and also very heart-felt and romantic at times.

"Curtains is an homage to all the old musicals that we grow up on - movie musicals, Broadway musicals - so you do get a feeling of this sort of like Golden Age of Broadway in the '50s and their music is very indicative of that in this show.

Ebb died in September 2004, long before "Curtains" reached its final form. Kander and Rupert Holmes, who also wrote the final book for "Curtains" following the death of original book-writer Peter Stone in 2003, provided additional lyrics.

In another song, "I Miss the Music," as composer Aaron Fox, Danieley sings of missing the writing partnership he enjoyed with his wife.

"He sings this song about missing working with me but it's also about missing the relationship and missing the times we have together and how we finish each other sentences," said Ziemba, suggesting that the song's lyrics can also be interpreted as Kander missing the working relationship he shared with Ebb for 40 years.

"He wrote that song by himself, so John Kander's turned out to be a pretty good lyricist himself."

- - - -

BOUBLIL, SCHONBERG BACK
WITH "THE PIRATE QUEEN"

NEW YORK (May 10, 2007) - If there were an easy recipe for success on Broadway, every show would be a hit. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg certainly combined the proper ingredients for the epic "Les Miserables," which opened in 1987, ran for 16 years and ranks as the third longest-running show in Broadway history. They had another hit in 1991 with "Miss Saigon," which lasted 10 years, and they now have their newest musical, "The Pirate Queen," setting sail on stage at the Hilton Theatre.

"We don't have recipes because each time you're learning that you know nothing when you're trying to put a show on stage," said Schonberg, who sat with his writing partner for an interview in a comfortable lounge inside the theater the day before the show's April 5th opening. "I must say we have our instinct, our tricks and how to tell a story, what we like, so altogether we try to be very different each time."

But there are similarities between the three shows.

"They're all political in a way," added Boublil. "All these shows are rooted in a very political background even without us being political about it. We always try to have a part of history in these shows, which has changed the lives of the people who are the leads of the shows."

Whereas "Les Miz" was set in strife-ridden France in the 19th Century and "Miss Saigon" had the Vietnam War in the 20th Century as the background, "The Pirate Queen" goes all the way to the 16th Century and Ireland to tell the tale of clan chieftain Grace "Grania" O'Malley.

Stephanie J. Block, who previously starred in "The Boy from Oz," plays the title character, a heroine who is described as "a pirate, chieftain, lover and other."

Politics is seen at several levels, ranging from British oppression at the hands of Queen Elizabeth I (played by Linda Balgord) to Grania's arranged marriage to the son of the leader of a rival clan, instead of to the man she really loves. Hadley Fraser plays her soul mate Tiernan, while Marcus Chait plays Donal, the man she's forced to marry her to merge the clans.

"What's interesting in 'The Pirate Queen' is that it's the story of one woman who is fighting to be who she is, a powerful woman who wants to have an active place in society, although she lives in a period of time when women have no power at all," Boublil explained.

"Even the Queen of England was also fighting in a way to establish her power against male domination of the time, so the evening is really about the feminine condition in a time when women had no power."

"The Pirate Queen" was the idea of Irish producers Moya Doherty and John McColgan, who brought "Riverdance" to the world.

"At the beginning, we were a little reluctant to do a show because the subject was not coming from us. It was coming from John and Moya and, at the same time, we have never been keen about biography of people," Schonberg recalled. "We were still hesitating and I had already written the first 25 minutes of the show, so we thought it was a good sign to keep going on working."

Schonberg supplied the music for "The Pirate Queen," Boublil handled the lyrics, and they teamed on the book. Prior to coming to New York, the musical had a tryout in Chicago last fall.

"The biggest challenge has been to make the story clear. The most difficult part of it was to understand clearly in the first 10 minutes of the show, like in any show, who the people you are going to have a journey with and spend two hours and a half with, who they are exactly and why you want to have a journey with them Š and make it as emotional, as enjoyable as possible," said Boublil.

The history of Ireland and the relationship between Ireland and England meld into the story. "They were not real pirates in the sense of the pirates of the Caribbean," said Boublil of the Irish seafarers. "They were called pirates by the English because they were looting their ships, but in fact they were trading. They were people who had a relationship with France, with Spain. The big animosity with England was based upon religion and that's the big relevance, which still applies today."

Added Schonberg, "We are trying to tell to the audience a little bit of their own stories - the story of women fighting for their position in a tough world, in a man's world; the love story between two people, the impossible love story. It's all a little bit the story of the audience. If you don't have onstage a mirror for the audience, it's irrelevant and useless."

Being an Irish show, "The Pirate Queen" is dotted with step dancing as well as swashbuckling.

"We had to find a very difficult mix between the kind show we write, like 'Les Miserables' or 'Miss Saigon,' historical drama, historical epic drama, and a tradition which we were not too familiar with, the Irish tradition," said Boublil.

That meant "including a lot of Irish dance, a lot of Irish sounds. Little by little it lead to something very exciting because we realized we shouldn't use the normal orchestra in the pit for this show. We realized that we could use the best dances of 'Riverdance' without making a parody of 'Riverdance.' We realized that we could serve a dramatic purpose with that story, exactly like we did with 'Miss Saigon' when we had to mix Asian sounds with the Western world. It was a fascinating experience for us."

- - - -

RAUL ESPARZA HEARS VOICES
BEING BOBBY IN "COMPANY"

NEW YORK (April 5, 2007) - Raul Esparza admits to hearing voices. Not the voices outside of his dimly lit dressing room at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre where he was chatting recently about the Broadway revival of "Company," rather the ones that echo from the past every time he steps on stage as Bobby, the musical's perpetual New York bachelor who fears commitment and marriage.

"You're stepping into part of Broadway history because all the voices of the people who have done the show before, they sort of do ring in your head - Larry Kert and Dean Jones and Elaine Stritch and Barbara Barrie. They're all there," he said, recalling cast members from the original production of "Company" that opened in 1970 and won six Tony Awards, including best musical. "We're all part of the same river. It's really something that occurs to me almost every performance of the debt and what you carry forward, which is an amazing feeling."

"Company," which boasts the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth, was last seen on Broadway in a limited engagement in 1995. The current revival opened on November 29 with John Doyle directing. Doyle repeats an eye-catching tactic he used in last year's revival of another Sondheim musical, "Sweeney Todd," by having the actors play instruments instead of employing a pit orchestra.

"The word 'revived' is actually true. It has been given an entirely new life," said Esparza. "The show is usually done in very '70s sort of sitcom format. People accuse it of being dated and they accuse Bobby of being a role that is nothing but a cipher that everybody bounces off of with these great songs. In this case, what we're doing is a production where John Doyle has brought out human beings in this story. It's funny as hell but it's not a sitcom. It is people who are wounded and you can see that."

Making up the wounded are five married couples whose lives are in various states of disarray, but who are intent on offering advice to their friend Bobby, a 35-year-old serial dater who strings along three women at a time.

"One of the things that Sondheim is so particularly great at writing is not just the ambivalence of what it means to grow up in this role but also the way that sometimes we say things that we don't mean at all," Esparza continued.

"Bobby is someone like all of us who is at a place in his life where his actions are not necessarily catching up with his thoughts anymore. What he does and who he wants to be are not matching. I think we all get to the place in our life where we start to go, 'Wait a minute. Who am I going to be as an adult? When am I going to accept the things that I can't change? When I am going to be OK in my own skin?' And that's all of us."

Bobby's pain, his doubts and his confusion are palpable as portrayed by Esparza, who has previously starred on Broadway in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," "Taboo," "Cabaret" and "The Rocky Horror Show."

"We're all Bobby in that way. It doesn't matter what the issue is. In this case, it does have a lot to do with commitment and a lot to do with marriage. Sexuality is addressed in this show in order to simply to dismiss that. It has so much to do with someone who is finally going to make a commitment to (himself) as much as to someone else. We all go through that in life. Everybody's Bobby in the audience. It's one of the reasons I think the show can be both so funny, 'cause we recognize ourselves in the couples, and then so moving 'cause we all know the fear and the heartbreak and the loneliness that it is just to be human."

Memorable Sondheim songs in "Company" include "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," "The Ladies Who Lunch," with Barbara Walsh playing the role of Joanne that Stritch originated, and "Being Alive," which is done by Esparza.

"People accuse Sondheim of being a cold writer, an acidic writer, a writer who has no emotion, but his plays are simply dripping with emotion. He's not sentimental but it's full of sentiment. There's nothing easy about it and it's very adult and it requires, too, that you participate in the show. It's interesting to see a musical where a character that steps forward and says 'I love you' and doesn't mean a word he's saying. It takes the audience a moment to get that mindset," said Esparza.

"Another thing that happens in this play and with George Furth's outstanding book is that you get to feel smart as audience members. Those jokes are pretty fast and very clever and if you get the humor here, it's a wonderful feeling to feel that smart."

What Doyle has done as a director is to strip away the normal trappings of musical - that is, massive sets - to allow the instrument-playing cast to extend their characters through the music that they themselves provide.

"The biggest different here is that it feels like you're actually inside the music; you're in the orchestra. You hear it differently every night. Sometimes you'll hear a particular sound in your left (ear) that you never heard before. That's interesting. It keeps it fresh,' said Esparza.

"The great climax of the show, 'Being Alive,' which is one of the seminal Sondheim songs, is a song where in this case there are 14 people on the stage making it happening. It's not just a solo for me. This is a show where I could not give the performance I give or get the response I get from the audience without the other actors contributing, not just as musicians but as actors."

By the time "Being Alive" wraps up Bobby's journey into adulthood, both audience members and cast members, but most notably Esparza, feel drained.

"It's a completely exhausting experience. It's one of those things where I feel like I hope that I am able to deliver and that I am worthy of the song and I can land it. You want to put every last ounce of your heart into it and I try to do that every single performance."

At that point, Esparza isn't hearing voices, only prolonged applause.

- - - -

NEW CONTEST LAUNCHED,
AFFILIATE WMRD VISITED

HARWINTON, CT (February 25, 2007) - Over the years, Broadway's Biggest Hits has staged a number the contests, but not as many as I might have liked for the simple reason that it's difficult to design a contest that's fair for all listeners.

It's no secret that the program is pre-recorded - usually more than a week in advance of airing - and affiliates play the show in a variety of time slots; some on Saturday, some on Sunday and some both days. As a result, it requires a little creativity to have a contest that gives every listener an equal chance of winning.

This weekend, the show begins a new contest that I hope is fair. I've assembled a montage of snippets from various Broadway musicals and invite everyone to enter via e-mail by providing the correct song title and the name of the musical from which the song is taken. To hear the montage, just tune in the show either over-the-air or online.

Everyone who has supplied all the correct answers will qualify to possibly win. I'll drop the names of those who qualify into a hat and start pulling names. The winners will get cast recordings until the supply runs out. I have CDs of "Wicked," "All Shook Up," "Tarzan" and many, many others to give away.

Winners will be notified by e-mail and the prizes will go out by mail. I hope everyone finds the contest to be clever and the montage to be at least a little challenging.

Because of the lag time between the recording of the show and the actual air date(s), the first winner(s) won't be announced on the show until the weekend of March 10-11. Good luck.
--
Because Broadway's Biggest Hits affiliates are spread far and wide, I don't often get the chance to visit the stations that carry the program, but this past week was an exception as I drove cross-state to WMRD (AM 1150) in Middletown, CT to be a guest on Ginny Wolf's "Spotlight" show. (That's Ginny in the picture.)

WMRD and sister station WLIS (AM 1420) in Old Saybrook, CT are Broadway's Biggest Hits new affiliates, and they air the show twice each weekend - at 10 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Ginny's show, which is heard at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, focuses on the arts in Connecticut and she's an enthusiastic advocate, who just happens to love Broadway as well. Our pre-recorded get-together can be heard this week.

Thanks, Ginny, for your hospitality!
--
For months, I've been considering launching a weekly e-newsletter for listeners and the word today is that I'm no closer to a decision. There's certainly sufficient interest for a newsletter and certainly enough news and info to pass along. What's lacking is the time to produce it. Stay tuned.

- - - -

"UNORIGINAL" BROADWAY
HEAVILY INTO RECYCLING

HARWINTON, CT (January 25, 2007) - The note from an acquaintance in New York came not via email, rather in an actual envelope delivered to the mailbox in front of my house. The sender, a retired Hartford Courant and New York Times editor who is a big theater fan, recounted having recently seen the current revival of "A Chorus Line."

"It's an exact copy of the original - no changes whatsoever (except some lighting, I'm told). I was disappointed. Why? Who knows? Maybe I've just lost my enthusiasm for it," Dick Mooney wrote.

I'd have accepted his explanation without a thought had he not prefaced his mini-review with the assertion that he went to see the musical "because I consider 'A Chorus Line' to be one of the GREATEST," an unmistakable signal that he was fully open to being to be pleased.

His muted reaction to "A Chorus Line" mirrors a feeling of disillusionment with Broadway that I've been experiencing of late, a feeling that Broadway is unwittingly and ultimately being victimized by its own success and a growing suspicion that Broadway is now alienating its core audience of traditional musical-theater lovers.

Will longtime fans of musical theater really get excited by such upcoming shows as "Legally Blonde," "Shrek," Xanadu" and a warmed over "Grease," its leads cast in prime time on a tacky reality TV show? Excuse me, but shouldn't Broadway ticket prices guarantee higher caliber talent than a "Broadway Idol" contest can generate?

Maybe traditional lovers of musical theater no longer represent the core. Maybe Broadway has broadened its appeal so much that it has become more amusement park than cultural entity; that what was once special is now ordinary. Maybe Broadway has fully reduced itself to being just another player - albeit an expensive one - in the entertainment spectrum.

I'd like to think this isn't the case. Over the past year or two, I've gotten a kick out of the spirited revival of "The Pajama Game" with Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli O'Hara, found "Mary Poppins" to be truly magical (if a bit long), and even appreciated "The Light in the Piazza" (again with Miss O'Hara) and "The Apple Tree," but was bored by the likes of such "commercial" shows as "Tarzan" "Lennon" and "All Shook Up." I didn't even bother with "The Wedding Singer."

Having "Legally Blonde," "Shrek," "Xanadu" and "Grease" in the pipeline wouldn't be a problem if more shows arrived on Broadway in the course of a year, but with a high-cost business model that demands wide appeal, and with long-running shows holding too many theaters hostage, too few shows open each season.

"Mamma Mia!" has monopolized the Cadillac Winter Garden Theatre for five years, while "The Producers" has played the St. James Theatre for six. "Chicago," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Rent" have lasted for 10 years each, and "The Phantom of the Opera" has run an amazing 18 years.

Yes, the end is probably near for "The Producers" - the next tenant at the St. James is said to be Mel Brooks' next movie-turned-musical funfest, "Young Frankenstein" - but "Mamma Mia!," "Chicago" and "Phantom" certainly aren't going anywhere soon.

"Beauty" will come to an end at the end of July but taking its place in November at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre will be another Disney tuner, "The Little Mermaid."

The paucity of theaters means that only five musicals - "Curtains," "The Pirate Queen," "LoveMusik," "Legally Blonde" and "110 in the Shade" - will open in the next five months:

"Curtains" is a new musical comedy with music by John Kander, lyrics by the late Fred Ebb and a book by Rupert Holmes. David Hyde Pierce plays a detective investigating murder on the set of a Broadway musical. It begins previews February 27 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre with opening night set for March 22.

"The Pirate Queen" is the newest musical from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg ("Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon"). Stephanie J. Block stars in this tale of Irish pirate chieftain Grace O'Malley. Previews start March 6 at the Hilton Theatre with opening night on April 5.

"LoveMusik" has Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy teaming up to play German composer Kurt Weill and his muse, Lotte Lenya, respectively. Harold Prince will direct. It begins previews at the Biltmore Theatre on April 12. Opening night is May 3.

"110 in the Shade" has Audra McDonald, John Cullum and Steve Kazee starring in a limited run of the musical that's based on the Richard Nash play "The Rainmaker." Previews begin at Studio 54 on April 13 with opening night scheduled for May 9.

"Legally Blonde" casts Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods, a sorority sister who decides to go to Harvard Law School after her boyfriend dumps her. With Valley Girlish opening number, "Ohmigod, You Guys," and what will no doubt be a scene-stealing (if not scene-eating) canine owned the central character, "Legally Blonde" certainly isn't aiming for traditional theater fans. It launches previews at the Palace Theatre on April 3 and opens April 29.

In his note, Mooney noted "because of my disappointment with 'Chorus Line,' I'm not going to see the new 'Les Miz' until enough people tell me it's still really great. I saw that one three or four times, too. Loved it. But I have the impression that this rerun may be just a rerun, in which case I'd rather remember Colm Wilkinson."

As a fan of "Les Miserables" myself, I've avoided it for the same reason. I don't want to risk being disappointed by a show that was plopped in a theater presumably because some sets existed and it seemed like easy money. It is doing well, though, and recently extended what was to have been a limited run through the summer.

New York Yankees icon Yogi Berra once said of a restaurant, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." The same logic can now be applied to Broadway, which had its best week ever the last week of 2006 when attendance hit 314,310 and grosses totaled $29.1 million.

There's no arguing the commercial success of current shows like "Wicked," "The Lion King," "Jersey Boys," "The Color Purple," "Monty Python's Spamalot," Mamma Mia!," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Beauty and The Beast, "The Producers," "Hairspray" and "Chicago."

The problem is that the majority of them are what might best be described as "unoriginals," derived from movies or song catalogues, rather from original thinking. For every genuinely fresh show like "The Drowsy Chaperone" or "Avenue Q" that occasionally comes along and becomes a hit, there are many more attempts to cash in by merely modifying a previous success story.

With too few theaters available, and the high cost of mounting shows demanding familiar titles that are easy to promote, it doesn't leave much for the traditional musical theater lovers to get excited about over the course of a season. That's why I'm already rooting for the whodunit "Curtains." But I still suspect that Broadway is now "too crowded" for the expectations of many of us to be considered.

- - - -

FRITZ WEAVER PLAYS
CORRUPT PATRIARCH

(Photo of Michael Stuhlbarg, left, and Fritz Weaver star in "The Voysey Inheritance" by Monique Carboni)

NEW YORK (December 26, 2006) - Fritz Weaver's acting career has spanned 60 years. His 81st birthday is less than a month away and he's still hard at work - currently starring as a corrupt family patriarch, a solicitor who has been embezzling funds from his family-owned firm's clients, in the Atlantic Theatre Company's Off-Broadway production of "The Voysey Inheritance."

It's a juicy role that may - or may not - mark his swan song. "Actors are opportunists. You can say, 'I've finished. I don't want to do any more' and the next day a script will come along and you'll say, 'I've got to do this.' You'll turn around from your retirement plans with joy. I hesitate to say that I'm retired," said Weaver recently weekend following a matinee performance of the Harley Granville Barker play.

Seated in a chair on-stage at the end of a large table, in the same spot from which a short time earlier he had pleased theatergoers as the elegant and smooth-talking Mr. Voysey, Weaver spoke enthusiastically of "The Voysey Inheritance," which dates back to 1905. "Its been updated by David Mamet in a very powerful way. It has even more power than the original," he said.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays the most crucial role as Mr. Voysey's conflicted son, Edward Voysey, who discovers that plundering clients' accounts is his inheritance, if he so chooses to continue the family tradition; that not only did his father embezzle to maintain the family's upper-crust lifestyle, so did his has grandfather. The setting may be England of a century ago, but "The Voysey Inheritance" comes off as a remarkably brisk and contemporary tale.

"When you think of all the white collar crime going on in this country, all of the CEOs who are corrupt, this is about that very thing. It shows you that nothing has changed in the last century," said Weaver, and for the succinct reason that "power corrupts and the more you get, the more you want."

The signs of power and wealth are very evident in the set - an elegant parlor that could be a Gainsborough gallery. More than 60 paintings comprise the three walls. It's the gathering place where Voysey family members and their guests sip port from crystal glasses.

"I would go out before the show sometimes and sit out there and just sort of say, 'I'm going to be up there in that set.' It's just a gorgeous set - these paintings and the sense of the Edwardian era at home here with the piano. It's a great thing," Weaver said.

Weaver knows something about sets. He made his New York stage debut in 1955 in "The White Devil" and his Broadway debut that same year for "The Chalk Garden," for which he received a Tony Award nomination. That was followed by "a whole string of flops that I was in for which there were no Tony nominations."

He finally took home a Tony in 1970 for "Child's Play." "It's a kind of lottery who wins Tonys and who doesn't. It's a question of finding the right role and the right time. There are many great actors who have never won a Tony and there's some who are not so great who have, so it evens out," he said.

Weaver's list of credits also includes two Broadway musicals: "All American" in 1962 and "Baker Street" in 1965.

"All American" starred Ray Bolger as a foreign university professor who comes to the United States. With music and lyrics by Charles Adams and Lee Strouse, who had given Broadway the musical "Bye Bye Birdie" two years earlier, "All- American" had a book by Mel Brooks and was directed by Joshua Logan.

"I had to dance with Bolger and this is something to contemplate," Weaver recalled. "The thing about him is that he improvised in rehearsal. He never stuck to the choreography. I, however, had to stay with exactly what I was told because that's my security.

"On opening night we're standing in the wings and Ray Bolger says to me, 'Hey, kid, come here. You know when the orchestra goes "Oop, oop?"' I say, 'Yeah.' 'What do I do then?' I said, 'Well, Ray...' I heard myself telling him how to do the dance. I mean, c'mon, telling Ray Bolger how to dance?"

In "Baker Street," which had a book that blended elements of many of Sherlock Holmes cases into one story, Weaver played fiction's most famous consulting detective. It reunited him with Logan, who was the original director before Harold Prince took over. "Baker Street" lasted nine months but failed to ring true for faithful fans of Sherlock Holmes because of the cobbled together storyline.

"That was the ultimate trouble I think," said Weaver. "The script couldn't be made to be a single unified story."

One character, Irene Adler, played by Inga Swenson, was taken from the Holmes tale "A Scandal in Bohemia," and an attempt was made to develop a romantic relationship between her and Holmes.

"There's a sort of a hidden Broadway imperative that there be a romance in it. Well, there's no romance in Sherlock Holmes except for one sentence," said Weaver, referring to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's assertion that "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." "On that we based a kind of tenuous love affair. Of course, you can't involve him in romance. You can't do it. You violate the canon when you do it that way."

In-between the musicals, in 1964, Weaver played six U.S. presidents in the A.E. Hotchner play "The White House." The "First Lady of the American Theater," Helen Hayes, played the first ladies. During the show's pre-Broadway tryout in Philadelphia, "The White House" company actually visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a performance.

"Lyndon Johnson had just become president. We were invited to do it at the White House before an audience of diplomats and congressmen and so forth and we did it. When we got to the White House, Lyndon Johnson came in. We were in rehearsal. Helen Hayes, who was a rock-ribbed Republican and despised the Democratic Party and Lyndon Johnson, sank to the floor with her forehead touching the floor in a courtesy to the president. It was a wonderful meeting of the first lady and first gentleman of the country."

The curtsy by Miss Hayes punctuated what was a memorable excursion for Weaver. "It was a great occasion to play there in those hallowed halls. It was shortly after Kennedy's assassination and the place had a kind of holy aspect to it. A different mood in the country entirely from what it is now. You thought of Lincoln and you thought of Wilson and Roosevelt. Now you think ... Never mind what we think now. We have our own opinions of what we think now."

In addition to the stage, Weaver has starred on numerous TV shows, and received an Emmy Award nomination for his work in the NBC miniseries "Holocaust." Asked how he has managed to work so much, he suggested "maybe bone structure" had something to do with it, before recalling an anecdote from the opening night of "Baker Street."

"Basil Rathbone, who played Sherlock Holmes in the movies, was at our opening night sitting in the front row. If you didn't think that was unnerving," he said, recalling that the two actors met after the performance. "He came in and he said, 'My boy, people who look like us will never be out of work.' The photographers came and they said would you pose over here. I turned to the camera and Rathbone took my face and turned it around and said, 'Profile, my boy, profile.' So I've been immortalized with another Holmes."

It is the refinement, rather than the profile, than Weaver brings to "The Voysey Inheritance" that makes the character of Mr. Voysey so believable, and it's a fitting curtain call to a career should that be the case.

"I would like - like Ferdinand the bull - to sit under a cork tree and smell the flowers for a while. I don't mean by that," Weaver explained, "that I want to be idle. I mean that life is so much bigger in its way than what we do. I've been doing it for 60 years and that's enough - perhaps."

"The Voysey Inheritance " opened December 6 and has now had its run extended through February 10 at the Atlantic Theater, 336 West 20th Street.

- - - -

JAMES AT HOME
IN "APPLE TREE"

NEW YORK (December 3, 2006) - Actor Brian d'Arcy James professes that the two intertwined goals in his life are to support his family and to continue to grow as an artist, and he's well aware that his chosen profession can be filled with many ups and downs.

"It's always a struggle. A scramble is probably a better word," James said one evening last month following a rehearsal for the Broadway revival of "The Apple Tree." "Sometimes you struggle, sometimes you don't, but you're always cranking a wheel to get to the next thing."

One up moment came in 2002 when he received a Tony Award nomination as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his work with John Lithgow and Kelli O'Hara in "Sweet Smell of Success."

Another up moment came in late 2004 when he starred in the world premiere production of the Irving Berlin musical "White Christmas" at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

The last six months or so have been entirely up, too. In that short time frame, he has played an I.R.A.-styled terrorist in Martin McDonagh's dark comedy "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," starred as a conman in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and is now tackling three roles in "The Apple Tree."

Preview performances of "The Apple Tree," which also stars Kristin Chenoweth and Marc Kudisch, began Wednesday night at Studio 54, one night later than originally planned after Chenoweth suffered an injury during a rehearsal last weekend.

The Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical is really three one-act musicals that are based on Mark Twain's "The Diary of Adam and Eve," Frank R. Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger?" and Jules Feiffer's "Passionella."

"This music is so strikingly beautiful and simple in a lot of ways but also wonderful in the context of the story, a variety of styles because the nature of the show changes," James explained.

"One is kind of traditional musical theater, the second you might call light opera and the third you might even say more pop. It's a revelation to me. I've always heard of 'The Apple Tree.' I never knew what the mechanics of it were. I've never seen it, only heard a couple of songs from the score so the whole thing, even though it's a revival, to me it's a complete discovery."

James seemed most enthused about getting to play Adam opposite Chenoweth's Eve. "That's just delightful. Whatever you can imagine of watching Adam and Eve getting to know each other and becoming the first male and female couple, that's what it is," he said.

Opening night for "The Apple Tree" is scheduled for December 14th, but it's not the only theatrical treat that James is involved with this holiday season. He's also heard on the recently released cast recording of "White Christmas," which brought the original leads from San Francisco back together.

James plays Captain Bob Wallace, the role Bing Crosby played in the memorable 1954 motion picture. Jeffry Denman plays Private Phil Davis, which Danny Kaye handled. Playing sisters Betty and Judy Haynes are Anatasia Barzee and Meredith Patterson, the roles originally played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen.

Recalling audience reaction to the San Francisco production, James said, "Inevitably you'd walk out of the theater and people would say, 'We have family traditions that are built around this movie.' It's a thing that is near and dear to a lot of people's hearts. To be able to do it and to very successfully do it a new medium, in a live theatrical way, gives people one more chance every Christmas to come out and experience it in a whole new way. I'm really happy that people aren't let down and people are in fact are just as happy, just as satisfied seeing this classic told on stage."

This year, sanctioned productions of "White Christmas" are being done in Detroit and St. Paul, Minn.

For most of us, though, the CD of "White Christmas" will have to suffice. "For fans of the movie, it'll be a great surprise and a joy to hear some fantastic songs by Irving Berlin that weren't in the movie," James said.

Among them are "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," Happy Holiday" and "How Deep Is the Ocean," along with the "White Christmas" favorites "Sisters," "Snow," "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep," "What Do You Do with a General?" and the title song.

James enthused that Berlin had the "ability to write tunes that seem universally digestible in the most delectable way."

He explained, "A sculptor will see a block of marble, he'll be able to create and bring out the life of the statue that exists within that. Berlin was able to do that with tunes - taking things that are kind of universal truths that everyone hears but can't necessarily make real. He was able to do that.

"Secondly, his songs are deceivingly simple and complex at the same time. On the face it, it seems like a simple song with a simple message, but the way that it's constructed, the care and the meticulousness of his putting words together in a very simply way, I think, create overtones that are happening with the listener and the viewers in ways that they do not even realize. The simplicity of it is also a tremendous strength in the songwriting."

If Berlin used simplicity to get his message across, playwright Martin McDonagh used brut force and over-the-top violence to get across the mad futility of all terrorists in "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," which presented a nightly bloodbath for theatergoers during its second act.

"I'm very proud to have been a part of that because you know that what you were doing wasn't just gratuitous or wasn't just there for some kind of shock value, although it was shocking, but it was making a statement," James said.

"I'd read that when he wrote this play he said he wanted to write something that got him killed. His dedication as an artist and as a writer and as a person who wants to say something is kind of embodied in that statement. To have been asked to carry that out in a way that would hopefully shed light on a world in chaos with very violent ways of manifesting itself, I feel proud to have been part of making a statement saying 'Hey, let's look at this and think about it.'"

Musicals, though, have been James' bread and butter, and he's very happy to be where he is at the moment. He won't have to begin "cranking a wheel" again until after his current musical, "The Apple Tree," ends its limited run on March 11.

- - - -

MICHELE PAWK
LOVING "LOUIE"

NEW YORK (November 12, 2006) - No Broadway show is ever perfect, but the structural makeup of the Simon Mendes da Costa play "Losing Louie" provides Michele Pawk and her cast mates with the unusual opportunity to continually polish their work and strive for perfection even as a performance is in progress.

"Every performance, after a scene, I meet Mark Linn-Baker backstage and we talk about 'Why didn't that fly? What did I do? Did I mumble something? Did they not hear me?' And he'll be like, 'No, somebody coughed on the setup.' It's a constant process of trying to get it right. You want to figure it out. It's so challenging. It's like a great puzzle in a way," explained Pawk before a recent matinee week at the Biltmore Theatre.

"Losing Louie" uses a funeral gathering to humorously expose long-hidden family secrets as it flips from the present to the past. Two brothers, played by Linn-Baker and Matthew Arkin, have come to Pound Ridge, N.Y. to bury their father. Joining them are their spouses, played by Pawk and Patricia Kalember.

"It's a really sweet, touching and very funny play. It's also a complicated play. It was written by a British playwright - only the second play that he's ever had done actually and the first play that's been ever produced here in America," Pawk explained.

"Losing Louie," which was staged in London as "Losing Louis," is set solely in a bedroom and opens in the past with Louie Ellis, played by Scott Cohen, under the covers with his lover Bella Holland, played by Jama Williamson. His pregnant wife, Bobbie Ellis, played by Rebecca Creskoff, is nowhere to be seen. What the paramours don't know, though, is that Louie's young son Tony is under the bed listening to their lovemaking.

"You get to actually see why and how and who these boys are because of what happened, because of who their parents were, and because of circumstances. To me, that's the beautiful thing about the play. You look at the past scenes and you see what happened and how they deal with their children and then you get to fast-forward to the present and you see the child as an adult and you see who he's become consequently because of all the stuff that had happened to him. That's the really beautiful delicious thing about the play."

New York Post theater critic Clive Barnes described Pawk as being "constantly hilarious" playing Shelia Ellis in "Losing Louie," which opened October 12, and she's certainly that, but what stands out for theatergoers when the curtain finally comes down is a realization of what all parents go through in raising their kids.

That's certainly the case for the two brothers, the struggling Tony Ellis, played as grownup by Linn-Baker, and the more affluent and successful Reggie Ellis, played by Arkin.

Ultimately, Pawk said, "I think they realize mom and dad did the best that they possibly could and I can either waste more time worrying about 'coulda, woulda, shoulda' or I can move on with my life. I can decide I can change the pattern, which I think is the beautiful sort of thing about psychology in general - how not to pass it on to your kids when you can change the behavior."

Few people in this world are baggage-free, and Pawk said her parents played a big role in her own career path. While her father encouraged her to follow her passion, which turned out to be acting, she said her mother was "pushy."

"My mother had aspirations of being a dancer when she was younger and got pregnant at 19 and her life was changed. She was a bit of Mama Rose as far as the theater stuff goes," said Pawk, recalling that it wasn't until she hit 30 herself that she came to the conclusion that theater life was her calling.

Pawk's career, though, has been filled with work in productions that perhaps deserved better fates. She has starred on Broadway in the short-lived Carol Burnett-Carrie Hamilton play "Hollywood Arms," for which she won a Tony Award in 2003, and the short-lived musical "Seussical" as well as in the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical "Bounce," which failed to make it to Broadway after tryouts in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Her favorite role was in "Hollywood Arms" as Louise opposite Linda Lavin's Nanny "probably because I didn't get to do it as long as I would have loved to have done it."

"Seussical," which featured a book, music and lyrics by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, may have only lasted six months bridging 2000 and 2001, but it has had a successful afterlife around the country, a fact that surprises Pawk "not at all.

"Listen to that CD (cast recording). It's a brilliant score and magnificent storytelling. To take those Dr. Seuss stories, put them all together and create such a complicated, beautifully wonderful, heartwarming story. I think it's a masterpiece."

So why didn't it work on Broadway? "I think the reasons that it didn't fly were, 'Other.' I think it became too complicated. I think it became overproduced," replied Pawk, who played Mayzie LaBird in "Seussical."

"It was a blast of a part. The ironic thing about that show at that time in my life, I had just given birth. Literally two, three months before we started out of town in Boston. It was sort of ironic that I was playing the bad mother Š when there I was with my child backstage every day. He became the little Who back there," said Pawk, who is married to actor John Dossett.

As for "Bounce" and its out-of-town demise?

"That one broke my heart. That was sort of a changing point in my assessment of the business, my assessment of my career and what I valued. To me it's unfathomable how you can have a musical written by Steve Sondheim and John Weidman, directed by Hal Prince (and not make it to Broadway). I don't understand how that doesn't see the light of day. There's nothing to say except, 'Shame on people.'"

With the Broadway landscape fill with movie adaptations and revivals, Pawk said she feel fortunate to being starring in a new production like "Losing Louie," which is a presentation of the Manhattan Theatre Club.

"We're really lucky in Manhattan. We have three not-for-profit theaters, Manhattan Theatre Club being one of them that supported this new play. I am so grateful to them. It's incredibly difficult to get a new piece of work off the ground in a commercial situation. It rarely, rarely happens anymore, and if we don't find a way to support it, there will be nothing new anymore."

Support can be shown for "Losing Louie" through November 26.

- - - -

ULVAEUS ASSESSES SUCCESS
OF "MAMMA MIA!" GLOBALLY

Photo courtesy Bruce Glikas/Broadway.com

NEW YORK (October 29, 2006) - Four days earlier, Bjorn Ulvaeus had been in Moscow, a member of an opening night audience at the MDM Theatre. "That was a wonderful experience," he recalled of seeing the musical "Mamma Mia!" produced in Russian. "Very enthusiastic cast and they sing very well."

While the songs were familiar, the lyrics were unrecognizable. "It's so surreal when you sit there and you see people move their mouths and out comes sounds but you don't understand one word, and especially in the dialogue when people burst out laughing and you don't have a clue what they're laughing at. It's very strange," Ulvaeus said.

Opening night in Moscow marked yet another milestone for the musical that uses the songs of Ulvaeus' legendary Swedish pop-rock group, ABBA, to tell its story. Since the first production of "Mamma Mia!" opened in London more than seven years ago, more than 27 million people have seen it worldwide and it has grossed more than $1.6 billion.

Besides English, "Mamma Mia!" has been staged in German, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Korean, Flemish, Swedish and, now, Russian. "Actually, Russian is a kind of a soft, good language to sing in," said Ulvaeus, who had flown here directly from Moscow to attend last week's 5th anniversary performance of "Mamma Mia!" at the Cadillac Winter Garden Theatre.

Seated on a sofa in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel, Ulvaeus reflected upon the success of "Mamma Mia!," which attracts more than 18,000 people around the world every night.

"The audiences are more or less the same," he said. "I would say the acting tradition is more what differs between the countries. You think of a typical American energetic actor and you think of a more sophisticated laid back English actor. There's a such a difference between American and Germany, and Germany and Russia as well, and that's very interesting to see."

"Mamma Mia!" tells the story of Sophie Sheridan (currently played on Broadway by Carey Anderson), a girl who tracks down three men from her mother's past and invites them to her wedding in hopes of learning if one of them is her father. Carolee Carmello plays the mom, Donna Sheridan.

Why has "Mamma Mia!" become such a phenomena?

"That's the big question, isn't it? I think partly because of the timing, perhaps," Ulvaeus responded.

"The musicals of '80s and those spilling over into the 90s like 'Les Miserables' and 'Phantom of the Opera,' however good they were, they were not really uplifting, happy, light, romantic things and 'Mamma Mia!' was, and also we were the first one to try to do this thing - to write a musical sort of backwards and that worked.

"I think that our attitude to it, that the story was always more important than the songs, shows. It works because people are immersed in the story very, very much. Without mentioning any names, people after 'Mamma Mia,' a lot people with good song catalogues have tried, but they've not approached it the same way that we have."

So many so-called "jukebox" musicals have come and gone since "Mamma Mia!" arrived on Broadway on October 18, 2001. Only "Jersey Boys," which uses the songs of The Four Seasons and tells their story, has been a blockbuster. Shows like "All Shook Up" with its Elvis Presley song, Lennon" with the songs of John Lennon and "Ring of Fire" with Johnny Cash tunes have been short-lived.

Ulvaeus said he never expected "Mamma Mia!" to click with theatergoers the way that it has. "Far from it," he said. "I thought it would be a little musical in London, maybe for a year or so, but never spreading around the globe as it has. I never expected that."

The idea for "Mamma Mia!" can be traced to producer Judy Craymer.

"The idea came very, very early on from Judy Craymer but back then - she was in a television production company - she wanted to do something for television loosely based on ABBA songs," Ulvaeus explained.

"I said, 'Produce a good script and we'll see.' No good script came and the years went by. Gradually it changed from television to becoming what's called a "panto" in England, which is some kind of theater thing going on around Christmas for families. After I had seen 'Grease' in London, and this must be 10 years ago now, with my family, my two girls wanted to see it, then it sort of afterwards dawned on me maybe this thing with AABA songs could be something like that - funny, romantic, uplifting and, above all, with a lot of hit songs."

ABBA, composed of Benny Andersson, Ulvaeus and their then wives, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog, churned out hit after hit in the 1970s and 1980s. A short list includes "Waterloo," Dancing Queen," "S.O.S.," "The Winner Takes It All," "Money, Money, Money," "Our Last Summer," "Take a Chance on Me" and "Mamma Mia."

How did the title song to "Mamma Mia!" come to be written?

"As with all the rest of the songs, by hard work, sitting down, Benny and me, in a basement, smoking 40 Marlboros each, and hammering away on the guitar and the piano. The funny thing is that I don't have specific memories with any of the songs," Ulvaeus said.

"The audience out there do, I know that, but I don't because we wrote them in kind of the same way, all of them. It's kind of strange but that's the way it is. I don't have any specific memory that goes with 'Mamma Mia.'"

At the height of ABBA's popularity, it was frequently said the group out-grossed Sweden's best- known manufacturer, Volvo. Now, "Mamma Mia!" represents a multi-media conglomerate as well.

Not only are there 11 global productions of the musical currently running, there's a 5th anniversary "special edition CD," with bonus tracks of "Mamma Mia," "Dancing Queen" and "Waterloo" not previously released in the U.S., as well as the new coffee table picture book "Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You?" Both were released last week.

Upcoming is a movie version of "Mamma Mia!," which will be produced by Tom Hanks' company.

How long the "Mamma Mia!" juggernaut will last is anyone's guess. Last week on Broadway, it only grossed $921,822.

For Ulvaeus, a day doesn't pass without him being reminded of the impact of ABBA's music. "I'm amazed and very proud. It's very gratifying," he said.

- - - -

HITTING THE ROAD
WITH MARC KUDISCH

HARWINTON, CT (September 24, 2006) - Motorcycling is "a non-stop adventure" for actor Marc Kudisch, who rode his 2007 Harley-Davidson Street Glide up from New York City to Hartford last month to star with Amanda Plummer in the current Hartford Stage production of the Tennessee Williams play "Summer and Smoke."

The play's five-week run continues through Sunday, and his extended stay in Connecticut has enabled Kudisch to explore some of the state's back roads as well as to zip back to the city on occasion so that upgrades could be done on his new bike.

A two-time Tony Award nominee for the musicals "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" on Broadway, Kudisch is equally passionate about acting and about riding, a sport he picked up in 2000 while performing in a production in Seattle.

"Everybody rides scooters out there. Vintage Vespas are a big deal," he recalled, "...so I ended up buying a Vespa just because it was small. I had always sort of had a fascination for 'cycles and scooters. I was out there for 3 months. I think I probably put 2,000 miles on that scooter and I loved it. I went everywhere on it."

Infected by the riding bug, Kudisch soon began displaying a symptom that most new riders develop, an unquenchable hunger for more power. "When I got back to New York with it, I realized I wanted something bigger. I went from a scooter up to a 600cc Honda 'cause I wanted to start with a medium-sized engine," he said.

That led to a '99 Honda Shadow Ace Tour, an 1100cc bike. "I had that for a couple of years and then I went to Harley. I wanted a bigger bike. I just found that bigger was more comfortable for me. I had a 2004 Softail, which I worked on for a couple of years, and now I've got the 2007 Street Glide."

His new ride has Harley's fresh-for-2007 combination of a 96-cubic-inch/1584cc motor and a six-speed transmission. Last Saturday, Kudisch accepted an invitation to give his bike a workout on a tour of northwestern Connecticut. The ride began with a stop at Yankee Harley-Davidson in Bristol so that he could pick up a gasket for the latest modification he was planning for his bike.

"A lot of it is vanity, I guess, but a part of it also is just the enjoyment...," he later said of his need to tweak his Street Glide. "Look, we work hard in our lives and for what? We work hard in our lives, hopefully, to create a life for ourselves that is comfortable, for ourselves, for our children, but in the end you have to remember that hard work is paid off in enjoying life.

"A part of what I enjoy is being able to ride and being able to travel... If I can't take a vacation, I can take an hour ride and for me that can be like a vacation and it keeps me sane. Yeah, I spend some money on that stuff but I also know that it makes me a much more sane individual, which is worth every dime I spend."

The gasket safely wrapped in cardboard and stowed in a saddlebag, we left the traffic on Route 6 behind for a pleasure ride that took us from Thomaston through Litchfield and Goshen to Toymaker's Cafe in Falls Village for a mid-afternoon breakfast. Owner Greg Bidou allowed us to peek in his barn behind the cafe at his newly restored 1964 Triumph Cub, one of only 364 made between 1961 and 1964, and his 1921 Model H Triumph.

The pit stop provided tangible proof of Kudisch's belief that the journey is what's important. "I say to people, 'The minute you sit on a bike your vacation starts.' More often than not, it's the ride that's more fun than the destination itself. You just become very aware of your surroundings.

"If you want to stop," Kudisch continued, snapping his fingers, "you pull off to the side of the road and throw it on its (kickstand) and you go and look around. You just become a part of your environment as opposed to shut off from it. That's the allure of it."

From Falls Village, Route 7 took us to the covered bridge in Cornwall where we chatted with the proud new owner of a 2006 Triumph Bonneville T-100 and on to Kent where, like so many other riders, we walked the sidewalks admiring he many bikes parked up and down the street.

Later, sitting at the dining room table at home, our bikes cooling in the driveway, Kudisch detoured away from riding to acting, and his current role playing the scandalous John Buchanan Jr. in "Summer and Smoke" at Hartford Stage.

"It was written in 1947. (Tennessee Williams) wrote 'Summer and Smoke' the same time he wrote 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' and right after he wrote 'The Glass Menagerie.' It was what he considered to be his Southern Trilogy," Kudisch explained.

"It's a beautiful play. Very under appreciated. I think a lot of people when they look at the three plays have always thought 'Summer and Smoke' was like the ugly stepsister. I really think ultimately that there is a lot that is undiscovered in that piece. It's a great piece and it actually feel surprising contemporary."

With the clock pushing 5:30 p.m., Kudisch, who celebrated his 40th birthday on Friday, was forced to head back to Hartford in order to make it to the theater by 7 p.m. Once he completes his Hartford Stage run, he'll take part next month in New York in a reading of the new Mel Brooks musical version of the movie comedy "Young Frankenstein."

"Riding around today, going through Connecticut, I wonder how many people are aware of how beautiful (the state is) and how much land and space there still is," he said.

"On a motorcycle, you're very aware of those things. In a car, you're probably in your own shut-off little world just thinking about where you're going. You miss how you get there. That's everything to me."

- - - -

NIXON OUT WITH
NEW MEMOIR

NEW YORK (September 10, 2006) - The questions posed to Marni Nixon over the decades have never varied. What was it like dubbing the singing voices for the stars of some of Hollywood's most beloved movie musicals? And how did it feel to not receive credit publicly for her sizeable vocal contributions to "The King and I," "West Side Story" and "My Fair Lady?"

Now, having answered them again and in detail in her newly-published memoir "I Could Have Sung All Night," Nixon finds herself receiving more widespread recognition. "I feel very vulnerable. I feel people are not going to like me anymore now that they know all this. I'm not so mysterious," she said, chatting recently across a table inside her home on West End Avenue.

Several years in the making, "I Could Have Sung All Night" covers Nixon's entire career, not just her skill and talent for making sweet sounds come out of the mouths of Deborah Kerr in "The King and I," Natalie Wood in "West Side Story," and Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady."

Nixon has sung opera, hosted a long-running and award-winning TV show ("Boomerang"), appeared on Broadway (most recently in "Follies" and "Nine"), toured with Liberace and Victor Borge, and passed on her knowledge as a vocal teacher.

"This book has a started a new kind of phase to my career. I've tried to be very honest. The book, I hope, is very inspirational to young kids to (show) what you have to go through to maintain a career and maintain a voice," she said.

Co-written with Stephen Cole, "I Could Have Sung All Night" contains professional and personal information and some surprises as well. The dish includes her marriages (her first husband was Ernest Gold, who wrote the Academy Award-winning music to "Exodus") and her three children, including songwriter son Andrew Gold ("Lonely Boy," "Thank You for Being a Friend").

"It depends upon where you know me from," Nixon replied when asked what will surprise readers. "Some of the really classical people are surprised that I've done so many Broadway things. Some of the Broadway people are absolutely shocked that I had such a classical career, and I have a lot of Grammy nominations and gold records for classical things, even though I've been doing that all along but the worlds seem to be kind of separate."

A portion of "I Could Have Sung All Night" was written last summer when Nixon was starring in the Barrington Stage Company's production of "Follies" in The Berkshires.

"It was very hard to get connected to the Internet up there," she said, recalling that she had to "use the phone in this communal home where I was staying." The dial-up connection tied up the line. "I wrote on e-mail for two or three hours every night after every performance and after every rehearsal to get everything done. You just have to be disciplined. That was hard."

While she was known as "The Ghostess with the Mostess" for her dubbing work, there was never a thought of Mr. Cole becoming a ghost and not getting cover credit on the book. "He was able to come in and really help me out, tell me 'This is not really important in the scheme of the story we've started.'"

The book also serves to clear up whatever misconceptions exist about Nixon.

"People think the dubbing was something that I did because I couldn't do anything else. The dubbing was just something that I did (in addition to) the jingles and commercials I was doing to make a living," she said.

"I had a concert career but it didn't make me that much money in Los Angeles even though I had heady assignments. I was working with Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the intelligentsia of the country. The dubbing just came along, it just fell in my lap and it was better than doing chorus work."

And now the news...

The name Bebe Neuwirth will soon be on the lips of everyone who goes to see "Chicago" at the Ambassador Theatre. Neuwirth, who won a Tony Award in 1997 for playing Velma Kelly when the Kander and Ebb musical was revived a decade ago, will return to the cast on December 31 for a three-month stint as Roxie Hart.
--
It already has the musical "Beauty and the Beast," "The Lion King" and "Tarzan" playing Broadway, and "Marry Poppins" on the way, but now Disney plans to make a musical of "The Little Mermaid." Based on the animated movie, "The Little Mermaid" will have its world premiere in Denver in June 2007 before coming to Broadway.
--
An October reading is planned for the upcoming Mel Brooks movie that's based on his movie hit "Young Frankenstein," with Susan Stroman directing. Kristen Chenoweth will play the part of Inga, Shuler Hensley will be the Monster, and Marc Kudisch will play the police inspector. The New York Post reports that Brooks want Cloris Leachman to recreate her movie role of Frau Blucher.
--
Sarah Uriate Berry returns to the cast of "Beauty and Beast" at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on September 19 as Belle. That's the same day that Donny Osmond joins the company as Gaston.
--
Patrick Page will take a break from playing Scar in "The Lion King" at the Minskoff Theatre to star as the title character in the limited-run holiday musical "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" at the Hilton Theatre. The musical based on the Dr. Seuss story begins previews October 25. Opening night is November 8 and it will run through January 7, 2007.
--
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber will be joined by Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson and Steven Spielberg in receiving the Kennedy Center Honors of 2006. A gala performance is set for December 3. The event will be recorded for later telecast by CBS.

- - - -

B'WAY GEARS UP
FOR FALL SHOWS

(August 27, 2006) - Summer's almost over, so it's time to start planning for fall. The motto for Broadway in the coming months might easily be "Out with the Old, In with the Old" as some familiar titles will disappear from theater marquees while some equally familiar ones will appear, notably "A Chorus Line," "Company," "Les Miserables" and "Mary Poppins."

What follows are some dates to either circle on the calendar or plug into your PDA as reminders of what's in store:

September 3 - The curtain will come down the final time on the Broadway musicals "Sweeney Todd" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" as well as the blood-drench play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore."

The Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd," which stars Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone, wraps up at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre after playing 349 performances. Meanwhile, the con comes to an end at the Imperial Theatre when the David Yazbek musical "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" closes after 666 performances.

A national tour of "Sweeny Todd" is planned for next summer, while a national tour of the movie-based musical "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" launched earlier this month in Seattle with Yazbek composing a fresh opening number, replacing "Give Them What They Want" with the new song "The Only Game in Town."

Martin McDonough's dark comedy "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" will give it final performance at the Lyceum Theatre, having played 142 performances.

September 10 - It's the 15th annual "Broadway On Broadway" concert in Times Square where stars from current and upcoming musicals perform for a crowd of 50,000 theater lovers. The free show is set for 11:30 a.m. with Martin Short hosting.

September 15 - George Bernard' Shaw's "Heartbreak House" begins previews at the American Airlines Theatre with a cast that includes Philip Bosco, Swoosie Kurtz, Byron Jennings, Lily Rabe and Laila Robins. Opening night will be October 11.

September 18 - Previews begin for the revival of the Marvin Hamlisch-Edward Kleban musical "A Chorus Line" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre with opening night set for October 5.

September 19 - Actor-ventriloquist Jay Johnson brings his solo show to the Helen Hayes Theatre. Opening night for "Jay Johnson: The Two and Only" is September 28.

September 21 - The Simon Mendes da Costa comedy "Losing Louie" begins previews at the Biltmore Theatre with a revised cast from the one originally announced. Matthew Arkin and Scott Cohen remain but Mark Linn-Baker replaces Adam Arkin and Patricia Kalember takes the place of Jan Maxwell. The opening is October 12.

September 25 - The songs of Bob Dylan and the direction and choreography of Twyla Tharp come together in the dance musical "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Opening night at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre is October 26.

October 3 - The Playwright Horizons' musical "Grey Gardens" transfers to the Walter Kerr Theatre with stars Christine Ebersole and Mary-Louise Wilson. Opening is November 2.

Also on this date the new Broadway cast recording of "A Chorus Line," which was recorded last week during the show's tryout in Seattle, gets released.

October 5 - Nathan Lane stars when previews begin for Simon Gray's dark comedy "Butley." Opening night at the Booth Theatre is October 25.

October 14 - It was a movie hit in 1964 with Julie Andrews in the title role, and now Disney brings "Mary Poppins" to the stage following a hit run in London. Gavin Lee comes over from the West End production to reprise the role of Bert, while Ashley Brown, who has starred in "Beauty and the Beast" on Broadway, plays Mary Poppins. Daniel Jenkins and Rebecca Luker will play Mr. And Mrs. Banks. Previews begin this night with opening night at the New Amsterdam Theatre set for November 16.

October 18 - "Mamma Mia!" celebrates its fifth anniversary at the Cadillac Winter Garden Theatre.

October 24 - "Les Miserables" returns for a six-month run with Alexander Gemignani as Jean Valjean, Norm Lewis as Javert, Daphne Rubin-Vegas as Fantine and Gary Beach as Thenardier. Performances begin at the Broadhurst Theatre with opening night scheduled for November 9.

October 26 - The comedy "The Little Dog Laughed" comes to the Cort Theatre. Opening is November 13.

October 30 - Raul Esparza stars in the revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Previews begin tonight with opening night set for November 29.

November 9 - Four-time Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore makes her Broadway debut in the David Hare play "The Vertical Hour." Previews begin at the Music Box Theatre with opening night planned for November 30.

November 14 - The Broadway revival of the Kander and Ebb musical "Chicago" marks its 10th anniversary with a one-night-only event featuring both original cast members and dozens of other stars who have played Roxie Hart, Velma Kelly, Billy Flynn and others over the years.

In addition to original cast members Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton, Joel Grey and Marcia Lewis, other "Chicago" alumni set to appear include John O'Hurley, Lynda Carter, Tom Wopat, Charlotte d'Amboise, Chita Rivera, Brent Barrett, Melanie Griffith, Brooke Shields, Patrick Swayze, Huey Lewis, Alan Thicke, Gregory Harrison and Wayne Brady.

Show time at the Ambassador Theatre that night will be 6:30 p.m.

November 20 - With "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" vacating the Imperial Theatrre, the new romantic musical comedy "High Fidelity, starring Jenn Colella and Will Chase and directed by Walter Bobbie, will move in. The Tom Kitt-Amanda Green-David Lindsay-Abaire musical will have a pre-Broadway run in Boston from September 26 through October. 22. It will start previews this day at the Imperial and open December 7.

- - - -

BROADWAY NOTES
ON UPCOMING SHOWS

(August 13, 2006) - Relevant ramblings and other notes on Broadway and beyond culled from a messy notebook and elsewhere:

-- "Grease" gets revived on Broadway in June 2007 and a new TV talent competition will pick the lead roles of Danny and Sandy. NBC will televise the mid-season show "You're the One That I Want," with "Grease" director Kathleen Marshall serving as a judge along with "Grease" co-creator Jim Jacobs and theatre producer David Ian.

-- The Broadway-bound revival of "A Chorus Line," which is currently trying out in San Francisco, will get a cast recording on the Masterworks Broadway label. The recording will be done Monday at Skywalker Sound Studio in Marin County, California, with the release date set for October 3.

-- The new production of "The Fantasticks," starring Burke Moses as El Gallo, will open one week later than originally announced. Opening night is now set for August 23 at the Snapple Theatre Center. Ghostlight Records has announced plans to put out the show's cast recording. A release date hasn't been set.

-- Seattle theatergoers attending "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," which kicked off its national tour there at the Paramount Theatre on August 4, have noticed that what they're hearing on stage isn't what's found on the original Broadway cast recording. Composer David Yazbek has written a new opening song, "The Only Game in Town," to replace "Give Them What They Want."

-- "Mamma Mia!" celebrates its fifth anniversary on Broadway with a benefit performance on October 18th at the Cadillac Winter Garden Theatre. Proceeds will benefit the Actors' Fund of America's Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative.

-- The Broadway revival of "Sweeney Todd," starring Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone, will play its final performance at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on Sunday, September 3. When it closes, the Stephen Sondheim musical will have played 349 performances. A national tour of "Sweeney Todd" is planned for late next summer.

-- Switching to the big screen, Hugh Jackman will star as Billy Bigelow in a remake of the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical "Carousel," which originally opened on Broadway in 1945. Jackman, a Tony winner for "The Boy from Oz," previously played the part in a 2002 concert at Carnegie Hall. He's also starred on the London stage in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" as well as in "Sunset Boulevard" in his native Australia.

-- Finally, looking ahead to autumn, Blair Brown, Jill Clayburgh, John Dossett, Concetta Tomei and Vanessa Aspillaga, will star in the Sarah Ruhl play "The Clean House" at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. Previews begin October 5.

- - - -

PREPARING "CHORUS LINE"
FOR BROADWAY REVIVAL

NEW YORK (July 16, 2006) - The timeline for the upcoming Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line" can be traced back more than 18 months to January 12, 2005. That was the day that producer and entertainment attorney John Breglio announced plans for what he calls "the biggest challenge of my life."

It was more recently, back in late April, though, that Breglio stood in front of the stage at the Hudson Theatre having just participated in the introduction of the cast and talked about bringing back one of Broadway's most revered and successful musicals.

"It's intimidating, it's scary," Breglio acknowledged, "but it's one of those decisions that you have no choice about."

The original production of "A Chorus Line" collected nine Tony Awards in 1976 and ran for 6,137 performances over 15 years before closing on April 28, 1990. It ranks as the fourth longest-running show in Broadway history behind "The Phantom of the Opera," "Cats" and "Les Miserables."

It's remembered for its stories of the aspirations of Broadway hopefuls; for the music of Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics of Edward Kleban and for the all-encompassing spirit of Michael Bennett, who conceived, choreographed and directed it, and who died in 1987 while "A Chorus Line" was still a hit.

Breglio, who represented Bennett and still handles his estate, and revival director Bob Avian, the co-choreographer of the original, are determined that Bennett's vision be properly honored.

Breglio continued, "I woke and said to myself one morning, 'Who am I going to give this to?' He left it to me and Bobby to entrust. Bobby basically said, 'I'll do it if you do' and I said, 'I'll only do it if you do it.' I had no choice really."

Avian recalled, "It was something that was calling out to us to be revived again. I didn't think about it too much and the words started coming, 'When are we going to do "Chorus Line" again? When are we going to do "Chorus Line" again?' I said to John, 'We'd better do it soon because I'm getting old.'"

That set the wheels in motion. Nearly a year was devoted to auditions. "Most shows are cast within three months or four months," Breglio explained. "I thought the single most important thing about the production