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Wednesday, April 11, 2012
LaChanze, Will Power, Kamilah Forbes and More live in performance April 30th
Friday, February 11, 2011
Glee to Tour Across America!
Glee is going on tour again. Leading up to a brief European jaunt at the end of June, 13 members of the show’s cast will play a 16-city tour of the United States.
All of the New Directions choir will participate in the tour, meaning Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Dianna Agron, Heather Morris and Kevin McHale will be in the house. Darren Criss will also join the tour, though Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison and Ashley Fink will not. ‘Glee Live! In Concert’ kicks off in Las Vegas on May 21.
Here is a full list of the dates:
May 21: Las Vegas, NV, Mandalay Bay Event Center
May 22: Sacramento, CA, Arco Arena
May 24: San Jose, CA, HP Pavilion
May 27: Anaheim, CA, Honda Center
May 28: Los Angeles, CA, Staples Center
May 29: San Diego, CA, Valley View Casino Center
June 1: Minneapolis, MN, Target Center
June 2: Indianapolis, IN, Conseco Fieldhouse
June 3: Chicago, IL, Allstate Arena
June 6: Boston, MA, TD Garden
June 8: Philadelphia, PA, Wells Fargo Center
June 11: Toronto, Canada, Air Canada Centre
June 13: Detroit, MI, Palace of Auburn Hills
June 14: Cleveland, OH, Quicken Loans Arena
June 16: East Rutherford, NJ, Izod Center
June 18: Uniondale, NY, Nassau Colliseum
Friday, December 3, 2010
Spider-Man the Musical on BROADWAY
My spidy sense is tickling… and not in a good way. I like the idea; but, very worried on what this is going to look like. Please note, I said the same thing when I heard that, The Color Purple, The Addams Family and Legally Blond what heading to the Great White Way.
However, the new musical “ Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has only been in previews for a few days, but the media attention it’s gotten has been massive, for a number of reasons.
It has a $60 million budget, making it the most expensive musical in history, and runs more than three hours. U2′s Bono and the Edge are the show’s composers. The Sunday night preview was plagued with problems. A heckler said she felt like a guinea pig. The theater’s general manager is already looking for someone new to lease the space. Yet, it has raked in a wad of cash.
Anecdotally, we’ve heard that some are willing to check it out to see what all that production money buys. But the ticket price, the glitches, and the constant talk about these things could be the show’s downfall if theater-goers ultimately decide it’s not worth it. Broadway shows only have a small window to prove themselves, so any dip in ticket sales could sweep the show off the stage quickly.
Friday, November 19, 2010
The Scottsboro Boys: Racism and razzle-dazzle
By J. KELLY NESTRUCK
No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931. Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left.
Fast forward to Fall 2010, in their two most famous works, Cabaret and Chicago, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb used popular forms of entertainment as metaphors for our tainted world. A resigned Sally Bowles insisted that “life is a cabaret,” while cocksure Billy Flynn asserted that “it's all a circus … the whole world, all show business.”
Th
e Scottsboro Boys, Kander and Ebb's troubling new musical, begins with a slightly less definitive pronouncement. “Everyone's a minstrel tonight,” sings the Interlocutor (Tony Award winner John Cullum, the only Caucasian in the cast) at the start of this show that repurposes the trappings of minstrelsy to revisit a racial injustice from the not-so-distant past.
Now getting its Broadway premiere in a powerful and unsettling production by Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys is in fact the final collaboration between Kander and Ebb, assuming the former doesn't have any unfinished shows hiding away in a drawer somewhere. (Ebb died in 2004.)
Under the command of the Interlocutor, a company of dynamic African-American performers perform the true story of the Scottsboro boys with a little help – and hindrance – from the sadistic stock minstrel characters Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones (the formidable caricaturists Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo),
Riding the rails in 1931 Alabama, nine black boys aged from 12 to 19 were arrested and accused of the gang rape of two white women. After they were sentenced to death, their objectionable convictions became a cause célèbre that led to the Supreme Court and, at one point, to 300,000 Americans protesting in 110 U.S. cities.
As the illiterate Haywood Patterson, who eventually learned to write and penned a book in prison, Winnipeg-born Joshua Henry gives a tremendous lead performance. Throughout his incarceration, Haywood remains defiant and tells the truth even when, in a cruel paradox, a lie would set him free. Henry plays him with a quivering, furious integrity, but also enough flawed humanity that he never turns into a symbol.
While Henry showed off his tank of a body in Green Day's American Idiot earlier this year, he now gets to prove what kind of dramatic ammunition he is packing in numbers like Nothin', in which, stuck in an impossible situation, Haywood performs a brutally slow, mocking shuck-and-jive.
Kander's catchy music – a mix of ragtime and American folk song – is effectively undercut by Ebb's lyrics. A song like Southern Days is beautiful, even as its ironic lyrics aim to wring all the nostalgia out of standards like My Old Kentucky Home that owe their origins to minstrel shows.
Stroman, who showed that nothing succeeds like excess with The Producers, here directs with impressive economy. With a few quick movements, the cast transforms the simple set of chairs and wooden planks into, for instance, a train chugging out of Chattanooga with tambourines for wheels.
Her most chilling staging comes during Electric Chair, a dream tap ballet in which the youngest of the boys (the naturally talented Jeremy Gumbs) has a nightmare about his upcoming execution that turns into what seems like a mad Mickey Mouse cartoon (Mickey being one of the few remaining pop-culture icons still to bear the traces of minstrelsy and blackface).
While Stroman's choreography and the energetic performances keep tempting you to enjoy The Scottsboro Boys's spectacle, the form the show takes never allows you to do so with a clear conscience.
The minstrelsy aspects – including a scene in blackface – have proved controversial, with small protests organized outside the show on recent weekends. But the cast's twisted portrayal of the women who made the accusations and the boys' Jewish lawyer are more potentially offensive than anything involving the African-American characters, whose side the show takes unequivocally.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Divorce Court The Musical
It should never be a funny matter; however recently when Tyler Perry plays star Dietra Hicks televised her divorce on Divorce Court I could not stop my LAUGHTER. When I tell you that Tyler Perry's next stage production should be Divorce Court and Dietra Hicks should definitely be the star... Please check it out!!!!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A Boy & His Soul Off-Broadway
By Joe DziemianowiczNYDailyNews.com
Colman Domingo, who appeared in the hit 'Passing Strange,' in 'A Boy and His Soul,' which he wrote and directed. The sense of smell is the strongest memory trigger.
But the ears are nothing to sniff at. Hearing tunes from vintage records rockets Colman Domingo back to the '70s and '80s, and he takes us with him in his vibrant memoir, "A Boy and His Soul." Domingo who also appeared as a regular on the second season of Logo TV's The Big Gay Sketch Show, produced by Rosie O'Donnell was best known character is his impression of Maya Angelou.
Over the one-man play's 85 minutes, he celebrates a gawky gay kid from not-always-sunny Philadelphia who comes of age, comes out of the closet and comes to see things "with adult eyes." The story is set in motion when Domingo returns to his childhood home, which his folks are selling. A big event for anyone. Flipping through old LPs by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Earth, Wind & Fire in the cluttered basement — neatly realized by designers Rachel Hauck (set) and Marcus Doshi (lights) — memories bubble up faster than you can say betcha by golly, wow.
Domingo's experiences, whether it's his struggles with homosexuality or his mother Edie's mortality, aren't all that extraordinary. What gives the show its unique groove is the star himself and his contagious enthusiasm for the soul, R&B and disco tunes that became the soundtrack to his life. Domingo, who was impressive in "Passing Strange," is commanding and endearing, whether he's acting, singing along to the music (he asks you to, as well) or shaking what his mama (and choreographer Ken Roberson) gave him.
Scheduled now until October 18, performances of A BOY AND HIS SOUL run Tuesdays at 7:00pm; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8:00pm; Saturdays at 3:00pm & 8:00pm and Sundays at 3:00pm at the Vineyard Theatre (108 East 15th Street, NYC). Tickets are $55, and can be purchased either by calling 212-353-0303, or by visiting the Vineyard Theatre website - http://www.vineyardtheatre.org/. Read more: 'Passing Strange,' in 'A Boy and His Soul' by Joe Dziemianowicz
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