There are a handful of truly historic meetings in the theatre world. When Rodgers met Hammerstein. When Lunt met Fontanne. When legendary American playwright Eugene O’Neill met The Bottle.
Amy Laburda last wrote about Oklahoma! When I was 14, Rent was important to me in a way I find it hard to overstate. My parents were well used to my latching onto a musical and playing the cast recording over and over again. But when I had been toting around Phantom of the Opera five years earlier, I didn’t need a perfectly trained memory to know when to turn down the volume so…
Sunday In The Park With George This play began with some promise. I liked the part about the genius doing brilliant work based on scientific principles that nobody around him has the capacity to understand. But then everybody started bothering him about his emotions and singing about loving him all the time and I lost interest. Cats I was once beaten with a lead pipe in a Turkish prison. If given the choice between returning…
The real question posed by Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! is this:
Would Ado Annie and Laurey's problems be solved if they just set themselves up as spinsters in a romantic friendship on Laurey's farm and dumped Jud, Curly, Will and Ali on a wagon bound for California? (All Most of the problems!)
When I was fourteen, basically the greatest way to spend an afternoon was to turn the volume all the way up on my CD player (so vintage) and dance and sing along to the cast recording of Wicked. I did this for hours. I had that CD memorized. I even had blocking – limited, of course, to directions like “during this line, stand on the chair” and “during this song, spin around on the bed,”…
Let's all take a few minutes out of what is sure to be a busy day to appreciate that we were born into the historical era with unprecedented levels of Patina Miller access. First: from 2008, her performance of "The Temp and the Receptionist" with Anderson Davis. Anderson Davis personifies "terrified determination" in a fashion so profoundly likable that he almost succeeds in distracting me from Patina Miller. Excellent work, Anderson Davis. There is so…
