#also when i went to the theatre not a single preview was for an original movie

[samanthaworm]

I'M TIRED OF THE MULTIVERSE!!

[meetmyblondemuffins]

Movie Antics

Warnings: unprotected sex, exhibitionism, fingering, penetrative sex

“Tickets for two,” I said enthusiastically to the man standing behind the glass of the old, worn ticket booth. I heard an exaggerated sigh coming from the right of me. Looking over at Sirius, I raised my brows and jutted out my bottom lip, attempting to make him feel somewhat guilty. I squeezed his large hand and further intertwined our fingers. “You’ll live, Siri. It’s only a couple of hours.”

I’d been dying to see this new independent film that had been released a few weeks ago. I had been putting off watching it for some time now because I wanted to watch it with Sirius. I could tell he would’ve preferred being left behind. The entire ten blocks we walked from the cinema he drug his feet like a child who was being forced into a dentists’ office. I was surprised he didn’t throw himself on the concrete; kicking and screaming. Although he didn’t throw a complete tantrum, he did try making up a thousand excuses as to why he absolutely couldn’t bear to see one second of this ‘horrendous-looking film’.

It started from the second we stepped out of the front door and into the chilly breeze of a typical, dreary London day.

“Look how gloomy it is. It’s bound to rain—we should stay in tonight.”

“It’s gloomy every day, Sirius. And besides, I brought an umbrella.”

“But… why walk allllll the way to the cinema in the cold when we could snuggle up in a perfectly warm bed?” I giggled at his suggestion.

“Yeah, I’m sure all you want to do is snuggle up in bed.” I knew that for a fact, Sirius wanted much more than to lie in bed when he’d already try to rid me of my clothing minutes before leaving the house.

He seemed more sex-driven the past few days than I’d seen him before. Everywhere we went, he was ready to go; whether he spontaneously suggested the idea while lounging around at home, or in complete public. Refusing a cluster of his many advances always guaranteed nothing less than spectacular sex later on. It’s like all of his built-up sexual tension was released all at once; It was fantastic.

As soon as we bought our tickets and concessions, we walked into the dimly lit theatre. Scanning the rows of chairs from left to right, I noticed that not a single chair in the entire room was occupied. I supposed nobody was up for a film on a greyer-than-usual Sunday afternoon.

Sirius walked to the first row that was closest to the entrance, leading me with my index finger wound around his. We sat towards the middle of the row.

I would’ve preferred to sit closer to the front, if even just a few rows, but I decided to cut my pouting, child-like boyfriend a bit of slack. Sirius slouched down in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest as the lights dimmed to complete darkness. Immediately following, lights of the previews that covered the far wall flooded the room. It was almost blinding.

Looking over at the silhouette of Sirius’s profile, the glow of the projection outlined the miserable look he had plastered on his face. I almost felt bad for dragging him here, but on the other hand, I think he was being a drama queen about the entire situation.

Reaching over the popcorn that I had resting in my lap, I brought the armrest that was separating us to a vertical position so that I could scoot closer to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and whispered into his ear, his flyaway curls brushing against my cheeks.

“I really appreciate you being here, you know.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, lightly kissed my temple, and rested his cheek on the top of my head. So he wasn’t completely resenting being here after all.

Sirius and I always did things for each other that we didn’t particularly want to do. We wanted each other to be happy, and it made our relationship stronger as a whole. I was awoken in the middle of the night to him leaving to go prank students with the other marauders and he went to nearly abandoned cinemas to watch films that he had no-to-negative feelings towards. It balanced out evenly.

Halfway through the movie (and also the bag of popcorn), Sirius’s arm that was resting across my shoulders made its way down to my hip. He leaned in to whisper into my ear.

“It’s not too late to get out of here. We could go out to a nice dinner, go for a romantic stroll through the park,” he drug out the ‘a’ in park, “anything. Anything you want.” Turning my full torso toward him, I cocked my head to the side as to say ‘why, why do you do this to me, Sirius Orion Black’. His expression was originally full of hope—hope that I thought this movie was as terrible as he’d predicted before we’d gotten here.

“Anything, huh?” His eyes filled with glee. But his face dropped immediately as I said:

“Well, I want to stay here.”

He went back to slouching in his chair, his head meeting the back of the headrest. I couldn’t stand seeing him act like this anymore. There was no way I was leaving this cinema until the film came to an end; but perhaps I could offer him a deal.

“If you stay until the end, I’ll do whatever you want afterwards.” A smirk form across his lips and I knew exactly what he had on his mind.

Moments later, I was once again engulfed in the film. The main characters had defied their near-impossible chances of being together, and the romantic/sexual portion came to its peak. I felt Sirius’s lips sneak below my earlobe and begin a trail to my collarbone. “I said afterwards, don’t be so eager,” I said placing my hand on his chest in an attempt to stay focused on what was happening between the characters.

“C’mon, even these poor bastards on screen are enjoying themselves. It’s like they’re mocking me.”

“Well I’m enjoying myself. And what, is ‘fucking in a movie theatre’ something you were planning to cross off of your bucket list before you die?”

“Well it wasn’t before but,—“ I cut him off with a look of disapproval. “There’s not anybody here, we’re sitting in the back. This is perfect!”

Before I could object, Sirius crashed his lips into mine. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to pull away. I’d caused him to suffer—or at least act like he was suffering—for a few hours and I suppose I owed this to him. I wouldn’t be missing out on the movie much. It was like I was experiencing what they were doing, but they weren’t in an empty cinema, it was a bit more romantic on their end. However, I didn’t mind much.

Our kiss deepened as his tongue brushed over my bottom lip before it entered my mouth, exploring every corner. His hand lightly cupped my cheek.

I felt Sirius’s fingertips lightly brush over the slightly thin material of my trousers that separated the pads of his fingers from my inner thigh. In a swift manoeuvre, his fingertips slid under the waistband of my trousers and pulled them down, then danced along my skin, igniting sparks as they made their way to my heat. His middle finger slipped past the side of my panties and made firm circles over my clit.

I’d quickly decided not to make this about me. I’d wanted to show Sirius just how much I appreciated him being there, even if I’d practically forced him to.

I palmed his hardening member through his pants and dropped to my knees in front of him. As soon as I unbuttoned and unzipped his skin-tight black jeans, pulling his boxers down slightly, his erection sprung upright, slapping against his stomach. I bit my lip and looked up at him through my lashes lustfully. He shut his eyes, bracing himself for the warmth of my mouth wrapped around him.

I let the tip of my tongue flick over his slit, tasting the saltiness of his pre-cum.

“Fuck, don’t tease,” he groaned, loud enough for only me to hear over the booming cinema surround sound. The flat of my tongue glided over his head as I took the shaft into my hand and began stroking, feeling the veins on his thickness. With each bob of my head, I allowed him to venture deeper and deeper into my throat, hollowing my cheeks until I felt the need to gag. His fingers became entangled in my hair, but he let me go at my own pace. I altered my speed and pressure often which made it difficult for him to stifle his moans.

His hand gripped my hair tightly and he threw his head back onto the head rest, his mouth hanging open. I could taste the familiar flavor of his cum spread across my tongue and slide down my throat.

I stood up from the floor and lifted the armrest on Sirius’s left, allowing us more room. I straddled his lap backwards, his chest pressing against my back. The only thing separating us was the thin lace material of my panties. His right hand travelled up my torso, grazing my rib cage and kneading my breast gently. His left hand snaked around my thigh and pulled my panties to the side. He traced shapes roughly around my centre as I let my head fall back to rest on his shoulder.

He nipped at the sweet spot on my neck and I let out a light moan. As good as his fingers felt against me, I need more. I lifted myself up a bit and reached between us to position his hard cock at my entrance. Slowly lowering all the way back down, I gave myself time to adjust to his large size as he filled me to the brim. He continued massaging my throbbing nerves and I rested my hand over his, getting him to apply more pressure. Arching my back against his chest, I could already feel myself tightening around him and he felt it too. I could feel every muscle throughout his body contract. Every time I had sex with Sirius, it always felt like the first time.

Slightly angling myself to find my g-spot, I let out a muffled whimper and shut my eyes tight when I felt his head brush my

G-spot . I slowly began going up and down on his throbbing dick, grinding against him every time my ass met his crotch. With every motion, I felt my knees weaken a little more each time.

Sirius’s breath became harsh and uneven on my neck and I could tell that he couldn’t hold it much longer. Every individual muscle in my lower body starting in my toes began to tighten in a wave, one after another. The pleasure crept up into the pit of my stomach and I reached my high, becoming a shaking mess in Sirius’s lap. His warm load coated my walls and his fingers dug into my thighs, leaving light scratches.

Once I recovered from my orgasm, I noticed the credits of the film beginning to roll and the lights were returning to their original brightness. I collapsed back into my seat and Sirius struggled to reposition himself back into his jeans. I laughed at the sight of him.

“What?” he questioned continuing to fumble with his jeans.

“Maybe if your pants weren’t so tight Mr Black, you wouldn’t be having such a tough time right now,” I mocked him.

“Whatever, I just hope I don’t have as tough of time trying to get them off when we get home,” he grinned, “you did say afterwards, didn’t you?”

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Michael Riedel vs Bernadette Peters – the Broadway Battle of 2003 and beyond

My previous piece gives a fairly comprehensive look at Bernadette and Gypsy through the ages; though there is at least one aspect of the 2003 revival that warrants further discussion:

Namely, Michael Riedel.

Today’s essay question then: “Riedel – gossip columnist extraordinaire, the “Butcher of Broadway”, spited male vindictive over not getting a lunch date with Bernadette Peters, or puppet-like mouthpiece of theatre’s shadowed elite? Discuss.”

It’s matter retrievable in print, or even kept alive in apocryphal memory throughout the theatre community to this day that Riedel was responsible for a campaign of unrelenting and caustic defamation against Bernadette as Rose in Gypsy around the 2003 season.

While “tabloids may [have been] sniping and the Internet chat rooms chirping”, when looking back at the minutiae, none were more vocal, prolific or influential in colouring early judgment than the “chief vulture [of] Mr. Riedel, who had written a string of vitriolic columns in which he said from the start that Ms. Peters was miscast”.

He continued to find other complaints and regularly attack her in print over an extended period of time.

Why? We’ll get there. There are a few theories to suggest. Firstly, how and what.

Primary to establish is that it perhaps would be foolish to expect anything else of Riedel.

Also an author and radio and TV show host, Riedel is best known as the “vituperative and compulsively readable” theatre columnist at The New York Post.

He’s a man who thrives on controversy, decrying: “Gossip is life!”

The man who says, “I’m a wimp when it comes to physical violence, but give me a keyboard and I’ll kill ya.”

“Inflicting pain, for him, is a jokey thing. ‘Michael has this cruel streak and a lack of empathy,’ says Susan Haskins, his close friend and co-host.”

And inflicting pain is what he did with Bernadette, in a saga that has become one of the most talked about and enduring moments of his career.

From the beginning, then.

Riedel started work at The Post in 1998.

His first words on Bernadette? “Oddly miscast in the Ethel Merman role,” in August of that year on Annie Get Your Gun. It was a sentiment he would carry across to his second mention six months later (“a seemingly odd choice to play the robust Annie Oakley”), and also across to the heart of his vitriolic coverage on her next Merman role in Gypsy.

 Negative coverage on Bernadette in Gypsy started in August 2002 when Riedel discussed the search for trying to find a new American producer for the show. It had initially been reported in late 2000 that a Gypsy revival with Bernadette was planned for London, before it was to transfer to Broadway. To begin with, Arthur Laurents was “eager to do Gypsy in London because it hadn't been seen in the West End since 1973”, and he “wanted to repeat [the] dreamlike triumph” he said Angela Lansbury’s production had been. But economic matters prevented this original plan, leaving the team looking for new producers in the US. Riedel suggested that Fran and Barry Wiessler step up as, “after all, they managed to sell the hell out of "Annie Get Your Gun," in which Peters…was also woefully miscast.”

He also quipped: “Industry joke: "Bernadette Peters in 'Gypsy'? Isn't she a little old to be playing Baby June?”, calling her “cutesy Peters” and again a “kewpie doll”.

Bernadette here seen side by side with the actual Baby June of the 2003 production – Kate Reinders.

Other publications to this point had discussed her “unusual” casting. Which was fairly self-evident. In contrast to being a surprising revelation that Bernadette Peters was not, in fact, Ethel Merman, this had been the intention from the start. Librettist Arthur “Laurents – whose idea it was to hire her – [said] going against type is exactly the point,” and Sam Mendes, as director, qualified “the tradition of battle axes in that role has been explored”.

It was Riedel who was the first to shift the focus from the obvious point that she was ‘differently cast’, to instead attach the negative prefix and intone that she was actually ‘MIS’ cast. According to him then, she was unsuitable, and would be unable to “carry the show, dramatically or vocally”. All before she had so much as sung a note or donned a stitch of her costume.

So no, it wasn’t then “the perception, widely held within the theater industry,” as he presented it, “that Peters is woefully miscast as Mama Rose”.

It was Riedel’s perception. And he took it, and ran with it, along with whatever else he could throw into the mix to drag both her and the show down for the next two years.

 As to another indication of how one single columnist can influence opinion and warp wider perception, just look to Riedel’s assessment of the show’s first preview. It is typically known as Riedel’s forte to “[break] with Broadway convention, [where] he attends the first night of previews, and reports on the problems…before the critics have their say”. This gives him “clout” by way of mining “terrain that goes relatively uncovered elsewhere”, and it means subsequent journals are frequently looking to him from whom to take their lead – and quotes.

At Gypsy’s opening preview then, he reported visions of “Arthur Laurents [charging] up the aisle…on fire”, loudly and vocally expressing his dissatisfaction with the show as he then “read Fox [a producer] the riot act”. Despite the fact that this was “not true, according to Laurents,” the damage was already done, with the sentiment of trouble and tension being subsequently reprinted and distributed out to the public across many a regional paper.

News travels fast, bad news travels faster.

 And news can be created at an ample rate, when in possession of one’s own regular periodical column. This recurring domain allowed plentiful opportunity for attack on Bernadette and Gypsy, and Riedel “began devoting nearly every column to the subject,” which amounted to weekly or even more frequent references.

As the show progressed beyond its first preview, Riedel brought in the next aspects of his smear-campaign – assailing Bernadette for missing performances through illness and accusing Ben Brantley, who reviewed the show positively in The New York Times, of unfair favouritism and “hyperbolic spin”.

The issue is not that Bernadette was not in fact ill or missing performances. She was. She had a diagnosis at first of “a cold and vocal strain”, that then progressed more seriously to a “respiratory infection” the following week, and was “told by her doctors that she needs to rest”. So rest she did.

The issue is the way in which Riedel depicted the situation and her absences via hyperbole and “insinuating she was shirking” responsibility. He went further than continual, repeated mentions and cruel article titles like “wilted Rose”, or “sick Rose losing bloom”, or “beloved but - ahem-cough-cough-ahem - vocally challenged and miscast star”. He went as far as the sensationalist and degrading action of putting “Peters' face on the side of a milk carton, the kind of advertisement typically used to recover lost children,” and asking readers to look out for “bee-stung lips, [a] high-pitched voice, [and a] kewpie doll figure”, who “may be clutching a box of tissues and a love letter from Ben Brantley”.

It was quantified in May of 2003 after the show had officially opened, that “out of the 39 performances "Gypsy" has played so far, [Bernadette] has missed six – an absence rate of 15 percent.”

As an interesting comparison, it was reported in The Times in February 2002 that “‘The Producers' stars Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick have performed together only eight times in last 43 performances due to scheduling problems and health concerns,” – an absence rate of 81%.

Did Riedel have anything nearly as ardent to say about the main male stars of the previous season’s hit missing such a rate of performances? Of course not.

 Riedel arguably has a disproportionate rate for criticising female divas.

One need only heed his recommendations that certain women check into his illuminatingly named “Rosie's Rest Home for Broadway Divas.” Divos need not apply.

Not that he was unaware of this.

In 2004, Riedel would jovially lay out that “Liz Smith and I have developed a nice tag-team act: I bash fragile Broadway leading ladies who miss performances, and she rides to their rescue.”

Donna Murphy was the recipient of what he that year dubbed his “BERNADETTE PETERS ATTENDANCE AWARD”, when she began missing performances in “Wonderful Town”, due to “severe back and neck injuries and a series of colds and sinus infections”.

This speaks to his remarkably cavalier and joyful attitude with which he tears down shows and performers. “The more Mr. Riedel's work upsets people, the more he enjoys it.”

He knows he yields influence – it was recognised he had “eclipsed Ben Brantley as the single most discussed element in marketing meetings for Broadway shows” – and he delights in his capacity to lead shows to premature demises through his poison-tipped quill yielding.

When it was reported Gypsy would be closing earlier than had been planned, he made mention of “hop[ping] around on [its] grave” and debonairly applauding himself, “I suppose I can take some credit for bringing it down”.

 His premonition from the previous year’s Tony’s ceremony was both ominous and prescient, when he predicted the show’s failure to win any awards “could spell trouble at the box office”. He was right. It did. The 8.5 million dollar revival closed months before anticipated and failed to return a profit.

Multiple factors can be attributed to Gypsy’s poor success at the Tony’s, but it’s clear to say Riedel’s continual bashing leading up to the fated night throughout the voting period certainly didn’t help matters.

His suggestions to do with Bernadette’s performances were not helpful either.

After alleging Laurents as the director of the 1991 revival “practically beat a performance out of” Tyne Daly when she was struggling with the role, he proffers that to improve Bernadette’s success, “it may be time for [Laurents] to take up the switch and thrash one out of Peters”.

Great.

It was irresponsible and unrelenting commentary that did not go unnoticed.

His “ruthless heckling of beloved Broadway star Ms. Peters” was deemed in print “his most egregious stunt so far”.

Vividly, in person, Riedel was accosted at a party one night by Floria Lasky, the venerable showbiz lawyer, who “grab[bed] Riedel’s tie and jerk[ed] it, nooselike, scolding, ‘It was unfair, what you did to Bernadette’”.

Moreover, the wide-reaching influential hold Riedel occupied over the environment surrounding Gypsy was tangible in the fact his words spread beyond just average readers, and even unusually “started seeping into the reviews of New York's top critics”. Riedel himself, as the “chief vulture”, was indeed what Ben Brantley was referring to in his own New York Times review by stating how the production was “shadowed by vultures predicting disaster”.

Even more substantially, the “whole Peters-Riedel-Brantley episode” became its own enduring cultural reference – being converted into its very own “satiric cabaret piece, ‘Bernadette and the Butcher of Broadway’”. All three parties were featured, with Riedel characterised as the butcher, and it played Off-Broadway later in 2003 “to positive notices”.

 But penitent for his sins and begging for absolution Riedel was not. “Riedel saw nothing but a great story and a great time,” and for many years after, he would continue to hark back to the matter in self-referential (almost reverential) and flippant ways.

In 2008 as Patti LuPone won her Tony for her turn as Rose in the subsequent revival, Riedel couldn’t help but jibe, “Not to rip open an old wound, but I'd love to know if Bernadette Peters was watching”. (He neglects also to mention that “Mendes’s Gypsy was seen by 100,000 more people than saw Laurents’s and grossed $6 million more”.)

More jibes are to be found in 2012 as he reported on the auction after Arthur Laurents’ funeral, or even as recently in 2019, as he asked, “Remember the outcry that greeted Sam Mendes’ Brechtian “Gypsy,” with Bernadette Peters, in 2003?”

As with in 2004 where he points to the “pack of jackals who have been snarling” about Bernadette’s failures, this brings up the canny knack Riedel has of offloading his views to bigger and detached third party sources – thus absolving himself of personal centrality, and thus culpability.

If there was an outcry, HE was its loudest contributor. If there were snarling jackals, HE was their leader.

Maybe Riedel’s third person detached approach to referencing matters was intended to be a humorous stylistic quirk for those in the know. Or maybe it was his way of expressing some inner turmoil over the event.

In some rare display of morality and emotional authenticity, Riedel would at one point admit “I find it kind of sad and pathetic that the high point of my life supposedly has been about beating up on Bernadette Peters”.

Fortunately for him then, a degree of absolution was eventually achieved in 2018, where Riedel visited Bernadette at her opening night in Hello Dolly in 2018, with the intention of ending their “15-year feud”. He “got down on one knee at Sardi’s and extended his hand,” with Bernadette reportedly yelling “Take a picture!” while he held his deferential and obsequious position on the floor.

So if eventually this “feud” has some kind of circular resolution and Riedel was glad it was over, why on earth did it begin in the first place?

One notion is that it was simply another day on the job. Riedel is a man who sees Broadway as “a game for rich people”. Positioned as an “an industry that brought in $720.9 million in the 2002-2003 season”, it is “not a fragile business”, he remarked. As such, he “[could not] fathom the point of donning kid gloves” in covering it, and reasoned the business as a whole was robust enough to weather a few hard knocks. “Thus, Riedel can coolly view Bernadette Peters as fair game, as opposed to, say, a national treasure”.

More to the point, he was a man in search of words. During the season in question, Riedel was “one of just three New York newspaper columnists covering the stage” – a “throwback to a bygone era when…Broadway gossipmeisters…such as Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen ruled”. Now at the time, as the “last of a great tabloid tradition”, Riedel presided over not just one but two columns a week at The Post. As a result, he was in need of content. “One of the reasons I've become more opinionated is I just have more space to fill,” he admitted. Robert Simonson hypothesises in his book ‘On Broadway Men, Still Wear Hats’ that Riedel may have consequently picked “the thrashing of Bernadette” as his main target simply because “it was a slow news cycle”. Options for ‘titillating’ and durable content were scarce elsewhere that season.

And after all, if Riedel would later cite Bernadette in an article concerning the Top 10 Powerhouses of Broadway in 2004, saying even despite a few knocks or bad shows, “she’ll bounce back” – surely there was no real damage done.

If her career wouldn’t be toppled by his continual public defamation and haranguing, what was the harm?

Feelings? Who cares about feelings or Bernadette’s extremely complex and personal history with the show stretching back to when she was a teenager.

It was just part of the territory, there was nothing personal in it.

 Or was there?

Maybe there was something personal in Riedel’s campaign after all.

He makes a curious comment while discussing ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in 2004. The then incoming star of the show, rapper P. Diddy, had invited Riedel to dinner, and he makes judgement that this was “a smart p.r. move”. Then he ponders, “you do have to wonder: If Bernadette Peters had broken bread with me this time last year, would her chorus boys have to be out there now working the TKTS line to keep "Gypsy" afloat?”

Might he be going as far to suggest that if Bernadette had indulged him in a meal, her show might not have suffered so, by way of him being more inclined to cover it with greater lenience?

It may seem that way, at least in considering how Riedel reviewed P. Diddy’s performance thus after their dinner: “Riedel pronounced himself impressed. ‘He could have forgotten his lines or had to be carried offstage. He didn’t do anything terrible, he didn’t do anything astonishing.’”

Seemingly all the rapper had to do was remember some words and remain physically onstage, and he sails through scot-free. That’s a rather different outcome, one could say, to being absolutely eviscerated for what became a Tony nominated effort at one of the appreciably hardest and most demanding musical theatre roles in existence.

Though perhaps it’s hard to tell if that was really his insinuation from just one isolated comment pertaining to lunch.

This argument might be fine, if it WAS the only isolated comment pertaining to wanting Bernadette to have lunch with him. But it isn’t. Riedel continues to make a further two references over protracted periods of time to the fact Bernadette hasn’t dined with him.

One begins to get the sense of him feeling desiring of or somewhat entitled to such a private lunch with the lady he’s verbally decimated for years, and a sense of bitter rejection that he hasn’t been granted one.

“If Tonya Pinkins doesn't win the Tony Award this year, I'll buy Bernadette Peters lunch,” he simpered, and later, “I invite Bernadette to be my guest for lunch at a restaurant of her choosing. She can reach me at The Post anytime she's hungry”.

The embittered columnist in this light takes on now the marred tinge of a small boy in the playground who doesn’t get to hold the hand of the girl he wants in front of his friends, so spends the next three years pushing her over in the sandpit in revenge.

Moreover, the last statement makes undeniable comment on Bernadette’s troubled relationship with food, body image and public eating.

So now not only so far has he insulted and mocked her physical appearance and played into all the usual trite shots calling her a “kewpie doll”; suggested Arthur Laurents violently hit her in order to elicit a better performance; continually publicly harassed her regarding a show that strikes close to the nerve with deep personal and psychological resonances due to her mother and childhood; but now he’s going for the low-blows of ridiculing her over her eating habits.

Flawless behaviour.

 Maybe it’s far-fetched to suggest a man would have such a fragile ego to run a multi-year public defamation campaign after so little as not getting his hypothesised fantasy of a personal lunch date. But then again, this was the man who “left Johns Hopkins University after his first year because of a broken heart.” (“I was in love with her; she wasn't in love with me,” he said.)

And also the man described as “an insomniac who pops the occasional Ambien,” living in a “small one-bedroom” that is “single-guy sloppy”, who has “been living alone since a four-year romance ended in 1996”.

The man whose own best friend called “cruel” and with a “lack of empathy”.

The man whose own sister answered that “well, yes,” he’s always been mean; and after being picked on as a kid for “being the small guy and the intellectual”, he grew dependent on using “his verbal ability to beat someone” and put himself in positions of defensive impenetrability.

See, writing Riedel-esque, vindictive and provocative conjecture is no especially challenging or cerebral task.

Riedel may well see his approach to ‘journalism’ or reporting as “all fun and games”.

But I for one am not laughing.

 One final aspect to address when considering Riedel’s reasoning for the depth of his coverage on Bernadette demands attention of how he gets his information. His own personal opinions and motivations aside, crucially he depends on insider providers for insider details. Perhaps somewhat alarmingly then, “leading Broadway producers themselves are among his sources”.

“Half of Broadway hates him. The other half leaks to him”, John Heilpern titled his 2012 Vanity Fair profile on Riedel.

As such, in frequently taking his lead from “theater folk, usually with an ax to grind”, Riedel acts as the mouthpiece to bring secretive backstage reports out front. High-up, influential characters are thus able to funnel their agendas into public view, while keeping their identities hidden.

Notably, it was raised in the above article that Riedel’s “merciless running story” regarding Bernadette in Gypsy “was fed by none other than its renowned librettist, Arthur Laurents—or, more precisely, by Laurents's lover”.

Contrary to the smiley picture below between members of the show’s creative team and it’s beloved star, it was no secret that Laurents did not like Mendes’ 2003 revival. Laurents told Riedel that “Sam did a terrible disservice to Bernadette and the play, and I wanted a Gypsy seen in New York that was good… You have to have musical theater in your bones, and Sam doesn't”. In fact, Laurents admitted the only reason his 2009 book ‘Mainly on Directing’ came into existence was because of how much he had to criticise about the show – it grew out of the extensive set of notes he gave Mendes.

Additionally, it was no secret that Laurents’ lover, Tom Hatcher, demonstrated both a desire and capacity to influence Arthur’s productions. As well as being the driving force for the 2009 Spanish-speaking reworking of West Side Story, Hatcher had intense investment in Gypsy specifically. Patti LuPone writes in her memoir, “From his deathbed, Tom had told Arthur, ‘You have to do Gypsy, and you have to do it with Patti’. It was one of his dying wishes”. Laurents himself, in corroboration of this, explained Tom’s reasoning – “he didn't want the Sam Mendes production to be New York's last memory of Gypsy”.

The allegation in Heilpern’s profile might be hard to prove from an outsider perspective. But given that neither were happy with Mendes’ production and both actively took steps to ensuring it would be superseded in memory, it is not completely implausible.

 Overarchingly, as much as Riedel’s writing may benefit FROM insider sources, it is said he does not write in benefit OF them. For instance, although friends with Scott Rudin in 2004, an animated (nay threatening) warning from Mr Rudin asking Riedel to “back off” from “slamming” his show, Caroline or Change, seemingly “had no impact”.

That’s not to cite total impartiality or exemption from personal connections and higher up influences colouring his reports of shows. Theatre publicist John Barlow would describe that sometimes “if you ask Michael to kill [one of his pieces], he will, if it’s someone with whom he does business”.

But it would be remiss not to mention that his influences and sources stretch beyond just the big wigs. Amongst his other informants too are the more lowly, overlooked folk like “the stagehands, the ushers, chorus kids, house managers, and press agents… the guys who build sets in the Bronx”. Basically, for anyone who’ll talk, Riedel will listen.

“Michael Riedel doesn't work for the producers or the publicists; he works for the reader,” one publicist said. “Sometimes we're glad of that, sometimes we're not-but at the end of the day, that's the reality.”

Sometimes he’s nice, sometimes he’s not – but the world goes round.

Through all that’s been explored, it should be stated how painful and injurious it must be for individual performers or shows to fall upon the unmitigated, maiming force of being on the wrong side of Riedel’s favour. The way he approached coverage on Bernadette is deplorable from an emotional and personal standpoint. Some would argue that it was too far and crossed a line and was most definitely unfair. Others would say it was justified. It’s hard not to sound petulant as the former, or heartless as the latter.

While his actions may indeed be abrasively wounding in isolated (often plentiful) cases, it’s unreasonable to say Riedel’s intentions would be to cripple the Broadway industry as a whole. There are those who purport that Riedel in fact “keeps Broadway alive with his controversies”. His words may not always be ‘nice’ but it’s difficult to argue they're not engaging.

Many are quick to criticize or react impassionedly to him and his columns; but few are quick to stop reading them. And Riedel “knows that the most important thing is being well read”.

Hence it is understandable why Riedel is appraised as “the columnist Broadway loves to hate”. Through his enthralling and stimulating bag of linguistic and dramatic tricks, Riedel knows how to keep the readers coming back. “He’s lively, and he makes the theater seem like an interesting place,” one producer did reason.

“There are times when no one's going to care about Broadway if you don't have a gossip angle that focuses on the backstage drama,” opined George Rush, the Daily News gossip columnist who was once Riedel's boss.

Perhaps it is logically and principally then, if somewhat cynically, a matter of believing “it's just business” and knowing how to “play the game”.

As Riedel himself would rationalise, “It’s all an act. You gotta have a gimmick, as they say in Gypsy.”

It may not be pleasant, but in a world increasingly dependent on sensationalistic and clickbait-driven engagement, it’s probably not going to change any time soon.

 Well then, if he can live with the toll of the position of moral tumult his column puts him in, so be it.

That he described his mind as being “constantly on the next deadline”, saying “I always think about the column”, and likening writing it to “standing under a windmill”, where “you dodge one blade, but there's always another one coming right behind it”, may be some indication that he can't. At least not wholly easily.

I’ll leave that to him to figure out. Off the record.

[dangerscully]

Yesterday I was asked to elaborate on my thoughts on All About Eve, having been lucky enough to see it on Wednesday evening - the first night after the press night.

First off - I haven’t seen the film yet. I’ve heard that it keeps a lot of the script and ideas the same, but as of yet I can’t comment on those similarities or differences. 

This turned itself into a long post and I accept no responsibility for that.

Spoilers below the cut. (If the cut doesn’t work on mobile and you want to avoid spoilers, now’s the time to scroll quickly down).

I’m gonna go all in here and start with a seriously unpopular opinion.

I didn’t particularly enjoy Gillian Anderson’s Streetcar performance. I found it largely cringeworthy.

I acknowledge that it was good. But it was so melodramatic - and yes I know that’s what the role demands! - that it made me uncomfortable because I was constantly aware that I watching Gillian with a capital G perform it, something that she’s an expert in making the audience forget, usually.

And a large part of my discomfort could well be thanks to the fact that I watched it via NTLive, rather than in person. I had a similar experience watching David Tennant in a televised performance of a stage production of Macbeth, and yet I found him incredible on stage in Don Juan in an equally hammy role.

But anyway, I digress. I went in with lowered, slightly nervous expectations, due to this.

Gillian Anderson. The main reason I attended the play, let’s be totally honest here. And boy did she deliver. A masterclass in acting, from subtleties to quiet melodrama.

And now that part has been said, the main reason that most of you will have clicked through(!), lets go a little deeper into the show.

***

All About Eve is a hybrid between a theatre production and a cinematic one. It is done through the very clever use of camerawork that is projected live onto the lifted back wall of the stage, allowing action to happen off-stage while still enabling the audience to experience it live. 

Over time, actors have found themselves having less of a restriction about into which box they categorise themselves. Film? Theatre? TV? Choose one - you can’t have more than one field! Luckily that is less so now, and Ivo Van Hove’s production is a way of celebrating that.

The live camerawork and editing is done so impressively and seamlessly that it’s almost unbelievable at times that you’re watching a live, single take of these scenes. It also allows for new ways for each performance to be slightly different each night. And it melds the intimacy of watching a live performance on stage, with the different kind of intimacy allowed by close-up, slow shots.

It’s also a great nod to the voyeurism and a lack of privacy that is a key theme in the show, thanks to fan culture. Scenes behind literal closed doors are still shown in detail to the audience.

And that live camerawork begins in the very first scene. Addison takes the stage, to introduce you to the story. And after a brief monologue, he walks off stage, with the camera following him. He is projected onto the empty stage, while he walks around “backstage”, introducing you to many of the characters and setting the scene. 

I found that so innovative. And immediately impressive as a single take one-shot. (It had a very Birdman vibe to it!) The audience is told from the very first scene that cameras are going to be an important part of the play. This scene was the last minute addition that was not in any of the previews, and I’m so glad that they put it in. Hopefully it will be kept!

Coming to the play from a fandom perspective - although I’ve taken a fairly healthy step back in recent months - felt hilariously meta. So much of the obsessive, embarrassing behaviour exhibited by Eve towards Margo was recognisable in more extreme areas of this fandom! We didn’t queue up for the signing on Wednesday (the jury’s out on whether or not we will do the second time we see it) but we did feel - probably unfairly - a sense of irony as we walked back to the tube station past the long queue of fans waiting to meet the cast of a play that is essentially about the dangers of obsessive fan behaviour!

My favourite scene was, perhaps (lol) unsurprisingly, one of Gillian’s. And she’s not even the focal point of the scene. She is off-stage, in the bathroom which is totally shielded from the audience. And while a scene plays out on stage, a projection of Gillian in a very Blanche-esque moment - despite having no dialogue - absolutely steals the scene via a single-camera projection that ends in a graphic display of vomiting.

Another particularly memorable scene happened again in the bathroom. This time, a two-camera set-up was used, increasing the feel of watching a film or tv show even more, as it cuts between Karen and Eve’s faces as they have a crucial confrontation in the bathroom. 

Karen. Karen Karen Karen. Monica Dolan, wow. Really, honestly incredible. No real words beyond that. This feels a particularly ineloquent reaction but she blew me away.

I’m gonna go back to the camerawork now; yes I keep focusing on it but it’s such an integral part of the overall production. After several live action projections from the same angle, we are greeted with a projection of Margo looking into the mirror, facing fears about her age and how it is affecting her career. Slowly, the projection shows her ageing. And it almost tricks the audience’s eye in that it takes a while to even realise that this projection isn’t actually a live one!

A similar CGI projection is used later in the show, to show Eve’s face transforming into Margo’s as she slowly takes over her life. It’s a simple concept, used over and over again in film and TV, but bringing it to a theatre stage was a new and exciting use for it.

I’m a big fan of PJ Harvey’s music. The music for this show was more like an atmospheric film score than a theatre score for a lot of it, again blurring the lines between a stage and screen production.

A lot of hype has been built up for Gillian and Lily’s moments of singing. Gillian was surprisingly good! You can tell she’s not a trained singer, but given that she is highly intoxicated at the point she takes the metaphorical mic, that doesn’t matter at all, and she still hits all of the notes in an authentic way. 

Lily James, of course, has more of a musical background, but her performance was still to me, more lacking overall. I did listen to a podcast that said that PJ Harvey heard that Lily is able to play the piano, so planned her song around that. Lily is then asked about it on the podcast, and laughs that she’s not played since school and it must have been something she told a white lie about to embellish her acting CV! And fair play to her, she pulls it off very well if that’s the case!

I don’t want to write a totally unbiased review, so I’ll touch on the aspects I was less impressed with. My main criticism of the first half in particular, was the number of jumps, in both time and location, without any real indication given to the audience. The set remained the same, and the time jump could apparently happen mid-dialogue. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s easier to keep track of this next time I see the show.

It would have also been cool to see a more modern take on obsessive fan culture. There’s plenty of research material for that around these days! Social media creates armies of fans, obsessing over minor details about a celebrity’s life in ways that weren’t as widely possible when the script was originally written. 

Lots of the reviews have criticised the fact that Ivo was trying to be “too clever” while putting this show together. And it could easily be argued that they have a point. Personally, I think it works, and as such the idea of it being “too” clever is voided. But it’s understandable that people may agree with the critics on this.

***

I think that’s most of what I have to say about the show! Given the number of changes that happened during the preview run (which, please remember, is essentially just a series of rehearsals to an audience), it will be interesting to see if the show develops any further. I will be seeing it again in April, over two months away, and I’m looking forward to comparing the two!

[aion-rsa]

The Many Saints of Newark Trailer Song Has Paid Off for Years

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The Many Saints of Newark trailer shows Dickie Moltisanti trying to do the right thing. The film is a prequel to the HBO series The Sopranos, and will give special attention to the “old school” guys who were in at the ground floor of this thing of theirs. Veteran mobsters lived up to codes, like Omerta, which means silence unto death, and followed rules.

The top rule was spelled out in Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic Goodfellas: Get paid. “Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me,” explains Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta. The Hollywood legend will play “Hollywood” Dick in The Many Saints of Newark, and tells his son, Dickie (Allesandro Nivola), to make sure he keeps collecting those merit badges.

The first thing “Hollywood” Dick asks his son when he’s seated at the prison visiting table is what he wants. While Dickie tells his gangster father he’s looking to do a good deed, the soundtrack kicks in a different set of needs.

You can see the trailer here:

The Flying Lizards, an experimental English avant-garde new wave band, released their cover version of Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)” in 1979. Featuring Deborah Evans-Stickland on lead vocals, it was a quirky, mechanical, postmodern rendition of a raucous classic. They performed equally exquisite disservice to songs like Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and James Brown’s “Sex Machine.”

The band was a loose collection of musicians brought together in 1976 by record producer David Cunningham. The Flying Lizards included instrumentalists David Toop and Steve Beresford, and Evans-Stickland, Patti Palladin and Vivien Goldman as main vocalists. They put out their début album The Flying Lizards in 1979, and Virgin Records extended their contract after the single “Money” made bank.

Barrett Strong’s 1959 original song paid off for a lot of bands, and was a standard for live acts for years. The Beatles were banging out “Money (That’s What I Want)” as early as August 1960, when they were still playing clubs in Hamburg, Germany. Strong had only released his single a few months earlier. It wasn’t even a hit in the U.K. Along with “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me” and “Please Mr. Postman,” it was one of three Motown songs The Beatles released on With The Beatles in 1963.

Motown Records founder and owner Berry Gordy, who came up with the opening piano riff for “Money,” loved the idea that the British phenomenon were recording his label’s songs. And when the Rolling Stones followed suit, it proved Motor City really got things moving. It is the only cover song both bands issued on vinyl.

“Money (That’s What I Want)” was one of the first songs recorded at the label’s 2648 West Grand Boulevard studio. Also co-written by Janie Bradford, session players included Benny Benjamin on drums, Eugene Grew on guitar, and Brian Holland on tambourine. It was Barrett’s only hit for Hitsville, though he went on to be an in-house songwriter who co-wrote classic masterworks like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War,” and “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone.”

“Money (That’s What I Want)” has been recorded by such diverse acts as Cheap Trick, Jr. Walker All Stars, Etta James, Boyz II Men, the Doors, Waylon Jennings, and Pearl Jam. The Flying Lizards’ version of “Money” made the playlist at WKRP in Cincinnati in the radio station series’ episode “Venus Rising.” It can also be heard in the films The Wedding Singer, Empire Records, and Charlie’s Angels.

The Sopranos soundtrack is well-known, some songs have become an iconic part of the TV landscape because of their association with the series. Tony may or may not have met his fate to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” but he definitely laid a beating on a local politician after hearing The Chi-Lites’ hit “Oh Girl.” Series creator David Chase is a former musician whose post-Sopranos 2012 film Not Fade Away told the story of a band from New Jersey.

The Many Saints of Newark is directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World), who directed several episodes of The Sopranos. The screenplay was written by Chase and Lawrence Konner.

The Many Saints of Newark will premiere on September 22 at the Beacon Theatre to kick-off the Tribeca Fall Preview, a season-long series featuring film premieres and musical performances.

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The Many Saints of Newark will be released in theaters on October 1, and will be available on HBO Max for 31 days from the theatrical release.

The post The Many Saints of Newark Trailer Song Has Paid Off for Years appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[crazy-noonoohead]

My top 10 shows I saw in 2017.

This is in no particular order, and to prove that, I’m sticking one of the best in the middle and saving one for last. I’m mostly focusing on shows I saw for the first time in 2017, but I’m making two exceptions (four if you count Broadway transfers that I saw in previous incarnations) and you probably already know what those two are. I’m also sticking to plays and musicals as opposed to concerts, comedy performances, etc., but I’ll include a few of those in my honorable mentions. So here goes!

The Book Of Mormon with Dom Simpson as Elder Price: Let me start off by saying I adore Nic Rouleau. He’s been in various productions of BOM since its very beginning, and he still continues to get better every time I see him. And when I say this next thing, I don’t want anyone to think I’m tired of him, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. The day he leaves the show is probably the day the world ends. But since he’s been with the show for so long, he’s the Price I’ve seen the most often, by a long shot, so seeing a new take on the role was a refreshing experience that I’ll always cherish. When I met Dom at the stage door, I found out that I had seen the show more times than he had done the show. I hope he has more opportunities to go on, because he gave a wonderful performance! (Quick shout-outs to the other two times I saw it this year, especially when I went on my birthday.)

Falsettos’ closing performance: Having frequented this show consistently since the first preview (for...no particular reason), it was such a privilege to watch this cast of seven give it their all every single time. Still, that final show was probably everyone’s best performance. Andrew’s final “The Games I Play” was definitely the best I had heard him sing it, and the fact that I was sitting close enough to see the tears in his eyes was both a blessing and a curse that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Anthony powered through even though he was getting over an illness (which I would not have realized if I hadn’t already known) and had to call out earlier that weekend. Stephanie had to take moments during “I’m Breaking Down” and “Trina’s Song,” but somehow made it through “Holding To The Ground.” Brandon teared up during “A Marriage Proposal.” Everyone was emotional during the curtain call. And of course, I started crying the moment the lights went down for the first act and rarely stopped. The woman sitting next to me was a friend of William Finn’s and had lost friends during the AIDS crisis, so the show resonated with her in a way that it never will with me. I’m grateful that the production is on Broadway HD and that I can watch it whenever I want to, but it’s not the same as being there. It’s been almost a year and I still miss it a lot. What more can I say?

The Play That Goes Wrong: After seeing this in London with my mom and stepdad, we all loved it so much that we jumped on the chance to see the Broadway transfer as soon as possible. It goes wrong in all the right ways! I have now seen it three times on Broadway, and the jokes are still fresh and hilarious. Even while laughing at all the mishaps, I find myself sympathizing with these characters and admiring their determination to keep going. Sometimes it cheered me up, and other times it made an already good day even better. I hope I can go back soon to see the new cast.

The Great Comet: I went into this one knowing nothing about the plot, just that a lot of people loved it. I was also seeing it 12 days after Falsettos closed, so you can probably guess the state of mind I was in. But I loved this show! The music was like nothing I’d heard before (in a good way, obviously), the set felt intimate and elaborate at the same time, and the cast was incredibly talented AND one of the most diverse I’d ever seen, if not THE most. Somehow they made it easy for me to relate to characters living in 19th century Russia, despite living as a millennial in 21st century New York. I saw it twice, once with the original Broadway cast and once with Dave Malloy and Ingrid Michaelson, and I would have gone more if it had the long, successful run it deserved. But unfortunately, just like a comet, it lived up to its name and shone brightly for a short amount of time before disappearing. Also, the pierogies they gave out before the show were delicious. And I’m just now realizing that they missed out on an opportunity to make “Pierre-ogi” puns.

Bastard Jones: I have to admit this one grew on me. Once I found out that a former member of Toxic Audio was in the cast, I knew I was going to see it multiple times no matter what I thought, so thank goodness it was a good show! The first time I went, I enjoyed myself, and of course I loved getting to see René perform for the first time in ten years, but I wasn’t blown away. But that second time...maybe the performances got tighter. Maybe the jokes just landed better. Maybe it was because I was with the first friend I ever took to a Toxic Audio show. I’ll never know for sure. But I liked it a lot more the second time. While most of the draw for me was still seeing René in a role that is absolutely perfect for him, I ended up falling for the whole show as well. The slapstick humor, word play, and dirty jokes are completely up my alley (there’s a dirty joke somewhere in the phrase “up my alley”), and I found two songs I want to use for auditions once the sheet music becomes available. I saw this one four times during its month-long run, and the only reason I didn’t go more is that it sold out super quickly after getting rave reviews. The team is hoping that their next step is a longer run in a bigger venue, and I will definitely revisit the show when that happens, especially if René is still playing Partridge.

Sunday In The Park With George: I watched the DVD of the original production a few years ago because my friend was very nice and lent it to me, and I was so excited that I could finally see a live production. It. Was. Fantastic! Annaleigh Ashford and Jake Gyllenhaal were both wonderful and almost definitely would have received Tony nominations if the production had decided to compete. Andrew Kober, whom I’d seen in a few other things, was a swing in the show and got to go on for the first time the night I was there, which made it even more of a treat. This was a great production of an already great show, and although it was always going to be a limited run, I wish it could have lasted longer. More Sondheim on Broadway, please!

Jitney: My mom and I saw this one together, and it took a while to get going for us, but once it did, we were hooked. A super talented group of people sharing a compelling story? Yes, please! We both left the theatre pleasantly surprised, and everyone who signed at the stage door was very nice. Most of the actors didn’t have Sharpies and I got to lend them mine, which was a nice bonus. Of course, it’s always great to see BOM alumni continue to be successful, and I saw it the day after my BOM anniversary on purpose. The alumnus in this show ran over and gave me a big hug that night.

Brigadoon: This weekend-long City Center production looked ready to transfer and get an open run! Stephanie J. Block’s solo number was the stand-out for me (partially because she’s Stephanie, but her song would have been my favorite anyway), and Kelli O’Hara and Patrick Wilson were amazing as the two leads. Yes, the show has that “falling in love after knowing each other for one day” thing that annoys me about a lot of older musicals, but it still has a beautiful score and a unique premise.

The Band’s Visit: I loved this show when I saw it at the Atlantic Theatre last November, and I was very excited when I found out it was transferring to Broadway, but I also had my reservations. I was concerned that the show would lose its intimacy in a larger space. Boy, was I happy to be wrong! They picked the right theatre, as it most likely would have lost the intimacy in a bigger house, almost the entire cast is the same, and somehow the show was even better the second time. It’s a heartwarming, simple but effective story that we could all use right now. It’s not a “see over and over again” show for me, but I will definitely return to Bet Hatikva (with a B) at some point. I can’t officially endorse it for Best Musical until I see more of the new musicals this season, but if it doesn’t at least get nominated, I’m rioting.

Groundhog Day: Will I get through this paragraph without crying? Won’t I get through this paragraph without crying? Civilization once again hangs in the balance. Wow. What an unlikely love story! And contrary to those corny Hallmark movies where you figure the love story out in the first 30 seconds of the trailer, this love story was ACTUALLY unlikely. For me, at least. This was the show that got me excited about theatre again after Falsettos closed. I found something else I couldn’t stop gushing about or recommending to friends. At first most of that excitement came from the novelty of the first preview (Google the story if you don’t already know; this post is long enough already) and the awesomely professional way the team handled such a stressful situation, but as I listened to the cast recording more, it became clear that it wasn’t just that one experience that I loved. It was the whole show, and everyone involved. They took the story of a beloved, seemingly flawless movie, and in my not-even-living-in-the-same-neighborhood-as-humble opinion...dare I say it?...made it even better? I made Twitter friends because of this show. I crocheted Phil and Rita dolls and got to give them to Andy and Barrett. The closing notice hurt, and attending the final performance was one of my most bittersweet experiences, but it was worth it. This show was definitely a highlight of 2017. Six months and a day was not enough time, but I’m grateful for the time it had and I miss it every day. (For those of you wondering, I did not get through this paragraph without crying.)

Honorable mentions, also in no particular order:

Andrew Rannells’ and Stephanie J. Block’s Live From Lincoln Center concerts: An hour each, watching two of my favorite performers do solo shows that will later air on PBS was such a treat! Andrew’s set was completely full of songs I’d never heard him sing before, while Stephanie’s was a mix of new things and songs she’s known for. After hearing Stephanie sing “Some People” from Gypsy, I want her to play Rose one day. But first I want her to play Fanny Brice. Andrew is one of the only people who could make me cry by singing “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen (the others, of course, being the members of Toxic/Vox Audio). And he did.

Indecent: I almost made my list a top 11 so I could include it, but I insisted on having a round number. This was a powerful one-act play about making and producing God Of Vengeance, which was very controversial at the time because it was the 20th century and two women fell in love. Taking place during the Holocaust, the use of sand was very effective, and was probably both my favorite thing about it and the most difficult part to watch. It was my pick for Best Play this past season, and again, it deserved a longer run.

White Arab Problems: One of my friends from acting class wrote and performed a 45-minute comedy act about the struggles of being Arab but passing for white. In the piece, she humorously acknowledges the privileges that come with being white while also really dealing with the frustration of people thinking she’s trying to appropriate her own culture. I first met her in class in 2015 and recognized some insecurities that came across as ones I also have. Watching her grow over the years, seeing her perform this piece, and knowing she was proud of what she did made me a proud friend/classmate/scene partner, and I look forward to seeing it again whenever I can.

The Skivvies: Not much to elaborate on here, but I see as many of their concerts as I can, and it’s always a super fun time.

Prince Of Broadway: While this one was billed as a musical, it was technically a revue, which is why I didn’t put it on the official list. Watching a super talented cast of nine people perform songs and scenes from multiple Hal Prince shows definitely made for a great night! I went to the last preview, and I went again during the final week. I want Chuck Cooper to play Tevye, and I want Brandon Uranowitz to play Georg Nowack. And the Emcee. And Molina. And any other role he wants to play because he’s amazing.

So there’s my list. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t include more plays, but hopefully next year. And with that, “ba da ba ba ba suck my balls, I’m out.”

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Two : TORCH SONG TRILOGY

There are no plays like Torch Song Trilogy. It was the first of its kind and to this day, I’ve never read anything quite like it. Yes, Angels in America is a masterpiece that every human being should absolutely read but it goes beyond the Queer condition. Yes, The Boys in the Band is a fun ride (for the actors) but it certainly depicts every clichés I hate about homosexual representation — though it seems to be on purpose. Yes, The Normal Heart is fucking important and grand but it’s about death more than it is about a community. And yes, while researching for this paper, I learned that a 2009 play was called Cock and now, I’m intrigued.

But we are here to talk about Torch Song Trilogy and the undying talent of Harvey Fierstein. Originally composed of three distinct plays with enough backstory from one to the next so that each could be experienced independently while telling a overall story, it gives a voice to a « singular » gay man, a drag queen called Arnold (played by Harvey Feirstein — who has one singular artistic and literal voice).

In International Stud, Arnold meets Ed, a bisexual man struggling with his identity. The fall in love and fall apart. In Fugue in a Nursery, they are both reunited in Ed’s summer house with Laurel (Ed’s girlfriend) and Alan (Arnold’s young stud of a boyfriend). Finally in Widows and Children First!, Arnold is a single father to a gay teenager called David and has to face the wrath of his mother.

Written and performed from 1978 to 1980 in a sex bar/theatre called La MaMa, the plays met commercial failure with little word-of-mouth. After the completion of the unofficial trilogy, it was reworked into a single play called Torch Song Trilogy and opened on Broadway in 1982 at the Little Theatre. It went on to run for 1,300 performances (including previews) and win two Tony Awards : Best Play and Best Actor in a Play for Fierstein.

Back in 1978, a reviewer said of The International Stud « a sincere but sentimentalized view of a transvestite extremes ». It shows the limitations of critics back then when it came to talk about Fierstein’s work. First of all, TRANSVESTITE is a word that is never used in the play (but it’s said by Lauren in the movie). It is only acceptable when someone considers himself/herself/themselves transvestite OR when Tim Curry sings it with lust and sexual power. Arnold is a proud-to-be DRAG QUEEN, working full time and earning as little as possible. The opening scene and monologue puts the audience in an intimate conversation with Arnold while he’s getting prepared to go on stage. He talks about love, sex, evokes sad stories, hilarious anecdotes about his past. Though extravagant in his appearance, he simply talks about finding love in this world.

Adoption. Bullying. Love. The Closet. Backrooms. Widowing. Drag. Those are the issues. Freedom is the main theme.

« Sentimentalism » in gay relationships was a new and exciting position to take for an author back then. The only other reference one could have was La Cage aux Folles (interestingly enough, Fierstein would go on to write a musical based on the original french movie), The Boys in the Band where every single character is a selfish asshole and walking cliché and Cruising, which was not a pretty side either. Personally, I don’t see any sentimentalism in the writing of Fierstein. I see the idea that every person is capable of wanting the same things. Individualism over pre-conceived boxes.

The magic of the trilogy is the evolution of Arnold throughout the years. When we first meet him, he’s an irresponsible pseudo-romantic gay man with dreams of meeting the love of his life, represented by the myth he created in his own mind, The International Stud. The whole package. He meets the guy. The guy ditches him. By the second time we meet Arnold, he’s in a relationship but pretends it does not matter. He almost rejects the natural evolution of his life until tragedy strikes. So that by the end of the third play, after facing all of its demons (incarnated in the flesh by his mother) we have a full-rounded character that went from kid to man. So much of the gay character cliché stays on the idea that a queer person is one-dimensional, loud, incapable of change and never the center of the story. Even today, the gay best friend is about a relevant as my morning turds — and I’m just talking about works of fiction. If someone introduces me once more as « my gay friend », I’ll burn this world to the mother fucking ground. Fierstein, in his desire to write and perform an authentic journey, allowed the gay man to become more than its primal representation in fiction. He humanized a joke to all audiences. Arnold is certainly not without flaws : he’s vindictive, manipulative, cynical and all over the place. He’s also incredibly empathic, realistic and trying desperately to fill the hole inside him. As we all do.

The International Stud is about someone’s youth. Fugue in a Nursery is about growing up. Widows and Children First! is about adulthood.

Torch Song Trilogy, in its novelty of POV, not only predicted future laws about equal rights, adoption and possible happiness in a time when gay people were still considered the scum of the earth, it also helped construct and envision an idea of a future when each individual is free to choose its path, whether you have a sexual or gender identity that is not considered « normal » by History standards — Damn, I hate this word. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with the fear of being a 50-something dude stuck in a routine of hookups, search of youth, a cage of loneliness and with no happiness in sight. I regret those fears for two reasons : First, There’s nothing wrong with being a 50-something year old single man liking hookups and not wanting to settle down, having kids and making a life of himself by himself. Second, my destiny is not written in the stars. As a gay man, I don’t have to subject myself to society’s idea of me OR to the pressure of my community. I get to choose what I do with my life and sucking cocks has nothing to do with that.

Harvey Fierstein put it best : « When we opened Torch Song, Gay leaders were attacking me saying « he just wants us to be heterosexuals. We just want our rights to have all the sex we want! ». No, the idea is FREEDOM. Freedom means I get to say what I want my life to be »

Torch Song Trilogy is a precious masterpiece that every queer person should read at least once. And if you don’t like reading plays, or going to plays, well there’s also the1988 movie that is not too bad. Also, don’t ever confuse Harvey Fierstein with Harvey Weinstein. That’s poor taste on your part.

[wiremagazine]

OUT & ABOUT: COMMUNITEA DANCE

By Michael Bustamante

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts will be hosting another fabulous CommuniTea Dance June 1, 2019, on the Center's Thomson Plaza for the Arts in Downtown Miami, for the third consecutive year. The event celebrates National Pride Month, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The CommuniTea Dance is free and open to all ages with an outdoor event set to celebrate South Florida's LGBTQ community, which will include outstanding local and international entertainment by LGBTQ artists and allies. Get ready to celebrate Pride at the Arsht Center with RuPaul's Drag Race's Shangela, who recently made a cameo in the Oscar-winning film A Star is Born alongside Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. The event will also feature drag performances by Karla Croqueta, Sasha Lords, Morphine Love, and Petty Boop, plus music by DJ Hottpants, Phaxas, and The State Of. Wire Magazine sat down with Shangela to preview this year's Arsht Center CommuniTea Dance.

Michael Bustamante: How did you first get into drag and what inspired you to do so? Shangela: My first intro to drag was when I was 18 and went to my first gay club in Dallas, Texas, and saw a lot of the drag performers on the Rose Room show stage. Also, two of my friends, Alyssa Edwards and Sahara Davenport, asked me to dance backup for them in pageants, which led to my fascination with drag. A few years later in 2009, I got bit by the drag bug and performed my first number, "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé. MB: You're kicking off National Pride Month on June 1 in Miami at the Arsht Center's CommuniTea Dance. What can we expect from your performance? S: It's Shangela. Expect the unexpected! You know I always show up with stunts and surprises and this will be no different. It will be high energy and will leave the kids gagging. It's also a momentous occasion since this June marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. 

MB: What message do you have for the local LGBTQ community?  S: My message is also something I live by daily, which is, no matter what, push through. I tell people if you want to succeed in life, you have to do the work and keep a positive outlook and never give up on yourself.

MB: The Arsht Center is Miami's home for the performing arts. Why do you think arts and culture are important? S: Arts and culture are critical to our world because they represent the beauty of humanity.

MB: Who is your favorite queen from season 11 of RPDR, and who are you rooting for? S: You know, I've been around for a while, haha. Drag Race to me is like a sorority and to be honest, every year I welcome the many talents that each girl brings to the sisterhood. This season, I think I am rooting most for Miss Vanjie, because Vanjie rhymes with Shangie, and who doesn't love a comeback queen. MB: Tell us about your experience being part of A Star is Born. S: Being able to work in A Star Is Born was truly a dream come true. Not only did I get to work with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, but it was also the first time my mom was able to take my grandma to the local movie theatre and see me on the big screen.

MB: What has been your favorite encounter to date? S: I love all my fans but I think sometimes meeting the moms is my favorite part! When I meet other people's moms, it reminds me of my own mom and her excitement for drag and Drag Race. MB: Where do you see Shangela/DJ Pierce in five years? S: Still working! I hope to continue to grow as an entertainer, as an actor, and as a business person. I want to continue connecting with fans around the world in everything from telling stories in media to creating new music, and I want to maintain my financial independence because... I don't have a sugar daddy. I've never had a sugar daddy. If I wanted a sugar daddy, I could probably go out and get one because I am what? Sickening.

This was originally published in Wire Magazine Issue 11.2019

[marilynngmesalo]

‘Children of a Lesser God’ playwright Mark Medoff dead at 79

‘Children of a Lesser God’ playwright Mark Medoff dead at 79 ‘Children of a Lesser God’ playwright Mark Medoff dead at 79 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Mark Medoff, a provocative playwright whose Children of a Lesser God won Tony and Olivier awards and whose screen adaptation of his play earned an Oscar nomination, has died in Las Cruces, N.M. He was 79.

Medoff died Tuesday in a hospice surrounded by family, according to his daughter, Jessica Bunchman. He had been battling both multiple myeloma, a cancer, and renal failure, she said Wednesday in a family statement.

Medoff wrote 30 plays and wrote, produced or directed 19 movies. He found his greatest success with Children of a Lesser God, the tale of a troubled love affair between a speech teacher and a deaf woman who struggle to overcome the communications gap between their two cultures.

Phyllis Frelich won a Tony in 1980 for her Broadway portrayal of Sarah Norman, the deaf woman at the heart of the play, which ran for almost 900 performances. It was later made into a movie, which won an Academy Award for actress Marlee Matlin, who co-starred opposite William Hurt.

Medoff was a caring adviser to many in the business, according to the statement.

“He had a way of making every creative heart with whom he worked feel as if their work, or their part in his work, was the single most important thing to him in the moment. In turn, hundreds of writers, actors, directors and creatives all over the world consider Mark Medoff a mentor,” the statement said.

Matlin tweeted on Wednesday: “Mark Medoff, the brilliant mind behind the Tony Award winning play, ‘Children Of A Lesser God,’ has passed at 79. He insisted and fought the studio that the role be played by a deaf actor; I would not be here as an Oscar winner if it weren’t for him. RIP Dear Mark.”

Mark Medoff, the brilliant mind behind the Tony Award winning play, “Children Of A Lesser God,” has passed at 79. He insisted and fought the studio that the role be played by a deaf actor; I would not be here as an Oscar winner if it weren’t for him. RIP Dear Mark. pic.twitter.com/wpIJJqW00x

— Marlee Matlin (@MarleeMatlin) April 24, 2019

A Broadway revival last year of Children of a Lesser God starred Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff, a former Miss Deaf America who earned a Tony nomination.

Medoff’s work often tackled social issues, from animal testing and AIDS in the play Prymate, to American myths and disorders in the Obie-winning stage work When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder to poverty in India in his screenplay for the 1992 film City of Joy. His 2015 play, Marilee and Baby Lamb: The Assassination of an American Goddess, is about the last days of Marilyn Monroe.

“Everything I do probably starts more from a social-issue impulse than anything else,” the playwright told The Associated Press in 2004. “I went to a psychologist when I was 18 or 19 and he said I was the first kid he’d ever met who was rebelling against a happy childhood. So when I started writing, I began to expropriate social issues and quickly roped myself out of my angst.”

Medoff was inspired to write Children of a Lesser God after meeting Frelich and her husband, Robert Steinberg, a lighting designer. “I told him there were no roles for deaf actresses,” Frelich recalled. “He said, ‘OK, I’ll write a play for you.’ He did. He went home and wrote Children of a Lesser God. He wanted to write a good play.”

Medoff was co-founder of the American Southwest Theatre Company and head of the Department of Theatre Arts for nine years at New Mexico State University, where he taught for years. He helped form the Creative Media Institute for Film & Digital Arts in 2005.

“When the Creative Media Institute was just getting going, Mark told the faculty, ‘Look, we can sit around and talk about how to teach people to make movies, or we can just go make movies,’ which reflected his philosophy across life,” said Amy Lanasa, a friend who now heads the institute, in the family statement. “Why sit around talking about it when you can get up and take action or create something?”

Medoff’s other works include the plays The Wager, The Hand of Its Enemy, The Heart Outright, The Majestic Kid and the screenplay for the HBO movie thriller Apology. He also penned the 1978 Chuck Norris action film, Good Guys Wear Black and the black comedy Refuge starring Linda Hamilton in 2010.

His second original Broadway play was in 2004 with Prymate, which closed quickly after 23 previews and five performances, having in one week only grossed 8 % of the theatre’s capacity.

Prymate tells the story of two middle-age scientists and former lovers — an animal behaviourist and a biologist — in a tug-of-war over the fate of an aging gorilla rescued from an AIDS lab. The Associated Press review said “Medoff’s dialogue is unsubtle, often crude and, what’s worse, unbelievable.” Variety called it “ludicrous.”

Medoff was born in Mount Carmel, Ill., grew up in Miami Beach, Fla., and received his bachelor’s in English from the University of Miami in 1962. He completed graduate studies in English in 1966 at Stanford University.

Medoff is survived by his second wife, Stephanie Thorne, whom he wed in 1972, three daughters and eight grandchildren. In 1981, he also received an honorary degree from Gallaudet University for exemplary service to the deaf community.

Medoff and his family have created The Hope E. Harrison Foundation to raise awareness and finance research to end the chromosomal anomaly Trisomy 18, which afflicts his five-year old granddaughter, Hope.

Click for update news Bangla news http://bit.ly/2XEV5Xt world news

[ismael37olson]

Hail, Zombies!

Hail, zombies, thou heav’n-made dead,

Forsaken by the God we dread;

Great metaphor for all we fear!

All hail the end of all that we hold dear!

It was back in 2013, after watching the movie Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (coincidentally starring BBAJ's Benjamin Walker). It was just a few hours after watching the movie that I started thinking about what kind of similar mashup I might concoct in the realm of musical theatre. I've always been fascinated by the idea of art made from other art. Maybe that's because so many musicals are based on stories in other forms, plays, novels, movies. Also, I had been wanting to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. But if I wanted to adapt an existing piece, I realized I needed to find a work in the public domain. I couldn't fuck around with Carousel or Damn Yankees. And then it hit me -- one of my favorite shows ever, the very first show I ever saw on Broadway, The Pirates of Penzance. It first debuted in 1879 and it is in the public domain. So I would write The ZOMBIES of Penzance. And yes, I was mega-stoned at the time. I already knew the show by heart, backwards and forwards. And the plot wouldn't have to change much at all. Major-General Stanley still wouldn't want the title characters to marry his daughters, though for slightly different reasons. I went through the plot in my head, figuring how each plot point would translate. It seemed pretty straight-forward.

In fact, that was the key for me. I realized it would be more an act of translation than a rewrite. How do we tell this same story, but in the language of zombie movies? As I've said in other posts, the real appeal for me was the delicious mismatch of form and content, an aggressive, comic rejection of Sondheim's Law, that Content Dictates Form (much like another New Line show, Bukowsical). I started with a test for myself. I decided I would first work on the new zombie lyric for "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General." If I could do that well, I knew I could do the whole show. I started that same night. It took me three days to finish it. I've changed only a handful of words since then. So I set to work. I don't think I could have done it with a show I knew less well. It took me four years, though there were periods when I had to put it aside for a while. I finished it in summer 2017, and passed it off to my buddy John Gerdes, who had agreed to arrange the score and orchestrate it. He finished our piano score in November, we went into rehearsal, and we presented a public reading in January. And the response was wonderful. Even with no set, costumes, makeup, or band, our overflow crowd totally loved it. They caught all the jokes, they followed the plot, and it was confirmed that you didn't need to know The Pirates of Penzance in order to enjoy The Zombies of Penzance, but knowing the original does offer extra laughs here and there. The response from the talkback after the reading was so helpful. I took a few months, did some rewrites, added a song and a half, and reconstructed the last part of the plot. Then I gave it back to John, who had already finished most of the orchestrations. In August, we went back into rehearsal for this first full production of The Zombies of Penzance, or At Night Come the Flesh Eaters, Gilbert & Sullivan's long-lost treasure. As I mentioned in my last post, in translating the central conflict to one about Monsters instead of Bad Guys, it also shifted the show's thematic content. The Pirates of Penzance is about the absurdity of social class, but The Zombies of Penzance is about the "Othering" and demonizing of those who aren't like us, usually by those who claim the highest morality. Of course, as befits Gilbert & Sullivan, the conflict is raised to ridiculous proportions in this case, since the Others are actually zombies. Zombies that sing really well. And partly because I cut the Policemen, this rewrite has also empowered the Stanley Daughters, much more than most (any?) of Gilbert's other women characters. I know some hardcore Gilbert & Sullivan fans will be terribly offended at what I've wrought. But that's part of the point, part of the central meta joke, that I've chosen the single most inappropriate storytelling form to tell a zombie apocalypse story -- polite English light opera -- and the larger meta joke, that Zombies actually is Gilbert's first draft, rejected by his producer Richard D'Oyly-Carte.

There is a long and interesting tradition of art made from other art, including, but not limited to, half or more of the great American musicals, most of Shakespeare's plays, and one of the greatest short films I've ever seen, Todd Haynes' brilliant Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Of the nine other musicals I've written, two were based on true stories, but the rest were all original stories. So this has been a fascinating experiment for me, and it has been really wonderful living in the language of Gilbert all this time, writing in his peculiar voice, both in the hilariously overwritten dialogue and the heavily rhymed lyrics. I kept every rhyme scheme! The best part of all this is seeing it onstage and getting to share it with our audience. People seem to be really excited about it. There will be some hardcore G&S fans who will be horrified by this, but that's really kind of the point of it all... I'm so grateful to this superb cast, who not only sing Sullivan's glorious music like they're a cast of forty, but they also nail the wacky, silly, ridiculous, but always straight-faced Gilbertian humor. I often say that I can't make musicals without lots of other talented people, but this time I needed lots of very talented people. And we got them. And my co-director Mike Dowdy-Windsor added so much, as he always does, including the most obvious, most perfect final moment -- which hadn't even occurred to me till he said it... I cannot wait to share this with our audience now. I'm really happy with how it has all turned out, and I'll dare to say that I think Gilbert would enjoy my adaptation, after getting over his outrage that I've rewritten his show, of course... Come join the crazy fun. When will you ever again get the chance to see a zombie operetta...? We preview tonight and open tomorrow!  Get your tickets now! Long Live the Musical! Scott from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/2018/09/hail-zombies.html

[latestnews2018-blog]

Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/neil-simon-broadway-playwright-dies-at-91/

Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” ″Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director of media relations.

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was one of the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwrights, often chronicling middle class issues and fears.

Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical. His list of credits is staggering.

Simon’s stage successes included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” ″Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″Plaza Suite,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Sweet Charity” and “Promises, Promises,” but there were other plays and musicals, too, more than 30 in all. Many of his plays were adapted into movies and one, “The Odd Couple,” even became a popular television series.

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park”; “The Odd Couple”; “Sweet Charity”; and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

Even before he launched his theater career, he made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar that also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor and, in 1983, he even had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience. The previous year had seen a popular revival of “The Odd Couple,” reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in “The Producers” several years earlier.

In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Simon reflected on his success. “I know that I have reached the pinnacle of rewards. There’s no more money anyone can pay me that I need. There are no awards they can give me that I haven’t won. I have no reason to write another play except that I am alive and I like to do it,” he said.

Simon had a rare stumble in the fall of 2009, however, when a Broadway revival of his “Brighton Beach Memoirs” closed abruptly after only nine performances because of poor ticket sales. It was to have run in repertory with Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” which was also canceled.

The bespectacled, mild-looking Simon (described in a New York Times magazine profile as looking like an accountant or librarian who dressed “just this side of drab”) was a relentless writer — and rewriter.

“I am most alive and most fulfilled sitting alone in a room, hoping that those words forming on the paper in the Smith-Corona will be the first perfect play ever written in a single draft,” Simon wrote in the introduction to one of the many anthologies of his plays.

He was a meticulous joke smith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with comic one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability. No matter. For much of his career, audiences embraced his work, which often focused on middle-class, urban life, many of the plots drawn from his own personal experience.

“I don’t write social and political plays, because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world,” he told The Paris Review in 1992.

Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 as best author — a category now discontinued — for “The Odd Couple,” although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses.” He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for “Biloxi Blues.” In 1991, “Lost in Yonkers” received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. And there was a special achievement Tony, too, in 1975.

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy — “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” ″Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound” — which many consider his finest works. In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York and was raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights. He was a Depression-era child, his father, Irving, a garment-industry salesman. He was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed his younger sibling, Doc.

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945-46, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948 and then, for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

The brothers wrote for such classic 1950s television series as “Your Show of Shows,” 90 minutes of live, original comedy starring Caesar and Imogene Coca, and later for “The Phil Silvers Show,” in which the popular comedian portrayed the conniving Army Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

Yet Simon grew dissatisfied with television writing and the network restrictions that accompanied it. Out of his frustration came “Come Blow Your Horn,” which starred Hal March and Warren Berlinger as two brothers (not unlike Danny and Neil Simon) trying to figure out what to do with their lives. The comedy ran for more than a year on Broadway. An audience member is said to have died on opening night.

But it was his second play, “Barefoot in the Park,” that really put Simon on the map. Critically well-received, the 1963 comedy, directed by Mike Nichols, concerned the tribulations of a pair of newlyweds, played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, who lived on the top floor of a New York brownstone.

Simon cemented that success two years later with “The Odd Couple,” a comedy about bickering roommates: Oscar, a gruff, slovenly sportswriter, and Felix, a neat, fussy photographer. Walter Matthau, as Oscar, and Art Carney, as Felix, starred on Broadway, with Matthau and Jack Lemmon playing the roles in a successful movie version. Jack Klugman and Tony Randall appeared in the TV series, which ran on ABC from 1970-1975. A female stage version was done on Broadway in 1985 with Rita Moreno as Olive (Oscar) and Sally Struthers as Florence (Felix). It was revived again as a TV series from 2015-17, starring Matthew Perry.

The play remains one of Simon’s most durable and popular works. Nathan Lane as Oscar and Matthew Broderick as Felix starred in a revival that was one of the biggest hits of the 2005-2006 Broadway season.

Besides “Sweet Charity” (1966), which starred Gwen Verdon as a goodhearted dance-hall hostess, and “Promises, Promises” (1968), based on Billy Wilder’s film “The Apartment,” Simon wrote the books for several other musicals.

“Little Me” (1962), adapted from Patrick Dennis’ best-selling spoof of show-biz autobiographies, featured a hardworking Sid Caesar in seven different roles. “They’re Playing Our Song” (1979), which had music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, ran for more than two years. But a musical version of Simon’s movie “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Martin Short and Bernadette Peters, had only a short run in 1993.

Many of his plays were turned into films as well. Besides “The Odd Couple,” he wrote the screenplays for movie versions of “Barefoot in the Park,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and more.

Simon also wrote original screenplays, the best known being “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Richard Dreyfuss as a struggling actor, and “The Heartbreak Kid,” which featured Charles Grodin as a recently married man, lusting to drop his new wife for a blonde goddess played by Cybill Shepherd.

In his later years, Simon had more difficulty on Broadway. After the success of “Lost in Yonkers,” which starred Mercedes Ruehl as a gentle, simple-minded woman controlled by her domineering mother (Irene Worth), the playwright had a string of financially unsuccessful plays including “Jake’s Women,” ″Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and “Proposals.” Simon even went off-Broadway with “London Suite” in 1995 but it didn’t run long either.

“The Dinner Party,” a comedy set in Paris about husbands and ex-wives, was a modest hit in 2000, primarily because of the box-office strength of its two stars, Henry Winkler and John Ritter. A hit revival of “Promises, Promises” in 2010 starred Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

Perhaps Simon’s most infamous production was the critically panned “Rose’s Dilemma,” which opened at off-Broadway’s nonprofit Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2003. Its star, Mary Tyler Moore, walked out of the show during preview performances after receiving a note from the playwright criticizing her performance. Moore was replaced by her understudy.

He wrote two memoirs, “Rewrites” (1996) and “The Play Goes On” (1999). They were combined into “Neil Simon’s Memoirs.”

Simon was married five times, twice to the same woman. His first wife, Joan Baim, died of cancer in 1973, after 20 years of marriage. They had two daughters, Ellen and Nancy, who survive him. Simon dealt with her death in “Chapter Two” (1977), telling the story of a widower who starts anew.

The playwright then married actress Marsha Mason, who had appeared in his stage comedy “The Good Doctor” and who went on to star in several films written by Simon including “The Goodbye Girl,” ″The Cheap Detective,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Only When I Laugh” and “Max Dugan Returns.” They were divorced in 1982.

The playwright was married to his third wife, Diane Lander, twice — once in 1987-1988 and again in 1990-1998. Simon adopted Lander’s daughter, Bryn, from a previous marriage. Simon married his fourth wife, actress Elaine Joyce, in 1999. He also survived by three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

“I suspect I shall keep on writing in a vain search for that perfect play. I hope I will keep my equilibrium and sense of humor when I’m told I haven’t achieved it,” Simon once said about his voluminous output of work. “At any rate, the trip has been wonderful. As George and Ira Gershwin said, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me.’”

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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[newyorktheater]

(l-r) Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk in The Band’s Visit

Jitney

Sweeney Todd

Michelle Wilson and Johanna Day

For all the Broadway box office records set in 2017, the year in New York theater felt tentative, in transition, as if both theater artists and audiences were trying to figure out how to deal with the changed, and charged, political landscape. Some shows offered the escapist route, like Hello, Dolly with Bette Midler or SpongeBob SquarePants; these crowd pleasers generally didn’t please me enough to include in my top ten. Other shows went in the opposite direction, offering some form of social or political engagement. With one exception (see below), the less satisfying of these dealt directly with politics or political activism in the narrow sense (The Parisian Woman or Michael Moore’s The Terms of My Surrender) or previewed a political apocalypse (1984.) Many of my favorites of 2017 paint a realistic picture of people fighting against a sense of hopelessness; but in telling their stories, the shows paradoxically provide us with a sense of hope – and sometimes a blueprint for action. Theater at its best can function as both a place of refuge and a resource.

The choices below are personal favorites; the ranking is somewhat arbitrary.

  1. The Band’s Visit

  The plot of this delicate adaptation of an indie Israeli film by Eran Kolirin hardly seems the stuff of Broadway musicals: An Egyptian police band gets lost on its way to performing at an Arab cultural center in Israel, and winds up spending a single night in an isolated desert town; one of the best songs is “Welcome to Nowhere.” But this show, which transferred this year from Off-Broadway, hits the spot thanks to David Yazbek’s exquisite Middle Eastern score and delicious lyrics, a spot-on cast led by the incomparable Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk, and a book by Itamar Moses that’s both doleful and droll. We fall in love with the characters, almost all of whom harbor an underlying sadness.

  2. Jitney

  “Jitney” was the last play to make it to Broadway from August Wilson’s celebrated 10-play American Century cycle, 11 years after his death. In Wilson’s 1979 play, which takes place in 1977 in a gypsy cab station in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, we get to know the drivers, their passengers, and their family members. Some feel trapped; some, defeated. But each has a story to tell, and a full life of faults and wisdom and talents that Wilson presents with humor and empathy.  The production directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, presented ensemble acting at its best.

    3.  Sweeney Todd

The Tooting Arts Club’s production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s glorious murderous musical began in 2014 in Harrington’s, one of London’s oldest working pie shops, and made the trans-Atlantic voyage intact, setting up in an impressively detailed replica of Harrington’s constructed at Barrow Street theater. I hesitate to include this Sweeney Todd in my top ten of 2017, because I loved the original cast, but made the mistake of seeing it a second time, with its current replacement cast, and didn’t love it anywhere near as much. Still, you can’t take away my memory of the first eight-member cast, especially Jeremy Secomb as Sweeney Todd, Sibohan McArthy as Mrs. Lovett and Matt Doyle as Anthony Hope, as they performed atop the tables inches from the audience, or sat alongside us on the benches

  4. Burning Doors

“Burning Doors” was Belarus Free Theatre’s latest arresting play about state-sponsored injustice, and the art of resisting it. A troupe banned in their home country, but continuing to perform there underground, Belarus Free Theatre mixes activism and artistry in a way that frankly puts to shame most American theater’s efforts at doing the same. As with their previous work, “Burning Doors” told real stories, naming names – this time including the story of the activism and repression of the Russian activist performance artists Pussy Riot, re-enacted by a prominent member of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina — presented with inventive and athletic theatricality.

  5. Indecent

A behind-the-scenes look at an all-Jewish, lesbian-themed drama at the dawn of the 20th century that led to a criminal prosecution, Indecent is both a fascinating history lesson written by Pulitzer-winning Paul Vogel, and a cleverly staged entertainment directed by Rebecca Taichman.

This was in my top 10 last year as well, when it debuted Off-Broadway. It transferred to Broadway in April of this year – marking Vogel’s Broadway debut – but lasted only four months. I suspect this haunting play will live on.

6. Sweat

Like Grapes of Wrath, Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” offers a devastating look at social and economic breakdown, told not with rants or statistics, but through a riveting tale about good people in a bad situation. The characters in “Sweat” hang out in a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, which 2010 U.S. Census data identified as the poorest city in America.

Everything clicked for me in the Public Theater production of this play in 2016, and I listed it in the top 10 of 2016. As with Indecent, its transfer to Broadway in the Spring apparently didn’t click with the theater-buying public; it closed after some three months, even though it had won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It’s worth noting that Nottage, who spent much time doing research in Reading, continues her presence in that city, developing a site-specific installation in  the abandoned Reading Railroad Station, entitled “Out/Let,” to engage the diverse and divided communities of the city in dialogue,

  7. Latin History for Morons

The ushers are wearing “Ghetto Scholar” sweatshirts in Studio 54, where for his sixth solo show John Leguizamo stands in front of a blackboard and lectures on the history, politics, culture and demographics of the 70 million Latinos in the United States. But Leguizamo is too much of an anarchic comic spirit, master mimic and candid memoirist to be merely erudite. “Latin History for Morons” exists on three planes – fascinating nuggets of actual history mixed with political commentary, eclectic comic shtick, and a funny, tender story of the performer’s efforts to connect with his family. “Latin History for Morons” suggests a potentially new and exciting direction in Leguizamo’s theatrical work.

8. A Doll’s House, Part 2

Laurie Metcal, Jayne Houdyshell, Condola Rashad, Chris Cooper in A Doll’s House, Part 2

A quartet of fine performances help elevated this play by Lucas Hnath to something more than just a sequel to Ibsen’s drama: Laurie Metcalf was the fifteenth actress since 1889 to portray Nora Helmer on Broadway, who slams the door on her husband and three children. But she was the first Nora to knock on that door 15 years later. The play is clever, and surprisingly amusing, but it is also thought-provoking: The characters’ conversations amount to a spirited and intriguing debate about the institution of marriage. Would it be a stretch to argue that, opening six months before the birth of the #metoo movement, the depiction of the unequal, unfair relationship between the sexes wound up being prescient?

9. K-Pop

Katie Lee Hill, Deborah Kim, Sun Hye Park, Julia Abueva, Cathy Ang, Susannah Kim

K-Pop was wildly (and loudly) entertaining, offering the audience a pretend-tour of a Korean pop music factory, which included mini-concerts at the beginning and the end, and energetic performances throughout, by credible and incredibly talented Korean pop stars, though wholly created (a la The Monkees) just for this show. If the dramatic scenes in K-Pop could have been better, I pick the show for my top 10 to represent the increasing number and variety of immersive theater, which has from a trend into a genre, which continues to innovate.

10.Antigone in Ferguson and Oedipus El Rey

I save these two for last, but in some ways, they are the most exciting of the theater I saw in 2017. Both productions adapted Greek tragedies written by Sophocles 2,500 years old in ways that make them more timely and relevant than almost anything else on any stage anywhere.

Oedipus El Rey was Luis Alfaro’s modern adaptation of Oedipus Rex, set in the Chicano barrio of South Central Los Angeles. It was an intense, visceral production, brutal and direct, but also graphically sensuous and oddly tender. It made a startling connection between how the Ancient Greeks viewed their fate and many Latinos view their future.

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“Antigone in Ferguson” was performed by stars of the HBO TV series “The Wire,” backed by a gospel chorus made up of residents and activists from Ferguson, Missouri, some of whom knew Michael Brown, the teenager killed by a police officer in 2014. The production was an adaptation written and produced by Bryan Doerries, the artistic director of Theater of War Productions, a theater company he launched eight years ago to use plays to help speciic audiences grapple with trauma. Originally presented in Ferguson, “Antigone in Ferguson” was presented for one night only  in basketball court in the shadow of the Howard public housing projects in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to an audience touched by violence. The conversation afterward was vibrant, intelligent and moving. It gave me a new understanding of the tragedy – and of theater.

  Top 10 New York Theater in 2017 To Be Grateful For For all the Broadway box office records set in 2017, the year in New York theater felt tentative, in transition, as if both theater artists and audiences were trying to figure out how to deal with the changed, and charged, political landscape.

[chicbamboowear]

“Frozen” heats up Denver: Inside Disney’s multimillion-dollar quest to conquer Broadway

Patti Murin will portray Anna in Disney’s pre-Broadway musical "Frozen," coming to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts on August 17. (Provided by the DCPA.)

Broadway singer and actress Patti Murin shares nearly everything about her work with her actor husband, Colin Donnell.

But not her latest project.

“I’ve been involved in this for a year and my husband doesn’t know a single thing about it,” Murin, 36, said of “Frozen: The Musical,” the stage adaptation of Disney’s 2013 hit animated movie. “It’s been such a closed process. And I mean closed. Nobody we love has been able to see it.”

Dozens of people working on the top-secret production have been camped inside the Buell Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex since May. Even before that, Disney executives had been considering “Frozen” for a stage musical, given the established pipeline for animated Disney features such as “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” to become Broadway (and later, nationally touring) productions.

When “Frozen: The Musical” debuts for the public at the Buell on Aug. 17, it could mark the launch of another theatrical production worth millions, or perhaps a billion, dollars for Disney, which plans to move the show to Broadway’s St. James Theatre in February.

But first, the “Frozen” team must work out countless kinks during the seven-week “pre-Broadway engagement” in Denver, a city in which Disney has learned to rely on the quantity and quality of theater-going audiences, plus skilled crews and facilities that mirror the production’s eventual home in New York City.

“We have about 150 people in Denver working on the show,” said Jack Eldon, vice president of domestic touring for Disney Theatrical Group. “That includes performers, technical crew, the creative team and all our designers. But we also need to make sure audiences there can sustain the number of performances that we need to revise some set pieces, and tweak things like the costumes and music.”

Landing “Frozen: The Musical” is a coup for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA), which hosts the region’s biggest touring theater productions. But it’s not unprecedented. In 2007, DCPA also hosted the six-week, pre-Broadway run of the stage adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, selling a record 95,000 tickets. It has also served as the launchpad for the national-touring production of “The Lion King,” which has been seen by tens of millions since that road version opened in Denver 15 years ago.

“Frozen: The Musical” is just the latest example of the DCPA’s national influence and evolution into touring-show powerhouse, DCPA president Janice Siden told The Denver Post.

“Everywhere I go, our Broadway group is the envy of theater groups around the country,” added Martin Semple, DCPA chairman, who credited DCPA Broadway executive director John Ekeberg with keeping the Disney relationship strong. “Going to the Tonys with John and meeting all these people just confirmed the respect people have for us.”

The DCPA has driven ticket sales for its 2017-18 season by dangling “Frozen” in front of its more than 28,000 subscribers. It has every reason to expect that the broad, crossover appeal of a “Frozen” tryout will help this season surpass last year’s numbers.

As the largest nonprofit theater company in the country, the DCPA sold 685,375 tickets to its touring-Broadway and in-house theater company shows in fiscal 2016, generating $150 million in economic impact and attracting roughly 1.2 million visitors to downtown Denver, according to a DCPA report.

Despite employing the original, Oscar-winning creative team from the film version of “Frozen,” and big-name Broadway veterans — including Tony winners such as director Michael Grandage (“Red”), choreographer Rob Ashford (“Thoroughly Modern Millie”) and music supervisor Stephen Oremus (“Wicked,” “The Book of Mormon”) — Disney is leaving nothing to chance.

Past musical adaptations of the animated Disney films “The Little Mermaid” and “Tarzan” were high-profile flops, and “Frozen: The Musical” has already burned through a couple of directors, three choreographers, two set designers and a pair of Elsas, according to The New York Times.

But flesh-and-blood audiences will have the last word on this reportedly $25 million-$30 million production — not the first.

“The creators get so close to it (that) I promise you they will be shocked at least once in that first performance — for good or bad,” said Dennis Crowley, senior publicist at Disney Theatrical. “If it’s like every other musical ever written, the creators will find something they absolutely did not expect, either something they thought would be a knock-’em-dead moment that won’t, or a laugh they never saw coming.”

Crowley cited the example of “Aladdin: The Musical,” the pre-Broadway engagement of which involved major retooling in the show’s first 40 minutes after theater goers in Toronto failed to respond to voice-over narration, which diverged significantly from the film.

“Audiences said, ‘We don’t know these people. We don’t care about these people. Where’s the pretty girl in the midriff and the hot boy and the genie?’ So they cut all the narration, brought in the genie at the top of the show and,” Crowley said, snapping his fingers, “from the first New York performance it was a different show. And that’s not atypical.”

Disney Theatrical has built in at least three months of downtime between the end of the 46-show Denver run on Oct. 1 and its New York roll-out early next year, just in case it needs a new song, new sets or more. Already, a creative team that includes the married songwriters from the film, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, has expanded “Frozen” from a 102-minute movie to a roughly two-hour musical, with triple the number of songs and a cast of more than 40.

Like most film shooting schedules, the pre-Broadway engagement is a grueling sprint that squeezes the most out of everyone’s time and energy — even if it started in earnest more than a year ago with the film’s original co-director, Jennifer Lee, writing the script and rehearsing the show at Manhattan’s New 42nd Street Studios.

“Right now in (technical rehearsals) in Denver it’s pretty intense,” said Caissie Levy, a Broadway veteran who plays Princess Elsa in the musical. “We’re there for nine or 10 hours a day, popping in for wig fittings and slotting things in like that. The first month of previews we’ll rehearse all day, and there will be a lot of maintenance for Patti and me. A lot of justified massages, sleep and steam rooms.”

There’s plenty of pressure on Levy the role of Princess Elsa, which includes belting out the instantly familiar and Oscar-winning song “Let It Go.” But there’s also opportunity in evolving an animated princess into a three-dimensional character.

It’s a tricky balance: “Frozen: The Musical” must mirror major aspects of the movie, because that’s what is selling tickets for the DCPA right now. Loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Snow Queen,” “Frozen” has resonated with global audiences thanks to its empowering female characters, humor and melody-drenched songs.

But the musical version must also find its own voice. Merely mimicking the film risks alienating fans with a hokey copy of the original — no matter how eye-popping the sets, costumes and special effects are.

And the potential audience is huge: “Frozen” is the highest grossing animated film in history, with more than $1 billion in worldwide revenue. DCPA and Denver tourism officials are anticipating plenty of out-of-state visitors to attend this pre-Broadway run, since 8 percent of DCPA patrons came from out-of-state last year — versus about 4 percent 20 years ago. The percentage of out-of-state visitors increases into the double digits for touring Broadway shows like “Wicked” and “The Lion King,” the DCPA said, which gives officials a good idea of “Frozen’s” potential draw.

This story features a bucket-list experience — check out our complete Colorado Summer Bucket List!

The stakes and tension are high for all involved, even without considering the instantaneous reactions will be posted to social media for all — including curious New York audiences and critics — to see. For that and other reasons, the show will run for about a month in Denver before critics are allowed to officially review it on Sept. 14.

“We must be adrenaline junkies and masochists and overall crazy people to do this, because it’s so thrilling and so terrifying at the same time,” said Levy, 36, who has appeared in “Rent,” “Hairspray,” “Wicked,” “Hair” and other pillars of Broadway success.

“But we need to make sure everyone who’s seeing the show for the first and only time, who bought tickets when they went on sale months ago and are bringing all their kids in their ‘Frozen’ gear, or who got a babysitter and went out to dinner, are getting the show that they’re meant to get,” added Levy, whose 18-month-old son and (as often as he can make it) husband are joining her from New York.

The Denver Post got the first peek at the production, provided this reporter swore to secrecy about any sets, special effects or details that he witnessed.

Inside the Buell Theatre looked like more of a buzzing hive than an empty shell, with dozens of designers and technical staff camped out among the audience seats at tables filled with lamps, computer workstations, hardwired phones and rivers of overlapping wires — more like NASA’s Mission Control than a stereotypical row of producers critiquing from the front row.

Many of them were designers and their associates, including Tony winner Christopher Oram (sets and costumes), six-time Tony winner Natasha Katz (lighting) and Tony winner Finn Ross (projections).

But the final collaborator in the musical, as the cast and crew likes to say, will be Denver audiences. The creative team is hoping to make something that will run for years to come, if not decades — less a time capsule of ideas, more a vehicle for their continual delivery.

Still, no amount of preparation can predict what happens on opening night.

“That is the day that I always say to myself, ‘Why did I do this?’ Because you’re always terrified,” Murin said. “You could be as ready as you could possibly be and still be like, ‘Why did I choose this career?!’ ”

Levy, who already feels a sisterly bond with both Murin’s “hot-mess” Princess Anna character and the actress as a person, said Denver is an ideal place to get acclimated to the show and its audiences. But she won’t refuse off-stage help if she needs it.

“Self-care is super important,” she said. “I’m sure we’re going to get very chummy with that oxygen tank in the wings.”

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[christinaepilzauthor-blog]

Before Almack's

by Lauren Gilbert Social activities, fashions, entertainment and more are all driven by "the next big thing." This is nothing new. Throughout history, we can find examples of this. During the Regency era, Almack's Assembly Rooms were THE place to be during the Regency era. A voucher for Almack's conveyed more social impact than invitations to multiple private balls and parties. When Almack's Assembly Rooms opened in February of 1765, Mr. Macall was in direct competition with Mrs. Cornelys' assemblies at Carlisle House, and it was by no means certain that Almack's would be "the next big thing". A veritable Studio 54 of its time, the assemblies at Carlisle House were geared for the highest society and were quite something.... Who was Mrs. Cornelys? Teresa Cornelys, also known as the Empress of Pleasure and the Queen of Masquerades, was born Anna Maria Teresa Imer in Venice in 1723, the daughter of Giuseppe Imer, an opera impresario. Her mother Paolina was an actress. Teresa herself was a singer and dancer. She was described as beautiful, but I found no particulars.  She led an extremely interesting life: she was married to a dancer named Angelo Pompeati in Vienna but lived with him only a few months. She became a well-known opera singer, and courtesan; at age 17, she was desired by Senator Alvise Gasparo Malpiero; some sources say she was his mistress. (Malpiero befriended a young Giacomo Casanova, who was frequently at his home.) Teresa fell madly in love with Casanova, who may have been the father of her first child, a son named Giuseppe. Her husband did not acknowledge the child; however, many accounts do not list Giuseppe as Casanova's son either. She subsequently had a daughter named Wilhelmine by a different lover, a daughter named Sophie by Casanova (most accounts do list Sophie as Casanova's daughter), and another baby by someone else. Wilhelmine and the baby both died. She had numerous lovers and used multiple names. Despite her own singing career and income from her various lovers, she was jailed for debt in Paris. Casanova took their son to raise in 1759. Teresa and Sophie moved on to the Netherlands. Teresa had first appeared in London at the Haymarket under the name Madame Pompeati, in an opera by Gluck, in 1746. The reviews were not good, and she returned to the continent. After her release from debtor's prison, she was convinced to try England again by a wealthy man known as John Freeman (and John Boorder and John Fermor which name he used in England) who she met in Holland and who may have been her lover. Using the name Cornelys (after a lover named Cornelis de Rigorboos in Rotterdam), she presented herself as a widow, and apparently benefited greatly from sympathy for her widowed state as well as the expanded legal rights enjoyed by widows as opposed to single or married women. At this time, she was about 37 years old. When she arrived in London this time, Teresa apparently decided to be a producer instead of an entertainer. In April of 1760, with the financial backing of John Fermor (as he was now known), Teresa rented Carlisle House in Soho Square, which she subsequently purchased a few months later. At one time the home of the 2nd Earl of Carlisle, Edward Howard, Carlisle House changed hands, and Teresa rented the house and its furnishings for 180 pounds per year from the owner, before she purchased it. She made extensive renovations to the house during her occupancy, adding several rooms (including a supper room and a ballroom/concert hall) which were connected to the original house by a Chinese bridge. She opened her business to provide entertainment to the upper classes by private subscription later in 1760, calling her membership "The Society." By making her entertainments a subscription affair, she evaded licensing laws in effect at the time as well as making them private and exclusive since not everyone could get tickets and she indicated that the cost was merely to cover expenses. (The Licensing Acts of 1737 and 1752 were in effect at the time, regulating legitimate theatrical entertainment as well as places open for public entertainment in and within 20 miles of London and Westminster.) Initially confined to dancing and card playing, Teresa expanded the entertainments offered to include concerts, balls and masquerades. Her rooms became very popular, and were known as much for their size and beauty of architecture and decoration as for the quality of the entertainments themselves. Musicians of note played and directed the concerts at her rooms, including Johann Christian Bach in 1765. As time went on, her entertainments became known for their sexual overtones, and the rooms were becoming known as a place of secret meetings for sexual purposes.

Subscription ticket for Carlisle House

Thanks to the support of society friends, including Lady Elizabeth Chudleigh (who would become a principal in a notorious bigamy case, having married in 1744 Augustus John Hervey (who became the 3rdEarl of Bristol) and then married Evelyn Pierpont, the 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull in 1769), Mrs. Cornelys' rooms became THE place to be.  In April of 1768, members of the Royal family and the Prince of Monaco,  and subsequently in August the King of Denmark,  attended entertainments at Carlisle House.  The quality of the suppers served and the elegance of the surroundings (including the light of many wax candles) all contributed to the popularity of these events as well as to the costs.  Teresa showed herself to be a shrewd business woman, advertising her entertainments shrewdly and maintaining her attendance for over a decade.  However, her business sense had never included the good management of money.  Her continual remodeling costs as well as her operating costs continued.   Even though she increased her subscription costs for special events, somehow she was never able to get out of debt and show a profit.

Ticket for Masque Ball at Carlisle House

Almack's rooms opened in February of 1765. Although it worried Teresa, who did some more decorating, initially Almack's did her no harm. What did cause a problem was Teresa's arrest providing public entertainments without a license in 1771. (When she ventured into operatic entertainments, she was competing with the Italian Opera House, and information was laid against her.) She agreed to stop the entertainments, and was fined 50 pounds. Once the matter was resolved, she returned to her regular entertainments (apparently, however, without opera). However, in January of 1772, the assembly rooms at the Pantheon opened on Oxford Street (not far from Carlisle House) and targeted the same exclusive clientele that Mrs. Cornelys and Almack's pursued. Teresa increased her redecorating to compete with the new rival, which only drove her further into debt. The offerings at the new Pantheon rooms provided novelty, and drew away many of her regulars, causing her debt level to increase.

Later in 1772, Teresa Cornelys was bankrupt. Her creditors seized Carlisle House and tried to auction off her assets, but did not succeed. It reopened, with different management, in hopes of making a profit. By 1776, Teresa was back in possession of Carlisle House but she could never achieve any level of success and she gave up in 1783, when she or her creditors tried to rent out the house and furnishings. By March of 1784, the house was empty. (Carlisle House was demolished in 1791.) She attempted other ventures under the name of Mrs. Smith that were equally unsuccessful, and she was finally confined in the Fleet Prison for debt. While in prison, Teresa was being treated by Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini (of questionable medical qualifications who advertised heavily) for a cancerous sore on her breast, but his treatment was unsuccessful. She died in Fleet Prison on August 19, 1797, age 74. Sources include: Chancellor, E. Beresford. MEMORIALS OF ST. JAMES'S STREET and CHRONICLES OF ALMACK'S. New York: Brentano's, 1922. THE LONDON ENCYCLOPAEDIA 3rd Edition. Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, authors. London: Macmillan London Ltd., 2008.

Darcytodionysus.com. "Personality of the Month: Teresa Cornelys" posted by Meg McNulty, August 3, 2010. HERE

GoogleBooks. Cruikshank, Dan. LONDON'S SINFUL SECRET:The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age. "At Home with Mrs. Cornelys." Pp. 196-202. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. (Preview)  HERE

GoogleBooks. DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY. Leslie Stephen, ed. Vol. 12. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1887. "Cornelys, Theresa (1723-1797)" by Warwick Wrote. Pp. 223-225. HERE

Googlebooks. THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. Vol. 284. January to June 1898. London: Chatto & Windus, 1898. "Mrs. Theresa Cornelys" by Edward Walford, M.A. Pp. 451-472. HERE

GoogleBooks. GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. In Five Volumes. Vol. 1. J. A. Fuller Maitland, M.A., F.S.A., ed. "Cornelys, Theresa" by H. R. Tedder, Esq. P. 606. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904. HERE

GoogleBooks. Russell, Gillian. WOMEN, SOCIABILITY AND THEATRE IN GEORGIAN LONDON. "The Circe of Soho: Teresa Cornelys and Carlisle House." Pp. 17-37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Preview)  HERE

SusannaEllisAuthor.wordpress.com. "Romance of London: Mrs. Cornelys at Carlisle House" from ROMANCE OF LONDON: Strange Stories, Scenes and Remarkable Persons of the Great Town in 3 Volumes by John Timbs. Posted March 7, 2016.  HERE

TheLancet.com. "Quacks and hacks: Georgian Medicine and the power of advertising" by Adrien Teal. Vol. 383, February 21, 2014. Pp. 404-405.  HERE

Images:  Subscription ticket HERE By Sharp, William, 1749-1824 [engraver] Incledon, Charles Benjamin, 1763-1826 [performer]Carlisle House ([London], England) [author] [Public domain or CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Masque Ball ticket HERE By Sharp [engraver] Sharp [artist] Incledon, Charles Benjamin, 1763-1826 [performer]Carlisle House ([London], England) [author] [Public domain or CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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About the author: Lauren Gilbert has been a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America since 2005.  Her first published work, HEYERWOOD: A Novel, was released in 2011.  Her second novel, A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, is due out soon.  She lives in Florida with her husband.  Please visit her website HERE for more information.

Hat Tip To: English Historical Fiction Authors