#artist: cliff richard

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Magic • Suddenly • Dancin' • Suspended in Time • Whenever You're Away from Me • I'm Alive • The Fall • Don't Walk Away • All Over the World • Xanadu

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[classic-art-favourites]

Rocky Cliff with Stormy Sea, Cornwall by William Trost Richards, 1902.

[theconjurervfx]

Stargate as Anime.

[whimsielf3]

My OC Posey and her backstory.

[radiomaxmusic]

Feature Artist / Cliff Richard / 9am ET

Sir Cliff Richard OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb; October 14, 1940) is a British singer and actor. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and, as of 2012, was the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard.…

[ailichi]

[Interviewer]: Which Oasis member has the strangest taste in music?

[Noel, immediately]: Him

I've been fascinated by this question for ages: every major interview, ask Liam Gallagher what music he likes, and he'll just say the Beatles and the Stone Roses, those two, and do his best to give the impression that he basically only listens to them. but in quieter interviews or when he’s just talking on camera, he’ll talk about others as well, and I've been taking some notes:

the Beatles are genuinely the be-all and end-all; understandable

the Stone Roses favourite tracks: Love Spreads, I Am the Resurrection, Sally Cinnamon (etc.) — also was into The Seahorses after the SR split

favourite post-Beatles album isn't anything of Lennon's, apparently, it's All Things Must Pass

favourite John solo song is off Double Fantasy, of course: Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

obviously does like the Rolling Stones too: I believe that when Oasis covered Jumpin’ Jack Flash it was because it was Liam’s total favourite

likes As Tears Go By by Marianne Faithful. sidenote: Marianne Faithful was Noel’s first pin-up

really likes Bo Diddley (disparate sources for this, he just mentions him frequently)

loved the Specials, even before he joined a band

loves that song, The First Cut is the Deepest, by P.P. Arnold

Led Zeppelin, obviously — mentioned When the Levee Breaks (also notice that one of his favourite Stone Roses songs is Love Spreads which is quite heavily influenced by LZ)

likes the Shangri-Las (The Leader of the Pack is on his women of rock n roll playlist)

likes the Doors, his favourite track is Mojo Rising

loves the Kinks, especially really likes The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, said it was “like a Lowry painting” (<3)

it’s like a dream to me that I heard he doesn’t rate Neil Young or at least was put out that Noel performed with NY + Crazy Horse in London

likes Lou Reed solo? never heard him say something about the Velvet Underground, but mentioned Perfect Day in particular

favourite Pink Floyd is Shine On You Crazy Diamond (loveable choice <3)

bit of Siouxie Sioux on his playlist of his favourite female artists :)

the Cure: “the cure for what?”

favourite album by the Jam is Sound Affects.

seems on the surface to not be mad about Paul Weller's solo stuff (or at least teases Noel for being so friendly with him), but also said: “There’s only a few songwriters that really inspire me. People like John Lennon and Paul Weller.”

chose Many Rivers to Cross by Jimmy Cliff from Jools Holland's archive when he was on in 2022

used not like Primal Scream in the very early days, but enjoyed Screamadelica (I like that he changes his mind on bands if they bring out something new that interests him)

generally lets on to be easy about the Smiths but just isn’t a superfan … likes them doesn’t love them

favourite Smiths song is The Boy with a Thorn in his Side (ah Liam <3)

on the record as saying he both likes and dislikes both Morrissey and Johnny Marr as solo artists

mentioned Electronic quite warmly (this was in 1994)

loves that Vaselines song that Nirvana covered, Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam

loves everything Richard Ashcroft has done, and seems to prefer the softer songs - a Song for the Lovers, Break the Night with Colour …

had the fairest U2 take I’ve ever heard, to paraphrase: “they’re pretty good but they were the biggest thing in the universe there for a few years, and to merit that they really should’ve been just a little bit better” (2019)

the Strokes: Liam says Noel and himself saw them, together, in San Francisco, when they were just starting out (‘setting up their own equipment’). probably the 7th of August 2001. I don’t get the impression he was overly taken with them. “Good songs but not classics”.

[hooked-on-elvis]

"Long Legged Girl (With the Short Dress On)" (1966-1967)

Recorded on June 29, 1966 at MGM Soundstage, Hollywood · Released as Single on April, 1967 and on the Soundtrack album Double Trouble on June, 1967.

MUSICIANS Guitar: Scotty Moore, Tiny Timbrell. Harmonica & Guitar: Charlie McCoy. Bass: Bob Moore. Drums: D.J. Fontana, Buddy Harman. Piano: Floyd Cramer. Steel Guitar: Pete Drake. Saxophone: Boots Randolph. Trombone: Richard Noel. Vocals: The Jordanaires. OVERDUBS, Guitar: Mike Deasy. Bass: Jerry Scheff. Drums: Toxey Sewell. Saxophone: Michael Henderson, Butch Parker.

Elvis as Guy Lambert in Double Trouble (1967).

RECORDING SESSION Soundtrack Sessions for MGM’s Double Trouble June 28-29, 1966 (7PM–12AM; 1–3AM): Radio Recorders and MGM Studios Recording Stage, Hollywood. Ever since the frustrating exercise of making the music for his first two movies, Love Me Tender and Loving You, Elvis had insisted on doing his soundtrack recording in a regular studio setting, not on a large, impersonal sound stage where he felt he couldn’t perform at his best. Disgusted with yet another round of lackluster material provided by his own publishing companies, Elvis showed up late at Radio Recorders for the Double Trouble sessions; but this time the result was that MGM studio executives moved the next night’s sessions to their own sound stage, saving money for themselves and for the film’s eventual bottom line (in which Elvis and the Colonel too had a share). Elvis had long since learned from Colonel Tom to be mindful of his obligations, and he raised no explicit objections—but he could not have been pleased when he heard the sound of the recordings they were making. The soundstage had all the presence of a giant tin can. Poor miking and generally sloppy engineering produced a sound that might have worked for mono cinema playback, but scarcely for the work of a major recording artist. (...) The session concluded with the rerecording of a single with a title as long as the song was short — “Long Legged Girl (With A Short Dress On),” which ran, mercifully, for one minute, twenty-seven seconds. Excerpt: "Elvis Presley, A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions" by Ernst Jorgensen. Foreword by Peter Guralnick (1998)

RELEASE On April 28, 1967 "Long Legged Girl (With the Short Dress On)" was released as A-Side Single (backed with "That’s Someone You Never Forget", which had originally appeared on 1962’s Pot Luck; ref. 47-9115) by Elvis Presley with the Jordanaires. A couple of months later, in June 1967, it came out on the Soundtrack album Double Trouble (ref. RD-7892).

LYRICS — "Long Legged Girl (With the Short Dress On)" Songwriters: John Leslie McFarland/Winfield Scott All right I've been thumbing rides, travelling light Walking streets 'til past midnight Tramping roads, trails, and lanes Scaling cliffs, fields, and plains Searching 'til the early dawn For that long-legged girl with the short dress on Riding trucks, bikes, and skis Sailing lakes and brooks and seas Driving wagons, cars, and jeeps Walking stilts in ten foot leaps Searching 'til the early dawn For that long-legged girl with the short dress on And everywhere I go, she's been and gone She's fine (she's fine) It's just too bad she's the travelling kind So fine (so fine) I just can't rest 'til I make her mine I've been from Maine to Tennessee Mexico and Waikiki Rain or shine, sleet or snow Searching high, then I'm searching low Everything depends upon For that long-legged girl with the short dress on She's fine (she's fine) It's just too bad she's the travelling kind So fine (so fine) I just can't rest 'til I make her mine Well, I've been from Maine to Tennessee Mexico and Waikiki Rain or shine, sleet or snow I'm searching high, well, I'm searching low 'Cause everything depends upon For that long-legged girl with the short dress on The long-legged girl with the short dress on

Elvis performing "Long Legged Girl (With The Short Dress On) in scene from Double Trouble (1967).

[justforbooks]

Sir Cliff Richard,

OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb; 14 October 1940) is a British singer and actor. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and, as of 2012, was the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard. With his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song. In the early 1960s, he had a successful screen career with films including The Young Ones, Summer Holiday and Wonderful Life and his own television show at the BBC. Increased focus on his Christian faith and subsequent softening of his music led to a more middle-of-the-road image, and he sometimes ventured into contemporary Christian music.

In a career spanning over 65 years, Richard has amassed several gold and platinum discs and awards, including two Ivor Novello Awards and three Brit Awards. More than 130 of his singles, albums, and EPs have reached the UK Top 20, more than any other artist.[8] Richard has had 67 UK top ten singles, the second highest total for an artist (behind Presley). He holds the record, with Presley, as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles, and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in each of five consecutive decades. He also had four UK Christmas No. 1 singles, two of which were as a solo artist; "Mistletoe and Wine" and "Saviour's Day".

By the late-1990s, Richard had sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has never achieved the same popularity in the United States despite eight US Top 40 singles, including the million-selling "Devil Woman" and "We Don't Talk Anymore". In Canada, he had a successful period in the early 1960s, the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some releases certified gold and platinum. He has remained a popular music, film, and television personality at home in the UK as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Northern Europe and Asia, and retains a following in other countries. When not touring, he divides his time between Barbados and Portugal. In 2019, he relocated to New York.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

In Cabaret, Set and Costume Designer Tom Scutt Wanted to Celebrate Queer Individuality

The British designer is currently double nominated for his work in the Broadway revival, which allows audiences to sit in the Kit Kat Club.

BY DYLAN PARENT JUNE 05, 2024

Tom Scutt is a stickler for details. For the designer, who headed the redesign of the August Wilson Theatre for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, the show isn’t only on the stage. It’s all around the theatre. As Scutt sits in the Green Bar, one of the many new audience lounges built for this revival, he shows off the space’s floral-patterned fabric.

“The Green Bar sort of became a bit of a manifestation of [Sally Bowles],” Scutt explains. “The seat covers in here are the same fabric as her suitcase in the show.” If, during Act One’s playful “Perfectly Marvelous,” one is seated on the correct side of the in-the-round stage, one might be able to peek inside Sally’s open, Mary Poppins-like suitcase decorated with butterflies, tassels, and hand drawings.

Explains Scutt: “I like the idea that the Kit Kat Club is real at a certain level. It's actually just a kaleidoscopic prism of the stuff that's happening in the show. [The Green Bar] is an extension of the dream idea. You're walking around the dream.”

Cabaret follows a young, queer American writer, Clifford “Cliff” Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood) as he arrives in 1930s Berlin. On his first night, he finds himself in the seedy Kit Kat Club watching “the toast of Mayfair” Sally Bowles (Gayle Rankin) perform. Struck by her vivacity, impulsiveness, and green fingernails, Cliff finds himself beguiled and Sally moves into his apartment. But their Bohemian love bubble bursts as the Nazis rise to power. The revival, currently performing at the August Wilson Theatre, was nominated for 9 Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival. 

Scutt has been doubly nominated for Best Costume Design of a Musical and Best Scenic Design of a Musical, no doubt because of how he completely transformed the August Wilson into the Kit Kat Club—from the time the guests enter the space through a special side entrance (going back in time to 1930s Germany), to when they sit down for the show (which is now performed in the round).

READ: See How Cabaret Renovated the August Wilson Theatre

“I think it's easy to write off a lot of what we've done in Cabaret as frivolous or style over substance, but that's wrong,” Scutt says definitively. “Maximalism and drag and dress up are so incredible at giving you political messages with humor and wit and vitality. It's sort of naughty and silly, and it just feels quite cathartic to get into one of these places that feels quite sterile often, and to just liven it up so that when people walk in here, they're just sort of tingling a bit.”

Scutt is the white, British son of an English and drama teacher, who was raised to be “well-versed” in the works of William Shakespeare and Richard Wagner. But, as he grew up, he discovered his queerness. As that identity grew stronger, Scutt “found there was more going on in me than the sorts of worlds that I've been brought up into could offer. I'm always looking for ways to subvert things within the confines of what we are given.”

As a designer working to untangle the knot that is created when working on a piece that is inherently political, but presented in a commercial landscape, Scutt tried to balance “ferocity of spirit” and queer joy—in a musical that’s also about the rise of fascism. The way to do that was through contrast.

“I wanted the beginning of the show to feel incredibly exuberant and unique and youthful and free,” Scutt says. “We wanted the end to feel the opposite of that.” That playfulness is captured, in part, by the 12-person Prologue company—performers who vogue and play music amongst audience members in the lobby spaces of the Kit Kat Club approximately 75 minutes before showtime.

Citing wit and “bawdiness” as values found in drag performers, and countercultural artists as inspiration, Scutt’s Kit Kat Club is a feast for the senses. There are neon lights, decadent gold accents, beads, baubles, and fringe curtains bedecking the thoroughly transformed Wilson. Those details gradually ease the audience into the performance. Then on the stage, Scutt’s costuming completes the picture. “Willkommen'' is truly a greeting for one and all as ensemble members leap, wink, and strike poses in bespoke outfits. For every ensemble performer, their Kit Kat Club costume is entirely their own, based on the actor’s strong identity. Some notable Kit Kat Club dancer costume details: a shooting star, a teeny tiny hat perched slightly askew, and balloon-like peasant sleeves worn like opera gloves.

Texas costume for Cabaret on Broadway Sketch by Tom Scutt/Photo by Marc Brenner

“What I've done is [created] a system whereby the swings of the Kit Kat club are all in their own character as well,” Scutt says. “They never step into someone else's costume. I often go back to the show in London, and I'm just seeing a combination of people and costumes that I've not seen before. And, for me, that feels alive and that feels living and it feels unpredictable.”

But Scutt is also aware of how brash moments of choreography, when coupled with lacy costuming, can feel oversimplified and oversexualized in its queerness. In this interactive iteration, at the forefront of Scutt's mind is the potential for boundary crossing, even violence, especially as the audience is not always representative of those who frequent queer nightlife spaces.

“[Director] Rebecca [Frecknall] and I were absolutely adamant that we could find a way to celebrate these Kit Kat Club performers and their bodies without it feeling very vulnerable,” Scutt says. “The angle that Rebecca and I took was about ferocity and confidence. The [performers] are not necessarily out to try and get you to be seduced by them. [They] are actually out there to express themselves and to share who they are in their character. That's the self possession that is needed.”

Rankin’s Sally Bowles draws the clearest line between clothing and agency as she finds herself. Describing Sally as “her least happy” in her first number, “Don’t Tell Mama,” dressed the part of a melancholy-yet-mischievous clown child in lacy pants, Scutt points out that Sally is swinging on the pendulum between demeaning performance and naked vulnerability. Not literally naked, he clarifies, but exposed, wig ripped off.

As a contrarian thirsting for meaning, fame, love, Sally paints her nails green. “Green is, like, historically difficult, and people say you shouldn't wear it,” Scutt says playfully. “Of course she's gonna wear it, you know? Of course she'll do whatever everyone else tells her not to.” This is also reflected in Sally’s fur coat, which in this new version is a pastel green. Pulling from ’90s grunge and It Girls (Courtney Love in particular) of that era, Scutt cites the continuation of green in Sally’s prized fur coat as something that is “probably offensive and not necessarily beautiful, but punchy.”

Sally Bowles costume for Cabaret on Broadway

For Scutt, Sally is experimenting through clothing, not unlike a child, working out who she is and who she might want to be. The first time the audience gets a glimpse of her natural hair is during “Maybe This Time,” a ballad bemoaning lack of luck in love sung with the heart of a true romantic. The wanting is a wave crash upon the stage of the cabaret, her body is barely concealed in the liminal space of a dressing gown. 

Then it’s Sally's descent, “or assent, depending on which way you look at it,” into a suit in the final number, “Cabaret,” that Scutt says is the most reflective of Sally’s inner turmoil. When asked by Cliff to “wake up,” leave the Kit Kat Club, and run to a boat bound for America, to safety, Sally turns the metaphorical mirror around to her lover, challenging him to look at himself.

“She takes Cliff’s suit off of him and wears it,” Scutt explains. “It’s almost a kind of martyring. She sort of just takes it and sacrifices herself so that [Cliff] can be free.” In the spirit of a true rock star, Sally’s personal breakdown in “Cabaret” is an artistic breakthrough. “The performer that she really is is maybe brasher and fiercer and more unhinged [than before], but it is pure creativity flowing out of her,” Scutt says, likening her to a phoenix. “When she's in her underwear and that suit, she is at her most free as an artist. I love that version. I prefer that version.”

Emcee costume for the musical number "Willkommen" in Cabaret on Broadway

For Scutt, much of Cabaret is poetic, abstract, open to interpretation. And no character is more fluid than Eddie Redmayne’s Emcee. First appearing in “Willkommen” in a child’s party hat, a mantle of mischief as delicate as paper, the Emcee conducts with black rubber fetish gloves, encouraging the antics of his misfit toys.

But, as the Nazis start to rise, “his mask starts to be stripped off,” Scutt says. “He literally takes his wig off in one scene, and then from that point on, he becomes a skeleton and a clown. He's kind of like a cautionary tale for me.” The skeleton, a goblin in semi-sheer black fabric, clinks his claws like coins in “Money,” part Babadook, part propaganda, all horror vernacular. However, in tackling the rise of white supremacy, Scutt says he and Frecknall sought to look at “the responsibility of the white man as master of ceremonies” in the oppression of Jewish people, people of color, queer, and trans people. As facism becomes the rule of law, beige blots out the colors, textures, and markers of individuality with which we’ve become familiar. Makeup-free faces, neat, slicked-back hair, and fawn-colored suits complete a new uniform, one of chilling sameness.

Emcee costume for the musical number "Money" from Cabaret on Broadway

For Scutt, that gives this Cabaret a chilling resonance to contemporary events, as there's been a rise again in inflammatory rhetoric and violence against queer people. At the same time, this production has been the most emotionally authentic piece he's ever done. In seeking to give company members ownership over their queerness, their artistry, their individuality, Scutt has affirmed his own queer identity. 

“Cabaret has been really, truly, the first show where I feel like it has demanded the truth from me,” Scutt says. “The piece just pulls it out of your heart. It is rooted into your heart and it demands that you show yourself, and stand up for yourself, and stand up for the people whose views you share. And I think that that has become a beacon for me of what to expect from my work and my collaborations…I've done many, many projects that are large-scale, but none of them have fed me in the same way because I'm able to pour out my heart in a way that we never normally get the opportunity to, as designers. There's authorship in that. There's collective authorship in what each and every one of the creatives on the show are doing. It's the most dear experience. It's incredible.”

https://www.playbill.com/article/in-cabaret-set-and-costume-designer-tom-scutt-wanted-to-celebrate-queer-individuality?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2aihorhZj0BtjAZOvmD0tc6BRbLQnotZ8zGyuWH2RFcdJEGOer_ORdYo8_aem_ATYeABJ1gSDP9lgfa9qTWwKZqhnxAQqKtnLfC-tjLW4WDzSrHMiM4vl5ZQPVY_JJuXApCLZG0EYmKgtvdihbdzaW

[la-femme-au-collier-vert]

A List of Works Influencing and Referenced by IWTV Season 1

Works Directly Referenced

Marriage in a Free Society by Edward Carpenter

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Cheri by Collete

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

La Nausee by Jean-Paul Sartre (credit to @demonicdomarmand )

Complete Poetry of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson*

Blue Book by Tom Anderson

The Book of Abramelin the Mage

Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto by Giovanni Ruffini

Iolanta by Pyotr Tchaikovsky with libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky

Pelleas et Melisande by Claude Debussy

Epigraphes Antiques by Claude Debussy

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Nosferatu (1922)

The Graduate (1967)

Marie Antoinette (1938)

On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin

De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis by Michael Ranft (1728)

Emily Post’s Etiquette

Bach’s Minuet in G Major (arranged as vampire minuet in G major)

Artworks referenced (much credit in this section to @iwtvfanevents and to @nicodelenfent )

Fall of The Rebel Angels by Peter Bruegel The Elder (1562)

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt (1633)

Three Peaches on a Stone Plinth by Adriaen Coorte (1705)

Strawberries and Cream Raphaelle Peale, (1816) credit to @diasdelfeugo

Red Mullet and Eel by Edouard Manet (1864)

Starry Night by Edvard Munch (1893)

Self Portrait by Edvard Munch (1881)

Captain Percy Williams on a Favorite Irish Hunter by Samuel Sidney (1881)

Autumn at Arkville by Alexander H. Wyant 

Cumulus Clouds, East River by Robert Henri 

Mildred-O Hat by Robert Henri (Undated)

Ship in the Night James Gale Tyler (1870)

Bouquet in a Theater Box by Renoir (1871)

Berthe Morisot with a Fan by Édouard Manet (1872)

La Vierge D’aurore by Odilon Redon (1890) credit to @vampirepoem on twt

Still Life with Blue Vase and Mushrooms by Otto Sholderer (1891)

After the Bath: Woman Drying her Hair by Edgar Degas (1898)

Bust of a Woman with Her Left Hand on Her

Chin by Edgar Degas (1898) credit to @terrifique

Backstage at the Opera by Jean Beraud (1889)

Roman Bacchanal by Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbiński (1898)

Dancers by Edgar Degas (1899)

Calling the Hounds Out of Cover by Haywood Hardy (1906)

Dolls by Witold Wojtkiewicz (1906) credit to @gyzeppelis on twt

Forty-two Kids by George Bellows (1907)

The Artist's Sister Melanie by Egon Schiele (1908)

Paddy Flannigan by George Bellows (1908)

Stag at Sharkey’s by George Bellows (1909)

The Lone Tenement by George Bellows (1909)

Ode to Flower After Anacreon by Auguste Renoir (1909) credit to @iwtvasart on twt

New York by George Bellows (1911)

Young Man kneeling before God the Father

Egon Schiele (1909)

Kneeling Girl with Spanish Skirt by Egon Schiele (1911)

Portrait of Erich Lederer by Egon Schiele (1912)

Krumau on the Molde by Egon Schiele (1912)

Weeping Nude by Edvard Munch (1913)

The Cliff Dwellers by George Bellows (1913)

Church in Stein on the Danube by Egon Schiele (1913)

Self Portrait in a Jerkin by Egon Schiele (1914)

The Kitten's Art Lesson by Henriette Ronner Knip credit to @terrifique

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon (1944)

New York by Vivian Maier (1953)

Self Portrait by Vivian Maier (Undated)

Self Portrait by Vivian Maier (1954)

Slave Auction by Jean-Michelle Basquiat (1982)

(Untitled) photo of St. Paul Loading Docks by Bradley Olson (2015)

Transformation by Ron Bechet (2021)

(Untitled) sculpture in the shape of vines by Sadie Sheldon

(Untitled) Ceramic Totems by Julie Silvers (Undated)

Mother Daughter by Rahmon Oluganna

Twins I by Raymon Oluganna

@iwtvfanevents made a post of unidentified works here.

Works Cited by the Writer’s Room as Influences

Bourbon Street: A History by Richard Campanella (as it hardly mentions Storyville I think interested parties would be better served by additional titles if they want a complete history of New Orleans)

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (This was also adapted into an award winning opera)

poetry by Charles Simic (possibly A Wedding in Hell?)

poetry by Mark Strand (possibly Dark Harbour?)

Works IWTV may be in conversation with (This is the most open to criticism and additions)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, uncensored (There are two very different versions of this which exist today, as Harvard Press republished the unedited original with permission from the Wilde family.)

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Warsan Shire for Beyoncé’s Lemonade

Faust: A Tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

La Morte Amoreuse by Theophile Gautier

Carmilla by Sheridan LeFanu

Maurice by E.M. Forster

Sailing to Byzantium by Yeats

The Circus Animal's Desertion by Yeats

The Second Coming by Yeats

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (credit to @johnlockdynamic )

1984 by George Orwell (credit to @savage-garden-nights for picking this up)

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

Gone With the Wind film (1939)

Hannibal (2013)

Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle Suzanne de Villenueve

Music used in Season 1 collected by @greedandenby here

*if collected or in translation most of the best editions today would not have been available to the characters pre-1940. It’s possible Louis is meant to have read them in their original French in some cases, but it would provide for a different experience. Lydia Davis’ Madame Bovary, for example, attempts to replicate this.

** I've tagged and linked relevant excerpts under quote series as I've been working my way through the list.

Season 2 here

Season 3 here

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

A Misunderstood Man • Sleep Of The Good • Gypsy Bundle • Had To Be • When You Thought Of Me • Dream Tomorrow • I Do Not Love You Isabella (Heathcliff's Wedding Song) • Choosing When It's Too Late • Marked With Death • Be With Me Always

Youtube

[classic-art-favourites]

British Coastal View (Coast of Cornwall) by William Trost Richards, 1880.

[eddieredmayneargentinablog]

New Article:

Eddie Redmayne On How His Emcee in Cabaret Is a Shape Shifter.

The Olivier and Oscar winner talked with Playbill about coming back to the stage, and whether he's coming to Broadway.

Playbill, by Talaura Harms, October 16, 2023.

While a few fortunate Broadway theatregoers were able to catch the recent Olivier Award-winning revival of Cabaret, the majority of us are anxiously awaiting its Spring 2024 arrival on Broadway. And even more, we are anxiously awaiting the casting news to see if one, both, or neither of its Olivier-winning stars, Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, will come with it.

While we impatiently tap our feet as we wait to hear, we've at least had the cast recording to keep us company. Released in January 2023, the album features Redmayne as The Emcee and Buckley as Sally Bowles. 

Playbill got the chance to catch up with Redmayne recently to chat about his wild, weird performance and, basically, harass him about his 13 year (and counting) absence from the Broadway stage.

Redmayne made his Broadway debut in 2010 when the Donmar Warehouse production of John Logan's Red��transferred from the West End. The two-hander starred Alfred Molina as artist Mark Rothko and Redmayne as his assistant. Redmayne earned an Olivier and a Tony for his performance. 

Redmayne says, only partly in jest, that one of the reasons he hasn't returned to Broadway is because Red was perfect. "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life—working with Fred Molina on a play that I loved, and with Michael Grandage," he says. "It went so well that I was like, 'I don't think I'm ever going to do a Broadway play ever again. It's never ever gonna go as well as that.'"

Following Red, he returned to the West End for another production with Grandage, a short run as the title role in Shakespeare's Richard II. Then his film career took off. His 2012 performance as Marius in the Les Misérables film set musical theatre hearts aflutter. Then in 2015, he was awarded an Oscar for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and garnered another nomination the following year for The Danish Girl.

He did not return to the stage until the 2021 West End revival of Kander and Ebb's Cabaret. The chance to create The Emcee anew was too good to pass up. "The abstract nature of the character—the fact that does the character even really exist? Is it a figment of the imagination? I mean, it's so ripe for interpretation," says Redmayne. "And the show is so beautifully constructed, but yet it allows for interpretation. That was the appeal."

The Emcee is so ripe for interpretation because the character only exists in the Kit Kat Club and not within narrative story of Cabaret. The diegetic Kit Kat Club numbers comment on the action of the plot—chanteuse Sally Bowles' relationship with English writer Cliff during the Nazi rise to power in Berlin—but the Kit Kat Club songs are not a part of the action. 

And this new immersive production takes that meta-theatricality to new heights—London's Playhouse Theatre has been transformed to look like a '40s Berlin nightclub, with performers interacting with he audience during the preshow. 

Redmayne's initial actor's instinct was to create a backstory for The Emcee, but in the end, his attempts simply were not supported by the text. So, he tried something else. "What was very liberating about playing this role was that I approached it, ultimately, in a very different way—which was throwing clay at a wall in big kind of broad gestures and then trying to refine it as it were," Redmayne explains. "Then, as we began to run the show, making sense of a psychology through it—working backwards, and working with the understanding that there's an abstraction to the character."

But Redmayne was excited about shaking his process up a bit. He'd only done film for the 10 years prior to Cabaret, and he was ready to dive into stage work again. In the months leading up to Cabaret rehearsals, he even enrolled in a training course at Lecoq (formally, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq), a physical theatre school in Paris. "I was working with actors aged 18 to 60 from all over the world. It was huge improvisations, the whole thing was in French, and there were these two French doyennes of Lecoq's training going 'No!' and it was kind of brutal, but it was exactly what I needed," he says, laughing. "It took me out of my head. I felt so much more physically free to humiliate myself. By the time I came into the rehearsal room for Cabaret, the experience was one of release in some ways."

So with his newfound physical freedom, and the idea of The Emcee as an abstraction unclouded by a backstory, Redmayne was ready to create his character. The vocal performance is almost otherworldly. Redmayne explains the genesis of his sound: "There was this idea of a shapeshifter. That was something that [director] Rebecca [Frecknall] and Tom Scott, our production designer, talked about—that my version of The Emcee could puppeteer this group of Kit Kat dancers and conjure these characters. But, ultimately, when fascism arrives, he is able to get out absolutely fine. He can shape shift his way out of that situation. And I wanted vocally for that to translate as well."

Working with Musical Director Jennifer Whyte ("She had brilliant ideas," he adds), Redmayne created different voices and sounds for different songs. In "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," he sang live over his own recorded harmony lines. "So, in that, there was a delicate side. Then there was the raucous, quite nasal version of The Emcee in 'Willkommen.' And then, particularly within 'I Don't Care Much,' I wanted you to hear him move from one voice into the other within the same song. So he's sort of demonstrating to the audience the power he has in his passivity, just to keep changing the versions of himself," explains Redmayne, then quickly adding,"That sounds bloody pretentious." (Clearly Mr. Redmayne does not understand how hard we can nerd out about a vocal performance.)

Musical theatre is in Redmayne's blood, he says. His first job, after all, was playing a workhouse boy in a West End production of Oliver! And he was a choral scholar in his years at Cambridge. And returning to Cabaret after years in film was a particular joy for him. "I do think that music and singing jumps synapses into people's souls and you connect emotionally in a beautifully honest way," he says. 

But he's more proud of just being involved with this particular production. He's been back to see every new cast as they arrive in the West End. "Rebecca has created a version of the show that champions individuality," he says. "Getting to watch a production that you've been in, but in a completely different interpretation—having seen all of The Emcees and Sallys and seen the breadth and brilliance of their voices—I just feel proud to be a part of something that keeps living."

And, of course, we asked if he'll be coming to Broadway with Cabaret in the spring. Of course we did. "You know more about it than I do," said the shape shifter, easily getting out of that one.

The Rebecca Frecknall-directed production of the Tony-winning 1966 Broadway musical, currently running at London's Kit Kat Club (a.k.a. the renovated Playhouse Theatre), officially opened December 12, 2021. It currently stars Jake Shears as The Emcee and Rebecca Lucy Taylor as Sally Bowles. Mason Alexander Park and Maude Apatow just completed their three-month runs in the show. 

Cabaret is slated to arrive at the August Wilson Theatre this season. Dates and cast are to be announced. 

Photo by Marc Brenner

[whimsielf3]

𝐂𝐫𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞

𝐬𝐡��𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭

𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭! 

Cliff Richard, Devil Woman (1976)

[radiomaxmusic]

Artist Countdown: Cliff Richard Top 35 Hits

Sir Cliff Richard OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb, October 14, 1940) is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor and philanthropist. He is the third-top-selling singles artist in the United Kingdom’s history, with total sales of over 21 million units in the UK and has reportedly sold an estimated 250 million records worldwide. With his backing group the Shadows, Richard, originally…

[autistpride]

How many of these famous autists do you recognize? And this isn't even a complete list!

So many amazing wonderful people are autistic. I will never understand why people hate us so much.

Actors/actresses/entertainment:

Chloe Hayden

Talia Grant

Rachel Barcellona

Sir Anthony Hopkins

Dan Akroyd

David Byrne

Darryl Hannah

Courtney Love

Jerry Seinfeld

Roseanne Barr

Jennifer Cook

Chuggaaconroy

Stephanie Davis

Rick Glassman

Paula Hamilton

Dan Harmon

Paige Layle

Matthew Labyorteaux

Wentworth Miller

Desi Napoles

Freddie Odom Jr

Kim Peek

Sue Ann Pien

Henry Rodriguez

Scott Steindorff

Ian Terry

Tara Palmer -Tomkinson

Albert Rutecki

Billy West

Alexis Wineman- Miss America contestant

Athletes:

Jessica- Jane Applegate

Michael Brannigan

David Campion

Brenna Clark

Ulysse Delsaux

Tommy Dis Brisay

Jim Eisenreich

Todd Hodgetts

John Howard

Anthony Ianni

Lisa Llorens

Clay Matzo

Frankie Macdonald

Jason McElwain

Chris Morgan

Max Park

Cody Ware

Amani Williams

Samuel Von Einem

Musicians:

Susan Boyle

Elizabeth Ibby Grace

David Byrne

Johnny Dean

Tony DeBlois

Christopher Dufley

Jody Dipiazza

Pertti Kurikka

James Jagow

Ladyhawke

Kodi Lee

Left at London

Red Lewis Clark

Abz Love

Thristan Mendoza

Heidi Mortenson

Hikari Oe

Matt Savage

Graham Sierota

SpaceGhostPurp

Mark Tinley

Donald Triplett

Aleksander Vinter

Comedians:

Hannah Gatsby

Robert White

Bethany Black

Scientists/inventors/mathematians/Researchers:

Damian Milton

Bram Cohen

Michelle Dawson

Carl Sagan

Writers:

Neil Gaimen

Mel Bags

Kage Baker

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M. Remi Yergeau

Sean Barron

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Matt Burning

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Nicole Cliffe

Laura Kate Dale

Aoife Dooley

Corrine Duyvus

Marianne Eloise

Jory Flemming

Temple Grandin

John R Hall

Naomi Higashida

Helan Hoang

Liane Holliday Willey

Luke Jackson

Rosie King

Thomas A McKean

Johnathan Mitchell

Jack Monroe

Caiseal Mor

Morenike Giwa- Onaiwu

Jasmine O'Neill

Brant Page Hanson

Dawn Prince-Hughs

Sue Robin

Stephen Shore

Andreas Souvitos

Sarah Stup

Susanna Tamaro

Chuck Tingle

Donna Williams

Leaders:

Julia Bascom

Ari Ne'eman

Sarah Marie Acevedo

Sharon Davenport

Joshua Collins

Conner Cummings

Kevin Healy

Poom Jenson

Amy Knight

Jared O'Mara

David Nelson

Shaun Neumeier

Master Sgt. Shale Norwitz

Jim Sinclair

Judy Singer

Dr. Vernon Smith

Artists:

Miina Akkijjyrkka

Danny Beath

Deborah Berger

Larry John Bissonnette

Patrick Francis

Goby

Jorge Gutierrez

Lina Long

Johnathan Lerman

Julian Martin

Haley Moss

Morgan Harper Nichols

Tim Sharp

Gilles Tehin

Willem Van Genk

Richard Wawro

Poets:

David Eastham

Christopher Knowles

David Miedzianik

Henriette Seth F