#randy Stoppard

[critterpede]

No I don’t have a type of favourite character what are you on about?

[midnightisday2]

ARE YOU FALLING IN LOVE~

I've the feeling you are~

[dr-archeville]

This Friday (March 1st, 2024) night at the Carolina Theatre of Durham, a retro film series double feature:

Rob Reiner's This is Spin̈al Tap: 40th Anniversary! (1984)

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1990)

$12.00 [plus tax] to get in, movies start at 7(-ish).

“Along with the City of Durham, we have made major investments in the Carolina Theatre for the comfort and safety of our guests during our closure,” says Randy McKay, the Carolina Theatre’s President & CEO. “That includes tens of thousands of dollars in new state of the art HVAC upgrades from Global Plasma Solutions (GPS) that remove biohazards, pollen, and other contaminants to make our air as pure — and sometimes purer — than outdoor air.”  The theater has also earned a Global Biorisk Advisory Council® (GBAC) STAR™ accreditation for its cleaning practices to ensure that guests have a safe and enjoyable experience.  “Together, these cleaning practices and advanced air filtration make the Carolina Theatre one of the safest spaces to attend a film or live event in the region,” says McKay.  [source]

Carolina Theatre of Durham 309 W. Morgan St., Durham, NC http://www.carolinatheatre.org/

[power-chords]

You’re thinking of the Lester Maddox line? That’s right. Randy Newman said, “I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show/with some smartass New York Jew.” Randy Newman was making fun of people who think like that. You didn’t need Randy Newman to tell you that a lot of Americans resent what they see as an East-Coast smartass Jewish establishment, but when you fast forward 50 years or whatever it is and there were people in the street chanting, “Jews will not replace us” — I was astounded. Whatever part of America you want to think about, it never seemed to me that there were enough people who thought like that who would fill a street or make a march. I’ve always felt that there was, as I mentioned, a latent virus that could be triggered in some way. But it never seemed — I’m struggling for adjectives now — it never seemed to be an urgent and dangerous consideration.

Tom Stoppard in conversation with David Marchese.

[newyorktheater]

Cast members Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson at CATS NYCmovie premiere

A new NYC marketing gimmick for the movie CATS is putting cats ears on cabs

Cast member Rebel Wilson and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber at CATS movie premiere

The cast of the movie ‘Cats’ attends The World Premiere of Cats, presented by Universal Pictures on December 16, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Pictures)

The NYC premiere of CATS the movie caps a week in which Broadway, with no more openings this year, seems to have migrated to the screen.

The first trailer for the “In the Heights” movie

Jason Alexander as a blacklisted playwright talking to Mrs. Maisel’s father in “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel”

What The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gets wrong about Broadway

Why is Stephen Sondheim Karoake in All Our Movies Now?

YouTube clip of Jennifer Hudson singing Memory from the movie

  The Improbable Insanity of Cats:

Andrew Lloyd Webber first had the idea for “Cats” in the l:ate seventies. He grew bored one day during the technical rehearsals for “Evita” and got to thinking about writing music for existing lyrics, something he’d never done. Maybe he could use a book of poems—say, that old T. S. Eliot book his mom used to read to him….

The idea proved anything but irresistible. No one wanted to finance the project: the show’s producer, Cameron Mackintosh, had to solicit small-fry investors through newspaper ads; Lloyd Webber took out a second mortgage to make up the ultimate shortfall. He had composed an epic, genre-spanning score, using a Moog synthesizer to imitate meowing, but, when he played it for Twyla Tharp, hoping that she would choreograph what would have to be a very dance-heavy musical…Tharp said no. A director candidate fell asleep while Lloyd Webber was pitching him. A Warner Brothers executive reminded him that half the world favored dogs.

“You make a living with movies and TV and it’s alright; it’s better than heavy lifting. But theater is fun.” – actor Orson Bean, 91, who’s playing a cardinal in a local California production of Bad Habits. “My secret to longevity is gratitude. The longer I live, the more grateful I become.”

The Best of  2019

Favorite New York Stage Performances of 2019

Top 10 Lists of Top 10 New York Theater

  The Week in New York Theater Previews and Reviews

Radio City Musical Hall Christmas Spectacular

Holiday Shows

This holiday season in New York means at least ten Christmas Carols, including one this year on Broadway, and 15 Nutcracker Suites.  Holiday shows in the city range from family fare to offbeat satires and even off-color burlesque,  many of which return year after year.

Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven

Wanda Wheels bristles when Mateo calls her “kind” in this sprawling, funny, foul-mouthed, messy, moving ensemble piece, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s first new play in New York since his Pulitzer Prize winning Between Riverside and Crazy five years ago. “Don’t pin a ‘kindness’ target on me,” Wanda says. “There’s a place for kindness. It’s not here.”

Here is Hope House, a government-funded temporary residence in New York City for women who have been cruelly treated in life and now are junkies, drunks, ex-cons, former hookers, or mentally ill, or just New Yorkers who have nowhere else to go. Over the course of the three hour play, we come to learn more about their complicated lives, and wind up sharing the affection the playwright feels for them, even as they curse each other, confront one another, furtively drink or take drugs, get physically violent. But there is kindness too; it’s just in disguise….

Greater Clements

There’s a joke Maggie and her son Joe like to tell on their tours of the local mine in Samuel D. Hunter’s latest play: “Guy falls down into the mine. His boss yells at him, ‘did you break anything?’ Guy shouts back, “only rocks down here, sir, not much to break.”

But as Greater Clements makes movingly clear, even when there’s nothing left, there’s always enough to break…It’s surely no accident that even Maggie and Joe’s family name enforces their sense of isolation, and of doom – Bunker. The play is rich with such symbolism

Randy Danson as Linda, a medium and Emily Cass McDonnell as her friend Hilda

  The Thin Place

“The Thin Place” is a thin play by Lucas Hnath about a woman named Hilda whose grandmother had believed in being able to communicate with the dead, which sets Hilda on her own psychic journey.

The Week in New York Theater News

  Ticketing innovations:

Broadway Plus One

What began as “Slave Play” playwright Jeremy O. Harris to corral his rich friends to subsidize tickets for his artist friends who couldn’t afford Broadway tickets has become a formal program: At checkout people can now add $25+ to their order for “Slave Play” to buy tickets for others who can’t afford them. The tickets are then distributed through a number of non profit partners including Broadway For All.

Amazon Alexa can now do more than just turn on your lights by voice command, or play a song from Cats. You can now order tickets to Phantom of the Opera on it as well.

For just $2 more, theatergoers to “Jagged Little Pill” can purchase a digital copy of the cast album when they buy tickets to weekday performances through July 2, 2020 before December 31, 2019

Eden Espinosa, Alex Newell, and Jessica Vosk will share the role of “Narrator” in the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center on February 17, 2020

  The Wooster Group’s Endless Work in Progress

A novelist hangs out with the Wooster Group in its 44th year “to grasp the inner workings of genius” in Harpers Magazine

Here was the theater I’d been waiting for. The actors spoke directly into microphones, facing front, like singers. The technicians running the show were visible, with their equipment, though they were often in costume themselves, and even spoke lines. Video, music, lighting, dance, speech, and action went off with amazing precision, while still feeling as though it was all being freshly improvised. Seeing them was like seeing a favorite band, and over the years I went to every performance I could. I became convinced that Liz LeCompte was one of our greatest living artists.

  Rest in Peace

Danny Aiello, 86, an Oscar-nominated actor for Do the Right Thing, was a veteran of seven Broadway productions in 11 years. His roles included the macho South Philadelphia father in the hit comedy “Gemini” (1977), for which he had already won an Obie Award for the play’s Off Broadway run; a violent tough guy in “Hurlyburly,” in which he replaced Harvey Keitel in 1985; and a Hollywood director clinging to his past in “The House of Blue Leaves” (1986). Describing his preparation as an actor, he said: “One minute before I go on, I look up at heaven and say, ‘Mama, don’t let me make a fool of myself.’

Richard Easton, 86, 24-time veteran of Broadway, Tony winning actor for Tom Stoppard’s ” Invention of Love”

  Dancer and Actor Jack Burns, 14 

    CATS Crazy. The Best of 2019. Ticketing Innovations. #Stageworthy News of the Week The NYC premiere of CATS the movie caps a week in which Broadway, with no more openings this year, seems to have migrated to the screen.