The Sound of Music Fifty-Four Years Later
When was the last time that you really listened to The Sound of Music? Musical theater enthusiasts tend to avoid mega-hits. We played them so much when we first came to know them, after we’d discovered this marvelous thing called The Broadway Musical. After umpteen dozens of times, we filed away the recordings and haven’t […]
A HARD BED AND A CHAIR
Did you miss A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair? It was the Stephen Sondheim-Wynton Marsalis revue that played City Center a few weeks ago. That’s all right. Not being able to make it may have been a blessing in disguise. The show was somewhere between a noble failure and a dud. […]
Mary Martin Remembered
Don’t let December 1 go by without celebrating the 100th birthday of one of Broadway’s favorite stars. “Mary Martin” sounds as if it’s a stage name, doesn’t it? In fact, it’s the actual name (plus a Virginia in between) that Mr. and Mrs. Martin gave the future multi-Tony-winning star on Dec. 1, 1913 when she […]
The Toughest Cut on Any Original Cast Album
“Fifty years from now, they’ll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the Mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a stockade fence.” The lines come from a surreal scene in Assassins. Twenty-seven year-old John Wilkes Booth, ninety-eight years dead, is encouraging twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot President John F. Kennedy. John Weidman wrote those words […]
Do You Know Juno?
I was a little shocked while watching Charlotte Moore’s splendid revival of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock at the Irish Repertory Theatre. I wasn’t surprised that J. Smith Cameron was sensational as Juno, the housewife who’s unlucky to be living in a Civil War-torn Ireland in 1922. That Juno is married to “Captain Jack,” […]
