Issue #59: January 15, 2001

• Seussical will get a celebrity boost beginning January 16 when talk show host Rosie O’Donnell takes over the role of the Cat in the Hat for vacationing David Shiner. Shiner will return on February 13, however I’m sure the producers are looking to Rosie to fill seats at a time when shows usually suffer following the holiday box office boom.

• Much confusion abounds as to who will be producing the Broadway revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The London production has been receiving rave reviews with Jessica Lange in the lead, and many were looking forward to this production, directed by Robin Phillips, to transfer in the fall of 2001. However, producer David Richenthal (Death of a Salesman revival) holds the rights to Long…. and plans on a pre-Broadway run at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre next January with a New York opening in March, 2002 starring Brian Dennehy and directed by Robert Falls.

• A Canadian production of the hit Broadway musical The Full Monty will open at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto in May. Mirvish Productions will once again mount the North American touring company, which will head to Chicago, Washington, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco following its run in Toronto. If it proves to be the hit Mamma Mia! currently is in Toronto the producers may have to mount a second road company in order to fill the road dates and still keep Toronto audiences happy.

• The revolving celebrity door for London’s hit The Graduate continues. Next up to replace the current Mrs. Robinson is Amanda Donohoe. You may remember her from television’s L.A. Law or more recently in the Jim Carrey 1997 movie Liar Liar.

• One of the most powerful actors on stage and screen, Jason Robards, died of cancer on Tuesday, December 26 at age 78. Robards stayed loyal to the theatre and "that thrill of a real live audience." Even though he made more than 50 films and received two Oscars, he viewed his movies as a chance to "grab the money and go back to Broadway as fast as I can." His stage debut was in 1953 in Victor Wolfson’s American Gothic at an off-Broadway theatre. His first critical acclaim came in May 1956 when he appeared in the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at the Circle in the Square. It was this performance that would forever define him as the quintessential interpreter of O’Neill’s tragic characters. Ironically his only Tony-award was for his 1959 performance in his version of F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Disenchanted. In 1958 he headed north to Ontario’s Stratford Festival performing in that season’s Henry IV, Part One and The Winter’s Tale. In a 1997 interview he summed up his feelings about the theatre saying "the theatre has kept me alive and it’s allowed me to work at my craft."