Issue #179: September 15, 2006
Next issue October 15.
- There are rumors that legendary Brit actor Michael
Gambon will be parachuting his recent Samuel Beckett outing Endgame in London to a Shubert stage. Stay tuned for details.
- Let’s hope this isn’t a new trend….a revival of Grease is
scheduled for June with the cast being chosen in a reality program to air
on NBC. Yeeshhhhh!
- Tom Everett Scott makes his Broadway debut on
November 13 in The Little Dog Laughed at the Cort Theater.
- Following his mega-musical stint in the recently departed Lord
of the Rings, Tony Award winning actor Brent Carver returns to
the stage in an intimate two-character musical. Carver stars,
along with another Stratford/Broadway veteran Jeffrey Kuhn, in the
CanStage production of The Story of My Life, which opens at the
Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto on November 2.
- Eleven Canadian theatres from coast to coast participated
for the first time in a tribute to the terror attacks of 9/11. Anne
Nelson’s play The Guys was the first theatrical response to the
horrific events staged in New York just six months after the attacks.
This year for the first time the play went north of the border and was
presented in eleven Canadian cities from Victoria to Halifax raising funds
in each city for the local firefighting charities. Let’s hope this will
become a tradition.
- Patrick Swayze is showing off his dancing style as
Nathan Detroit in the revival of Guys and Dolls.
- Nicholas Hytner has proven to be quite the lucky
charm since taking over for Trevor Nunn in 2003 as artistic
director of the National Theatre. In his short rein he has seen box
office success with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Jerry
Springer-The Opera. Other critical and box office successes Michael
Frayn’s Democracy and David Hare’s Stuff Happens have
made the leap to Broadway to glowing reviews. And of course this year’s
Tony Award-winning History Boys proved the hit of the Broadway
season. No wonder the National Theatre saw the wisdom in signing Hytner through to 2013.
- Tom Jones returned to the stage and to a role he
created in May 1960. The Fantasticks which ran for 42 years at the
Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village making it the longest
running musical of all time, opened at the Snapple Theater Center on August 23. Unknown to most, Jones co-wrote the show — which has made the song Try To Remember a classic — with Harvey Schmidt.
|