Issue #181: November 1, 2006
- Currently in previews is the Mackintosh/Disney mega-musical Mary Poppins at the New Amsterdam Theatre.
- As I mentioned in a previous column four-time Tony-winner Angela
Lansbury is returning to the stage in a new play by Terrence
McNally. Deuce is scheduled to premiere on May 6 at the Music
Box theatre. Starring along side Ms. Lansbury will be another
theatre legend Marian Seldes. When the former star of Murder She Wrote takes the stage it will have been after more than a
twenty-year absence from Broadway.
- Christopher Plummer returns to Broadway in the
revival of Inherit the Wind in March for a limited 12-week run at
the Lyceum Theater. Opposite him will be stage and film veteran Brian
Dennehy.
- Kristin Chenoweth also returns to the stage when
she stars in the Roundabout’s revival of The Apple Tree at Studio
54 on December 14.
- Geoffrey Rush will be returning to the stage when
he stars in next year’s production of Exit the King with the Sydney
Company B in his homeland of Australia.
- Mega producer Cameron Mackintosh had quite a month
in October…on the 7th the London production of Les
Miserables became the longest-running West End musical in history and
on the 9th The Phantom of the Opera hit its twentieth anniversary in London. On October 14 the previews began on
Broadway for Mary Poppins, and to round out this meg-hit month Les
Miserables returned to Broadway on October 24 all
freshened up.
- Born in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Arthur Hill may be
best known for the 70’s television series Owen Marshall, Counselor at
Law and Marcus Welby, M.D. along with many other familiar
television shows including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Defenders,
Ben Casey, The Untouchables, The F.B.I. and Mission Impossible.
As a young man Hill toured Canada in a campus theatrical group then
moved to London where he appeared in several West End productions.
Returning to North America he landed on Broadway in 1955 in Thornton
Wilder’s The Matchmaker. He continued to work on Broadway
throughout the 50's as well as breaking into television in such productions
as Hallmark Hall of Fame and Studio One making his screen
debut in 1961 in The Young Doctors. However it was in the early
60's when he was working on a film that Edward Albee’s script of Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf landed in his hands. He joined the
production and his performance won him a Tony and New York Drama Critics
Award for the 1962-63 season. In 1967 he played opposite Ingrid
Bergman in Eugene O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions. Arthur
Hill died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 84 on
October 22…another master of the stage mourned.
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