Issue #202: November 1, 2007

Read the Toronto Star article on Camp Broadway!!
Read the Toronto Sun article on Camp Broadway!!

• Music icon Chaka Khan takes over the role of Sofia in The Color Purple beginning January 9.

• Mary Louise Parker will leave her Weeds role temporarily in March when she stars in the Off Broadway production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone.

• Following an outstanding run by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, August: Osage County, opens at the Imperial Theater on November 20 for a limited run. Playwright Tracy Letts family saga boasts a 13-member cast about this midwestern family that promises humour and intrigue.

• New Yorkers will get a first look at a two night special production of Jerry Springer – The Opera scheduled for January 29 and 30 at Carnegie Hall. The producers have cast stage and screen veteran Harvey Keitel in the lead. Depending on response to this event a Broadway run maybe in the cards.

• John Waters’ latest musical is based on his cult film, Cry-Baby. The Broadway bound musical gets its first peek at the La Jolla Playhouse beginning November 6.

• Cate Blanchett and her husband playwright Andrew Upton will take over the reins as joint artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in January.

• He made a stunning Lancelot in Lerner and Loewe’s classic musical Camelot in 1960, a role that Robert Goulet would always be connected with throughout his long career. I remember him fondly the few times I worked with him when he came to Toronto. The first time was when we flew him in ….to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The O’Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts. He walked down the stairs to the crowd of invited guests there to celebrate with us….and he spontaneously launched into “If Ever I Would Leave You” the song which he made famous from Camelot. The show opened the O’Keefe Centre that chilly October 1, 1960. The next time I worked with him was on a return revival of Camelot at the O’Keefe Centre in 1993…only this time he was King Arthur. Although he had a fifty plus year career with a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy award, 60 albums and stints in Las Vegas where he called home for the last twenty years or so….it will be as the young Lancelot he will most be remembered. Robert Goulet died on October 30th awaiting a lung transplant.