Issue #208: February 15, 2008

Read the Toronto Star article on Camp Broadway!!

• Tony award-winner Bob Martin (Drowsy Chaperone) is joining the team that is rewriting the book for The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Based on the film set in the 1920s, Minsky’s has already had a long journey to Broadway since it’s 1999 Los Angeles tryout with the deaths of two of the original creative team. Let’s hope this new blood will actually see a Broadway debut.

• Broadway legend Elaine Stritch joins the cast of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s production of Endgame, which hits the stage on April 25.

• Another stage legend Jane Alexander will star in the Primary Stages Off Broadway production of Tina Howe’s Chasing Manet beginning March 24.

• Hairspray leads the number of nominations for the 2008 Olivier Awards with 11 nods including best musical. The Drowsy Chaperone, which closed after only two months is up for five nominations and rounding out the best musical category is The Lord of the Rings and Parade. The Olivier Awards for excellence in London theatre will be given away at the awards ceremony on March 9.

• British born Canadian actor-director Barry Morse will be best remembered for his role in the 60s TV series The Fugitive, however his career spanned seven decades and more than 3,000 roles on radio, television, stage and film. Morse was the youngest candidate to be accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where he honed his craft before immigrating to Canada with his wife and children in 1951. In Canada he was kept busy by the CBC where he wrote, narrated and produced a half-hour CBC Radio series A Touch of Greasepaint, which ran for fourteen years and also appeared on Barry Morse Presents on the CBC’s television station. His Broadway roles included, Hide and Seek, Salad Days and he was the lead in Hadrian VII. For a short time in 1966 he was artistic director at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. However it was in 1963 when television producer Quinn Martin came calling with the role of a lifetime….Lieut. Philip Gerard on The Fugitive. Although it only ran for 120 episodes the tale of the fugitive doctor pursuing the one-armed man and Morse’s tenacious pursuit….he will always be connected to the series. Through the years Morse continued to work on stage and was active in the (George Bernard) Shaw Society of England serving as president and chairing meetings up until a week or so before his death on February 2 at the age of 89.