Issue #243: August 15, 2010
- There is finally a date for the much-delayed musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark…Sunday, November 14 is the day it will preview at the renamed Foxwoods Theater (formerly the Hilton Theater). Directed by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor look for U2’s Bono and The Edge to make an appearance at the official opening night December 21….they wrote the music and lyrics.
- The 10th annual Helpmann Awards, a celebration of Australian live theatre, will take place at the Sydney Opera House on September 6. Up for best musical at two familiar rivals…Jersey Boys and The Drowsy Chaperone. In a repeat of the 2006 Tony Awards it will be interesting to see who comes out on top down under.
- The gravely voice Patricia Neal made her mark in films with an Oscar worthy performance in the 1963 Hud opposite Paul Newman, but she also had a stellar stage career in the early years. Her first appearance on Broadway was understudying Vivian Vance (I Love Lucy) in the Voice of the Turtle in 1945. The next year she starred in Another Part of the Forest directed by the author Lillian Hellman for which she won the Tony Award for best actress. In 1952 she starred in another of Hellman’s works, a revival of The Children’s Hour. In 1955 she was in A Roomful of Roses and in 1956 she took over for Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, which was directed by Elia Kazan. She also hit the stage in London in 1958 in Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer. In 1959 she was cast as Helen Keller’s mother in The Miracle Worker. Her home life was not without tragedy….. with husband Roald Dahl she had five children, one died from measles, one suffered a brain injury and Neal herself in 1966 suffered a series of strokes that left her partially paralyzed. Her amazing recovery had her back in front of cameras for the 1968 film The Subject Was Roses. Her life, so far, was captured in a 1981 TV movie starring Glenda Jackson. Patricia Neal died in early August at the age of 84.
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