NEWSical The Musical’s Michael West

Joel sits down with funnyman Michael West in his dressing room at the 47th Street Theatre. Michael opens his trunk of many voices and out comes  Bill Clinton (“a southern Elmer Fudd”), Al Gore (“a gay kindergarten teacher”), Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis, Jr., Robert Goulet, and Harvey Fierstein. With special guest: NEWSical director Mark Waldrop.

Joel has lost count of how many times he has seen Michael in Forbidden Broadway and When Pigs Fly. And now, before the 8 PM performance on Saturday, January 30^th of NEWSical the Musical, Joel finally got his chance to schmooze with Michael, and discuss his career from growing up in Atlanta to re-working and updating his one-man show, Almost Live From The Betty Ford Clinic, to appearing now in NEWSical The Musical, the revue which skewers celebrities and politicians and “all the news that is fit to spoof.”

Early into the podcast, NEWSical director Mark Waldrop, slipped in to Michael’s dressing room, and jumped into the conversation. He’s been working with NEWSical writer Rick Crom on Bonnie and Clyde (Hunter Foster wrote the book)… “It’s in gestation… This is a very funny Bonnie and Clyde.”

Joel and Michael discussed the musical When Pigs Fly, which played during the height of the AIDS crisis, and his admiration for DC director/writer/producer Larry Kaye and his new musical The Tapioca Miracle (Michael was in the New York workshop).
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As you’ll hear in this interview, no one does impressions like Michael West, and there’s no show in town as freshly topical yet singable as NEWSical the Musical. “It’s bipartisan, everyone gets laughed at”.

NEWSical the Musical is playing at The 47^th Street Theatre, 304 West 47^th Street, in New York City. For more information, and to purchase tickets, click here.