by Brad Hathaway
with contributions from:
Ro Boddie, Bob Butler, Mark Chalfont, Ben Demers, John Hauge, Aaron Posner,
Hunter Styles, Tim Treanor and Lorraine Treanor
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| Category | Contributed by | Gift suggestion | Price | To buy, click on the image. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDs - Holiday | Brad Hathaway | Elf - Original Broadway Cast - - We included this disc in last year's Holiday Gift Guide, but the show has returned to Broadway for this season so it seems a good idea to list it again. This is the recording from the 2010 mounting. The 2012 version opened November 9 with a mostly new cast. The show is a family-friendly, high energy musical version of the movie that starred Will Farrell. Book writers Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Thomas Meehan (Hairspray, The Producers) added some schmaltz and a number of slots for nifty songs and song writers Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin (The Wedding Singer, The Rhythm Club) took full advantage of the opportunities. | 15 |  |
| CDs - Holiday | Brad Hathaway | A Christmas Story: The Musical – World Premiere Recording Another holiday show appearing on Broadway for the season this year is the new musical adaptation of the ever-popular movie about a boy's wish for a Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun and his father's thrill at winning "a major award." The adaptation even manages to musicalize the famous scene of the kid licking a frozen pole on the playground where his tongue freezes to the metal. The show premiered at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre in 2010. Now, with a different cast, it is on Broadway. | 13 |  |
| CDs - Holiday | Brad Hathaway | Irving Berlin's White Christmas - The Musical - Before Elf or A Christmas Story played short seasonal engagements on Broadway, the stage adaptation of the film White Christmas played the Marquis for the holiday seasons 2008 and 2009. It had a long gestation period as a stage musical. It was first mounted in 2000 as a summer show at St. Louis' Municipal Opera. It was re-worked and re-opened in San Francisco in 2004 and then was mounted in San Francisco, Los Angles and Boston in 2005. The cast recording features Brian d'Arcy James and Jeffry Denman in the roles that Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye played in the movie. The female leads are Anastasia Barzee and Karen Morrow and the recording captures Larry Blank's big-band-sound orchestrations. | 10 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Cinderella – Original Television Cast - The stage version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's charmer which was written for television is slated for the Broadway Theatre in February with a new book by Douglas Carter Beane. Laura Osnes will star. This original was televised in 1957 with Julie Andrews as Cinderella. It remains a delight. | 12 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Carrie – Premiere Cast Recording - The first production of the musical based on Stephen King's bloody horror story of teenage angst was such a flop that Ken Mendelbaum had to title his book about Broadway flops "Not Since Carrie." That 5 performance failure didn't get a recording and disappeared into legend. This year, however, the off-Broadway MCC Theater took up the challenge, and with some significant re-working, opened a production with Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson in a limited run which was greeted with high praise. Ghostlight Records took that cast into the studio to give us our first recording of the score. Notably, for a musical on a demonic theme, they assigned a recording number that included "the number of the beast." | 15 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Queen of the Mist – Original Cast Recording - Mary Testa's performance in Michael John LaChiusa's unorthodox musical is captivating but also annoying. After all, she's playing a terribly annoying character – and doing it wonderfully! She's the woman who became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and live. Her story makes a fascinating musical as LaChiusa turns history into a metaphysical metaphor. Here it is captured by Ghostlight Records in an entertaining and thoroughly satisfying package. | 12 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Les Miserables - 2010 cast - First Night Records captured the re-worked Boublil/Schöenberg classic that uses new orchestrations by Chris Jahnke (with additional ones by Stephen Metcalfe and Stephen Brooker) in a live performance in Manchester, England. The orchestra of fourteen is a bit thin to the ears of those who know earlier recordings, but there is an excitement to the production that works in this complete 2 disc release. | 12 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Lysistrata Jones - Original Broadway Cast - Douglas Carter Bean, who made such a delight out of Xanadu, tried to do the same for Aristophenes' anti-war Greek comedy. The light-hearted and often funny lift didn't find an audience on Broadway and folded its tent after only 30 performances, but Broadway Records captured Lewis Finn's rock/rap/pop score in a spirited performance. | 18 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | 35MM – A Musical Exhibition – Original Cast Recording - An intriguing concept for a musical play reaching into the avant-guard is this multimedia musical that links songs to photographs and vice versa. Very little in the way of explanation is offered in the packaging in keeping with the theme of one of the songs, "Why Must We Tell Them Why?" But pay close attention to the text of the sixteen songs and five transitions while you study the photographs in the booklet and messages emerge. Most of the songs are fairly heavy rock for musical theater. Each is "about" one or more photo - or is it each photo is "about" a song? Never mind. | 18 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Fugitive Songs – A Song Cycle - In 2008 Joe Calarco directed the premiere of this small revue featuring nineteen songs which its creators called half-musical/half-hootenanny. Now, with the help of funds raised through Kickstarter, Yellow Sound gives us a recording of the score with a different cast. This time there are names like Karen Olivo, Tony winner for the recent West Side Story revival, Gavin Creel, twice Tony nominee (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hair) and Joshua Henry (The Scottsboro Boys, Porgy & Bess). The packaging doesn't tell you much about the project so the recipient of your gift of this disc may want to do some independent research. | 9 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | A Little Princess – A New Musical - This tuneful charmer from Andrew Lippa (The Addams Family) with a book and lyrics by Brian Crawley (Violet) was first produced 8 years ago at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, Ca. It is "loosely adapted" from a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, (The Secret Garden), and tells the story of a young girl sent to a boarding school in Victorian London where she's mistreated, but teaches everyone the value of love. Here it gets a full-sounding recording from Ghostlight Records with a cast that includes Sierra Boggess (The Little Mermaid) Will Chase (Lennon, High Fidelity) Titus Burgess (The Little Mermaid) and and Laura Bennanti (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Gypsy). The twenty-something Boggess sounds a bit mature for an early teen but she does bring a youthful charm to the part. | 17 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | Next Thing You Know - A contemporary folk/pop small cast musical with a fresh sound, this musical tells a good deal of its story through its songs so the listening experience is akin to a radioplay – especially if you read through the helpful synopsis in the package. The performances are solid and the band (guitar, bass, violin, cello and percussion) plays the charts of the composer, Joshua Salzman, with enthusiasm. | 15 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Brad Hathaway | John Tartaglia's ImaginOcean – Off Broadway Cast Album - Touring the country at the moment is a show for youngsters dreamed up by John Tartaglia, who grown ups may remember as the winning young man behind the puppets "Rod" and "Princeton" in Avenue Q. William Wade came up with half a dozen bright and chipper songs for Tartaglia's book about three fish on a treasure hunt. The production is a puppet show using black light to make the characters glow in florescent oranges, greens and purples amid a sea of bubbles, plants and an occasional star. The short (20 minute) disc with its colorful packaging might just be a perfect "first cast album" for anyone on your gift list whose age is counted in a single digit. | 14 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Lorraine Treanor, DCTS staff member | This Christmas Sandy Bainum (Music Man, Show Boat) has just released this collection of her favorite seasonal songs. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “The Christmas Song,” “Waiting for the Man With the Bag,” “White Christmas,” “Be a Santa,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve,” and many more. There are brand new songs by musical director Lanny Meyers and bassist Jay Leonhart, as well as the title song, “This Christmas,” a catchy new Hanukah tune by the legendary Bruce Kimmel that cleverly evokes the humor and warmth of the holidays. Features guests A Cappella, the Accidentals, Guy Haines and Broadway star Euan Morton. | 18 |  |
| CDs - Broadway and others of note | Lorraine Treanor DCTS staff | Holiday: The Divas of DC features 13 new tracks of holiday favorites by none other than Carolyn Cole, Felicia Curry, Erin Driscoll, Sherri L. Edelen, Karlah Hamilton, Kellee Knighten Hough, Donna Migliaccio, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Nova Y. Payton, Erin Weaver, Sandy Bainum, and Rachel Zampelli, with musical arrangements by Gabe Magiente. The album’s song list includes favorites such as “Silent Night,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing,” and “What Child is This?” among many others. Produced by Signature Theatre Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer in collaboration with theatreWashington, proceeds benefit Taking Care of Our Own. | 20 |  washingtonTheatre CD price: $20 |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Broadway in a Box - 25 CDs - The most lavish package you could put under the tree of someone you hope will become a theater fan would be this 25 CD set containing 17 original Broadway cast recordings dating from 1949 - 1987 plus revival cast recordings of 8 more. It includes some absolute "must have" discs – but therein lies the difficulty. Most people on your gift list who would want some or all of these probably already have a fair number of them. | 91 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Complete Broadway Musicals – 12 CDs - Another big-budget option for anyone who hasn't already got a fairly well stocked theater shelf would be this set from Masterworks Broadway featuring the full scores of all twelve musicals that graced Broadway from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II – from Oklahoma! (1979 revival recording) through The Sound of Music (Original Broadway Cast recording). The set includes the other famous mega-hits Carousel, South Pacific and The King and I, the solid success Flower Drum Song, the disappointments Allegro, Me & Juliet and Pipe Dream and the works not written for Broadway but which were later adapted for the New York Stage, State Fair and Cinderella. | 109 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | The Collected Songs of Victor Herbert - There have been many giants in the history of the American musical, but perhaps the first one – the one on whose shoulders the subsequent glories rested – was Victor Herbert. For its new series "The Foundations of the American Musical Theater" New World Records has issued a 4 disc set containing over 100 of Herbert's songs newly recorded with William Hicks at the piano and a host of accomplished vocalists including George Dvorsky, Rebecca Luker and Ron Raines. Arranged chronologically, the set takes you through Herbert's career from the German lieder to parlor songs, songs for vaudeville and revues like the Ziegfeld Follies and operettas like Babes in Toyland and The Century Girl. To add to the munificence of your gift, you might wrap it up with the succeeding release of New World Records series, a two disc recording of Herbert's romantic comic opera Eileen. | 40 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Create your own Box Sets: Broadway Cast Albums of last season's Tony nominees. - You can be as generous as you want when it comes to assembling a box set of your own. Three of the Best Musical nominees: Nice Work If You Can Get It, Newsies and the winner: Once (shown at right) | 11 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Want a bigger box set? Add the recordings of the "Best Score" nominees: Bonnie & Clyde and One Man, Two Guvnors (shown at right) | 10 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Want an even bigger collection? Add the 3 nominees for the "Best Revival" Tony which received two-disc recordings: Follies, Evita and the Tony winner, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (shown at right) | 10 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | A Virtual Box Set of Previously Rare Cast Recordings Masterworks Broadway – the Sony label that has taken on the catalog of both of the most active Original Broadway Cast album labels, Columbia Masterworks and RCA, among others – has been reaching into their gem-filled files to make some rare and wonderful albums from the past available through digital download or through orders for print-on-demand copies. Assemble your own box set either by downloading from the iTunes store, order copies for your gift giving from ArkiveMusic.com or from Amazon. Here are some titles that might titillate: – Cabaret – The Original London Cast Album – Seventeen – The 1951 Original Broadway Cast – The Adventures of Marco Polo – The 1956 TV musical starring Alfred Drake – Liza Minelli Live at the Winter Garden and Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett Live TV Specials (right hand column) | 14 |  |
| CDs - Box Sets | Brad Hathaway | Live Recordings from 54 Below Broadway Records has an agreement with the New York nightclub 54 Below, a cabaret-like facility in the basement below the Broadway theater Studio 54, which will result in live recordings of the stars performing in the club. The first two albums are due out December 11. They are Patti LuPone's act "Far Away Places" and Andrea McArdle's 70s and Sunny. And on January 15th: Norbert Leo Butz in live performance. (shown at right) | 20 |  |
| DVDs | Brad Hathaway | TV musicalsThe mid to late 1950s saw television networks experimenting with many different genres in the search for programming that would draw large audiences. Musical theater seemed a logical choice and many fine performances were aired. Then, the standard method of capturing these for future viewing was the kinescope - essentially a movie camera pointed at a black and white television screen during a live broadcast. VAI has been releasing some marvelously entertaining musicals from the period and the latest two would make a fine addition to a theater lover's video collection. Bloomer Girl, telling of the replacement of hoop skirts with a more comfortable garment championed by Dolly Bloomer during the Civil War, was a Broadway hit as World War II came to an end. It was adapted for television with Barbara Cook in the lead in 1956. One year later, Gilbert and Sullivan's 1888 operetta, The Yeomen of the Guard, (shown right) was the basis of an edited version with Alfred Drake and Celeste Holm. In releasing these two new DVDs, VAI has adopted the welcome practice of including the original television commercials on the disc for those who want to see what they were like as well. | 20 |  |
| DVDs | Brad Hathaway | That's Entertainment – The BBC Proms Concert recorded live in London's Royal Albert Hall. John Wilson leads his orchestra in performances of classic MGM musical numbers using recreations of the original orchestrations. Soloists include Kim Criswell, Seth MacFarlane, Curt Stigers, Sarah Fox, and Sir Thomas Allen. The excitement of live performances comes through on this two hour video and the sound recording is marvelous, which is very important given the glorious playing of Mr. Wilson's orchestra. Unfortunately, the commentators tend to talk over the first few moments of some of the songs and rarely do they have much to say that is worth the interruption. | 20 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | The Gershwins and Me by Michael Feinstein. The perpetually young man who is still reeling from the luck of assisting Ira Gershwin in the last 6 years of his mentor's life, setting off a career that has taken him around the world performing the great standards from the American pop songbook, has written a new volume that is half fascinating reading and half handsome book for the smaller coffee table in your living room. Much of the Gershwin material Feinstein covered in his own earlier book, 1995s Nice Work If You Can Get It, is revisited here but with a slightly matured voice. In twelve chapters each tied to one of the Gershwin brothers' classic songs, Feinstein gives us much more about the subject he knows so well – George and Ira. – 350 pages with no index – Includes a cd of Feinstein singing the twelve songs. | 23 |  Amazon Price: $23; $50 collectors edition |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | The Richard Rodgers Reader by Geoffrey Block In May, I told the readers of Theater Shelf about the exciting discovery of a "Reader" – a compilation of writings, contemporary and retrospective, by and about a specific great composer from the golden age of the American musical theater. In that case, it was Irving Berlin. In July I extolled the virtues of another one – The George Gershwin Reader. Now let me add a third fabulous volume in the series. With 58 short-to-medium length items that cover Richard Rodgers' life and his career as the melody maker of the team Rodgers and Hart and then as the composer in the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein and finally as a force on his own (think No Strings for which he wrote both music and lyrics). One comes away from this volume with a solid feel for his work and for the man himself. – 356 pages including a general index and an index to compositions. | 40 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | A Purple Summer – Notes on the Lyrics of Spring Awakening by Steven Sater This tiny, 90 small page with big type compilation offers the commentary of the lyricist of one of the most innovative shows to hit big on Broadway in the last half-dozen years. That show is the Tony winning Best Musical of 2006-2007, Spring Awakening, which ran over two years on Broadway. Sater took home the Tony for the book for this musical and shared the Best Original Score award with his composer, Duncan Sheik. The lyrics of some songs don't need any explication. What's not to understand about being "Totally F#cked"? But others have layer upon layer of meaning. If you ever wanted to know just what a "Purple Summer" is, here is your chance. | 10 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater by Jeffrey Magee The astonishingly productive life of Irving Berlin was distinctly theater-centered. Yes, he churned out tin pan alley pop songs unconnected to any plot, character, skit or scene. Sure, he wrote amazingly successful scores for Hollywood musicals. But the bulk of his work was tied to the Broadway stage. Jeffrey Magee views his life and career through that specifically theatrical lens in a dense, scholarly addition to the Broadway Legacy series. For serious study or for quick checks of the facts involved with a specific song or show. – 300 pages plus another 100 of notes, bibliography, discography, credits and index. | 30 |  Amazon Price: $30 |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | Lady in the Dark – Biography of a Musical by bruce d. mcclung. The show that Gerald Bordman called "the most imaginative, intelligent and cohesive work of" 1940-41, a psychoanalyst's-inspired dream with a book by Moss Hart, music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, is given a "biography" by a University of Cincinnati professor of music who insists on giving his name in all lower case. Flashing back from opening night he relates the genesis of the show's concept, its development, the structure of its score and the work done during the pre-Broadway tryouts. He then covers the post-Broadway tour and revivals, taking a break for a chapter to discuss the "changing cultural context" affecting a script with a plot that turns on the interpretation of dreams as a treatment for mental conditions. He even discusses the details of the various recordings of the score, | 45 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | The Songs of Hollywood by Philip Furia and Laurie Patterson The biographer of Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer, Philip Furia, and Laurie Patterson survey the history of songs written for or popularized by the movies. It covers its subject from the moment in 1927 Al Jolson uttered the ad lib "You ain't heard nothin' yet" in the film that started the phenomenon of the "talkies," which of course, were often the "singees." Richly illustrated with screenshots from the films being discussed, Furia and Patterson briskly walk the reader through the subsequent 80 years of Hollywood history. | 35 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | The Collected Drama of H. L. Mencken Edited by S. T. Joshi Many descriptions come to mind at the mention of H. L. Mencken before that of either "playwright" or "theater critic." He is remembered primarily as a journalist, an essayist, a satirist and a commenter on American life. He was a scholar as well, as his grammar/dictionary The American Language attests. Joshi unearths a separate dimension of the man's output as a theater journalist and a playwright. This volume includes five short one act plays, ranging from five to fourteen pages in length, a short humor piece in the form of detailed stage directions and a full length play titled Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts which he wrote with famous theater critic George Jean Nathan. There is also a generous sampling of Mencken's writing on the subject of drama covering topics from Shakespeare to Shaw. | 55 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | A Million Miles from Broadway: Musical Theatre Beyond New York and London by Mel Atkey My 2006 Holiday Gift Guide highlighted a then-new book on musical theater in Canada in which author Mel Atkey introduced me to a heretofore unknown-to-me thriving theatrical community. His book: Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre. Now Mr. Atkey lifts the veil on a wider world of musical theater creativity. From Amsterdam to Sweden to Dublin, Atkey tempts us with a sketchy overview of the developments in Europe, moves on to Canada and then crosses the equator to discuss Australian efforts. Other chapters deal with the musical in South Africa, Latin America and Asia. In this book Atkey spends a great deal of space on the common background of all musical theater and dwells on a frustratingly slender selection of examples. But where else can you get a first introduction into his subject? | 28 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | Marc Blitzstein – His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack Professor Pollack writes a thorough biography of the man who composed The Cradle Will Rock, Juno (based on Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock) and Regina (based on Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes). There was so much more to his career, however. Blitzstein supplied the translation of Brecht's text for Threepenny Opera, the incidental music for Orson Welles' Julius Caesar and King Lear, the book for the 1930s review Pins and Needles and even some songs for the Garrick Gaieties! An activist in a time of tension and turmoil, he stirred the pot in many ways. | 32 |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | strong>Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City by Elizabeth l. Wollman The 1970s were famous for - among other things - the conversion of "The Great White Way" of Broadway into Sleaze Boulevard with 42nd Street sporting more porn shops than legitimate theaters. But it wasn't only on the street that things had turned raunchy. On stages from Broadway to Off-Broadway to Not-Even-Close-To-Broadway, skin and sex reigned. On Broadway you had the disrobing champ, Hair, to kick off the decade – it opened at the Biltmore in 1968 and kept on rocking through 1750 performances ending in 1972. The effort to sell tickets through more prurient material continued on Broadway as Oh! Calcutta! found audiences at the beginning of the decade at the Belasco and then again at the Edison. The decade came to something of a climax with Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart's wife-swapping (but finally marriage-affirming) I Love My Wife. Elizabeth Wollman has surveyed the field and put it all in perspective in Hard Times. Like some of the recent releases from Oxford University Press, Wollman's book boasts its own "companion website" and the text of the book is replete with icons directing the reader to photos and audio clips giving her narrative additional color – visual and aural. | 28 |  Amazon Price: $28 |
| Books | Brad Hathaway | 360 Sound - The Columbia Records Story by Sean Wilentz On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Columbia Records comes this hefty, thick paper, thoroughly illustrated coffee table biography. That label, of course, is of interest to theater mavens principally for its role in the development of the original Broadway cast album. Columbia president and record producer extraordinaire, Goddard Lieberson, oversaw the near-perfection of the craft of converting Broadway musical scores from material that works in combination with other aspects of a live theatrical performance into a rewarding audio-only experience. The results included the original Broadway cast recordings of South Pacific which Wilentz calls "one of the best-selling LPs of its time." A sidebar by Dave Marsh reports further that "My Fair Lady spent 480 weeks on the charts (it was number one for fifteen.)" It is a volume that of necessity speeds through its story, only briefly pausing for highlights. But it is a fascinating one to pick up and skim from time to time. – 336 pages with over 300 photos | 28 |  |
| Books | Ro Boddie Actor | In our interview with actor Ro Boddie, he praised the book The Actor and the Target by British director Declan Donnellan.“That book has been a huge catalyst and anchor for me. One of the main ideas is for you, the actor, to focus outside yourself – the person you are speaking to. This idea helps me to bring me out of myself. The other person becomes the captain of my ship. The technique from Donnellan’s text allows the actor to think “less about self and more about the other person. When you are getting that energy onstage, it forges a strong relationship.” | 13 |  |
| Books | Mark Chalfant, Artistic Director of Washington Improv Theater | Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone A quirky text filled with personal anecdotes from the life of a relentlessly imaginative pioneer in improvisation. What Keith Johnstone writes in the section on Status will change the way you walk down the street every day. His insights in the Narrative Skills section will make you realize you're a born storyteller. And the section on Spontaneity not only includes methods to get out of your own way, creatively speaking, but shares a powerful perspective on what it is to be a teacher. Johnstone wrote other books later that are also good and actually more comprehensive, but this is the most personal, and the one that began my love of improvisation. | 23 |  |
| Books | Ben Demers, DCTS writer | Shakespeare: The Illustrated Edition The celebrated Bill Bryson cuts through various Shakespearean myths to reach the knowable truth about the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. With his characteristic wit and accessible writing style, Bryson debunks each far flung theory about Shakespeare's life and works, replacing them with nuggets of historical truth. In the process, he leads the reader on a merry guided tour through Elizabethan England, employing the whimsy and canny sense of place that have made him a best selling travel writer. The book boasts a beautiful green and gold hardcover, as well as numerous period illustrations that enrich each chapter with lush detail. At one time, it included the incredible bonus CD of Shakespeare's Sonnets being read by the great John Gielgud. (no longer packaged with the book, but available elsewhere. This absorbing look at one of the titans of the English language makes a great holiday gift for theater buffs, Shakespeare neophytes, travel lovers, and anyone with an appreciation for history that doesn't take itself too seriously. | 20 |  |
| Books | John Hauge, Co-President of TrueTheatergoer | Ralph Richardson: An Actor's Life by Garry O'Connor A wonderful evocation of the life and craft of one of theater's greatest performers. His John Gabriel Borkman in 1975 (with Wendy Hiller and Peggy Ashcroft) remains an acting peak for me, especially in its ability to suggest the otherworldliness of the supernatural. The New York Times book reviewer hailed the book as "the best biography of an actor I've ever read." | 37 |  |
| Books | Aaron Posner, Director | In our interview with Aaron Posner, the director recommended, The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate by Peter Brook. In the 1970s, Peter Brook set off for a series of African villages with a group of ethnically diverse actors to seek the foundations of holy and immediate theatre. They observed, learned, improvised and explored the many stories and traditions they met along the way.“I loved it when I read it in high school; it was the first theatre theory work I read. I love his whole perspective, and universality. It was a tremendous influence on me.” | 11 |  |
| Books | Hunter Styles, Director, and DCTS writer | Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair by Frank Hauser and Russell Reich Notes on Directing is an eloquent, concise, and user-friendly punch-list of tips on directing for budding theatre artists, directors, and leaders in the arts and beyond. Veteran director Frank Hauser shares his candid, no-nonsense thoughts on topics ranging from script analysis to casting and rehearsal to communicating with other artists. Actress Dame Judi Dench calls it "compulsory reading for every aspiring director," and Wall Street Journal theatre critic Terry Teachout says it's "blunt, funny, utterly relevant, amazingly illuminating. I never read anything that taught me more about the theatre in so short a space." | 10 |  |
| Books | Tim Treanor, DCTS writer | The Michael Chekhov Handbook: For the Actor by Lenard Petit. Petit teaches the Chekhov technique, which is complex but which rewards the actor with a new (or renewed) ability to attack his work with imagination and creativity. Petit's book is remarkably lucid and free of cant, so that an actor unfamiliar with the Chekhov principles can nonetheless understand the practice. This may come off sounding biased, since I'm a friend of the author, but Petit's reputation teaching the techique for over 20 years is sufficiently established for you to get the substance behind my recommendation. | 29 |  |
| Books | Lorraine Treanor DCTS staff | Supporting Player: My Life Upon the Wicked Stage Richard Seff’s memoir of a 60+ year career onstage in NY and behind its closed doors. A reader wrote: “ I am not in theatre, but I love going to theatre, and after reading Richard Seff's informed and informative memoir, I feel I've just relived the last 50 years of my life. He has captured the Golden Age of Broadway, and put it all down with insight, humor, and great joy.” No longer an agent or actor, Richard Seff’s career continues as a playwright and theatre critic for DC Theatre Scene. | 25 |  |
| Books | Lorraine Treanor DCTS staff | Lincoln When the screenplay of the Steven Spielberg directed film Lincoln, by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), is released this January, everyone who loves the work of Mr. Kushner will be able to hold in their hands the passionate, masterfully written dialogue of this landmark DreamWorks film, by one of the greatest one of America’s great writers. Contains a forward by Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book inspired the film, and 8 pages of color photos from Lincoln. | 16 |  |
| Subscriptions | Lorraine Treanor, DCTS staff | American Theater MagazineGive the gift of American theater. You'll often find an article related to Washington area productions (this month's cover article is an interview with Pam McKinnon on the production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf seen here at Arena Stage) and much else with news of national and international perspectives on theatre and the people who create it. Includes 5 plays per year. The subscription ($35) is one benefit of TCG membership but there are more: discounts on tickets and TCG books, and special services for theatre professionals | 35 |  |
| Subscriptions | Lorraine Treanor, DCTS staff | The Soul of the American Actor There is no other publication which I dive into with more pleasure and share more often than actor Ronald Rand’s The Soul of the American Actor, a carefully collected series of essays by major theatre artists and original interviews. You can receive the 4 times a year print edition for $16. Or read it free! - each complete edition is shared online -- and hopefully be an angel and send in a donation. | 16 |  |
| Subscriptions | Lorraine Treanor, DCTS staff | The Sondheim Review Lovers of all things Sondheim would enjoy receiving this glossy quarterly magazine, packed with well-researched essays - such as, Merrily We Roll Along started out in 1934 not as a musical - and Sondheim news and interviews from around the world. | 20 |  |
| Audio Books | Bob Butler, Audio Books Contractors | A Midsummer Night's Dream In this, Shakespeare’s most fantastical comedy, the fairy world wreaks havoc with the foolish mortal one and a lover’s nightmare melts into an innocent dream. Under the canopy of a moonlit forest, four sets of lovers and five delightfully inept “mechanicals” weave a magic web.2 CDs Narrated by Kimberly Schraf. Note: - We thought you would enjoy audio books recorded by local performers. We turned to Bob Butler from Washington-based Audio Book Contractors, who told us an interesting bit of area history. ABC was founded in 1983 by actress Flo Gibson, (her career included the role of Jack Webb's "moll" in the old "Dragnet" radio series, and the narration of more than 1130 unabridged books for Books on Tape, the Library of Congress and ABC. ABC has an extensive collection of audiobooks including more than 60 plays, | 17 |  |
| Audio Books | Bob Butler, Audio Books Contractors | The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Trapped aboard an enemy submarine during World War I, Bowen Tyler, his comrades, the lady he loves and a group of German enemies are borne to an uncharted mysterious island. There they encounter supposedly extinct monsters and the earliest ancestors of the human race.Narrated by Michael Russotto. | 16 |  |
| Audio Books | Bob Butler, Audio Books Contractors | Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle returns to a strange world after a long sleep and Ichabod Crane encounters haunting difficulties and a headless horseman during his courtship of Katrina. (2 CDs) Narrated by John MacDonald | 19 |  |
| Audio Books | Bob Butler, Audio Books Contractors | A Sampler of American Humor These rib-ticklers include Twain's "The Story of the Old Ram" and "The Story of a Speech", E.P. Butler's "Pigs is Pigs", W.A. Butler's "Nothing to Wear", Warner's "How I Killed a Bear", Field's "Oon Criteek de Bernhardt", Alden's "Carrie's Comedy" and Wharton's "The Pelican." (2 CDs) Narrated by John MacDonald, Flo Gibson and Grover Gardner | 19 |  |
Start the new year with some new classes!
Here are a few you can give as gifts.
An Approach for Actors – Delaney Williams
Shakespeare Theatre Master Acting Classes and Camp Shakespeare
Theatre Lab School of Dramatic Arts – Email here
Perhaps the best gift of all is to give the experience of live theatre.
Here are a few easy ways to do that.
TixCertificates, administered by theatreWashington, are honored by most theatres in the area. Order in $20 increments.
Here are some theatres which offer gift certificates directly.
Signature Theatre (you’ll find details at the bottom of the page)
Let’s discuss!
What is the best / most treasured theatre gift you have every given or received?
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