For over four years, this column has brought you reviews of theater-related CDs, DVDs and Books that you might want to have on your very own theater shelves. It has been a pleasure as well as an honor to be your source for information on both the obvious new releases and the more obscure items […]
Sheldon Harnick: Hidden Treasures, 1949-2013
One storyline in the history of the evolution of what we now know as “a musical” has been the progression of lyric writing from light verse to less rigid but often more potent forms of poetry. Those of us who love the genre feel a great appreciation and respect for the works of W. S. […]
Show scores by Dianna Ross and other top pop and jazz artists
One vocal treatment of a Styne score that has been laying under the wraps of near obscurity for 45 years has just re-emerged in a digital re-release of note:”Diana Ross and the Supremes Sing & Perform Funny Girl.” In 1968, when Motown’s Berry Gordy was beginning to groom Ms. Ross for single stardom, he brought her into a studio in New York City for a two day recording session to lay down the lead vocals for a ten-track album of songs from the score that belongs so demonstrably to Barbra Streisand.
Fun Home, the musical from Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir
We’ll take a look at the recordings of the Tony nominated musicals before the June 8 award telecast but, right now, there’s an original cast album of an Off Broadway musical that deserves your attention.
Scenes and Monologues from Steinberg/ATCA New Play Finalists
Read any good plays lately? I have a confession to make. I can’t read a play and come away with anything approaching the emotional satisfaction I get from the experience in the theater. Some people can. I can’t. It takes the skills of actors, directors and designers to bring the stories to life for me […]
Jarrod Spector Live at 54 Below
Some artists who put together a cabaret show just pick a bunch of songs that they like to sing or that show off their talents. Others pick a theme or turn their cabaret show into an autobiography. Either way, with enough talent and a sense of taste, these shows can be thrilling – as those […]
Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater
Who is this Eddie Shapiro? How did he get to spend all this quality time with twenty (or twenty-one – more on this later) Tony Award winning leading ladies of Broadway fame including the likes of Chita Rivera, Angela Lansbury, Carol Channing and Elaine Stritch (to name four in their eighties or nineties) or Kristin […]
From Broadway With Love, A Benefit Concert for Sandy Hook
When show folk put their minds (and hearts) into it, they can raise any roof. On January 28th of last year, the roof that couldn’t contain their touching contributions to a benefit concert was that of the Palace Theatre in Waterbury, Connecticut. The theater is seventy-five miles from New York’s Palace Theater on Broadway, but […]
Fosse
Quick. Without looking at the title of this column, who was the only person to win the Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical on Broadway, the Oscar for the Best Director of a Movie and the Emmy for the Best Director of a Television Special … and do it all in one year? […]
Before Sound of Music and Smash – TV musicals, 1944 – 1996
The success of NBC’s live telecast of The Sound of Music last December has sparked interest in the televising of musicals. That interest may only increase now that NBC has announced it is going to do another one next December – this time it will be the venerable Peter Pan, a show that many associate […]
Live recordings from NY nightclub, 54 Below
Two years ago, when I was preparing the 2012 holiday gift guide, I received a press release from a new well-named label: Broadway Records. It announced the launch of a series of live recordings of cabaret-style performances at the then-brand-new supper-club downstairs from the Studio 54 Theater on 54th Street in New York – – […]
Holiday Gifts for Theatre Lovers
Suggestions from Brad Hathaway
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