This is my interview with Gavin when he was touring in Into the Woods. Thank you Gavin for your time, your artistry and your generosity. You will truly be missed.

Whether that’s intrinsically a part of the characters he’s playing or just who he is as an actor, Ceel is easily one of the most likable people in musicals today. Take his performance as The Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. Even though The Wolf is menacing (in a dandy sort of way) and the Prince is “raised to be charming, not sincere,” Creel is sincerely charming and, when the role calls for it, charmingly sincere.

Into the Woods is finishing its mini-tour of ten cities with a final stop in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre. The show runs June 27th – July 30th. Creel, who played the part on Broadway, is joined by many of the production’s Broadway cast including Sebastian Arcelus, Stephanie J. Block, Katy Geraghty, Montego Glover, Kennedy Kanagawa and Nancy Opel.

I recently spoke with Creel who was in San Francisco for the penultimate stop of Into the Woods. In our conversation we talked about Stephen Sondheim, why the cast took this show on the road and about his own show, Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, which will have its world premiere in November at MCC Theater in New York. Los Angeles audiences can get a preview of that show when Creel performs at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood on July 24th.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: In 2003 you were in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce [later renamed Road Show] in Chicago and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. What did you learn from that experience of working on Sondheim’s material that perhaps informs the work you’re now bringing to Into the Woods? 

What comes to mind is that I watched the greatest, at that time, living musical theater composer and arguably the greatest living producer director of our musical theater time: Hal Prince. I watched them in the mud. I got to watch them trying to make the lotus blossom. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t successful. Obviously it wasn’t commercially successful, but it was bumpy. 

I did this very foolish innocently enough thing of deciding that they must come out of the womb formed. These ideas must just be hatched in brilliance. And I was like, Oh yeah, this moment isn’t really that great. Sondheim can write something that’s really not that great. And then Sondheim goes, “This is really not that great. How do I make this great or I can do this here and do this, and then watch it become something that went to the next level.” To see that in front of you is very humbling and an encouraging and freeing experience. 

How would you compare the process of working on a musical with Stephen Sondheim to working on one of his most successful musicals, arguably his most successful musical, without him any longer?

It was sad, I have to say. James Lapine, on the first day of rehearsal, we all circled up and everybody and there was a space next to him. He said, “It’s odd to me that there’s a space. I feel like Steve made a space for himself. This is a bittersweet moment because we’re all here to lift this beautiful piece up and I’m honored that you’re doing this piece that I wrote with Steve, and Steve would be standing next to me.”

This is sounds woo woo, but I think Steve was guiding us from the other side. I still feel a presence. It’s a rock concert response to our show in a way that James is like, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s crazy. I think that is definitely a testament to the show being so beloved for almost 40 years. But I also think we were guided. I think there was a spirit on the other side. The best spirit of all going, “I’m going to help.” It got into all of our hearts. 

When I saw the show at the St. James in New York in December it looked to me like everybody was having the time of their lives, which is not easy to do as an actor. How much of it is the fact that you are all genuinely having a good time?

It is really hard to fake joy in that way. Even if you’re doing a really good job of it, the audience can sniff it out. I’m personally having the time of my life. I did not expect to be a part of this. I was going to go watch my best friend Sara [Bareilles who was the original Baker’s Wife] in the concert at City Center. And then [director] Lear deBessonet called me and was like, “Hey, would you ever consider coming in?” The first time my ego was like, I don’t want to play that part. I want to be the baker. And then I thought about it. Let’s just do the job. I need the health insurance. I’ll have a good time. I’ll get to hang out with Sara again. We had such a good time doing Waitress for that small amount of time together [in 2019]. Here I am, over a year later, still getting to tell the story across the country. We are literally still having fun and I can’t believe this leg of it is going to be done in six weeks. It’s nuts. We’re very sad to let it go. 

Many of you who appeared in this production on Broadway have come together to continue telling this story. That is very rare these days for so many cast members to take a show on the road. Why do you think the mold was broken for Into the Woods? 

I think the world has changed since what we went through. The pandemic changed me. Certainly I can speak for myself of just really appreciating what you have in a new way. I just don’t think we were ready to let it go. What a gift! This just dropped in my lap. Personally, I could save money. I could work. I could see the country. I could take a breath from everything that we’ve been through. I think that story sort of whispered through the building. Gavin’s going to go and hey, you think about going on? Let me tell you why I’m going. When does this ever happen? We could actually all go together. Our show was definitely closing [in New York] because New York, New York needed a theater. We had to close, but we didn’t feel ready to be finished. 

I think one of the one of the main things that Sondheim wanted to get across with this particular work, and he said so in an interview around the time of the release of the film, was that the message of Into the Woods is about community responsibility. There’s obviously a sense of community within Broadway. There’s a sense of community within this company. Do you think that this musical offers any insight into how we perhaps can better serve ourselves by coming together as a community in our regular lives? 

Yes. I think it’s two parts, to be honest. The whole thing starts with “I wish, more than anything.” If we can acknowledge that everybody wants something for themselves then we can see the shared community in that fact. How wonderful it would be if we could help each other get what each other wants. And this musical lays that out so beautifully.

The other I was going to say is when you said that about community, no one is alone. On the surface it seems like it means I’m with you. But also I’m with you in helping you get what you want. We can work together to help you achieve your dreams. There’s always a force outside of you that’s greater than you, that is against you in some way. The giant isn’t bad. “Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what’s right. You decide what’s good.” The giant is just trying to do what they can to survive. We can see the community in that statement, which is what I think the show really illuminates. It means more than just you’re not alone, as in you don’t have to be sad and lonely. It means you’re not alone in your desires, your dreams, your wishes, your hopes. I’ve got them, too. So let’s both dream together.

You’ve been working on Confessions of a Museum Novice for a while and you’ve been performing it a concert version off and on in different places. How has the work evolved since you first started sharing this with the world? 

It continues to evolve. Originally I was invited to have a meeting with Limor Tomer and Erin Flannery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who run the Live Art series. They said, would you like to come to the Met? We’ll give you a membership card at the museum. Look around. And when you find a piece of art or pieces, anything that you’re inspired by within the building, let us know and we’ll help you produce a show for one night at the Met. I’d never been there. I was an imposter syndrome times a million. I’m not a huge fine art person. Museums tend to overwhelm me, but I went for it. 

We ended up doing it in October of 2021 with a fully masked audience for two shows and it was electric. I have to turn this into a musical. I have to expand this a bit, too. I still play Gavin Creel. It’s still about a man who’s having a sort of a midlife meltdown who for some reason called the Metropolitan Museum of Art to try to figure his life out by walking through and figuring out what’s going on. It’s about love and life and art and loneliness and ultimately forgiveness and love again.

What we’re going to do in L.A. is we’re going to do the first 45 minutes of the show to give people a taste. And then we’re going to do some covers, theater and pop covers to give people some stuff they know.

Let’s go back 17 years ago to when your album GoodTimeNation came out. You have a song on there about what Might Still Happen. What has you most optimistic about what might still happen to you personally and professionally?

I wrote that as a kid 20 years ago on the roof of my studio apartment; 250 square feet. Some of the hardest and happiest times I’ve had. One of the best lessons of living in New York in 250 square feet is you have everything you need in that much space. Anything past that is icing. I have a two bedroom apartment, thank God now, but I could live in 200 square feet if you made me. I might sell it all and just chill. My buddy Robbie Roth, who I made my first two records with, we would crawl up to the roof illegally because the fire door didn’t shut. We would sit up there, put a blanket down and pick around with melodies. That song is ultimately about heartbreak, but it’s hope.

It was a call to my future self. It makes me emotional to think about the idea of being a young person and feeling really sad but saying there’s good stuff coming, keep going. You can’t know the future, so just sit in the present. Just be. Get yourself a beer, get a friend, get a guitar, get on the roof, look out over the city. There’s possibility everywhere.

Not to bring it back to Into the Woods, but I was really broken before the pandemic, through the pandemic and after. It was just a terrible time in my life. Into the Woods was like this beautiful life raft that not only buoyed me out of storm, but it continued to lift me and set me down on solid ground. I will never forget this time that I’ve had and I just hope that we pack the house at the Ahmanson because I want to go out with a bang.

To see the full interview with Gavin Creel, please go here.

Main Photo: Gavin Creel in the Broadway production of Into the Woods (Photo by Matthew Murphy and Ryan Zimmerman for MurphyMade/Courtesy Center Theatre Group)

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THIS IS THE THIRD OF OUR BEST OF 23 REVIEW OF INTERVIEWS: On April 19th of this year I spoke with Tony Award-winner Stephanie J. Block about her upcoming show with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis. She was on tour at that time with Into the Woods. But the show with Rudetsky was postponed. It has since been rescheduled for this Sunday at The Wallis. Instead of just one show there are now two.

I held the interview you are about to read until closer to the rescheduled shows. Which means some of the conversation we had is less timely now that it was in April. Discussions of Into the Woods, Funny Girl and her performance as Norman Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Kennedy Center aren’t as topical today as they were then.

But Block is not just a great performer – as her roles in Falsettos, The Boy From Oz and The Cher Show (for which she won her Tony Award) can attest – she’s also a great interview. So though slightly dated, this is one thoroughly entertaining conversation. What follows are excerpts from that interview that have been edited for length and clarity. I strongly encourage you to go to our YouTube channel to see the full interview.

You’ve sung on stage with Cher, you sung with Dolly Parton, and of course, you have your Tony Award. When you were tackling the very intense roles of Fifer, Belle, Ariel and Mary Poppins at Disneyland, is this what you imagined your career would be?

First of all, damn you! Secondly, as the story has it and it is true, my mother forged my birth certificate so that I could audition for the Disneyland Summer Parade. I wasn’t yet 16, so she had to forge my birth certificate. So that already tells you enough of what you need to know about the loving show mother that embraced me and encouraged me. But I was serious even back then.

I went to the Orange County, which was the High School of Performing Arts back then, and everything had that high level of stakes and intensity and discipline. So whether I was Fifer the Pig dancing down the parade route at Disneyland, I took as much pride in that as I did with doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

You were referred to at your church as the little Ethel Merman when you were seven years old. You have since had the opportunity to play Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, which is a role that Ethel Merman originated. Are there other Ethel Merman roles that you would like to do?

I think with a lot of the classic musical theater pieces there might have to be some reworking. Would I love to play Annie Get Your Gun? Absolutely. I’d love to play Annie. But I think someone like Larissa FastHorse might have to go in there and change a lot of the lines in the material. But does the music still hold up? Yes. Does the sort of crackle in her performance and the indelible performance that she’s left for us still hold true in my heart? Yes. Because in my heart, I’m an old MGM girl. You put on one of those old movies – anything with Judy Garland, anything with Ann Miller – and it just changes the whole course of my day.

I saw you in Falsettos, and frankly, I think you were robbed for the Tony Award because that performance, that whole show, was one I will never forget. I saw 9 to 5 in Los Angeles. I saw The Boy from Oz and I recently saw Into the Woods before it closed in New York. And the first time I saw you was in Crazy for You at La Mirada. 

Oh, my gosh.

Those shows, absent Crazy for You, are a mix of huge successes and less successful shows. Something Hal Prince said that I thought was really interesting was how much he learned more from the shows that weren’t successful than the ones that were. Is there a difference between the lessons you’ve learned on shows that were successful versus the ones that were not?

I think we just have to say that 75% of most Broadway endeavors would be defined as quote unquote, failures. So right off the bat, three quarters of every show that gets mounted is not going to last [long enough to] get their money back. I can’t speak to the producer end of it. I can only speak to the actor end of it. Yeah, I do learn a lot about myself when things don’t go as I hoped, prayed or wished. I will say I always enter a piece 150% because I think you have to love the project with that much in order to dive in.

When it starts falling apart, I’m also very much aware of that. I like to drink the Kool-Aid, but, all of the flags start going up. Or you go, Oh, this may not be going to Radio City to collect all the Tonys. But somehow I look at these artists that always start from scratch, begin again, are willing to put their vulnerable selves on the line for show after show after show. That, to me, is the biggest statement of most artists I know. That we really are willing to accept three quarters of it as failure and a small one quarter as success, and we keep jumping in headfirst.

Your performance in Falsettos of I’m Breaking Down, strikes me as a three-act play in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. What was the process of creating the ever increasingly intense breakdown over the course of that song?

You’re exactly right. You’ve got to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I find it so interesting that [composer/bookwriter] William Finn wrote essentially an 11:00 number in the first half hour of the play. That, in and of itself, is so out of form that it’s kind of wild. [Director/bookwriter] James Lapine said, I’m going to give you your space. I’m going to give you a couple days by yourself with our choreographer. I’m going to give you a whole host of props that you would find in your kitchen. I’m going to let you play and then I’m going to come in to see what you have created. For James, it’s very much simplicity defines mastery. Believe it or not, that epic song had more crap and props and movement to it than what you saw in its final version on Broadway. But I approached him and he said, How do you see this song? And I said, I think I see this song is like Carol Burnett having her own culinary show. And he goes, okay, well show me what you got.

This is Carol Burnett-slash-Trina trying to put on a very composed culinary show. Little by little, her inner voice, all of her demons, just start taking over. I actually went too far and he had to bring me back. Now we’ve got to find the balance between humor, angst and a conversation with the audience. So that was the balancing act.

Carol Burnett has to be a huge influence for you. While you were doing Sunset Boulevard you posted on your Instagram account a picture of Gloria Swanson side by side with Carol Burnett and said that your performance was going to be a combination of the two. How important is Carol Burnett in your life?

She’s wildly important to me. She, to me, being able to stand up as her and have a conversation with her audience to break that fourth wall and to be secure enough to say this is who I am as Carol, let’s banter and talk, then to embody a character in some of the most dramatic things I’ve ever seen. Then to embody humor and to not be so serious about herself that she could absolutely make fun of herself in the middle of a full skit. She’s a genius. I knew that if I could even do a fraction, if I could do one quarter of what Carol Burnett was doing, then there was a place for me in this world. 

Regarding Into the Woods, you said that was a dream role, 30 years in the making. What inspires you most about this show in general and more specifically about the role of the Baker’s wife?

In the beginning of my career I wanted to wear characters as like a costume and take on their shape, their form, their sound. Now as I get older, the goal is to bring myself to a character. To bring my story, my shape, my sound to these characters. The Baker’s wife is very much that. I am playing opposite my husband [Sebastian Arcelus]. So the baker and the baker’s wife couldn’t be more true than I feel is being portrayed now. My husband and I had quite a journey to get a child. It took us well over five years. As you can imagine, from Chinese herbs to shots to geriatric pregnancies, all of the above. When we tell that story, we are them and they are us.

The themes that are interwoven in this piece: it doesn’t matter if you’re in high school or you’re 80 years old or you’re a middle-aged woman, or you have a child, don’t have a child. Everybody’s journey personifies a different stage in someone’s life, and that’s what you’re going to hear. That’s what the audience is going to be attuned to. So right now, my journey as the baker’s wife and having a child is far different than me wanting to play the baker’s wife, like you said, 30 years ago.

You met Sebastian when you were in Wicked together. You got married before a performance, I think it was six years ago, and then you just went on stage. What do you remember most about that performance, particularly when you were singing As Long As You’re Mine?

Any time a couple, regardless of what stage it is in your relationship, when there’s a secret that just two of you hold, there is that sort of butterflies in the belly. There is sort of the giggle and the unspoken. We know something that nobody else knows. So that excitement certainly carried through. I’m sure we had smiles. [Elphaba] isn’t supposed to smile through the whole show, but internally I’m sure I had an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that was underneath that green make-up when we did As Long As You’re Mine. It was a defining moment, certainly in my career, because all of those words took on a completely different meaning as husband and wife.

I saw one of the interviews that you did around The Boy From Oz and you said you weren’t doing the Liza Minnelli that we all know and love. This is Liza who was 18. It was before her fame had come to her. If 30 or 40 years from now, somebody wants to do a musical about somebody with whom you collaborated and an actor was going to take on the role of the young Stephanie J. Block, how would you like that character to be portrayed?

I would like her to be hopeful. I would like her to be silly. I would like her to be brassy because I was big and brassy. And I think always kind. Always kind, but ready to play. Those would be the words that I would infuse into the actress. It would be, I think, much like Liza, very difficult to watch that portrayal. Especially if somebody was to play young me but span 35 years of me in 45 minutes. I would feel like there’s a lump in my throat going, Oh, but there’s more. Oh, but you forgot to add that. But I think I would also have an open heart and the grace to accept it and receive it and hopefully lovingly support it.

In a 2006 interview you did with BroadwayWorld, you called the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl your “favorite regional theater role.” You went on to say, “It’s time to bring her back to Broadway. What a powerhouse role for any actresses. Producers interested can call 555-Stef!” which I thought was terrific. Fanny is back on Broadway now in a production that has had more rollercoasters than Disneyland. What does this production tell you about the challenges of producing contemporary musical theater and the pitfalls that have to be avoided? 

If I’m going to answer this, my disclaimer is I am taking great liberties because I have no horse in the race as a producer. But what I would like to see happen is that we cast a part based on the merit and the truth and the marriage of an actor and a piece not based on what could possibly sell tickets because of the pedigree of one particular person or one particular thing. It is a collaboration and a marriage and they all have to meet up.

I think we also have to entertain the idea of thinking outside the box. Then step into rehearsal. And then if it doesn’t go as planned, that there is the open-heartedness and the grace that I just spoke about to say, okay, great. You are monstrously talented. Perhaps this is not the vehicle that we all thought it was going to be for you, and that’s not going to service you or the piece. Let’s rethink. How do you feel about that? Let’s re-engage the conversation.

Much like art, live theater, is a living, breathing thing that I wish the creation of a piece can continue to be that without looking at the bottom line. That something is being created for artistry’s sake, and that within that landscape or ecosystem, things change or mistakes were made or gosh, this isn’t working out the way we hoped, or my God, this is working out even better than we hoped, right? But that the conversation can still happen and that grace can surround that. That’s what I feel.

Reviews and audience response to the Kennedy Center production of Sunset Boulevard means you’re giving us all optimism that there might be a Broadway revival. Do you have any new ways to dream, shall we say, about a Broadway production in which you play Norma Desmond?

I have 25% chance, maybe 50% chance, that there will be new ways to dream. The timing is not the timing I would like. There is a project that is in the works for cinema for Sunset Boulevard. That is ALW’s [Andrew Lloyd Webber] focus. That’s The Really Useful Group’s focus. And I can understand that as a business woman. As the artist, I would have loved to have seen a momentum and a transfer.

When I was asked by [Broadway Center Stage] Artistic Director, Jeffrey Finn of the Kennedy Center, what would you like to do in the next year, and I came out with this, I had no idea that this part and I would embrace each other in such a way that it affected me. It affected the audience. It affected the whole piece to be looked at in a completely different way. That was not my goal. But that was one of those times where we were all jumping in headfirst with no expectations, just wanting to create something different. Timely. I am of the school now that if you are going to revive, there needs to be a why. So we shall see what the next couple of years might bring. I’d like to hope that there’s space for it back on Broadway. We’ll see.

There was a Tony Monday last year or the year prior where you posted a video saying to your friends who were or were not nominated, that regardless of that the story continues to be told. What’s the story that’s most important for you to tell through your work today and through these evenings you have with Seth Rudetsky?

For me, right now, the word that is screaming in my head is connection. Absolute connection. If you are putting something out there and it is not being received and then digested and something is being thrown back at you, that’s my ultimate goal. Whether I am playing a part, whether I’m myself, whether I’m beside ridiculous, monstrously talented and smart Seth Rudetsky, for me, the evening was not a win if I did not connect and communicate with my audience. So that’s always the goal.

I certainly think we’ll do that at The Wallis. These intimate nights and spaces, they’re a joy to me. They really fill up my artistic bank. And much like Carol Burnett, it does feel like I’m standing there in my own skin wanting to meet them and wanting them to meet the real me. 

To see the full interview with Stephanie J. Block, please go here.

Main Photo: Stephanie J. Block (Courtesy The Wallis)

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Playwright Nilo Cruz and composer Gabriela Lena Frank have collaborated so many times it would be easy to assume that their 2022 opera, El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego), would be their most recent work.

In reality it is the work that first brought them together more than a dozen years ago. El Ultimo Sueño had its world premiere last October at San Diego Opera. In June of this year it was performed at San Francisco Opera. This Saturday it will open at LA Opera where it runs through December 9th.

Cruz and Frank’s opera finds Frida Kahlo (Daniela Mack) having already passed away. Diego Rivera (Alfredo Daza) is on the cusp of passing away but wants his beloved Frida to come back from the underworld to help him in his transition to the afterlife. She’s very reluctant to do so given the pain he caused her in her life. The opera is set around Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead). Think of the opera as the Orpheus and Eurydice myth reversed with a healthy dash of the animated film Coco.

Cuban-born Cruz is best-known as a playwright. In 2003 he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play Anna in the Tropics. His other works include Dancing on Her Knees; Two Sisters and a Piano; Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams; Lorca in a Green Dress and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. His collaborations with Frank include The Conquest Requiem and The Santos Oratorio and the text of orchestral songs, La Centinela y la paloma.

Earlier this week I spoke with Cruz who was at his home in Florida. During our conversation we talked about the challenges of breathing new life into Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera given how much has already been written about them; the new-found politics that are represented by a character they created for the opera and about the nature of art and creativity.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Is there a difference in the way Cuba, or Cubans in particular, feel about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo that maybe is different than how they are perceived in the States or elsewhere? 

It’s hard for me to know because I left Cuba when I was so young. I left when I was ten years old. But they’re great revolutionaries and they were socialists. A few writers in Cuba have written about them in the theater. I believe they’re embraced by by the island, by people on the island, of course. But who doesn’t love them? Who cares, you know, about their political affinities? They’re just people you want to love because of the art they produced and what they give to the world.

Underneath the acrimony and history that exists between Frida and Diego in the opera, this is truly a love story. What was key for you in realizing the best way to dramatize that love story?

I believe it was when I read that at the end of his life Diego Rivera requested his ashes to be reunited with Frida’s ashes. Talk about a great love story. He wants to be in the in afterworld with Frida. That was so touching when I read that I thought this needs to be a love story and it needs to be a love story in which the Day of the Dead is involved.

They were soulmates. They were kindred spirits. Even though they had relationships with other men and women, they really loved each other. They caused each other a lot of pain. Unfortunately other things happened along the way, but they should have been together from the beginning and to the end. But human beings are full of faults and this is what makes the story so compelling in many ways for an opera and for the theater.

What was most important to you and Gabriela to make this a different way of telling this story or revealing who these people were as you wanted to depict them?

When Gabriela approached me with the subject matter, I had a little bit of resistance at the beginning because there was so much out there about them. But when I sat down and listened to her music, she had a piece that had to do with The Day of the Dead. I said to her, let’s not write a biopic or a biographical opera about them. Let’s go in this direction because they both adored that holiday. I thought this is the way to enter this opera. When I was remembering Orpheus, the operas, and the beautiful myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, I thought let’s do something similar to that.

There have been countless Orpheus operas and most recently there’s Matthew Aucoin‘s opera, Eurydice, based on the play of the same name that looks at this story from her point of view. The musical Hadestown deals with that myth. Do you think we’re living in a time where we all clamor for really great love stories, even if they don’t end up together? 

I think that we have become so cynical that we need something else in order to believe in love again. That’s what we do in this opera. That’s what I’m always doing with my work. Whether the plays are political, there’s always a love story there in between the lines and the lives of the characters.

You’ve collaborated many times with Gabriela well before this particular opera. Of all the collaborations that you’ve done with her, what makes this particular work unique for you?

This is the work that brought us together. Unfortunately it took years for us to work on the opera. In the meantime, we started to work on other things and those projects became preparations for us to work on this large canvas. We were always dialoging, even we were doing other pieces together, about Frida and Diego. It allowed me to become a better librettist. It allowed Gabriela to explore her music and her talents as a composer. So I think we were always preparing for this.

At the time of the opera’s world premiere in San Diego, director Lorena Maza told KPBS that as a creative team you asked yourselves “what are Diego and Frida for us now.” Who are they for you today as opposed to maybe who they were before you started this project? 

Oh, they’re still the same for me. I feel enormous amount of love for the two of them. I think Frida and Diego don’t just belong to Mexico, they belong to the world. So for me nothing has changed. If anything it is more the responsibility of exposing them to more people, even though they don’t need that exposure. They were great artists who gave great treasures to the world. For me it was just honoring them, honoring their love for each other, honoring their beliefs in life and what they gave us in terms of their paintings. 

There’s only one true duet between the two of them in the opera. Was that an intentional part of the structure that this moment became so emotional that this was the only time where these two would sing together? 

We thought that politics would bring them together. Especially when they started to look at the world around them. That, in some ways, made them reflect on some of the things that they loved in life. They wanted the universe to change. They wanted things to change in Mexico and all over the world. That, of course, caused us to write a a duet. It’s really the moment in which they almost come close to each other, but somehow they don’t.

Do you think that passion was equal to the passion they had for each other?

I think that passion, their love for each other, art and politics were all intertwined when it came to Frida and Diego.

Tell me about the creation of the characters of Katrina (Ana María Martínez) and Leonardo (Key’mon W. Murrah)?

Katrina is the keeper of the dead. She’s the gatekeeper. She was very helpful to navigate between the two worlds. Then Leonardo, who possesses the male and the female in the way he presents himself in life, I thought would be very interesting to do. He’s an artist luring Frida back to the world. I didn’t think that Frida would come back to the world just because of her passion for Diego. I think it needed to be something more, and it had to do with her passion for art.

It’s a very consuming art form. I think that all artists are this way. It’s not the time that we spend working on our art, but all the time we spend away from it. We’re also thinking about it. For her, because she was such a passionate painter, I think there needed to be another artist to convince her to come back to the world. Of course, Katrina was sort of the antagonist in some ways because we needed an antagonist as well. These were the things that were circling me when I was writing the libretto.

When you started working on this opera you probably didn’t think that the idea of a drag character would become a political statement. But given everything that’s going on in the United States has Leonardo turned out to be a political character? And when something like that happens to a work that you’ve created, where it takes on a different meaning now than you intended, how does that land with you as an artist?

That’s the beauty of art: that it continues to grow throughout time. When we saw it in San Diego and later in San Francisco, I started to see that character in a different light. With everything that’s happened, what was happening, what is still happening, especially since I’m in Florida, I thought, how wonderful that we chose this character that not only has a role to play in this world of Frida and Diego, but also for our modern times as well. Being such a beautiful character, such a generous human being who is passionate about life and the world. Even though he’s probably, or they, I should say, gone through difficult times, there’s still this love for the world.

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine brought the interior and the exterior world of an artist’s life on stage beautifully in Sunday in the Park with George. John Logan did the same thing with Rothko in his play, Red. What are the inherent challenges for any writer who is also an artist to bring both an artist’s exterior and interior worlds to vibrant life on stage?

Sunday in the Park with George was very inspirational for me. If you think about it my source of inspiration’s really the paintings by both Frida and Diego. Usually those who write about artists, especially if you’re writing an opera or you’re writing a book – unless you’re writing a non-fiction book – I think one needs to tap not only into the the biography of the artist, but you also need to tap into your own imagination and your own take of what the role of the artist is in the world. I think art can save and I think art can offer possibilities.

Is it important for you to see yourself in the people that you’re writing about?

I think there’s always something of the personal in my work. There has to be somehow. I think plays are like children. They are pieces that we create, and, of course, they inherit some of our sensibilities. I don’t mind that at all.

There’s a real economy of words in your libretto. Late in the opera Diego sings “To paint is to remember” and Frida responds “To paint is to relieve the hurt.” How would you describe what the act of creation is for you?

I think it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle to find the word. Sometimes writing is about not finding the word, but what you encounter in between your search for the word. So it is a struggle. It’s almost nightmarish sometimes, too, because you ask more of yourself and the piece asks more of you. You don’t want to repeat yourself. And if you repeat yourself, you try to repeat yourself in a different way or with different colors. So I think the art form is very, very demanding. But more than anything, that it’s not to impose yourself on the piece, but to learn from the piece and what the piece is asking of you as an artist. To be in that state of mind and to be open to it.

Main Photo: Daniela Mack and Alfredo Daza in El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego by Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz at LA Opera (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

The post Librettist Nilo Cruz: “Frida and Diego Belong to the World” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Both lead actors play two roles in the show. Act One depicts painter George Seurat’s intense mission to finish his masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. His muse and mistress is Dot. In Act Two, which takes place one hundred years later, a descendant of Seurat’s, also named George, is giving the world premiere of one of his works. Joining him for that premiere is his grandmother, Marie, who claims to be Seurat’s daughter and that her mother is the woman featured prominently at the front of his painting.

This is Alabado’s first time in a Sondheim musical. She’s appeared on Broadway in Mean Girls, American Idiot and American Psycho. On tour she’s also appeared in Spring Awakening and Evita.

Earlier this week I spoke via Zoom with Alabado about the dual roles she’s playing, specific lyrics of Sondheim’s found in the song Move On and about her experiences working with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

As Dot you sing in Move On, “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see.” How does playing this role allow you to see more of yourself as an actor and a singer?

This is my first time, in my 15 years of doing this professionally, of being able to tackle Sondheim. Which didn’t come out of not wanting to, but rather just the way that my career has gone. It just has never taken me in the path of Sondheim.

Also, I am a Mexican Lebanese woman. I think that, in the last five years maybe, this is the first time that we’ve seen different types being cast in these beautiful, huge Sondheim shows that possibly didn’t have that kind of accessibility for somebody like me in the past. So I feel very privileged and honored to be tackling this work. 

I didn’t know Sunday in the Park very well. Every time I sing those lyrics in Move On I learn and find something new in them. I feel like I am changing as an actor, as a singer, as a performer with the incredible messages that Dot is trying to relay to George throughout the piece and the messages that Sondheim and James Lapine are trying to give us as the artists interpreting them. It’s been very moving for me.

When you’re tackling the work of Stephen Sondheim it’s obviously different than tackling Mean Girls. Not to belittle Mean Girls, but they don’t aspire to be the same thing at all.

What’s great about musical theater is we have so many different types of musicals. Sondheim is, as we all know, a complete genius in the art form – possibly the greatest musical theater composer creator that has and will ever have lived and touched all of us with his incredible work. I think tackling this is completely different than tackling Mean Girls.

I did American Idiot and Spring Awakening, all these different types of musicals. There is a density of this material that requires a different piece of you. You have to give yourself to it differently. Also, my brain has to activate in a certain way that takes a lot of focus as an actor as well. Not that I’m not focusing in those other shows, but this is a little bit of a different muscle.

I looked at an interview that your director, Sarna Lapine, gave to The Interval New York in 2017 when this production appeared on Broadway with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. She was talking about the arc of the show as, “The mistress is the muse in Act One and she becomes the teacher in Act Two.” Did you and Sarna have any conversations about that way of looking at these two women that you’re playing?

Not in particular like that. But one of the things that we and Graham have always been in conversation about is what does Dot get from George? What does George learn from Dot? What does Marie teach George act two? What does George teach Marie in turn? How are all of these people still helping each other?

Dot and George have a harder time because they both want different things that Dot knows deep down she can never get from him and he can never get from her. [That’s] why it’s such a heartbreak what ends up happening for George and Dot. Me and Sarna had many conversations about the wisdom which Marie gives to second act George and where that comes from. It comes from the song Children and Art. It’s this idea that all we can do is learn the lessons from the people that we have passed, that have passed through us, that have come through us. 

Do you think that her approach might be different as a woman and that she may have brought different resonance, different tones, different ways of depicting and telling this story?

Yes, absolutely. Sarna saw the original when she was eight years old. She talks about that. She talks about how deeply important this piece is to her, to her family, but really her personally. 

What’s beautiful about reviving shows or trying them in different ways is that the show originally was interpreted so specifically by these two people that created it. The beautiful lesson that we all get to take when we revive or try shows again later on is that this gift was given to us, which is the original interpretation. [That] also involved Bernadette and Mandy. Everything about the original was crafted with this group of people so specifically. Then our job as interpretive artists is to find our way and new ways into it. How is the world different? How are we different? How do we interpret art differently? I can’t wait to see what Sunday in the Park with George interpreted in 2050 would be.

But as a woman with a woman director, which I don’t get to do very often either, we’ve had incredibly deep, wonderful conversations. Me, Sarna and Graham have really been so connected in this process. I think that Sarna, interpreting it through the eyes and lens of a woman, has given us wonderful new ways to see things and try things.

She’s given you new things to see. You get to do things in a new way. You’re living out what Sondheim wrote, aren’t you?

Right because that’s all we can do as artists.

I read an interview that Bernadette Peters gave thirty years after Sunday in the Park with George. She was talking about singing Move On and she said that it, “got to be like meditating. It was so healing and uplifting.” What do you experience when you get to that moment in the show?

The first couple of times we sang it I could not help but sob through it because it’s just cathartic. It’s oddly a release, but it’s a release in the most peaceful way, which is why the song to me is so incredible. The wisdom that is given to us in those lyrics, and that Dot gets to impart on George, is so moving. It’s what all of us desperately need to hear as actors, artists, creators. It’s, I agree, a meditation, a self-healing moment for me personally, for Dot or George, for Graham, for our company, for the audience. And it feels like this big moment of what we all need to hear right now. So I find it to be very healing in that way.

I do want to ask you about one new musical that you did, because I am a massive fan of another genius, a gentleman we used to have on this planet called David Bowie. What was the process like of working on Lazarus with, in and around David Bowie? 

That’s a for a whole other hour of talking. But in short, it was one of the most unexpected, incredible things I’ve ever gotten to do in my life. When I was thinking I was going to do musical theater for a living, did I think I would get to work closely with a legend like that? The whole thing from start to finish was magical and zany and so unexpected and just so cool.

I started my career doing more rock musicals. So I was in that world. But then being able to find this with David and with the creators of Lazarus, with Ivo van Hove the director, what an opportunity and memories that I will never, ever lose because he was such a good person. And he loves musicals, which I didn’t really know about David until we were working on it. He was so grateful that we were all doing it. Everything he wanted was to write a musical and to have it performed. So it was just really important to him and, in turn, important to us.

We recorded the cast album on the day that he died. We didn’t know. It was a very interesting time. I hold it very dear to my heart in many, many ways.

I want to finish up our time by going one last time to Move On because it has my favorite lyric that I think has ever been written. “I chose and my world was shaken, so what. The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”

That’s my favorite lyric of the whole show.

Does that thinking play a part in how you move through your career, in your life, not only during Sunday in the Park with George, but for whatever else comes after that?

If anyone wants to know what it’s like to be an actor it’s that. Everything that we do feels like a little leap of faith. You never know what’s happening. I find that to be why my life is so rich and full of experiences and emotion. I could never be the person I am without having done this.

What we do is complicated. It can be very, very challenging, very hard. And it can also be really complicated to find levity in a business that sometimes can feel really difficult. I think that lesson in itself is why I love what I do so much. You do just have to choose. You have to take a leap.

You maybe made what could be interpreted as the wrong choice. But doing it is what was the right choice. All we can do is just keep going. I think that will always stay with me moving forward after this show, because that’s one of the hardest things I find as an actor is choosing and making choices and not being afraid of that. I think Dot is trying to teach us, and teach George in that moment, that just choosing and going forward is all we can do. We can’t know if it’s right or wrong, but all we can do is do it.

To see the full interview with Krystina Alabado, please go here.

Sunday in the Park with George continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through March 19th.

Main Photo: Krystina Alabado and Graham Phillips in Sunday in the Park with George (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

The post Krystina Alabado Moves on With Dot and Marie appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

13: THE MUSICAL – Netflix – Starts August 12^th

Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Bridges of Madison County) had the world premiere of his musical 13 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2006. The musical tells the story of a Evan Goldman who desperately wants the cool kids at his new school in Indiana to attend his Bar Mitzvah so he can avoid being forever labeled a geek.

Tamara Davis directed this film version that has a script by Robert Horn (Tootsie: The Musical). The cast includes Eli Golden, Gabriella Uhl, Debra Messing and Rhea Perlman.

I saw the musical in 2007 in Los Angeles and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

2:22 – A GHOST STORY – Ahmanson Theatre – Los Angeles – Now – December 4^th

We might as well start Halloween week with this supernatural thriller written by Danny Robins. It’s a simple premise: Jenny (Constance Wu) believes she hears footsteps coming from her baby’s room every morning at 2:22 AM. Her husband Sam (Finn Wittrock) doesn’t believe her. They invite Lauren (Anna Camp) and Ben (Adam Rothenberg) over for dinner and vow to wait up to see whether Jenny or Sam is correct.

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a play if Sam is right, would it? 

2:22 – A Ghost Story earned rave reviews when it opened in London. This production is the first US production of the play. Matthew Dunster directs.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN  – Hudson Theatre – New York City – Now – January 15^th STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Arthur Miller’s classic play features an all-Black Loman family in this production from the Young Vic in London. Wendell Pierce (The Wire; Clemency) stars as Willy with Tony Award nominee Sharon D. Clarke (Caroline, or Change) as Linda. Khris Davis and McKinley Belcher III play sons Biff and Happy with Tony Award-winner André De Sheilds (Hadestown) as Willy’s brother Ben.

Miranda Cromwell, who co-directed the UK productions with Marianne Elliott, directs.

Ben Brantley, in his opening sentence of his New York Times review of the London production said, “The tired old man has had an unexpected transfusion. And he has seldom seemed more alive – or more doomed.” In other words, attention must be paid.

This is the most emotional production of Death of a Salesman we’ve ever seen.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

EVERYTHING FOR DAWN – All Arts – Now Available

Fifteen different composers and/or librettist have combined forces to create this 10-part opera mini-series. Dawn is a teenager dealing with the aftermath of her artist father’s suicide. Set in Detroit, the first three episodes take place in 1997 when Dawn her mother find a box of paintings. Episodes 4-7 go back two years prior and depict the father in a mental health facility. Episodes 8-10 take place in 2001 as Dawn’s father becomes widely acknowledge as a master of outsider art.

Clarice Assad, Jason Cady, Adrienne Danrich, Lauren D’Errico, Melissa Dunphy, Miguel Frasconi, Paul Kerekes, Pauline Kim Harris, Phil Kline, Krista Knight, Jerry Lieblich, Jerome A. Parker Kamala Sankaram, Aaron Siegel and Matthew Welch are the composers and lyricists.

Episodes 1-6 are already available. Episodes 7-8 get released on October 28^th and the final two episodes will be released on November 4^th.

There is no charge to watch Everything for Dawn which can be found on the ALL ARTS app or at AllArts.org. here.

INTO THE WOODS – St. James Theatre – New York City – Now – January 8^th STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

This often-produced musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine was such a hit at New York City Center’s Encores series that it was inevitable the show would transfer to Broadway…and it has and the reviews and ticket sales are proof that was a great idea.

If you don’t know the musical, multiple fairytales are all taking place in the same forest at the same time. We’re big fans of Act II where not everything is as happy as it first seems. Most people love the first act and don’t know what could happen in that second act. Ah…the surprise!

Lear deBessonet directs. The current cast includes Stephanie J. Block as the Baker’s Wife, Gavin Creel as Cinderella’s Price and the Wolf, Brian D’Arcy James as the Baker, Andy Karl as Rapunzel’s Prince (Joshua Henry returns to the role beginning November 24^th), Patina Miller as the Witch on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with Montego Glover performing the role on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday and Krysta Rodriguez as Cinderella (Denée Benton takes over the role beginning on November 21^st.

Katy Geraghty practically steals the show as Little Red Riding Hood and Kennedy Kanagawa gives enormous life to the Milky White puppet.

Tony Award-winner Joaquina Kalukango (Paradise Square) will take over the role of The Witch beginning December 16th and remain with the show for the rest of the run.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

KIMBERLY AKIMBO – The Booth Theatre – New York City – Opening November 10^th

When this musical by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori opened at the Atlantic Theater in December of last year, critics and audiences recognized immediately this was something special. 

Based on the play of the same name by Lindsay-Abaire, it tells the story of Kimberly Levaco  (Victoria Clark – Tony Award winner for The Light in the Piazzai) who is aging far faster than she is growing old. She seems to be north of sixty, but still is in high school.

As Jesse Green said in his New York Times review, “Kimberly Akimbo is realdy the rare example of a good play that has become an even better musical.”

Kimberly Akimbo will definitely be a priority on our next trip to New York City.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS – Westside Theatre Upstairs – New York City – Now running STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken’s delightful musical about a man-eating plant gets the perfect revival in this production directed by Michael Mayer.

Currently starring as Seymour is Tony Award-winner Matt Doyle (Company). He just replaced Rob McClure who finished his run on November 13th. Lena Hall, Tony Award-winner for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, stars as Audrey. Andrew Call is her abusive boyfriend Oren Scrivello; Brad Oscar is Mushnik and Aaron Arnell Harrington is the voice of Audrey II.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable production. As Audrey, Hall has created a woman who isn’t as fragile as is traditionally depicted. She’s a tough-as-nails survivor with a vulnerable streak that is heartbreaking. We saw McClure in the show and thought he was perfect. Doyle will certainly put his own spin on the nebbish young man who provides sweet understanding. After all, Seymour IS Audrey’s man. But don’t feed the plants!

For tickets and more information, please go here.

A STRANGE LOOP – Lyceum Theatre, New York – Now – January 15^th  STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

The 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical and the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Michael R. Jackson’s musical A Strange Loop. It’s an aptly named meta-musical about a gay Black man who’s writing a musical about a gay Black man who is writing a musical about…You get the picture.  

Stephen Brackett directs A Strange Loop. The ensemble features Antwayn Hopper, L Morgan Lee, John-Michael Lyles, James Jackson, Jr., John-Andrew Morrison, Jaquel Spivey and Jason Veasey.

This is a wholly original musical that challenges everything we imagine a Broadway musical to be. Jackson does it in all the best possible ways.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

DANIIL TRIFONOV RECITAL – Multiple Venues – November 10^th – December 7^th

Pianist Trifonov performs a solo piano recital featuring works by Tchaikovsky (Children’s Album); Robert Schumann (Fantasy in C Major); Mozart (Fantasia in C Minor), Ravel (Gaspard de la nuit) and Scriabin (Piano Sonata No. 5).

He’ll be at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto on December 2^nd; Shriver Hall in Baltimore on December 4^th  and Carnegie Hall in New York on December 7^th.

For tickets and more details, please click on each venue’s name.

Main Photo: Joshua Henry and Gavin Creel in Into the Woods (Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

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Life is a roller-coaster of a ride. Just ask Bobby Conte. The actor/singer has appeared on Broadway in A Bronx Tale where his mentor and friend was Nick Cordero, the actor who passed away due to COVID in 2020. He recently appeared in the revival of the musical Company as P.J. That musical was written by Stephen Sondheim who passed away a week after the first preview once the show was able to return after Broadway started to re-emerge from the pandemic.

Conte is not one to sit around waiting for something to do. In 2020 he released a solo album entitled Along the Way. It’s a mix of Broadway, pop and standards that was born out of a cabaret act he started writing in 2015 and had started performing.

On August 15th, Conte will be performing a revised version of his original cabaret show at Birdland in New York. Those revisions reflecting the incredibles highs and lows he’s been experiencing. But through it all he’s taken everything in stride and maintained a tremendous sense of gratitude. As you’ll see in this interview.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation earlier this week that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

The album came out two years ago. How has your personal journey mirrored or diverged from the one you sing about on the record in the two years since its release? 

It’s a great question. The more time that goes on I’m able to look at it more with a bit more perspective. The context of the show and of the album is that it’s charting three specific relationships in my life. The dynamic of one of those relationships has significantly changed since the pandemic. So in re-writing the show a bit for Birdland, I had to do some editing to see how that relationship has evolved.

One of the songs has changed: in the place of Love to Me [from The Light in the Piazza] I’m now putting in What Can You Lose? from Dick Tracy that Stephen Sondheim wrote. For a very practical reason, it’s important when I tour this show to have a song from A Bronx Tale and I have a song from Company. 

Really, the big thing is that Nick had died. Nick left before I was ready to say goodbye to him. It’s all very odd. It’s a little overwhelming to think about every now and then when the reality hits. So that’s how the show is a bit evolved and changed over the past two years.

Do you feel like you’ve been confronted with a lot of this a lot sooner than you thought you would be?

I start this show by singing Blame It on My Youth to try to acknowledge to the audience right away that I’m aware that I know nothing in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t make my feelings and my experiences insignificant, but there’s a lot more life to live. You can move on to the next chapter with that sort of sigh of relief in your breath to say there’s so much more awaiting you. 

Within this album there’s a song from Pasek and Paul’s song cycle Edges. There are also songs from Anyone Can Whistle, The Light in the Piazza, the aborted Honeymooners musical and also She Loves Me. Does the selection of those songs not only give us an idea of your perspective of relationships, but also the kind of shows or perhaps the specific shows you would like to do in the future? 

The list I have of dream roles is endless. So yes, those are some. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Because I’m such a nerd with this there would be an endless number of them that I’ve read and I fall in love with over the years that I would love to do. It’s more that the lyrics of those songs served a specific function in a story I wanted to tell.

I also love digging into these composers now that we know so well and really have hit the zeitgeist. They’re really figuring out who they were when they were trying to figure themselves out in a way. The show very much is about a young person trying to figure out who he is as he’s entering a more adult world. So it seemed to have just fit better in that context. But yes, you’re not wrong and, digging deeper into it, maybe this show is a bit of the musical interests that I have.

What have you learned yourself about yourself as a performer during the multi-year journey of Company? 

I’ve learned that I have totally given over to the Marianne Elliott mindset of what theater is supposed to do. When you are dealing with entities that are so beloved and have been held on a pedestal by many people for so long, your way to honor that legacy, and that the annals of history that you’re now entering, is to do an unapologetic, unabashed take that’s in service of the writer and in service of the original intention of those people, but make it palatable and accessible for an audience who has never seen the show before or perhaps have never been to the theater before.

If we don’t engage that kind of audience, then our art form is going to die on the vine. So I’ve stepped more away from my sort of purist mindset in the musical theater and that’s what I learned.

Your answer reminds me of the lyric from Move On in Sunday in the Park with George. “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.” That’s a lesson we can all learn. I think that whole song is a masterclass in lessons we can learn. 

I think there was some interview years ago [with] James Lapine [bookwriter and director of Sunday in the Park with George original production] and it was when the revival had come back that used all that computer digital animation [2008]. They were looking back at the lyrics and I think James said, “It’s like we wrote ourselves a message in a bottle.” It’s this thing that we can always come back to when you’re in the pits of despair or in writer’s block or just not figuring out what’s the point of doing anything in the first place. Do I have anything of value to even put out in the world? Especially when you could think it doesn’t matter what we put out into the world because we’re so insignificant.

Have you have you seen these amazing pictures that NASA came out with a couple of weeks ago? If that doesn’t give you perspective or make you feel so meaningless, I don’t know what does. But yet it’s our job to find meaning in whatever our actions are, even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter or as I would say in A Bronx Tale all the time, “like nobody cares.” But just because nobody cares, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to find meaning and purpose in what you do in your daily life or else you’re just wandering aimlessly.

Earlier this year I had the privilege of having a conversation with Matt Doyle about his experiences in Company and he told me that Sondheim was around a lot for rehearsals. Can you tell me about your experiences with him? 

So the first time he came in we were running You Could Drive a Person Crazy. We were figuring out what those ad libs were before Manu [Narayan – “Theo”] starts singing “When a person’s personality is personable.” They used to be very explicit. They used to be very biting and it was a little intense and overwhelming. So we didn’t pick them up, but we made it more palatable language.

I remember just in the moment going, “What are you so afraid of” and then going back and doing the fun choreography. That made him burst into laughter, which I will always remember.

He came to the first preview and then held court at the back of the theater for a couple hours. More times than not I’m a pretty private person. When I’m around people that I respect so much and intimidate me, in some ways your job, I’ve learned, is to shut your mouth and open your ears. I was just listening as intently as I could. There were definitely questions I wanted to ask. But I thought I’ll see him at opening or I’ll see him in other contexts, it’ll be fine. Then sadly he passed a week later. So it’s not too dissimilar to Nick. It’s continuous examples of when you are fortunate enough to have the people you love around you, you should make as full a memory and as full an experience as you can with these individuals while they’re still here. 

So what would you have asked him? 

Well the rumor, I think even Matt had told me back during the pre-pandemic, was that PJ and Theo were names of ex-boyfriends of Steve’s and that’s where they got the names for these boyfriends. So I wanted to go up to him and say, “Can you tell me who P.J. was?” 

You were on quite an emotional whirlwind with this show: not being able to open on Sondheim’s 90 birthday, having the pandemic happen, re-opening, Sondheim passing. I guess the bright spot was that you got to perform the show and then the acknowledgment Company received at the Tony Awards. Given how emotional this whole experience had to have been for you, to use one of the songs from from your album, does time heal everything?

Absolutely it does. I’ve always viewed that song in the context of relationships, but I have no doubt it can relate to the context of being in a workplace. But I don’t know, man. There are undeniably some sorry and grateful aspects to the whole experience. That was many of our favorite songs backstage that we would hear every night. But I’m a person that, just to find some sort of sanity in a world that has no control; when you and I have to exist in the art, entertainment, artistic world, where if wanted control of our lives, we’d go be accountants elsewhere, I know I need to choose gratitude when the pendulum swings at the end of the day – even in these hard situations. 

We were one of the shows that got to come back after this pandemic. We had many colleagues for whom that was not the case. Even though Steve died, he got to see our show as the last piece that he had written on Broadway in this new context. He adored it and was lauding it and wanted his work to be seen in an ephemeral, malleable context, because that’s what theater is in many ways. What a blessing that is that then I got to work with the dream team of theater monsters and the American musical theater for even for these nine months, even if it was over the span of three years. I choose to look at it in that way.

In a 2017 Stephen Sondheim interview that Lin-Manuel Miranda did, Sondheim said, “It stimulates you to do things you haven’t done before. The whole thing is if you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says, and that’s death.” Once this Birdland show is over and behind you and with Company behind you, what would you like to do that you haven’t done before? 

There’s an endless number of things. But what I’ve learned a bit more – and I’ve been now in the city for up to eight years soon – is to give in to the unknown. To give in to the silence or the quiet space or the hesitancy is a good thing because Company, A Bronx Tale, funnily enough, came from that space. I was leading a full creative daily life. That’s what I try to do every day – find things within my control to service that and the instinct within me.

The easiest way to do that is to make material of your own, to build a show like I’m doing at Birdland. Then I’ll tour across the country. That’s the easiest way to fulfill that because I’m not reliant on other people giving me that opportunity. But when these opportunities like A Bronx Tale and Company fall in your lap, it’s because I have wonderful people that work for me to get me in those doors. But it’s serendipity, it’s luck, it’s total happenstance or law of attraction or whatever you want to say. My job is just to meet that with diligence, non-complacent hard work. So all I do is continue putting in that hard work and then seeing what serendipitous things happen to land in my lap. 

Bobby Conte will be taking his show around the country. We will update you when dates are announced.

To see our interview with Bobby Conte, please go here.

Main Photo: Bobby Conte (Courtesy of the Artist)

The post Along the Way Bobby Conte Is Living A Lot appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

MUSICALS:

AMERICAN PROPHET – Arena Stage – Washington, D.C. – July 15^th – August 28^th

The writings and speeches of abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass serve as the inspiration for this new musical from composer/lyricist Marcus Hummon and director/creator Charles Randolph-Wright.

This show was a recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Awards prior to this world premiere.  Cornelius Smith Jr. stars as Frederick Douglass with Kristolyn Lloyd (original Broadway cast of Dear Evan Hansen) as his wife, Anna.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

BETWEEN THE LINES – 2ndStage – New York – June 14^th – October 2^nd

This musical is based on the young adult novel by  Jodi Picoult (Wish You Were Here) and her daughter, Samantha van Leer, from 2013. The story surrounds, Delilah, a young girl infatuated with Prince Oliver in a book she loves. Her world and his in the novel come together when he starts speaking to her.

Timothy Allen McDonald collaborated with Picoult and van Leer to write the book. Kate Anderson and Elyssa Samsel wrote the the music and lyrics. Jeff Calhoun (Newsies) directs with choreography by Paul McGill (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

For tickets and more information, please go here.

FUNNY GIRL – August Wilson Theatre, New York – Open-ended run

When this musical opened this spring on Broadway it was the fact that it had been 58 years since the musical Funny Girl opened on Broadway and turned Barbra Streisand into one of the world’s greatest stars. Then came the whirlwind of controversy about whether Beanie Feldstein was miscast in the role.

She is no longer in the musical. Her understudy, Julie Benko, will be taking over the role until Lea Michele (Glee) assumes the role of Fanny Brice on September 6^th. 

Enter Beanie Feldstein who is tackling the role of Fanny Brice. Like Streisand, Feldstein has only played a supporting role in one musical before this one (Hello, Dolly!). Joining her are Ramin Karimloo as love-interest Nick Arnstein and Jane Lynch as Mrs. Brice (through September 4^th). Tovah Feldshuh will assume the role on September 6^th.  Jared Grimes, the sol recipient of a Tony nomination for this production, dazzles in the role of Eddie Ryan.Michael Mayer directs the show which has a revised script by Harvey Fierstein.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

INTO THE WOODS – St. James Theatre – New York – Now – October 16th

This often-produced musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine was such a hit at New York City Center’s Encores series that it was inevitable the show would transfer to Broadway…and it has and the reviews and ticket sales are proof that was a great idea.

If you don’t know the musical, multiple fairytales are all taking place in the same forest at the same time. We’re big fans of Act II where not everything is as happy as it first seems. (Our favorite act is the second act.)

Lear deBessonet directs an all-star cast including Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife, Gavin Creel as Cinderella’s Price and the Wolf, Joshua Henry as Rapunzel’s Prince , Brian D’Arcy James as the Baker, Patina Miller as the Witch and Phillipa Soo as Cinderella.

The recent announcement of an extension means there will be some cast changes that have yet to be announced.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

MJ THE MUSICAL – Neil Simon Theatre, New York – Open-ended run

It was, of course, inevitable that there would be a jukebox musical showcasing the countless hit songs by Michael Jackson. What may set this musical apart from failed attempts to use songs by The Beach Boys, Cher John Lennon and more is that the book is by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and the show is directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon.

Myles Frost makes his Broadway debut as MJ and was the recipient of a Tony Award for his performance. The show also won Tony Awards for Lighting and Sound Design. The other Tony Award recipient was Wheeldon for his choreography. (Kudos to the outstanding company of dancers that perform this show.) 

We’ve seen the show and while it does gloss over much of the controversy that surrounded Jackson, it is wildly entertaining. Based on the audience response, this show is likely to run for a very long time.

For tickets and more details, please go here.

MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL – Al Hirschfeld Theatre, New York/Touring Company: Currently at The Pantages Theatre, Hollywood – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Why turn Baz Luhrmann’s ground-breaking film into a musical? Because you can can can. It might seem impossible to out-Baz Baz, but director Alex Timbres has done exactly that. This is bigger, louder, more song-filled than Luhrmann’s film. Surprisingly it loses nothing in translation.

The musical won 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The Broadway production currently stars Ashley Loren as Satine and Derek Klena as Christian. The touring company stars Courtney Reed and Conor Ryan (with Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer as an alternate in the role of Satine).

For tickets and more information on Broadway, please go here. For touring dates, tickets and more information, please go here.

A STRANGE LOOP – Lyceum Theatre, New York – Open-ended run STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

The 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical and the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Michael R. Jackson’s musical A Strange Loop. It’s an aptly named meta-musical about a gay Black man who’s writing a musical about a gay Black man who is writing a musical about…You get the picture.  

Stephen Brackett directs A Strange Loop. The ensemble features Antwayn Hopper, L Morgan Lee, John-Mihael Lyles, James Jackson, Jr., John-Andrew Morrison, Jaquel Spivey and Jason Veasey.

This is a wholly original musical that challenges everything we imagine a Broadway musical to be. Jackson does it in all the best possible ways.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

OPERA:

SANTA FE OPERA – Now – August 27^th

Isabel Leonard as Carmen; Mitchell Harper choreographing The Barber of Seville; Quinn Kelsey as Falstaff; the first-ever Santa Fe Opera production of Tristan Und Isolde and the world premiere on Saturday of M. Butterfly by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang are all good reasons to attend this year’s season at Santa Fe Opera.

If you’ve never been, you owe it to yourself to experience this amazing venue. And be prepared to tailgate!

For tickets and more information, please go here.

PLAYS:

HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES – La Jolla Playhouse – La Jolla, CA – July 26^th – August 21^st

Anytime Moisés Kaufmann and Tectonic Theater Project have a world premiere, it’s a reason to go to the theatre. They’re the team behind The Laramie Project Cycle, The Tallest Tree in The Forest, I Am My Own Wife and more.

This new play is an investigation into the Hoecker Album of photographs from Germany during World War II.  They are named after Karl-Friedrich Hoecker who was an SS officer for the Nazis. Most of the photographs were taken in the summer and fall of 1944.

As the webpage for this production asks, “What hidden secrets can a photograph reveal?” Kaufmann (who co-directs with Amanda Gronich) and Tectonic Theater Project will make it mesmerizing.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

ORESTEIA and HAMLET – Park Avenue Armory – New York – Now – August 13^th

Director Robert Icke received an Olivier Award as Best Director for Oresteia, an adaptation of the three Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus. The show was a critical and commercial success in London.

Equally acclaimed was his production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at The Almeida Theatre in London. Alex Lawther stars as the conflicted prince. 

Both shows appear in repertory. For tickets and more information for Orestia, please go here. For tickets and more information for Hamlet, please go here.

PRIMA FACIE – National Theatre Live – Beginning July 21^st (check local listings)

Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) stars in this play by Suzie Miller as a young lawyer whose main clients have been men accused of sexual assault. Her perspective on what she’s doing gets challenged when she gets assaulted herself.

It’s a powerful role for Comer and she is considered a front-runner for the Olivier Award next year. She’ll also potentially be up for a Tony nomination as the play is scheduled to open in New York in the 2022-2023 season. So, too, might director Justin Martin.

But you can watch the play in a theater near you as it is part of National Theatre Live’s programming. To locate a theater near you and to get tickets, please go here.

For our weekly Best Bets, please check every Monday for that week’s selections.

Main Photo: Conor Ryan and Courtney Reed in Moulin Rouge The Musical Touring Production (Photo by Matthew Murphy/Courtesy Broadway in Hollywood)

The post Best Bets Still Available: August 2022 appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

As they sing in the second act of this stunning musical, “Art isn’t easy. Every minor details is a major decision.” All the details and decisions that led to the creation of Sunday in the Park with George are revealed in Lapine’s new book, Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created “Sunday in the Park with George.“

To celebrate the release of the book, Christine Baranski will moderate an online conversation with Lapine, Sondheim and the musical’s two stars Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. The event is being presented by The Town Hall and takes place on Tuesday, August 3rd at 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT.

If you’re wondering why Baranski is involved, she appeared in the off-Broadway production of the musical in the roles of Clarisse and Blair Daniels.

Trivia note: Kelsey Grammer and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio also appeared in that production but did not participate during its Broadway run.

I saw the original production, but just after Patinkin and Peters had left the show. (Though the show was filmed and their performances have been captured in all their splendor for generations to view.) The leads when I saw it were Harry Groener and Maryann Plunkett. I also saw the 2008 revival at Studio 54 and found it even more moving and emotional than I did during the original production.

For any Sondheim fan, this is essential viewing. I strongly recommend it.

There are two ticket prices to watch this conversation. A $45 ticket allows US residents to see the show and get a copy of the book. A $25 tickets allows anyone to stream the event without receiving the book. Foreign residents can get both the streaming event and the book for $60. Ticket can be purchased here.

The post Sunday in the Park with James and Steve appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

What’s on tap for the Best Bets at Home: June 26th – June 28th?

Broadway fans will have a musical, a diva in concert and an all-star special concert. Fans of theatre will have Shakespeare, Molière (with a Broadway star), a reading of a sequel to a classic play (also featuring Broadway stars) and more. Opera fans have a second production of a Massenet opera available to them just this week and a celebration of opera choruses. Jazz fans have two options with many of the genre’s biggest names performing. Classical music fans have a Carnegie Hall concert by one of our greatest living composers and also the farewell to a legendary conductor.

What will you choose?

Here are the Best Bets at Home: June 26th – June 28th

Falsettos – Lincoln Center at Home on Broadway HD – Now – June 27th at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

The 2016 Broadway production of James Lapine and William Finn’s musical Falsettos is available for streaming through Saturday, June 27th. The presentation of this Tony Award-nominated production is part of Lincoln Center at Home in collaboration with Broadway HD.

Lapine and Finn paired two one-act Off-Broadway musicals they created (1981’s March of the Falsettos and 1990’s Falsettoland) to make the full length musical Falsettos.

Christian Borle plays Marvin. He and his wife, Trina (Stephanie J. Block), are preparing their son, Jason (Anthony Rosenthal) for his Bar Mitzvah. Marvin has recently left Trina for Whizzer (Andrew Rannells) which complicates more than just their marriage. Trina is seeing a therapist, Mendel (Brandon Uranowitz) and her therapist is falling in love with his patient.

It sounds complicated and perhaps it is. But Lapine and Finn have created a musical that is both funny and heartbreaking, romantic and sad. They’ve also created one hell of a show that feels just as topical today as when it was first created.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – National Theatre Live – Now – July 2nd

First let me tell you this is definitely not a traditional production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This 2019 Nicholas Hytner production finds most of the audience walking around the theatre as the play takes place.

The Bridge Theatre, where this production was staged, has high ceilings and a unique structure that allows for this immersive version of Midsummer. Critics talked about Cirque du Soleil-style elements, some queering up of the story and they all raved about how this possibly over-produced play has, with this production, entered the 21st century.

Maybe not being a traditional production is going to be not just a good thing, but a great thing with this A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Philip Glass Ensemble: Music with Changing Parts – Medici.tv – June 26th – June 28th

This weekend’s free Carnegie Hall concert available on Medici.tv features a 2018 performance by composer Philip Glass with his ensemble. The concert is complete performance of his 1970 work Music With Changing Parts.

For quite some time this was not amongst Glass’s best-known works. It was independently released on vinyl and went out of print in the late 1970s. It was remastered and released on CD in 1994. It’s a work that greatly influenced Brian Eno and David Bowie who saw the Philip Glass Ensemble perform it in Europe in the 1970s.

Michael Riesman is the conductor for this performance. Joining Glass and the Ensemble are the San Francisco Girls Chorus (Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Conductor) and students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Watching the concert is free, but it does require signing in with Medici.tv.

Wayne Shorter Celebration Part 2 – SF Jazz Friday’s at Five – June 26th 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

On May 22nd SF Jazz streamed the first part of their Wayne Shorter Celebration featuring Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin and Shorter’s touring musicians pianist Danilo Pérez, bass player John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. This was one of the concerts that replaced Shorter’s scheduled shows that he had to miss due to health issues.

For part two of this celebration the special guests are Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard. Once again, Pérez, Patitucci and Blade also perform.

Friday’s At Five does require you sign up in advance. You can join for one month for $5 or for an entire year for $60. Membership allows you to watch all Friday’s at Five programs. Upcoming performances will include Allen Touissant, John Scofield, Cécile McLorin Salvant and two more celebrations of Wayne Shorter (with guests Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman and Ambrose Akinmusire.)

The Men From the Boys – Playbill Pride Plays – June 26th – 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

As part of their programming celebrating Gay Pride, Playbill will live stream a reading of Mart Crowley’s The Men from the Boys. This is a 2002 sequel to Crowley’s best-known play, The Boys in the Band. Many of the characters from the first play appear in this sequel and new characters are also introduced.

Performing this reading will be Denis O’Hare as Michael, Rick Elice as Donald, Mario Cantone as Emory, Joseph James O’Neil as Hank, Kevyn Morrow as Bernard, and Lou Liberatore as Harold. For the new characters Carson McCalley plays Scott, Charlie Carver plays Jason and Telly Leung plays Rick.

Directing The Men From the Boys is Zachary Quinto who appeared in the 2019 Broadway production of The Boys in the Band.

Crowley passed away earlier this year.

Playing Through Changes – Jazz House Kids – June 26th – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

New Jersey-based Jazz House Kids offers education and performances for children ages 8 to 18. Like many organizations this year their plans of a big gala were thwarted by the pandemic. So they took their efforts online in a mix of live performances and classic footage. This is a re-streaming of last week’s event.

Lester Holt of NBC News hosts the program.

The performers included in this 2 hour and 15 minute show are Dianne Reeves, David Sanborn, Eddie Palmieri, Diana Krall, Ingrid Jensen, Wynton Marsalis, Andra Day, Chick Corea, Bill Charlap Trio, Ravi Coltrane, Dee Dee Bridgewater, José James, The Christian McBride Big Band featuring Melissa Walker and the late Al Jarreau and George Duke.

McBride and Walker will do a live introduction to this week’s streaming of Playing Through Changes.  

We’ve provided a link in the title that goes to the Jazz House Kids webpage. It will also be available for viewing on their Facebook page and YouTube Channel

Gloria: A Life – PBS Great Performances – June 27th (Check Local Listings)

Christine Lahti stars in Emily Mann’s play as women’s rights leader Gloria Steinem. Lahti is joined by an all-female cast playing the non-Steinem characters. Gloria: A Life is directed by Diane Paulus.

Reviews for the play itself were mixed. The last 20 minutes of the production, which feature a talking circle, regularly got singled out for how powerful they were. Since Steinem is included in this film, it is probably a safe assumption that she will be part of this part of the performance..

Manon – San Francisco Opera – June 27th – June 28th

This week’s offering from San Francisco Opera is their 2017 production of Jules Massenet’s Manon. This was a co-production with Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Israeli Opera.

We’ve written previously about the creation of Manon and its storyline. Rather than recap it again, you can find it here.

For this production Ellie Dehn sings the role of Manon and Michael Fabiano sings the role of Chevalier des Grieux. Both singers were making their role debuts in this production, which was directed by Vincent Boussard. Patrick Fournillier is the conductor.

Tartuffe On Line – Molière in the Park – June 27th – 2:00 PM EDT/11:00 AM PDT and 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Who knew Molière would be so topical in 2020. If you don’t know the premise of Tartuffe, here’s a quick preview:

Tartuffe believes himself to be a righteous man, but he is ultimately a thief. His favorite accessory is his bible which he has at the ready whenever its mere presence can be helpful to him.

Oronte longs for his days of having power. But his power is quickly disappearing. He is now old, rudderless and hopelessly naive.

Imagine what happens when these two meet up. This is truly a satire that mirrors our times.

Raúl Esparza and Samira Wiley had the cast that also includes Kaliswa Brewster, Naomi Lorrain, Jared McNeill, Jennifer Mudge, Rosemary Prinz, Carter Redwood. Lucie Tiberghien directs and the translation is by Richard Wilbur.

The performance will remain available online through July 12th. This event is free, but does require registration here.

Lea Salonga with Seth Rudetsky – June 28th – 9:00 AM EDT/6:00 AM PDT (second showing 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT)

Lea Salonga probably needs no introduction. She is this week’s guest performer in Seth Rudetsky’s concert series. The concert will be live for the first showing and that performance will be streamed later in the day (at a better hour for most people.

If you want a reminder, she is the Tony Award-winning actress who originated the role of Kim in Miss Saigon. She has also appeared on Broadway in Les Misérables, Flower Drum Song, Allegiance and Once on This Island.

This is not a free event. Tickets are required and they are $25.

Great Opera Choruses – LA Opera at Home – June 28th – 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT

Every year the LA Opera Chorus performs a concert celebrating Great Opera Choruses. This year’s event was scheduled at The Soraya in Northridge (where the concert had taken place for four years), but was cancelled due to the pandemic. Rather than give up on their annual tradition, LA Opera is performing a virtual concert in collaboration with The Soraya.

Grant Gershon, Resident Conductor of the LA Opera Orchestra, will be joined by Assistant Chorus Master Jeremy Frank who will serve as accompanist and music supervisor.

The program is slated to include three famous choruses from popular works. The concert will culminate with a performance of the Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The audience will be encouraged to sing along (and bang things). The virtual concert will provide lyrics on screen.

MTT25: An Online Tribute to Michael Tilson Thomas – San Francisco Symphony Facebook Page – June 28th – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

Conductor, pianist and composer Michael Tilson Thomas ends his 25-year tenure with the San Francisco Symphony not quite as anyone imagined. But that won’t stop the orchestra from celebrating him.

Sunday finds an on-line tribute to Tilson Thomas hosted by Audra McDonald and Susan Graham.

Joining them for this tribute will be Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Julia Bullock, Measha Brueggergosman, Bonnie Raitt, Lars Ulrich, and more. They will all share their own memories of working with MTT and there will also be performances.

MTT has long been a personal inspiration for me. I was too young to have been around to watch Leonard Bernstein on television. When I was growing up MTT offered his own perspectives on classical music for me to enjoy. Not only were they informative, they instilled in me a passion that helped guide me through tedious piano practices, lessons and recitals.

His passion for certain composers also inspires me. One of my all-time favorite recordings is MTT leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an amazing concert with Sarah Vaughan called Gershwin Live! Seeing him lead the same orchestra in 2018 in a performance of Charles Ives’s A Symphony: New England Holidays is one of my favorite concerts.

Playbill Pride Spectacular – Playbill Pride Plays – June 28th – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

Playbill closes out their Pride celebrations with an all-star concert on Sunday featuring some of Broadway’s best-known performers.

How’s this for a line-up: Jelani Alladin, Alexandra Billings, Billy Bustamante, Jean Colella, DeMarius Copes, Wilson Cruz, Robin De Jesús, Lea Delaria, Brandon Victor Dixon, Eden Espinosa, Niani Feelings, Harvey Fierstein, Gaby Gamache, Matt Gould, Curtis Holland, Cheyenne Jackson, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson, Francis Jue, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Caitlin Kinnunen, L. Morgan Lee, Raymond J. Lee, Matthew Lopez, Cheech Manohar, Griffin Matthews, Anastacia McCleskey, Michael McElroy, John McGinty, Chris Medlin, Ezra Menas, Paul HeeSang Miller, John Cameron Mitchell, Mary Kate Morrissey, Javier Muñoz, Alan Muraoka, Shakina Nayfack, Ariana Notartomaso, Diana Oh, Ken Page, Clint Ramos, Lee Roy Reams, Matt Rodin, Jai Rodriguez, Mj Rodriguez, Mars Rucker, Sushma Saha, George Salazar, Miriam Shor, Jason Tam, John Tartaglia, Sonya Tayeh, Sergio Trujillo, Vishal Vaidya, BD Wong, Iain Young, and Brittany Zeinstra.

John McDaniel serves as Music Director. The concert will showcase songs from musicals with LGBTQ stories. Playbill Pride Spectacular is free to watch, but will serves as a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

That’s a wrap on this weekend’s Best Bets at Home: June 26th – June 28th. Enjoy yourselves!

Main Photo: The company of Falsettos (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Update: This post has been updated to include the extension to July 12th of the ability to view Tartuffe Online

The post Culture Best Bets at Home: June 26th – June 28th – UPDATED appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

To acknowledge Juneteenth, the Metropolitan Opera shifted their scheduled operas a little bit. La Forza del Destino, starring Leontyne Price from the 1983-1984 season, has added a second day of showings and is available through Saturday, June 20th at 6:30 PM EDT/3:30 PDT. This pushes the two Philip Glass operas, Akhnaten and Satyagraha one day each. Akhnaten now begins streaming on Saturday and Satyagraha will begin streaming on Sunday. The previously announced production of La Traviata will start Week 15 at the Met.

Here are your Culture Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st.

Live with Carnegie Hall: Juneteenth Celebration – June 19th – Carnegie Hall Website – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT

Carnegie Hall celebrates Juneteenth with a program that combines music and commentary. Rev. Dr. James A Forbes Jr. will be front and center for this event that will features performances by pianist Joseph Joubert and the Juneteenth Mass Choir. There will be speeches by Bill Moyers and Bishop Michael Curry. Comments from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis and Carnegie Hall’s Chairman, Robert F. Smith, will also be part of the program.

Small Island – National Theatre Live – Now – June 25th

British author Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel, Small Island, was the inspiration for this 2019 National Theatre production. The play was written by Helen Edmundson and, like Levy’s novel, earned raved reviews.

The setting is the second World War and culminates in 1948. Two women are at the center of the story: Hortense (Leah Harvey), a Jamaican immigrant who believes a life in England will be far superior to the one she leaves behind and Queenie (Aisling Loftus), a woman of great generosity and kindness who allows servicemen to use her home while her husband is off at war. Between the two is Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jr.), Hortense’s husband who wants to become a lawyer.

The struggle of Jamaican immigrants to England is ultimately what’s at stake in the play.

Rufus Norris directed this production which features a company of 40 actors. Critics talked about Small Island as being one of the most important plays in the history of the National Theatre.

It should be noted that the website for this NT Live presentation does come with the following warning: “As part of depicting the experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, at times characters in the play use language which is racially offensive.”

Dance Theatre of Harlem: Vessels – June 19th – June 21st – DTH’s YouTube Channel

This is a 2014 work choreographed by Darrell Grand Moultrie set to the music of Ezio Bosso. Vessels has regularly been a part of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s touring program.

Moutrie’s work is divided into four sections: Light, Belief, Love and Abundance.

Light features dancers Chyrstyn Fentroy, Jenelle Figgins, Ingrid Silva, Nayara Lopes, Alison Stroming, Fredrick Davis, Da’ Von Doane, Dylan Santos, Anthony Savoy and Samuel Wilson. Belief features Figgins, Silva, Lopes and Stroming. Love showcases Fentroy and Davis and the whole company performs Abundance.

Vessels is important to the company. Earlier this year they created a social-distanced interpretation of Moultrie’s works and its themes in celebration of composer Bosso who passed away in May.

YES! Reflections of Molly Bloom – Irish Repertory Theatre – June 19th and June 20th

Aedín Moloney stars is this one-woman show inspired by James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.

Set in Ireland in 1904, Molly struggles to find meaning in her life after her children are gone, her marriage has lost its luster and the affair she was having ran its course. She doesn’t fully know what she wants, but she knows this isn’t it. With a true Irish sense of both doom and humor, Molly follows an untraditional path to rediscovering who she is.

Moloney, who won the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance, adapted the novel with Colum McCann. YES! features music from Paddy Moloney, best known for his band The Chieftains.

The two performances (Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT and Saturday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT) require reservations made at least two hours in advance. There is a suggested donation of $25. Once a reservation has been made you will receive details how to watch the performance.

Munich Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall – Medici.tv – June 19th – June 21st

Continuing with the Fridays with Carnegie Hall Fridays series on Medici.tv, this week’s program features the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. This concert took place October 26, 2019.

On the program is Jörg Widmann’s Con brio; Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

The soloist for the Brahms is Leonidas Kavakos. His encore is Enescu’s Ménétrier (“The Fiddler”) from Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28, No. 1.

You do not have to subscribe to Medici.tv to see this concert. You do need to register with them, however, to do so.

Act One – Lincoln Center at Home – June 19th – July 3rd

If you ask most theater professionals what one book should be read by anyone contemplating a career in theater or anyone who has a career in theatre and almost universally the answer is Moss Hart’s biography, Act One.

Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner James Lapine adapted Hart’s book and turned it into a Tony-nominated play that ran at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in 2014. Santino Fontana (last year’s Tony Award winner for Tootsie) and Tony Shalhoub (Tony Award winner for The Band’s Visit) each play Hart at various points in his life. Andrea Martin (Tony Award winner for Pippin) heads the rest of the company that finds 22 actors playing over 40 roles.

Hart is best known as the playwright who gave us You Can’t Take It With You (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize) and The Man Who Came to Dinner. He directed the musical My Fair Lady and won a Tony Award for his work. He wrote several screenplays including the Oscar-nominated Gentleman’s Agreement and the script for the 1954 version of A Star Is Born (the Judy Garland version.)

Ann – Great Performances on PBS – June 19th (check local listings)

You have to have real drive and passion for a project to leave a hit television show like Two and Half Men to pursue a play. That’s precisely what actress/writer Holland Taylor did when she left the sitcom to realize her dream of putting the life of Texas governor Ann Richards on stage.

That play, Ann, played at Lincoln Center (earning Taylor a well-deserved Tony Award nomination for her performance) and has been filmed. Ann will air this weekend on PBS’s Great Performances series.

Richards was bigger than life and had a quick-wit. An classic example of her quick turn of phrase was during the 1988 Democratic Convention when she said of George H.W. Bush, “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Salome – San Francisco Opera – June 20th – June 21st

Richard Strauss worked with Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name to create his opera, Salome. The opera had its world premiere in 1905 in Dresden. The opera was controversial with several companies not allowing it to be performed until many years after its premiere (including the Metropolitan Opera where performances in 1907 were cancelled after its first performance and the opera was not seen again until 1934.)

What made it so controversial? No doubt it is the “Dance of the Seven Veils.” That dance inspires the warning that this production contains nudity and scenes that viewers might find disturbing.

In this 2009 production, Nadja Michael sings the role of “Salome.” Herod is sing by Kim Begley. James Robinson directed and Nicola Luisotti conducted. The opera is performed without an intermission and runs approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Jessie Mueller with Seth Rudetsky – June 21st – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

Tony Award winning actress Jessie Mueller (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) joins Seth Rudetsky in this weekend’s concert. Her other Broadway credits include originating the role of “Jenna” in the musical Waitress and she was Tony nominated for her performance as “Julie Jordan” in the most recent Broadway revival of Carousel.

If you are unable to watch Sunday’s live concert, there will be a rebroadcast of it on Monday at 3 PM EDT/12 PM PDT. Tickets for either viewing are $25.

That’s it for this week’s Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st. But before we go we want to remind you that the world premiere of a reimagined Immediate Tragedy (a long-lost work by Martha Graham) takes place on Friday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT on the Soraya Facebook Page and will be shown on Saturday on the Martha Graham YouTube Channel on Saturday at 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT.

Have a great weekend.

Photo from Small Island by Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Courtesy National Theatre Live

Update: We erroneously credited Moss Hart with having written the book for MY FAIR LADY. Alan Jay Lerner was the sole writer of the book of the musical. We regret the error.

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