Don't bother, they're here
I’m loving this deep dive that the Guardian is doing into Tristram Kenton’s archive, this time taking a turn into the many Open Air Theatre productions he has been witness to. Highly recommended:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2020/aug/19/great-outdoors-the-magic-of-regents-park-open-air-theatre-in-pictures
“I’ll be off a second later and go straight to the theatre”
I wasn’t expecting to like this 2018 Broadway Cast Recording of My Fair Lady half as much as I did. Rumblings of discontent about Lauren Ambrose’s casting as Eliza stuck in my mind, as did the unlikeliness of Harry Hadden-Paton being her Henry Higgins, and who wants American versions of English accents? (I’m sure they feel the same!)
But there’s something rather delicious about this recording that makes it really shine. It helps of course to have a score and lyrics as gloriously evergreen as Lerner and Loewe’s, MD Ted Sperling’s treatment of the original orchestrations making them feel as fresh as a cockney sparrer, and his orchestra sound like a dream. – you really could listen to them all night. Continue reading “Album Review: My Fair Lady (2018 Broadway Cast Recording)”
Best UK Cast Recording
Broken Wings – Original Concept Album
Calendar Girls – Original London Recording
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – Original West End Cast Recording
Six The Musical – Studio Cast Recording
Working: A Musical – Original London Cast Recording
Young Frankenstein – Original London Cast Recording
Best American Cast Recording
Frozen – Original Broadway Cast Recording
Mean Girls – Original Broadway Cast Recording
My Fair Lady – 2018 Broadway Cast Recording
Once On This Island – New Broadway Cast Recording
Pretty Woman – Original Broadway Cast Recording
The Prom – Original Broadway Cast Recording
Best Solo Album
Audra McDonald – Sing Happy
Carrie Hope Fletcher – When The Curtain Falls
David Hunter – Silver Linings
Louise Dearman – For You, For Me
Natasha Barnes – Real
Sutton Foster – Take Me To The World
Manhattan Concert Productions (MCP) is pleased to announce the following creative team for Broadway Classics in Concert, on Tuesday, February 20, 8:00 p.m., in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall.
Don Stephenson, Stage Director
Kevin Stites, Music Director/Conductor
Christopher Ash, Projection & Video
Jason Lyons, Lighting
Dave Horowitz, Sound
Gary Mickelson, Stage Manager
Telsey + Company / Craig Burns, CSA, Casting
MCP also welcomes Nikki Renée Daniels who will be joining the outstanding alumni cast for Broadway Classics in Concert.
The full alumni cast includes Michael Arden (Ragtime, Hunchback of Notre Dame), Sierra Boggess (The Secret Garden), Carolee Carmello (Broadway Classics 2013), Allan Corduner(Titanic), Nikki Renée Daniels (The Secret Garden), Quentin Earl Darrington (The Secret Garden), Ramin Karimloo (Parade, The Secret Garden), Norm Lewis (Ragtime), Laura Osnes(Crazy For You), Lea Salonga (Ragtime), Ryan Silverman (Titanic) and Tony Yazbeck (Crazy For You). Continue reading “News: Creatives and company for Broadway Classics in Concert”
“I learned a long time ago not to trust what people tell me”
I did want to love Fearless, I really did. Any series with Helen McCrory in its leading role has to be worthy of consideration and ITV have been upping their drama game (qv Unforgotten) recently. But despite an intriguing opener, the six episodes of Fearless increasingly tested the patience as Patrick Harbinson’s script failed to deliver on its twistily complex promise, instead giving us a fairly run-of-the-mill thriller that ultimately proved less than thrilling.
With a playbook that threw out major themes with regularity – miscarriages of justice, the Syrian refugee crisis, institutional corruption, the war in Iraq, the ethics of the surveillance state, just to name a few – it was inevitable that some would fall by the wayside. But with the amount of personal backstory for McCrory’s Emma also shoehorned in there, the narrative was both painfully overstuffed and sadly inconsequential – it was increasingly hard to know what we were meant to care about.
“You let a terrorist’s wife live in your home and you set a murderer free”
Fearless is a new six-part drama on ITV and whilst some people might be excited by the fact that it is written by one of the writers of Homeland (Patrick Harbinson), all right-thinking people will of course be psyched that it is giving Helen McCrory a stonking leading role. She plays human rights lawyer Emma Banville who is utterly unafraid to butt heads with the world as she investigates miscarriages of justice.
Her latest case draws her into the orbit of Kevin Russell (definite fave Sam Swainsbury) whose conviction for murder looks to be a little iffy. With perhaps a little too much ease, she finds it unsafe and secures a retrial but looks set to have opened up quite the can of national security-flavoured worms as a serious-looking transatlantic phone call on a secure line seems to suggest that there is much more to this than meets the eye. Continue reading “TV Review: Fearless Episode 1”
 |
| Photo: Gage Skidmore |
All The President’s Men? is a singular theatrical experience for the politically engaged on 24 April, 7.30pm at the Vaudeville Theatre.
A staged reading edited and directed by Nicolas Kent and presented by the National Theatre, London and The Public Theater, New York, it features scenes from the U.S. Senate’s Confirmation Hearings
In January, one week before the president’s inauguration a fierce fight erupted in the Senate between Republicans and Democrats over the confirmation of the key figures for President Trump’s cabinet. These four powerful men lead the Trump administration’s policy on Russia, the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, on human rights worldwide, on the Paris Climate control agreement, as well as on the civil rights and the health of millions of Americans. Continue reading “Casting announced for All The President’s Men?”
“We drink water from a dipper,
You drink champagne from a slipper”
Christmastime is often one for traditions and one of the better theatrical ones has proven to be the big musicals that Sheffield Theatres produce. From Me and My Girl to My Fair Lady to a never-better Company and last year’s Anything Goes that went on to tour, the outgoing Artistic Director Daniel Evans has proved a master at big-hearted, large-scale productions that skimp on nothing to create some of the best musical theatre the country has to offer.
This year sees Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat as Evans’ final show (as AD at least) and it is an undoubted success, a fitting festive farewell. It’s a brave choice too, an unwieldy beast of a story based on Edna Ferber’s novel about the backstage drama onboard the Mississippi show boat Cotton Blossom, using the performing troupe as a prism through which to view several decades of momentous change in the USA from the late 1800s. Continue reading “Review: Show Boat, Crucible”
“This could be the gateway to extraordinary things”
The second series of Da Vinci’s Demons continues the historical fantasy in all its raucous, vaguely homo-erotic glory and feels like a stronger season for it. Having set up the busy world of Medici-ruled Florence and all its enemies, alongside Leonardo’s ongoing mystical quest at the behest of the Sons of Mithras, the show breathes a little here and has no compunction in scattering its main players on separate storylines, whilst folding in new ones to keep the story-telling ever fresh.
Most notably, Tom Riley’s captivating Leo hops on a ship with his pals and a guy called Amerigo Vespucci (Lee Boardman eventually getting to milk an excellent gag) to chase the Book of Leaves all the way to Peru and the depths of Machu Picchu. These South American scenes are just fantastic, magnificent to look at as our heroes take on the Incan Empire in all its gruesome feathered glory to uncover the mystery around Leo’s mother and the hidden power contained with the book. Continue reading “DVD Review: Da Vinci’s Demons Series 2”
“War has always been the handmaiden of progress”
From its opening moments of buttocks and blood (both belonging to an uncredited Hugh Bonneville if that floats your boat), it’s clear that Da Vinci’s Demons is going to have its fun whilst playing fast and loose with the early life of its subject, Florentine polymath Leonardo Da Vinci. Conceived by David S Goyer and a co-production between Starz and BBC Worldwide, it’s a good-natured romp of a drama series much in the mould of Merlin, Atlantis or the lamented Sinbad but perhaps tied a little closer to reality as it dips in and out of the tangled history of the Italian city states.
And it is its historical connections that serves as a main driver for the technological innovations for which Leonardo is famed and which form the ‘issue of the week’ around which most of the episodes hang. So as Da Vinci climbs into bed with the ruling Medici family, he’s sucked into their political machinations whilst battling rival families in Florence and the ever-present threat of the Catholic Church in Rome. Alongside this sits a more fantastical series-long arc about the mystical Book of Leaves and the Sons of Mithras who believe Da Vinci has only just begun to tap into his true power. Continue reading “DVD Review: Da Vinci’s Demons Series 1”