July 2005 Archives

This is the most amazing story, as told by Richard Ouzounian in Thursday'sToronto Star: How Adam Brazier, on a tryout for The Woman in White in New York was chosen byAndrew Lloyd Webber to star in The Likes of Us, the new (old) musical that is re-uniting Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. What a great business!

Show about Dr. Barnardo reunites feuding partners

By RICHARD OUZOUNIAN
THEATRE CRITIC

From buffed boy-toy to Victorian social reformer in one short year.

It was only 12 months ago that Unionville-born Adam Brazier was playing the naughty title role in the Shaw Festival's hit Pal Joey. And on Monday he started rehearsals in London for The Likes of Us by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

The musical about Dr. Thomas Barnardo is actually the first show ever written by the world-famous team behind Jesus Christ, Superstar and Evita. It was never produced, but the duo is revisiting it now, nearly 40 years later, to help mark the centenary of Barnardo's death.

Barnardo is the man who attempted to improve the lot of nearly 60,000 impoverished street children in 19th century London by sending them off to homes he established around the world -- including one in Peterborough.

"My head is still reeling," says the 30-year-old Brazier from his hotel in Covent Garden. "Two weeks ago, I would have thought this was impossible. Whose life did I steal?"

It started on June 15, when Brazier flew down to New York to audition for the romantic lead in the Broadway version of The Woman in White, Lloyd Webber's current London hit.

He obviously made an impression because a few days later, he got a call from the Really Useful Group, Lloyd Webber's producing company, asking if he was free to play the central role in The Likes of Us.

"This was a Monday," recalls Brazier, "and I asked them when I had to leave. They said Sunday, and I was like, 'Why not?'"

Brazier will be taking part in the central event of the annual Sydmonton Festival, a private arts festival that Lloyd Webber holds each summer at his country estate 85 kilometres southwest of London, where he is officially known as Baron Lloyd Webber of Sydmonton.

Workshops here have launched such shows as The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard. Lloyd Webber invites an audience made up of the élite of the British theatrical profession, and their opinions of the production often determine whether or not it will continue.

The festival always attracts major interest, but it will be higher than usual this year, because this marks the first time in over 25 years that Lloyd Webber and Rice have worked on a show together.

After their trio of initial amazing successes (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ, Superstar and Evita), they parted acrimoniously.

An attempt to reconcile them during Cats ended even more bitterly when Rice submitted a lyric for "Memory," only to have it rejected.

The show business world is wondering how the two former chums and partners will get along after all this time.

All of this is pretty heady stuff for Brazier, whose first performing memories centre around entertaining the crowds at the CNE who flocked to his father's Tiny Tom Donuts stand.

Brazier graduated from George Brown theatre school in 1996 and went straight into the Stratford Festival for two seasons. After that, he dabbled in film and TV before landing the highly coveted role of Sky, the young bridegroom, in Mamma Mia!

Brazier starred in the show's original Toronto production in 2000 and then went on tour across North America.

A stint on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning revival of Into the Woods followed, as well as starring roles in the last two Ross Petty Christmas pantomimes.

Brazier and the company will rehearse in London for two weeks before moving on to Sydmonton and the gala performances on the weekend of July 8.

After that, nothing is set, but Brazier will admit that the casting people for The Woman in White have ordered him to take no other jobs until they make their final decision.

"I'm sitting here in my hotel room," says Brazier, "listening on my tape recorder to a few of the songs I get to sing being banged out on a piano. These are songs no one has ever heard, written by two of the most important figures in the world of modern musicals. I am bewildered by my good fortune and every night I count my many blessings."

Unlike the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the Toronto Fringe Festival is not jury selected. It is done by chance, by lottery. There's always tons of variety, some great, some not so great. But hey, for $10, who's complaining? The Toronto Fringe Festival runs July 6-17, 2005.

Unfortunately, lady luck didn't smile upon me and I didn't get picked for a spot in the Fringe, but two of my musical theatre associates did...

Brock Simpson, a fellow member of the ACLCL is producing his show at the Fringe this year. Here's the info he sent to me:

Brockspeare Productions Presents
LUST'S LABOUR'S LOST: A ROCK MUSICAL
World Premiere at Toronto Fringe!

TARRAGON THEATRE MAINSPACE, 30 Bridgman Avenue, Toronto

Thurs, July 7 at 8:15pm
Fri, July 8 at 1:30pm
Sun, July 10 at 5:45pm
Mon, July 11 at 6:15pm
Tues, July 12 at 9:45pm
Fri, July 15 at 10:30pm
Sun, July 17 at 3:15pm

Ticket Prices: $10. For More Info Call the Fringe Hotline at 416.966.1062
or www.fringetoronto.com

I also got the following message from Michael Coady who played Sam Crenshaw in the 2004 workshop of Plane Crazy at the Poor Alex. He is appearing in a musical in the Fringe:

OZ RECALLED: A Musical Comedy about a Middle-aged Dorothy

directed by Timothy French
written by Jesse Stewart
choreography by Marc Kimelman
assistant directed by Elenna Mosoff

featuring Sharron Matthews

Also featuring: James Quigley, Michael Coady, Jesse Stewart, Lena Palermo, Peter Windrem, Sedina Fiati, Labe Kagan, Julia Harper, Laura Azahar, Catherine Braund, Patty Burchell, Julia Feldman, Allan Gillespie, Lindsay Kramer, Robert Laughton, Rob Sutherland

VENUE: The Walmer Centre Theatre
in the Walmer Road Church, 188 Lowther Ave.

Visit Website for map, etc. www.OzRecalled.com

SHOW SCHEDULE: (90 minute runtime)
Wednesday July 6 @ 8:00pm
Thursday July 7 @ 8:00pm
Friday July 8 @ 8:00pm
Saturday July 9 @ 4:00pm
Wednesday July 13 @ 8:00pm
Thursday July 14 @ 8:00pm
Friday July 15 @ 8:00pm
Saturday July 16 @ 4:00pm
Tickets: $10

Whatever happened to Dorothy after her first turn through Oz? What became of her friends in the sometimes merry -- sometimes scary Land of Oz? Would a mid-life crisis, combined with being electrocuted on a 'B' movie-set, be a good time for Dorothy to check-in with Oz again? And what's a big Broadway style dance-musical, with live band, doing in the Fringe Festival anyway?

"A funny, raucous, exuberant romp with clever dance numbers and catchy melodies." -- Kingston Whig Standard

Break a leg guys!

"On this day of independence, on this independence day" as Bing sang in Holiday Inn, the Declaration of Independence will be front and center:

According to this article in Playbill:

As it has for the past 18 years, the town of Williamstown, Massachusetts, will host a reading of The Declaration of Independence on July 4.

Williamstown is, of course, the home of a noted theatre festival, and this year members of the company will get in on the act. Ellen McLaughlin, and actress and playwright who will be in the Williamstown Theatre Festival's production of Top Girls this summer, will read The Declaration of Independence, as well as the Preamble to The Constitution. New WTF artistic director Roger Rees, meanwhile, will take on the role of the villain: he will read the British response to the Declaration.

The event will take place at 11:30 AM on the second floor of the Chaplin Library, located in Stetson Hall on the Williams College campus behind Sawyer Library. Admission is free.

"There's gonna be fireworks!"

I'm just watching High Society right now and WOW...what a great movie. I've seen it a million times on afternoon TV in the '70s, but I haven't caught it in a while.

With a score by Cole Porter,High Society is a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, which originally starredCary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart. From Amazon:

In 1940, Katherine Hepburn's movie career was in desperate condition. Her 1938 film BRINGING UP BABY, although recognized as a Howard Hawks's masterpiece today, was at the time a box office failure. The failure signaled the temporary end of demand for her talents in Hollywood, although she had HOLIDAY in the can (and costarring, like both BRINGING UP BABY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, Cary Grant). So, she went back to the stage, in a play written specifically for her, and the subsequent hit was an unexpected and triumphant return to the screen for Hepburn. Her career never looked back again, especially when two years later she teamed with Spencer Tracy for the first time. Ironically, she originally requested that Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play the Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart roles.

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY is such an extraordinarily well-done film that one can watch it repeatedly, reveling each time in new and hidden details. It strikes the perfect balance of being spectacularly well-acted, hysterically funny, and delightfully silly while maintaining an elegant veneer. The cast is nearly overwhelming in its quality, with Hepburn and Grant turning in especially fine performances. Jimmy Stewart is also superb, though he won an Oscar for this year that he probably didn't deserve. The Academy in 1940 may have been giving him the award as an apology for not having won the year before for MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. Unfortunately, this meant that Jimmy Stewart's best friend Henry Fonda failed to win for one of the finest performances in the history of American cinema, as Tom Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Still, although the Oscar clearly should have gone to Fonda, Stewart manages a great turn. He and Grant manage a great moment when Stewart adlibbed a hiccup, and Grant, not batting an eye, adlibbed, "Excuse me." The rest of the cast is flawless. Too many excel to mention, but special mention must be made of Roland Young as Uncle Willie, Virginia Weidler in a marvelous turn as Tracy Lord's precocious younger sister, and the erstwhile Errol Flynn nemesis Henry Daniell as the devious and unscrupulous Sidney Kidd.

Although this film holds up magnificently upon reviewings, there is nothing like seeing it for the first time. I remember vividly how exciting it was to watch this in the lamentably demised Lincoln Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, having absolutely no idea how the film was going to end only five minutes before the closing credits. Who will Tracy marry? Will she marry? How will the film managed to tie up all the loose ends.

I have a list of my all time favorite lines from films. One of my favorites comes from this one. On the morning after Tracy has gotten rip-roaringly drunk, she has almost no memories of what happened, but what she does recall makes her fear that she might have been in a compromising situation with Jimmy Stewart. After Stewart assures the confused and fearful Tracy Lord that nothing happened because she was drunk and "there are rules about that sort of thing," the infinitely relieved Tracy says, "I think men are wonderful."

The film has managed to permeate our culture in subtle ways, from inspiring musical remakes, to providing famous adult movie stars with their names, to providing foundations for jokes (in the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventure "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam," whenever Bullwinkle sees his jewel encrusted small boat, he mutters under his breath, "Yar, yar").

First of all, Grace Kelly is GORGEOUS. I don't think there's anyone like her today...the only person that approaches her in the looks department is Nicole Kidman, but Grace Kelly is much more natural to watch (prolly 'cause she's not fighting off an Australian accent while she's acting), more graceful, and more naturally beautiful.

Celeste Holm (who originated the role of Ado Annie -- singing "I Cain't Say No" -- in Oklahoma on Broadway, and who is still alive) and Frank Sinatra do a fantastic number with all the wedding gifts called "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" It is a wonderfully inventive number where they use the different pieces of wedding silverware to modify their voices and to create sounds and movement to punctuate the song. Pure movie musical magic.

And Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong do a number together called "Now You Has Jazz" that is pure scat heaven. Plus, I loved the mansions...I want a mansion in Newport for Christmas!

As an aside, there's a big "hangover" scene near the end which makes me think "I'd hate to be hung over in the '50s"...all those tight dresses and formal clothes don't make a hangover look like much fun. Track pants are the only way to go if your head's on fire...

Well I finally saw The Producers in New York! Last night I went to the St. James Theatre to see Richard Kind as Max Bialystock and Roger Bart as Leo Bloom produce Springtime For Hitler.

Great seat -- S2 -- the last row of the orchestra on the center aisle. The theater is so intimate that I felt incredibly close and the sightline was great. I really think that is part of the reason for the early demise ofThe Producers in Toronto. I saw it there on opening night and I was up in the nose bleed balcony of theCanon Theatre and you miss so much of the business and energy on stage. My new policy is, if you can't see the actors spit come out of their mouths, you're sitting too far back! Ideally, you can feel it too!

I loved the show! Richard and Roger were AWESOME. Richard Kind played Max Bialystock. He really harkened back to Zero Mostel's Max in the1968 movie. He had a nice combination of decrepitness and lovability. He was loud, brash and very commanding on stage. And great facial responses and business throughout the whole show -- he could really milk a moment.

Everyone knows I love Roger Bart. But really, he was great as Leo. His physical and vocal humor is great and his singing chops are perfect for the role. The two had a really nice energy between them as well. The blue blankie stuff was hilarious, not cloying and forced as it had been in Toronto.

There was one moment when Roger Bart almost lost it in the scene where he is quitting his clerking job and tries to hand over his visor. It was stuck, and he kept tugging at it. You could see the smile forming on his face. I love stuff like that. Also the scene in Roger Debris apartment when he is interacting with Carmen Ghia (played very campily by Brooks Ashmanskas) there was a neat positive energy between the two of them, since Roger Bart had been nominated for a Tony for the Carmen Ghia role!

The whole cast was great -- Frans Liebkind (John Treacy Egan), Roger Debris (Jonathan Freeman) Ulla (Angie Schworer) and the ensemble too.

And the little old ladies were fab!

The whole thing clocked in at almost three hours, but didn't feel long to me. Interestingly, they've cut the little dialogue bit that Roger Debris has during "Springtime for Hitler" when he is sitting on the stage a la Judy Garland. But they did do the tap challenge.

I just love this show. I know not everyone does but the music and lyrics are great and I've always had a soft spot for Mel Brooks' humor since my dad was a big fan. People say the reason it didn't run in Toronto, was that it is a "New York" show. I guess, but the audience (which was packed) appeared to be mostly tourists.

Did I mention I had a good time?