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And he was only three weeks away from his next birthday. True, anyone who’s 96 can’t count on becoming 97, but we would have wished that Charles Strouse could reach this June 7th and many more. Orson Welles famously said that when it comes to hits, “You only need one” to make a reputation and […]

As soon as I returned home from seeing the London revival of OLIVER!, I reached for the original American cast album. Yes, original American cast, not original Broadway cast. Throughout 1962, producer David Merrick believed that the musical that had been the biggest hit of the 1960-61 London season would soon become the biggest hit […]

idina Menzel wasn’t the only one galvanized by the story. Tina Landau was equally engaged when she heard about julia butterfly hill. (And yes, julia prefers small letters in the spelling of her name.) In 1997, when hill was a mere 23, she climbed a 1,000-plus-year-old redwood. After scaling 180 feet, she planted herself there […]

Jonathan Groff’s brilliant performance in JUST IN TIME got me listening to a recording that I hadn’t heard in some time. And I was reminded that BELLS ARE RINGING – which includes “Just in Time” – is a sensational cast album. Give a listen, and you may wonder why composer Jule Styne and bookwriter-lyricists Betty […]

In 2010, Antonio Banderas announced that he’d appear in a revival but never did. Some years before, Mandy Patinkin was offered the show but wasn’t enthusiastic enough to spur a new production. And for a while in the late 1980s, two Israeli film producersannounced that they’d do a film of this musical. They’d change its […]