The Toughest Cut on Any Original Cast Album
“Fifty years from now, they’ll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the Mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a stockade fence.” The lines come from a surreal scene in Assassins. Twenty-seven year-old John Wilkes Booth, ninety-eight years dead, is encouraging twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot President John F. Kennedy. John Weidman wrote those words […]
Do You Know Juno?
I was a little shocked while watching Charlotte Moore’s splendid revival of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock at the Irish Repertory Theatre. I wasn’t surprised that J. Smith Cameron was sensational as Juno, the housewife who’s unlucky to be living in a Civil War-torn Ireland in 1922. That Juno is married to “Captain Jack,” […]
Give Him a Grinch and He’ll Take a Smile
At last! After years of waiting, one of the most endearing scores of recent vintage has finally been recorded and released. It’s going to be in a number of stockings that are hung by the mantle with care, and not just because CDs tend to fit in Christmas stockings. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole […]
The So-Bad-It’s-Good Halloween Party List
Having a Halloween party? Many of my friends do, although they do demand that their guests come in costumes that were seen in Broadway musicals. My favorite memory: I was dressed in Hugh O’Brian’s John Adams costume from his summer stock tour of 1776; Raymond Wood was attired as a Munchkin, even though he was […]
50 Years for 110
Broadway already had Starbucks long before every street corner did. Starbuck Number One appeared as a pivotal character in N. Richard Nash’s play The Rainmaker fifty-nine years ago next week, on Oct. 28, 1954. Starbuck Number Two showed up fifty years ago this week on Oct. 23, 1963 in the play’s musical version, 110 in […]
