Mr Garrison Goes to Chicago

Here's why Nick Garrison wasn't in last weeks Brown Derby production of The Goonies at Re-bar:He's been busy in Chicago doing Hedwig for The American Theater Company. If you go their website, you can see clips of Nick doing numbers from the show, which has been extended through May 31st. Go check it out.

Wicked sucks.

There...I've said it. I'm your typical fag who loves musicals, and I somewhat liked the original book (but feel it's a bit overrated), and I like many of the people involved with Wicked, but the music is really shitty.

And the shittiest song in the show is the most popular song, Defying Gravity, which is an anthem for many a young, impressionable, lgbt theater-goer. It's noble sentiments fail to disguise the essential, irritating turgid crappiness of that song.

But I still love Kristin Chenowith. And, I'm still envious that Idina Menzel gets to sleep with Taye Diggs WHENEVER she wants...

the bitch.

For Musical Theater nerds only...

A two year old sings Sondheim...

P.S. Assassins is one of the Great American Musicals because it's about two of America's favorite pasttimes:

guns and celebrity.

Avenue Q is a very funny and charming show...

and I'll be the first one to admit that these two clowns have a strong influence in my life, despite the fact they recently became Scientologists...Sadly, I take their advice on a daily basis.

Another humorous note from the show we saw on Sunday night; my brother recognized an actor in the show from his headshot in the programme. The guy had been posting sex ads pretty much every day he was in Seattle on the website, Bear411.

And used his headshot, which I find lazily ironic.

South Pacific cleans up with Tony nominations.

The Broadway revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific earned 11 Tony nominations today, including a nod for local boy, director Bartlett Sher, (his third lifetime nomination with no wins), and nominations for Best Revival of a Musical and Leading Actor and Actress, (Paul Szot and Kelli O'Hara). Sher's competition includes 90 year old Arthur Laurents for his direction of the Patti LuPone starring revival of Gypsy, which Laurents wrote the original book for, in 1959. The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, which garnered a huge amount of Drama Desk nominations earlier this month despite largely poor reviews for the show, didn't fare as well with Tony voters, only receiving three nominations, two of them for co-stars Christopher Fitzgerald and Andrea Martin. In The Heights, a hip-hop/salsa infused musical about immigrant life in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan led with 13 nominations total, followed by South Pacific. Tracy Letts Pulitzer Prize winning play, August: Osage County, dominated the play categories with 7 nominations including three for acting and one for Anna D Shapiro's direction.

The Tony award ceremony is June 15th at Radio City Music Hall.

The NY Times gives local boy, Bartlett Sher's revival of South Pacific a rave review

Amazingly, this is the FIRST revival of South Pacific since its original run.

Love blossoms fast and early in Bartlett Sher’s rapturous revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” which opened Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. And while you may think, “But this is so sudden,” you don’t doubt for a second that it’s the real thing.

and Ben Brantley goes on to rave:

I know we’re not supposed to expect perfection in this imperfect world, but I’m darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production. (Yes, the second act remains weaker than the first, but Mr. Sher almost makes you forget that.)

The picture caption: Matthew Morrison as Lt Cable and Li Jun Li as Liat
The photo credit is: Sara Krulwich/The NY Times


I have to say, I've never seen a live stage production of South Pacific; done the ok movie and a very entertaining concert version on PBS with Reba McIntyre last year but somehow I've missed seeing any high school/college/community theater/summer stock versions of this, which is odd because I've seen just about every major musical at some point. The music is gorgeous but the story has always seemed a little heavy handed to me. Brantley's rave review implies that Sher pulls off the difficult task of staging a work that's of a very specific time and place and making it relevant to contemporary audiences without damaging the context of the piece.

It seems obvious that Sher is going to get more and more New York based work due to all his recent successes there.