Dark Monday -Wicked

Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth starred in the Broadway musical Wicked. They were both beyond spectacular. Wicked essentially gives you the backstory to The Wizard of Oz. But it is much more than that, for it is about being different, not fitting in, and how the majority can injure the minorities.



Idina Menzel play Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and shows how a green young girl goes from innocence to wicked through life's trials. Idina must have really had to act here, since that lucky woman is beautiful, has a gorgeous voice, and is married to Taye Diggs, who she met while both were in the original cast of Rent on Broadway. She gave girth to a son in September. Here she sings the amazing song Defying Gravity.



Kristin Chenoweth played Glinda, the Good Witch. Glinda's path is one of redemption, as she starts out a rather shallow and self-involved character and grows to become so much more. Kristin is immensely talented, as could be seen on both Pushing Daisies and Glee. She won the Emmy this season, and just went to Washington, DC, to participate on the March for Equality. In this clip, she sings Popular.



The show is an incredible show, and has opened throughout the world. In the Melbourne production, Anthony Callea [a favorite of mine] played Boq, the munchkin in love with Glinda, the same role American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert played in the American touring company. It is still running on Broadway, as well as touring. To find out if it might be playing near you, you can check out the official website here.

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Dark Monday - Mikail Baryshnikov

Russian born Mikail Baryshnikov is considered by many to be one of the greatest ballet dancers ever, and was certainly someone who was great for dance. He headlined for Russia's premiere ballet company, the Kirov, astounding audiences the world over with his grace, good looks, and amazing athletic ability. His leaps were legendary, as were the tales of his womanizing. In 1974, while the Kirov was touring Canada, Baryshnikov, known as Misha to his friends, controlled the headlines throughout the world by defecting to Canada.




Once he had severed his ties to Mother Russia, he set out to make a name for himself, and fully embrace the freedoms and opportunities commercialism had to offer. He danced wherever he wanted, whatever style he wanted. He became a known figure in NYC nightlife, often seen in the company of Liza Minelli and Bianca Jagger at places like Studio 54. He appeared in movies, including a brilliant turn as a former Russian ballet dancer in The Turning Point, as well in the movie White Nights.



Misha has been nominated for an Oscar, a Tony, and has won 3 Emmy Awards. One of those for a 1980 TV special, Baryshinkov on Broadway, co-starring good friend and party buddy, Liza Minnelli. The show had them performing together - dancing, playing the piano and singing - to many of the great Broadway show numbers of all times. This includes Too Darn Hot from the Cole Porter show, Kiss Me Kate.



Deciding he needs to have a big finale for the show, he finally decides on the most logical show for a dancer, A Chorus Line, and is joined by the Broadway cast of the show in the big number, One.



I think that I, like every other gay boy in the world at the time, had a massive crush [ie lust] for Baryshnikov, with his beautiful body and striking looks. But he boy was stridently str8, having a child with the gorgeous and talented Jessica Lange, and three more with former ballerina and current girlfriend Lisa Rinehart. In one of his latest acting roles, he played Aleksandr Petrovsky, the older love interest of Sarah Jessica Parker, in the series Sex and the City.

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Dark Monday - Sunday In The Park With George

I was lucky enough to see Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin in the original Broadway production of Sunday In The Park With George, as well as the recent revival brought over from London's West End. The musical, written by my hero Stephen Sondheim, is a brilliant homage to the painting by George Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte. I will say I enjoyed the revival, but the original was just so damn good, with amazing performances by both Bernadette and Mandy which left an indelible memory of the experience even though with was about 25 years earlier.



The first act centers on Sondheim's take on the people who influenced the characters in the painting. The second act brings the story to the present, as Seurat's [fictional] great-grandson about to put on a 'light and color' art piece, inspired by the painting produced in the first act. Like most of Sondheim's work, the music and lyrics were textured and layered, with meaning, emotion, and storyline a focus. The first act closed with George (Patinkin) finishing the painting, and placing all the characters in the tableaux.



The show focuses on the process of art for the artist, from George songs like Color And Light, Finishing The Hat, and Putting It Together opening a discussion of the thinking of artists. I certainly remember thinking it was perhaps Sondheim's most personal musical to date. His quiet, reclusive, and ponderous George was about as close to his own reputation as any character has been.


The marquee for the revival.

The following is a clip for the song Move On from Act II of the show. While not from the show, it is Bernadette singing it beautifully.

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Dark Monday - Avenue Q meets Wicked

At a special appearance by London's West End cast of Avenue Q in 2007, Simon Lipkin and Julie Atherton perform the song Popular from the musical Wicked. This is part of Luurvefest. Avenue Q is still running in London, featuring Daniel Boys, a favorite of mine.



So, I really couldn't let the moment pass without posting a video with Daniel, right? So here he is singing For Now with Julie Atherton and the rest of the cast at West End Live, an event to promote live theater.

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Dark Monday - Follies

Follies is a show by the remarkable Stephen Sondheim. I am telling you, the man is brilliant. Follies was a well-conceived musical about a reunion of a group of vaudeville singer and dancers. Perhaps one of the most sung numbers from the show is I'm Still Here, sung by Eartha Kitt. The song was famously sung by Shirley MacLaine in Postcards From The Edge.



Here is Dorothy Loudon, known for her role of Mrs. Hannigan in the original Annie, singing a medley of Sondheim songs, including the incredible Losing My Mind from Follies and You Could Drive A Person Crazy from Company.



For a more traditional version of I Think About You, here is the glorious Cleo Laine.

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Dark Monday - Ain't Misbehavin'

Indeed, I was lucky enough to see this as well. It was magical. You were transported to another time, the time of Fats Waller. There were just five performers on the stage, and they were all incredible. They were André DeShields, Armelia McQueen, Ken Page, Charlayne Woodard and the showstopping Nell Carter. This was before she had that awful sitcom.



The cast performed Ladies Who Sing With The Band on the 1978 Tony Awards broadcast. Here it is.



Nell Carter brought down the house every night with her outstanding version of Mean To Me. I believe it is this number that garnered her the attention and the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

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Dark Monday - Sweeney Todd

George Hearn and Angela Lansbury in the Original Broadway production.

I saw this show in previews, and it was just magical. This was back in 1979, and I was already a fan of composer Stephen Sondheim, one of the most brilliant minds the theater has known. I went with a college theater group I was part of, and we went for a four-day trip, seeing 6 shows in that time. It was an insane schedule, but also amazing, seeing Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Back then, when I was working in the theater, there were basically two camps when it came to musical theater - you were a fan of Sondheim, or you loved Andrew Lloyd Webber - and never the twain shall meet. We Sondheim fans believed the Webber fans were just populist, non-thinking idiots who went for spectacle over content. Webber fans thought we Sondheim fans were intellectual elitists, and I think both groups were correct.

A variety of people have played in Sweeney Todd, from famous to not-so-much.

I you saw the movie with Johnny Depp, it was well done, but the Broadway show was oh so much better. I remember sitting in the audience that first time [I saw it more than once], and the orchestra started playing...

That damn factory whistle nearly had me jumping out of my skin. That opening created a tension that held fast throughout the show. Later in the show, Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett had to figure out what do do with the dead bodies, since leaving them lay around wouldn't be good as she ran a meat-pie shoppe. So here is Angela Lansbury and George Hearn coming up with a solution in A Little Priest.

The show was just brilliant.

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Dark Monday - Pippin

This was the first Broadway show I ever saw. While in high school, we took our sophomore class trip to NYC to do dinner and a play. We went to Mama Leone's [tourist trap that impressed kids form Smyrna, DE] for dinner, and then to see Pippin. I was astounded by this wonderful musical, directed by the icon Bob Fosse.

Scans from my Original Cast Album

The cast was amazing. They were Eric Berry, Jill Clayburgh, Leland Palmer, Irene Ryan (Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies), Ben Vereen, and John Rubinstein. Ann Reinking was in the chorus. Music and lyrics were by Stephen Schwartz, who also gave us Godspell and Wicked, as well as several Disney annimated flicks. There was lots of skin showing, at least for a boy from Delaware. And John Rubinstein delivered a line I will never forget, 'Why'd the Goddamned duck have to die.' He cussed! And was often without a shirt!

But the real star of the show was the choreography of Fosse. It wasn't really dancing as I knew it as much as movement of the body. It was completely something I had never seen, and blew me away. Here is the opening number, Magic To Do.

There was also Glory, a show-stopper with the choreography only Fosse could deliver.

From this experience, I was hooked on live theater. Now, I can't sing worth a damn, but I appeared in high school musicals, my biggest role as the mute king in Once Upon A Mattress. I worked behind the scenes in college, and moved to NYC and worked for 4 seasons at the off-Broadway theater Circle Repertory Theatre Company in the Village. And got to work on some great theater, as well as go to many shows before I left NYC after 10 years.

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Dark Monday - Rent

In 1996, a little musical opened that might very well have changed the landscape on Broadway forever. It was named Rent, starring a cast of relative unknowns, most of whom went on to much more. They were Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Fredi Walker. The show ran for 12 years, until 2008.

To quote Wikipedia, Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of AIDS.

The first video clip is video of the opening night performance of Today 4 U, featuring Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who won a Tony for his portrayal of Angel. The quality isn't great, but it was the opening night!

The second clip is when the entire original cast flew to Chicago for the 1996 Democratic National Convention to perform Seasons Of Love, a truly great song. The lyrics are so beautiful I used them at my sister's wedding when I made the toast at the reception, as I was her 'maid of honor.'

Just amazing!

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Dark Monday - Neil Patrick Harris in Cabaret

Monday is usually the day off for Broadway shows, following a work week of eight shows in 6 days, Tuesday thru Sunday. It was the one night a week the marquis lights would be turned off, which was known as Broadway being 'dark.' I don't think that is as true now as it once was, but out of my old-fashioned sense of tradition, I will offer up my little tribute to Dionysus, the God of theater and, interestingly enough, of wine and excess. In 2003, Neil Patrick Harris was a replacement for the Broadway revival of Cabaret, the musical most remembered for the movie version with the riveting direction of Bob Fosse and the amazing performances of Liza Minnelli and Joel Gray. Based on the book The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and the play I Am A Camera by John Van Druten, the story is about the fall of the free-wheeling times in Germany of the 20s and 30s, and the rise of the Nazi movement.

Liza Minnelli, Liza & Joel Gray, Natasha Richardson & Alan Cumming

The revival opened in 1998 and originally starred Alan Cumming as the Emcee and Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles and played most of its run at Studio 54. Harris received rave reviews for this role in Cabaret, and went on to do more musical theater, including Sondheim's Assassins and Rent in Los Angeles. He sang several songs, including Two Ladies, Money (Makes The World Go Round), and I Don't Care Much. Here is an audio-only clip from the show, I Don't Care Much.

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