Kyle Christopher West - Page 10

In 2007, Dunken Sheik and Steven Sater's rock musical SPRING AWAKENING took home eight of the eleven Tony Awards it was nominated for, including the coveted Best Musical award. It was bold, new, edgy - and it caught the hearts and minds of everyone who saw it. Although the current local production at Runway Theatre is unlikely to be held to the same standards, the audience reaction to the company's opening night performance was every bit as excited about the show as the audiences in New York.

Tallywackers, the restaurant that shook up the industry when it opened last May, unveiled today its plans to become the Official Home of Boylesque beginning June 17, 2016. The restaurant, bar and entertainment destination known for its signature Guy Candy, will add boylesque, the artful seduction and striptease performed exclusively by men, to its lineup and feature national headliners monthly.

Although we haven't met, I already know we'd get along swimmingly. You see, you're on BroadwayWorld.com and you're browsing a travel article, so I can already tell we have so much in common. And while I'm currently writing to you from Dallas, Texas, it feels like only yesterday I was juggling jobs to cover the rising rent on my New York City apartment. Although I'll forever miss the energy of a busy life in the city, a visit or two a year is all I need to feel at home again in the Big Apple.

On Monday, I had the pleasure of speaking with actor Randy Harrison, who's currently on tour as the Master of Ceremonies in CABARET. Randy talked candidly about working in the entertainment industry as an out member of the LGBT community, crazy touring audience interactions, and why he's happy to bounce around the country in various regional theatre gigs. Check out our conversation below:

Our Productions Theatre Co. continues it's 2016 Season - A Season with HeART, with a regional premier of the award winning musical, I Love You Because this summer for an extended five week run in both Lewisville and Addison.

Dallas Summer Musicals is delighted to present the all-new touring production of RAGTIME at the Music Hall at Fair Park May 24 - June 5, 2016. A timeless celebration of life, RAGTIME tells the stories of an upper-class wife, a determined Jewish immigrant and a daring young Harlem musician - set in turn-of-the-century New York - all three united by their desire and belief in a brighter tomorrow. Their compelling stories are told to theatre's richest and most glorious Tony Award®-winning score of heavily syncopated or 'ragged' rhythms, a defining characteristic of the Progressive Era.

By 2009, when the musical MEMPHIS opened on Broadway, America had nearly 60 years since the Civil Rights Movement began in the 1950s. But, despite significant progress, headlines even today continue to affirm our society's failings in the areas of discrimination and prejudice. Monday night, when the house lights faded for opening night of MEMPHIS at Theatre Three, the crowd cheered. Although I was just as eager to support the company's newest production, I'd not considered how moved I would be by the historic, but still timely themes.

The Broadway blockbuster WICKED is easily one of the most popular musicals of the past several decades, and I write that without any pun intended.

This week, BroadwayWorld guest writer Sarah Comley-Caldwell had the privilege of chatting with the playwright and star of THE WONDER BREAD YEARS, Pat Hazell. With his background as a Seinfeld and sitcom writer, commercial director and actor, Hazell brings wit, warmth and nostalgia to his one man show-a self described hybrid of theatre, stand up comedy and communal laughter.

Since 2010, SEUSSICAL has been listed as one of the top five musicals most frequently performed in the United States. By the time I entered Casa Manana's auditorium last weekend to see SEUSSICAL JR (a version that has been shortened for younger attention spans), it took both hands to count the number of times I personally had seen the show. Luckily for me, this version of the show is packed with some of DFW's top professional talent, and a handful of the most skilled 'Casa Kids' rounding out the talented ensemble.

Although it's been nearly five decades since the legendary Judy Garland died at age 47, her timeless performances on screen have infinitely preserved her youthful image. In fact, despite the tragic finale of Garland's young life, audiences born post-Vietnam might solely remember the actress skipping down the infamous yellow brick road in her blue gingham dress. Over at the Kalita Humphreys Theatre, not only are Dallas theatre enthusiasts treated to an interesting behind-the-scene's look of Garland's final years, but it should be noted that this career-changing performance by local legend Janelle Lutz (rhymes with boots) is the event of the season that truly should not be missed.

[title of show] opens at The Firehouse Theatre on April 15th and runs through May 1st. Our stellar quartet takes the stage in this one-act show about living in New York and musicals - but, most importantly, friendship. Joshua Sherman (Hunter) was last seen on stage in Artes De La Rosa's production of Big Fish as Edward Bloom. Elisa Danielle James (Susan) is delighted to return to the Firehouse stage after previously appearing in Mary Poppins, Into the Woods, and The Drowsy Chaperone from last year's season. Noelle Mason (Heidi) most recently appeared in Godspell at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas and Company at Onstage in Bedford. You can catch her this summer as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof with Garland Summer Musicals. Cody Dry (Jeff) is making his Firehouse debut with [title of show] - well, kind of - he was seen playing keyboards in Firehouse's production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. Up next, he will be music directing The Last Five Years in the spring for Brick Road Theatre Company.

Casa Mañana Theatre presents SEUSSICAL JR. as the final production of their 2015 - 2016 Children's Theatre season, presented by Northstar Bank. Tickets are on sale now.

Although I don't remember seeing the film of THE LITTLE MERMAID in theatres, I do recall being five years old when the VHS tape was released. Watching on the 12-inch screen in my grandmother's guest room, I'd sing as I played, rewound and replayed the tape for hours on end. The fact that I'd have to wait for years to play my dream role onstage was then unimaginable. Later, when the Broadway production opened in 2007, not only had I not grown into a mezzo-soprano mermaid, but I'd also begun a different job with Disney Theatricals as a manager in their New Amsterdam Theatre. Despite sitting in on several meetings about Disney's plans to renovate the Lunt-Fontane Theatre for Ariel and her friends, I somehow never found myself "under the sea" during the show's brief run. This weekend's performance by Dallas Summer Musicals definitely showed me what I'd missed!

This weekend, local alternative theatre company L.I.P. Service Productions opened their newest work, LAUGHING WILD by Christopher Durang (author of the 2013 Tony Award-winning VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE). With only two speaking actors and a minimal stage, the oddball comedy centers around an strange, but unextraordinary event: a manic woman assaults an average man in the tuna fish aisle of a grocery store. Performed as two thirty-minute monologues and one thirty-minute scene, these over-the-top characters bounce back and forth like a pinball trying to rack up a bonus play in an arcade game. Although the style of comedy in LAUGHING WILD isn't necessarily my taste, I must admit I found myself laughing a number of times, especially as the stories eventually unfolded.

Our Productions Theatre Co. will present a new work in April, that will meld both performing and visual arts into one special cabaret performance presentation. HeART and Music will be held, April 15 & 16, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. at the Addison Theatre Centre. The musical themed artwork of Dallas artist, and Our Productions Co-Artistic, Mark Mullino, who paints music with different images with acrylic on canvas. These works of art will be brought to life as they are featured in their visual beauty while the song that is painted is brought to life by local musicians. Conceived by Stephanie Riggs and written & directed by Mark Mullino, the art becomes living right for the joy of the audiences eyes and ears.

This week, I sat down with Janelle Lutz backstage at The Firehouse Theatre, moments before she took the stage for her second (and final) dress rehearsal for THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, which runs February 18th through March 6th. Lutz (pronounced 'loots,' although she doesn't correct those that rhyme her name with klutz) shared her affection for Julie Andrews' portrayal of the role in the 1967 movie, and admitted some intimidation in following in Sutton Foster's Broadway shoes. As we talked about her exciting stage opportunities around DFW, I couldn't help but observe how one of DFW's largest stage personalities is also one of the most sincere, humble performers I've had the chance to speak with. Upon the end of our conversation, when I gave Ms. Lutz the opportunity to add anything I may have overlooked, she thought for a moment and responded: 'I'd just like to say thank you to the Dallas theatre community. This is my family; they've taken huge chances on me.'

Like many artists before him, composer Jonathan Larson's genius wasn't fully acknowledged until after he had passed away. As any "Renthead" could tell you, Larson tragically died on the morning of the first off-Broadway preview performance of RENT, which would go on to become the mega rock hit of the 1990s. Although RENT would ultimately be the only complete work Larson left the world, he'd spent many years drafting and performing many unrealized pieces. After his death in 1996, playwright David Auburn (PROOF) got his hands on a "rock monologue" Larson had created (then called 30/90). Auburn reworked the piece into TICK, TICK…BOOM!, a three-person piece biographically documenting Larson's (portrayed through the character, Jon) struggle to create art in The Big Apple as he approached his thirties.

When IF/THEN debuted on Broadway in March 2014, it reunited original RENT stars Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp with RENT director Michael Grief. Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, whose 2008 rock musical NEXT TO NORMAL had received the Pulitzer Prize, wrote the much-anticipated show, and New York celebrated the team's brisk New York return. Although the show received mostly mixed-to-positive reviews, it lasted a mere 430 performances, despite mother-daughter duos flocking to see Menzel upon the icy heels of FROZEN's success.

Over the past few years, the theatre community has been quietly buzzing about the stage work of Jackie Burns, the young actress whose credits include Elphaba in Broadway's WICKED, a soloist in the tribe of the 2009 HAIR revival, the original off-Broadway production of ROCK OF AGES, and most recently, as standby to IDINA MENZEL (WICKED, RENT) in the 2013 Broadway musical IF/THEN. This week, during her lunch break from rehearsals in New York City, Jackie sat down to chat with me about revisiting the show, and the pressure of stepping in for the FROZEN star.