Nicole Rosky - Page 245

Brooklyn band Sky-Pony (fronted by Tony nominee Lauren Worsham of Broadway's A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) is known for shows that bridge the gap between rock and theater. Earlier this week, they combined these interests with special show that included a cavalcade of luminaries from the world of Broadway at Joe's Pub. Special guests included Tony nominee Marc Kudisch (Hand to God, 9 to 5), Margo Seibert (Rocky, Tamar of the River), Alli Mauzey (Wicked, Hairspray), Lisa O'Hare (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder), Catherine Walker (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) and Tony winner Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening). BroadwayWorld brings you highlights from the concert below!

Today in 1938, Pygmalion opened at the Maxine Elliott's Theatre. Written by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the play centers on Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins. He makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a comment on women's independence, packaged as a romantic comedy.

Today in 2010, A View From the Bridge opened at the Cort Theatre, where it ran for 81 performances. Written by American playwright Arthur Miller, the show was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play is set in 1950s America, in an Italian American neighborhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It employs both a chorus and a narrator (Alfieri). Eddie, the tragic protagonist, has an improper love of, and almost obsession with, Catherine. The 2010 revival starred Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Hecht.

Today in 2005, Little Women opened at the Virginia Theatre (now the August Wilson Theatre), where it ran for 137 performances. Based on Louisa May Alcott's classic 1869 semi-autobiographical novel, it focuses on the four March sisters - brassy, tomboy-like, aspiring writer Jo, romantic Meg, pretentious Amy, and kind-hearted Beth - and their beloved Marmee, at home in Concord, Massachusetts while the family patriarch is away serving as a Union Army chaplain during the Civil War. Intercut with the vignettes in which their lives unfold are several recreations of the melodramatic short stories Jo writes in her attic studio. The Broadway cast included Sutton Foster, Maureen McGovern, Janet Carroll, Jenny Powers, Megan McGinnis, and Amy McAlexander.

Today in 1942, the first revival of Porgy and Bess opened at the Majestic Theatre, where it ran for 286 performances. First performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, it was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward. All three works deal with African-American life in the fictitious Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s. Originally conceived by George Gershwin as an 'American folk opera', Porgy and Bess premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers-a daring artistic choice at the time.

BroadwayWorld is excited to bring you 'Songs from My Living Room'- a new series that goes into the home of one of today's most acclaimed contemporary songwriters, as he explains the stories behind his songs. The monthly series will feature special guests from all corners of the entertainment industry to help bring to life the music and lyrics of Scott Alan straight from his living room into yours. This fourth episode, directed by Robbie Rozelle, features David Burtka singing Alan's 'Goodnight' from his debut album 'Dreaming Wide Awake'.

The Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning Keen Company will soon present a rare revival of John & Jen, the musical with music by Andrew Lippa, lyrics by Tom Greenwald, and a book by Greenwald and Lippa. This production will star Kate Baldwin (Big Fish, Finian's Rainbow) and Conor Ryan (Cinderella, The Fortress of Solitude) in the title roles. The compnay just gave a special press preview and BroadwayWorld wa sthere for the festivities. Check out interviews with the full gang and a sneak peek below!

Today in 1903, The Wizard of Oz opened at the Majestic Theatre, where it ran for 293 performances. Based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, which was originally published in 1900, much of the original music was by Paul Tietjens and has been mostly forgotten, although it was still well-remembered and in discussion at MGM in the late 1930s, when the classic film version of the story was made. The main plot of the show, as recounted in newspapers of the time, is Pastoria's attempts to regain the throne from the Wizard of Oz. The original protagonists' search for the Wizard puts them on the wrong side of the law. Since then, many new incarnations have been created, including the 1939 film, and the 2011 West End musical.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

The cast of the Tony Award-winning hit Beautiful just celebrated the show's one year anniversary. Since opening on Broadway on January 12, 2014, Beautiful has broken all box office records at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, where it recently became the highest grossing production in the theatre's history. Leading the company is Tony winner Jessie Mueller, who has been with the show all along the way. Mueller just chatted with BroadwayWorld about her year as Carole King, working with Sara Bareiless on her new WAITRESS musical, performing at the Kennedy Center Honors, and so much more. Check out the full interview below!

Happy Birthday Michael Crawford! In 1981, Crawford starred in the Original London production of Cy Coleman's Barnum (1981) as the illustrious American showman P. T. Barnum. He is best known for starring opposite Sarah Brightman in the original cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera as the title character. In 1986, Crawford began his performance in London, continuing on to Broadway in 1988, and then Los Angeles a year later, in 1989. He played the role for 2½ years and over 1,300 performances, winning an Olivier Award (Best Actor in a Musical) and a Tony Award (Best Performance By An Actor in a Lead Role, Musical). Beginning in February 2011, Crawford has played the role of the Wizard in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical version of The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium.

In honor of National Hot and Spicy Food Day, check out a never-before-seen clip of ON THE TOWN's Alysha Umphress singing 'I Can Cook Too.'

The new Off-Broadway comedy 'Application Pending' stars Christina Bianco, who plays rookie admissions officer Christine Evans as well as forty other roles. The show will be playing at The Westside Theatre from January 26th to April 19th.www.ApplicationPendingPlay.com. Bianco and company just gave a special press preview of the new play and you can check out a sneak peek below!

Today in 1998, Ragtime opened at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts (now the Foxwoods Theatre), where it ran for 834 performances. The musical garnered four Tony Awards including Best Book, Original Score and Best Orchestrations. The beloved Ahrens and Flaherty score features some of the award-winning team's best-known songs including the title song, 'Make Them Hear You' and the anthem 'The Wheels of a Dream.' A revival opened at the Neil Simon Theatre in 2009.

Today in 1931, Broadway veteran James Earl Jones was born. He has won Tony awards in 1969 for The Great White Hope and in 1987 for Fences. He has acted in many Shakespearean roles: Othello, King Lear, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Abhorson in Measure for Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet. On April 7, 2005, James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams headed the cast in an African-American Broadway revival version of On Golden Pond, directed by Leonard Foglia and produced by Jeffrey Finn. In February 2008, he starred on Broadway as Big Daddy in a limited-run, all-African-American production of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Debbie Allen and mounted at the Broadhurst Theatre. In October 2010, Jones returned to the Broadway stage in Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy along with Vanessa Redgrave at the Golden Theatre. In November 2011, Jones starred in Driving Miss Daisy in London's West End, and on November 12 Jones received his honorary Oscar in front of the audience at the Wyndham's Theatre, which was presented to him by Ben Kingsley.

Happy Birthday, Lin-Manuel Miranda! Miranda is most famous for writing and starring as 'Usnavi' in the Broadway musical In the Heights, which opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2008, and for which he won the Tony Award as composer and lyricist. He also wrote Spanish language dialogue and worked with Stephen Sondheim to translate into Spanish song lyrics for the revival of West Side Story, which opened on Broadway in March 2009. Most recently, Miranda worked on the musical theatre version of Broadway's Bring It On, inspired by the 2000 cheerleader comedy film of the same name.

Today in 2008, The 39 Steps opend at the American Airlines Theatre, where it ran for 771 performances. The play is a farce adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patrick Barlow wrote the adaptation, based on the original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon of a two-actor version of the play. The play's concept calls for the entirety of the 1935 adventure film The 39 Steps to be performed with a cast of only four. One actor plays the hero, Richard Hannay, an actress plays the three women with whom he has romantic entanglements, and two other actors play every other character in the show: heroes, villains, men, women, children and even the occasional inanimate object. This often requires lightning fast quick-changes and occasionally for them to play multiple characters at once. Thus the film's serious spy story is played mainly for laughs, and the script is full of allusions to (and puns on the titles of) other Alfred Hitchcock films, including Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo and North by Northwest.

Roundabout Theatre Company presents a new Off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine's Tony Award-winning Into the Woods. Directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, this production premiered in May 2013 at the McCarter Theatre in association with the Fiasco Theater. Into the Woods began preview performances December 18, 2014 and officially opens on January 22, 2015 at the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street). This is a limited engagement thru March 22, 2015. BroadwayWorld brings you highlights of the cast in action below!

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, Nicole Scherzinger just made her West End stage debut as 'Grizabella' in Andrew Lloyd Webber's record-breaking musical Cats, and according to a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Webber has plans to bring the show (and his new star) to Broadway. He told DM: 'Cats will now definitely go to Broadway again. It's very exciting.' On Scherzinger's future involvement, he added: 'I would very greatly hope she would do it. To do something like that in America would open up a billion doors for her.'He continued: 'She is what you might call an American theatre babe. I do believe she is the most exciting musical theatre artist I have found - well, that I have worked with - in very, very many years. I really do.' In the video below, Scherzinger performs and acoustic cover of Sam Smith's 'I'm Not the Only One.' Check it out below!

On January 9th, Broadway's biggest belters celebrated the best-selling Canadian music artist in history, Celine Dion, in an evening of epic power ballads, and classic pop tunes at 54 Below. With one of the most distinctive voices in music history, and with albums sales of over 200 million, Dion is undeniably one of the most influential female artists of our generation. Audiences can expect to hear a wide array of Celine's greatest hits from her 25 year career, including 'The Power Of Love,' 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now,' 'My Heart Will Go On,' 'I Drove All Night,' and many more. Featuring a star-studded Broadway cast, this is one concert no Broadway or Pop Music love should miss! Check out highlights from the concert below!