Ann 2013 - Articles Page 2

ANN, a new play written and performed by Emmy Award-winning actress Holland Taylor, will begin previews on Broadway at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street) Monday, February 18, 2013 at 8pm, and will open Thursday, March 7, 2013. Taylor, who stars as Ann Richards, the legendary late governor of Texas, discusses the role in the video below. Click to watch!

ANN, a new play written and performed by Emmy Award-winning actress Holland Taylor, will begin previews on Broadway at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street) Monday, February 18, 2013 at 8pm, and will open Thursday, March 7, 2013. Directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein, ANN has scenic design by Michael Fagin, costume design by Julie Weiss, lighting design by Matthew Richards, sound design by Ken Huncovsky, projection design by Zachary Borovay, wig design by Paul Huntley, and is produced by Bob Boyett and Harriet Newman Leve with co-producers Jane Dubin, Jack Thomas, Amy Danis, Mark Johannes, Sarahbeth Grossman, Anne O'Shea and Jon Cryer in association with Lincoln Center Theater. ANN is executive produced by Kevin Bailey.

Bob Boyett and Harriet Newman Leve have just announced that ANN, a new play written and performed by Emmy Award-winning actress Holland Taylor, will open on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street) Thursday, March 7, 2013. ANN is a no-holds-barred portrait of the unforgettable Governor of the Lone Star State, Ann Richards. The play is directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein, and is produced by Bob Boyett and Harriet Newman Leve in association with Lincoln Center Theater. ANN is executive produced by Kevin Bailey who has spearheaded the production since its inception.

Let's face it, nobody produces a song and sketch revue based on the plays of Ionesco in a theatre on the western outskirts of 55th Street expecting a commercial smash.  During the ten days in 1974 when the original production of Ionescopade ran Off-Broadway, lovers of musical theatre were lining up at box offices to see stars like Carol Channing in Lorelei, Debbie Reynolds in Irene, and Patty and Maxene Andrews in Over Here!  Younger playgoers were discovering themselves with Pippin and rocking out to Grease, while those who go for intellectual snob hits had their choice of the revival of Candide or the new Sondheim/Prince romance A Little Night Music.  Those venturing to Off-Broadway were still flocking to that fresh new musical, The Fantasticks, then in only its fifteenth year.

'We found all the people who didn't see Donny and Marie tonight,' Suzanne Carrico chirps with a big smile as she surveys her Metropolitan Room audience.  In her new show, featuring material from her CD, What Christmas Time Means To Me, the MAC Award winner might be called a little bit American songbook, a little bit holiday traditional as she celebrates 'the only time of the year with a built-in soundtrack' with cleverness, sincerity and a heck of a lot of joy.

While I have a sneaking suspicion that playwright Evan Smith meant for his new comedy, The Savannah Disputation, to bring out provocative issues of faith from underneath its many, many, many big laughs, I'm afraid director Walter Bobbie's production at Playwrights Horizon settles for being ninety of the funniest minutes currently gracing Manhattan's stages. Oh sure, maybe some churchgoers will have reservations, but this heathen had a helluva good time.

As the denizens who frequent Manhattan's halls where two-drink minimums reign are well aware, the lass or laddie serving your cocktail is often an artist of greater experience and show-stopping talent than the perfectly fine entertainer who is on stage putting his or her own personal spin on 'This Is The Moment.' Being a serious, full-time cabaret singer usually means being the president, CEO, investor and product of your own unintentionally non-profit corporation in a world where hobbyists with deep pockets and lots of friends who don't need to think twic

Though Ervin Drake's 'The Friendliest Thing (Two People Can Do),' from his 1964 hit What Makes Sammy Run?, has been called the first song from a Broadway musical to be directly about having sex, Suzanne Carrico employs no vampy winks or purring vocals as she observes with heightened intellectual interest the unnecessity of foreplaying drinks and dances when a couple in lust could simply get right to it.  (Yes, I just made up two words in that sentence.  Deal with it.)  Her new show at The Metropolitan Room, opening less than three weeks afters winning the MAC Award for Outstanding Debut, is named for this suggestive showtune but the self-described geek cleverly treats the song as a subtext to Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields' 'Welcome To Holiday Inn,' sandwiching the cerebral sexuality between slices of broader, comical pass-making.  This is either the smartest show about sex or the sexiest show about smarts in town.In outstanding company both offstage (Mary Cleere Haran is her director) and on (she's got music director/arranger Tedd Firth on piano and Steve Doyle on bass), Carrico has the kind of sunny, uncomplicated voice that can fill Harold Arlen and Leo Brown's 'Hooray For Love' with perky glee, matched with the kind of acting skill that can explore the dark dramatic longings of Arlen and Johnny Mercer's 'I Had Myself a True Love,' climaxing in an anguished belt that is far more about the woman she portrays than her ability to vocally shine.She calls this her hanky-panky show and most every number has something to do with sex.  There's the sweet simplicity with which she approaches Jimmy Roberts and Joe DiPietro's 'I Will Be Loved Tonight,' where a woman who has gone too long without a lover's touch anticipates how the evening's date will end, and the wry exasperation of 'Toothbrush Time,' William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein's tense contemplation on why last night's lover is taking so long to get out of the apartment.  She savors the snazzy jazz jauntiness of Michael John La Chiusa's 'The Thief' and turns George Gershwin and B.G. DeSylva's 'Do It Again!' into a lopsided debate between the mind and the libido (guess who wins).The very funny sexpot character song, 'Femininity' (Jay Livingston/Ray Evans), is given an interesting personal twist as she introduces it with some of her own feelings as an adolescent girl surprised by the different way boys would look at her once she started developing.  Her admiration for the romantic passion expressed by Alan and Marilyn Bergman fuels her detailed story-telling in 'Like a Lover' and 'The Island.And for those who believe that hanky-panky is never complete without a bit of cuddling after, she finishes the evening with a very satisfied and satisfying 'Embraceable You' by the Gershwins.