Chinese Character - "Utopia" makes for ideal "Forbidden" fruit

ENTERTAINMENT / Theater & Arts






"Utopia" makes for ideal "Forbidden" fruit

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-06-13 18:38



NEW YORK - All those Tony wins for "The Coast of Utopia" definitely add
oomph to "Forbidden Broadway: The Roast of Utopia," the special summer
retrospective edition of the "Forbidden Broadway" franchise that debuts
Wednesday and runs through August 22 at the 47th Street Theatre.

Not only will Tom Stoppard's nine-hour marathon be royally spoofed, but
so will Sunday's other big Tony champ, "Spring Awakening," as well as
"Mary Poppins" and other current shows, mixed in with encores of the most
popular "Forbidden" parodies from the past 25 years.

As always, Gerard Alessandrini is the writer-creator and also co-director
with Phillip George; an all-new edition is being planned for the fall.
(Under the terms of its rental agreement with the 47th Street Theatre,
"Forbidden" has to vacate the theater for several weeks each spring so
the theater's resident company, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, can
play its season.)


About those Tony Awards: They might have been walloped in the ratings by
Tony Soprano, but for those who were watching, the Broadway scene
basically looked very inviting, with some good selling done on at least
half of the musicals that opened this season, especially "Awakening," "A
Chorus Line" and "Curtains"; less inviting were the sequences chosen to
represent "110 in the Shade," "Company" and "Grey Gardens."

In the highly competitive best actress in a musical category, Christine
Ebersole triumphed as she should have; the same when Frank Langella
received the prize in the super-tight best actor in a play category.
Langella also gave the night's best acceptance speech, with Mary Louise
Wilson of "Grey Gardens" and David Hyde Pierce of "Curtains" also as
eloquent as we always want a Broadway veteran to be.

Most charmingly enthusiastic speechmaker: Julie White, best actress for
"The Little Dog Laughed." The most elegant ladies onstage: the classy
Angela Lansbury and best featured actress winner Jennifer Ehle.


"The Pirate Queen" swashes its final buckle Sunday after 85 performances,
plus previews, at the Hilton. Sixteen days later, on July 3, an original
cast recording of the Boublil-Schoenberg score will be released
nationwide by the Masterworks Broadway label.


Richard Thomas, who's been traveling the country in the Roundabout
Theatre Company's tour production of "12 Angry Men," isn't ready to call
it quits. He's agreed to tour in the Reginald Rose play for a second
year, hitting 19 cities in 28 weeks, including Cleveland, Toronto, Costa
Mesa, Calif., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C. Thomas will
again play Juror No. 8, the role Robert Cummings played in the original
1954 Studio One TV version directed by Franklin Schaffner and by Henry
Fonda in Sidney Lumet's 1957 film.


Michael Feinstein finishes his current run at Feinstein's at Loews
Regency on Saturday. On every night of his two-week salute to cabaret
legend Bobby Short, Feinstein has had a different guest star join him
onstage to do one number and share a Short memory or two. Elaine Stritch
was the first on June 5; the marvelous singer-pianist Charlie Cochran
takes the final guest spot Saturday.







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