On Angela Lansbury's Return To Broadway

Angela Lansbury opens in DEUCE May 6 after almost a 24-year absence from Broadway and her fans are thrilled. She and the venerable Marian Seldes share the stage for a full 90 minutes without intermission. No small feat for anyone to play 8 shows a week, let alone someone who's been in the spotlight for more than 60 years.

My first theatrical experience with Angela Lansbury took place at The Winter Garden Theatre on a cold Friday night in December 1966. The show was MAME. My high school friend, Pat Sousa, and I had received a weeklong theatre trip to NYC as Christmas gifts that year. We saw CACTUS FlOWER, DINNER AT EIGHT, MAME, SWEET CHARITY, and THE ODD COUPLE. If memory serves me correctly, Marian Seldes appeared in DINNER AT EIGHT.


If you're lucky enough to have seen Angela Lansbury in MAME, you've experienced the joy of musical theatre and perfect casting. Who can forget Mame sparring with Vera Charles (Beatrice Arthur), or embracing Agnes Gooch (Jane Connell) after she learns how "to live," and Lansbury standing arm-in-arm among the chorus line, all dressed in top hats and riding habits, as they sing the show's signature song.

Not only did we see the most popular theatre hits of the day, we also met the show's stars---this involved a little amateur sleuthing similar to Lansbury's own Jessica Fletcher.

Surprisingly, getting backstage at the Winter Garden proved simple. We found an unlocked door leading from the house to backstage. Pat and I stood (along with one tall wooden ladder and a stagehand) in the middle of an otherwise empty stage while trying to figure out where to find the dressing rooms. You can imagine how two starry-eyed teens with dreams of being on Broadway ourselves attempted to act as if we belonged on that hallowed stage where real magic had just taken place. And then, quite magically, Jane Connell appeared. We gushed about how much we loved her and the show, she signed our programs, and we said that we wanted to meet Angela Lansbury. It's possible that we used the explanation, "we came all the way from Florida to see the show." This innocent plea--out of the southern-laced mouths of babes with freshly scrubbed faces--had worked for us earlier in the week at The Palace Theatre. My gushing had landed us in Gwen Verdon's dressing room.

Jane Connell escorted us across the Winter Garden stage, through the wings, and let the stagedoor manager know "they're with me." As we began making our way upstairs to the dressing rooms, Angela Lansbury descended (gaily talking with her son and daughter). Jane introduced us, Pat gushed, I don't remember saying anything,(I had done most of the gushing when meeting the aforementioned Gwen Verdon). Angela Lansbury, tall, gracious, and kind, signed her picture in my MAME souvenir program. I've kept all my autographed programs from that fabulous holiday gift.

Years later, I caught Ms. Lansbury in SWEENEY TODD and watched "Murder She Wrote" off and on---a favorite television progam of my Mother's. On one of my parent's trips out to visit, I took them up the coast to Mendocino, the small picturesque seaside town we see as Cabot Cove, Maine in Murder She Wrote's opening scenes.

Bravo to Angela Lansbury for sharing her extraordinary talent with us again.

DEUCE Plays The Music Box Theatre, May 6 through August 19, 2007
Tickets: www.broadway.com

On Glory . . . Rostropovich

Master cellist, conductor, and accomplished pianist, Mstislav "Slava" Rostropovich died yesterday in Moscow. Here the master performs near Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall on November 12, 1989. . . A fierce crusader of artistic freedom during the Cold War, his many friends called him by "Slava," which means Glory in Russian.

“Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word . . . Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.”
__Mstislav Rostropovich, letter to PRAVDA,Soviet State Newspaper,1970

Photo Credit: Reuters

Piano Playing Cat Nora Releases New Video

Nora, the piano playing cat, just released her new video. Nora's first video hit YouTube in January. More than 1.5 million views later, this little piano playing cutie immediately landed on television newscasts around the globe. Notable U.S. featured spots include The Ellen Degeneres Show and Good Morning America. Nora tickled the ivories on The Martha Stewart Show in March.

For more about Nora, visit: Ravenswingstudio.

Watch Nora:The Sequel

On Accomplice: New York "Taking It To The Streets"

Schedule three hours on a weekend day to take in Accomplice: New York, one of the hottest city tour adventures available.

Sunday's New York Times article, along with a previous flurry of blurbs on national television outlets, will no doubt help Accomplice founders expand their interactive tours in major cities around the globe---including Peoria, if someone there is willing to license a production, according to FAQs posted on the Accomplice web site. Does anyone know who visits Peoria?

San Franciscans and out-of-towners have embraced audience interactive events for years---from Tony 'n Tina's Wedding to cult classic sing-along movie musical revivals. Accomplice takes reality theatre to the streets---where better to showcase the next Accomplice production than in The Streets of San Francisco!

Watch Accomplice Trailer and Order Tickets: www.accomplicenewyork.com

Check out Sunday NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/theater/22zino.html

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On Bada Bing! Bada Boom! The Sopranos Final Season

The Sopranos eases into it's final nine episodes as fans across the globe speculate how America's best loved home-grown Mafia family completes Season 7. When the doorbell rings, Carmela's opening line to Tony in bed, "Is this it?" sets the episode in motion. It's only fitting that Tony leaves the house in a terry cloth bathrobe after his arrest on lame gun charges. Released on bail, Tony and Carmela end up at his brother-in-law's lake house in upstate NY to celebrate Tony's 47th birthday."No risk, No Reward," Tony muses during a conversation sitting in a motor boat fishing with Bobby.

Music plays as much a character as the family members do. There's karoke singing with Carmela appropriately crooning, "Love Hurts." Jazz fans will enjoy hearing Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" throughout a game of monopoly and during Bobby and Tony's drunken fist fight. Bobby feels compelled to defend Janice's honor after Tony insults her.

"We're family, these things happen," says Janice the next morning, everyone is hung-over. Another great scene follows this one with Tony sitting alone on the dock lamenting to Carmela, "I'm old Carm, my body has suffered a trauma it will probably never recover from." Tony continues to brood over last year's life-changing shooting and heart attack.

Episode 78 ends with Bobby taking care of business. He blows away some skinny long-haired chump in a laundromat and returns to the lake house where his children are having a tea party out by the lake. As Bobby's young daughter runs toward him, "This Magic Moment" begins to play. We watch Bobby embrace his daughter---the one pure good thing in his life.

Photo Credits: HBO