Lea Salonga, now playing Fantine in Broadway’s “Les Miserables,â€? will make a rare concert appearance on Nov. 2 at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

A Tony Award-winner for “Miss Saigon, Salonga has also appeared on Broadway in “Les Miserables” as Eponine and in “Flower Drum Song.” She was the singing voice of Jasmine in Disney’s feature film “Aladdin” — singing “A Whole New World” — and in Disney’s film “Mulan” — singing “Reflection.”

This is quite a coup for the Music Hall, a great venue for this kind of music — a solo concert accompanied by a group of her favorite handpicked musicans.

Tickets are $45 – 65

The Tarrytown Music Hall is at 13 Main St., Tarrytown.

The box office is at www.tarrytownmusichall.org

Call 877-840-0457
.

Here’s the latest “In the Wings” video segment.

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When Nyack High School theater director Joe Egan heard the people from Rodgers & Hammerstein had phoned, he panicked.

“I thought we were in trouble for something we had done in ‘Cats’ two years ago,� he said with a laugh.

ut the news was good: Nyack was invited to be one of four high schools and two colleges from across the U.S. to produce pilot productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.� The pilot productions would help R&H Theatricals to prepare the show for the eventual release of amateur rights.

Charlie Scatamacchia (vice president for R&H Theatricals) said ‘We think your school can handle this. After having seen your  ‘Cats,’ we feel you’re capable of handling this,’� Egan said.

Gulp.

Egan thought this was going to be his easy year. The producing team — including musical director Kurt Kelley, choreographer Greg Baccarini and lighting designer Andrew Gmoser — had done “Cats� and “Titanic� over the past two springs.

“We were like “I think we’re going to do something light and have it done with,’� Egan said.

Kurt and Greg were a little scared at first,� Egan said. “Then  Andrew said ‘We have to do it.’�

Egan talked to Nyack’s interim principal, Dan Nicholson, and got the green light.

When he broke the news to the students and parents at a meeting a couple of weeks ago.

Max Reinhardsen, a Nyack senior, was in the auditorium.

“I have trouble hearing now because of how loud it was after Joe made the announcement,� Reinhardsen said jokingly.

“Actually, there was a moment of complete silence, like ‘How is this possible?’ I don’t think people believed it,� he recalled. “It’s still sinking in.�

Daisy Krikun, a junior, called the opportunity “so once-in-a-lifetime.�

“My mouth dropped open for at least 10 minutes,� when she heard Egan’s announcement.

“I know we were capable of doing it,� she said. “I just didn’t know other people thought we were.�

While the task is daunting, Krikun is confident.

“Joe and Greg (Baccarini) can do anything,� she said.

Brice Walborn, a senior, said he “just freaked out� when Egan made the announcement.

“The room got really loud. A couple of girls almost started to cry they were so excited. I was just happy it was a show I finally knew.�

Walborn says he’ll take a couple of voice lessons to prepare for next Thursday’s auditions.

“It’s the most stressed we’ve ever been for a show. The music is very intense and more operatic, more challenging than most of the music we’ve done before,� he said. “There’s more pressure to live up to the standard of what’s out there now.�

Will Walborn audition to be the Phantom?

“I’m not positive I can pull it off,� he said, “but I’m going to work really hard to get that, or the second lead of Raoul, the love interest for Christine.�

“The Phantom is actually only on stage for 19 minutes in the entire show,� Walborn said. “But when he is, it’s these big, extravagant loud solos. When he is on stage, he’s the sole focus of the performance.�

“As a senior, to go for that lead means a little bit more.�

Walborn said the recognition is encouraging.

“It means so much that we’ve actually had people come to our shows and see the talent that we’ve put on and the hard work that we’ve put into it,� he said. “It’s not something that anyone takes lightly. It’s very time consuming and it’s something that we really put all of our effort into.�

Reinhardsen is still in awe of the honor bestowed on Nyack.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber in England and all his people picked four high schools and two colleges — and we were one of them because our reputation is so high. It blows my mind every time I think about it.�

Bert Fink, of R&H Theatricals, said other schools are:  Elon University in Elon, N.C.; Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio; Fairfield Senior High School in Fairfield, Ohio; Carroll Senior High School in Southlake, Texas and one more high school yet to be announced.

ink said Nyack was the only school in New York and the only school in the Northeast to be chosen to participate, adding that he’s certain that representatives from R&H will “almost certainly drive up to see it firsthand� when the production opens on March 7, 2008.
Egan said he hopes to add a first-Sunday performance to the  two-weekend run, with shows on March 7, 8, 9, 14 and two on March 15.
Egan called the process of mounting the Tony-winning best musical — based on Gaston LeRoux’s novel — “a daunting task.�
But that’s what R&H is after, Fink said. They want six different productions, with six different budgets and resources and talent pools.
“We may figure out how to get the chandelier right and someone else might stage a great ‘Masquerade,’� said Egan.
“I guess we don’t have a year off,� Egan said.

Here’s my “In the Wings” segment on “Phantom” returning to Westchester Broadway Theatre.Download:

How often do you get to be in on the ground floor of a new theater company? Here’s your chance.

The Ruth Keeler Memorial Library in North Salem, in conjunction with St. James Church, is holding auditions tomorrow night for “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the first production of a yet-nameless group that hopes to make theater a regular Wednesday-night thing at the library.

The tryouts, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow, seek the following characters, for a production to be presented Jan. 5 at 5 p.m. and Jan. 6 at 2 p.m.
Amahl, a crippled boy of about 12
His Mother  (age 25-58)
Three Kings: Kaspar, Melchior, Balthazar (ages 25-60)
The Page (age 16-30)
Shepherds and Villagers  (All ages)
Singers, Rappers, Dancers, Musicians  (All ages)

Scripts will be available at the audition.

Besides needing a name — maybe they’ll hold a contest — the group also needs anyone interested in working behind the scenes in props, costumes or makeup.

For more information, call Robin at 914-669-5660.

The Ruth Keeler Memorial Library is at 276 Titicus Road in North Salem.

I went to a reading of a work in process last night at the Pelham Library. The invitation came from Cynthia Granville, who was artistic director at Blueberry Pond Theater Ensemble in Ossining and has moved on to a new company: The Supporting Characters.

Like Blueberry Pond, The Supporting Characters are committed to developing new works from lab readings and discussions. Granville adds another element, though, stressing that the process continues “through public performance.”

“We provide a fertile artistic ground with freedom to fail, freedom to experiment, and freedom to bring bold original work to life in a process which recognizes that a play is not complete until it is seen by an audience.”

Last night’s audience was small but attentive, listening to Lloyd Pace’s new play “New Orleans,” about a young girl and a long-ago event in a New Orleans hotel room.

The room was small, a smoke alarm of some kind kept going off, but the payoff was big for Pace and for his audience: Getting to hear a play that had a lot to offer.

For me, hearing 11-year-old Molly Callahan’s lilting approach to the dialogue was a high point. It was a family affair, to be sure, as Callahan is the daughter of actor Francis Callahan and Granville. Molly’s kid sister, Bonnie, was there, too.

“New Orleans” is a memory play, told by Buster, a woman now but played by Molly, since the events that transpired over the course of the play’s action froze her at that emotional age.

“Some of us don’t move on,” Buster says.

There is still work to do on the play, and that is precisely the point.

The next step is an Equity-approved showcase of “New Orleans,” opening Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. at the Producers Club, 358 W. 44th St.

Here’s the schedule: Nov. 3 and 4 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Nov. 7, 8 and 9 at 8 p.m.; Nov. 10 and 11 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Tickets are $18, available at www.theatermania.com or 212-352-3101.

Consider this the dawning of a new age in Westchester theater with two venues getting big-time artistic directors who are committed to putting their theaters on the map.

First is Michael Bush at the Emelin, a tiny theater with big dreams. Bush comes from Manhattan Theater Club, where he was right-hand-man to legendary artistic director Lynne Meadow. He comes to an Emelin that is just starting a $10 million capital campaign to turn a sleepy 9,000-sq.-foot space into a 36,000-sq.-foot space, with a dedicated movie theater, a black-box experimental space and an expanded main hall with more seats. Bush will introduce himself to his subscribers at an Oct. 11 gala in New Rochelle and then they’ll get to see what kind of shows he’s been working on — and a taste of what to expect — during his 20-day “Theatre in Concert Festival,” Nov. 17-Dec. 6. The festival includes two shows about Tennessee Williams (a Bush favorite), a good sampling of cabaret (a Bush strength), and a little bit of country music (a new Bush obsession).

In White Plains, executive producer Jack W. Batman (pronounced BATmin) is turning the ill-fated White Plains Performing Arts Center, which had limped along after its management team lost the Helen Hayes Theater Company, into an Equity house to produce musical theater spectaculars.

On the season schedule is “Man of La Mancha” Nov. 29-Dec. 16, “Ragtime,” in a concert version Feb. 1-3, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” Feb. 28-March 16, and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” April 24-May 11.

Very exciting news.

When Oscar-winning actor and sometime Westchester resident Tim Robbins first read George Orwell’s “1984� — when he was fresh out of UCLA, in 1983 — he thought it was fanciful science fiction.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, this isn’t coming true because we don’t have absolute observation of everyone’s movements’,� Robbins recalls. “How could it be possible for a government to monitor all of the individuals in its society?’�

Revisiting the book as he prepared to direct the Actors’ Gang production of “1984� — for a world tour that comes to the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College on Saturday — he was less at ease.

“There was this interesting passage which I had totally forgotten,� he recalls. “(Orwell) says ‘We’re not interested in 80 percent of the people. Eighty percent of the people are too stupefied by overwork or pacified by entertainment. We don’t have to worry about them. It’s 20 percent we have to monitor.’ And that is achievable.�

When Michael Gene Sullivan approached Robbins with a new adaptation of Orwell’s 1948 novel,  Robbins was hooked, but says he wasn’t sure how much of it was really Orwell.

“I absolutely loved it, but I thought, ‘Well, jeez, he’s made some stuff up here,’� Robbins says with a laugh.

Then he started reading.

“Before I called him, I reread the book and I was shocked, delighted and horrified to realize that he hadn’t made it up, that it was all in the book, and how visionary was Orwell to write what he wrote.�

Orwell’s novel looks at a society that’s ruled by the party and overseen by Big Brother. The central character, Winston Smith, initially defies the party until he is pulled into a trap and reconditioned and reprogrammed to proclaim his love for Big Brother.

This is not a reality show where people volunteer to be watched 24/7 for several weeks, to gain 15 minutes of fame and the promise of wealth. This is a society where the individual doesn’t exist, where choice is not an option.
Having read the adaptation and reread the book, Robbins saw little choice but to exercise his option to direct it.

“It’s completely Orwell,� he says.

“The thing that struck me in particular — and one of the things the adaptation focuses on — is the chapter ‘War is Peace.’ It’s Orwell’s description of the state and why war is perpetual and why we are in need of an unseen and constant undefeatable enemy.�

Robbins — no fan of the Bush administration’s war policy — then laughs a knowing laugh.

“The resonance in that alone was enough to immediately do the production. Pretty remarkable. If you don’t have time to read the entire book, just read the Goldstein chapter ‘War is Peace.’ It’s easy to find in the book because it’s in different print than the rest of the book. It’s in bold or italic.�

Robbins — whose front-and-center criticism of the administration has garnered him plenty of detractors — recognizes that some will dismiss the work when they see his name attached to it.

Still, he’s convinced “1984� has plenty to say to those who’ll listen.

“We’ve found, having toured predominately red states — we’ve made the discovery that there are no red and blue states, they’re a  bunch of purple states — that there is a real need and desire to hear this material across political lines.

“We mustn’t forget that some of the staunchest supporters of individual freedoms are Republicans,� he says. “They have been coming to the play and they’ve been interested in the questions it raises. And they’ve stayed around for post-performance discussions, some of which get very lively.�

There is a post-performance discussion set for the Purchase performance on Saturday, Robbins says, although he won’t be on hand for that. (He’ll be rehearsing the cast on Friday, but won’t be at the performance the following night.)

The Actors’ Gang production has toured the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Greece, with Robbins dropping in on it to ensure everything is as he planned.

He says that on his recent travels, — working on the film, “City of Ember� — he found “a different America than I feel is portrayed in the media.�

“I don’t know that there’s any support for this war beyond the government and the media,� he says. “As someone who’s visibly against the war, on this recent trip which lasted eight weeks, there was not one person that said anything negative to me.�

Robbins sees the benefit of individuals taking a stand to change the government, something that was beyond the power of Winston in “1984.�

“I have a real clear idea that if the people actually did determine what the policy of the country was, we’d be in a lot better shape,� Robbins says. “So I have hope because I have an indication that things can change.�

“It always seems to happen that way: Through advocacy and protest and through simple conversations in a diner, eventually the people that lead this country will begin following the wishes of the populace.�