For Marisa Urgo, life is imitating art a bit. She’s cast as the coach’s wife in “Footloose” at Harrison. “Footloose” is, of course, about a town where kids are forbidden to dance. Because she plays one of the dance-forbidding adults, Marisa doesn’t get to dance a lot in the show…. Read More →
Just in, from Cary Fuller at Rye Country Day. Snow has canceled tonight’s opening of “Urinetown, the Musical.” All tickets for tonight will be honored at a Sunday matinee at 2. Tickets are still $15, $12 for students. 914-934-8129.
The snow is throwing a wrench into a lot of plans. Martin Moran’s “Rehearsing Consciousness,” part of the Insights & Revelations Series at the Emelin Theater, has been canceled tonight and rescheduled to 8 p.m. March 4. The solo show takes the audience from Johannesburg to Colorado to Broadway. Audiences… Read More →
The press opening for Westchester Broadway Theatre’s production of “Nine” has been postponed by today’s snow and rescheduled to Sunday, Feb. 28. Dinner will be at 5:30, with the curtain at 7. My review of the musical — starring Robert Cuccioli as Italian film director Guido Contini, suffering a midlife… Read More →
Whirlwind of a day yesterday. Started out early, writing the stories that will appear in the paper next week. (We’re going to run the stories in our Expresses on the Thursday’s the show opens. And I’ll have a round-up of that weekend’s shows in Life&Style each Thursday, too.) Then it… Read More →
The storm that’s just starting now is already having an impact beyond school closings and early dismissals. Got a note last night from White Plains Performing Arts Center: “Due to the impending snowstorm this weekend, the White Plains Performing Arts Center Conservatory Theatre’s production of A CHORUS LINE has been… Read More →
Jim Fyfe, a bon vivant and man about town who has stepped in to direct “Return to the Forbidden Planet” at Rockland Country Day School, could use a hand with some set elements. He writes: “The show requires some very specific space-ship stuff, like a high-tech (or high-tech looking) captain’s… Read More →
In a story about Bob Cuccioli over the weekend, I mentioned that Westchester audiences might know him from his work at the “now-defunct” White Plains Performing Arts Center. In the context of the story, that is accurate: The producing team and the regional Equity season in which Cuccioli played Don… Read More →
Sorry to learn that this year will be the last at Rye Country Day School for director Cary Fuller, a thoughtful gentleman of the theater who has been at this for 41 years. Mr. Fuller (seen here in a Carucha Meuse photo as he directed “Anything Goes”) is a dedicated… Read More →
“Urinetown,”?this year’s musical at Rye Country Day School, continues the school’s long tradition of putting teachers and staff in the cast, side by side with students. This year, “regulars” Matt Suzuki, David Tafe and Dick Pike will be joined by RCDS security officer Patrick Early in a cast directed by… Read More →
Here’s a look at a very busy spring on local stages, in both professional and community theater. Professional Axial Theatre Company: Axial presents “For The Love of Money,” an evening of monologues about people’s romance with money, May 13 through 23. At St. John’s Episcopal Church, 8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville. 914-286-7680…. Read More →
OK, so maybe you’ve been in a cave and missed every one of the eight musicals that The Bedford Community Theatre has brought to the Community House on Main Street in Bedford Hills. Not to worry. BCT is holding a Broadway sing-along Feb. 27 from 7-10 pm at the Bedford… Read More →
“I’m my own farce,” Stanley Tucci says from his car on his way to rehearsal for Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor,” a show that will add “Broadway director” to his long resumé when it opens at the Music Box Theatre on April 4. The Katonah native, a widowed father… Read More →
When he was 17, Maury Yeston fell in love with Federico Fellini’s film “8 1/2,” about an Italian director suffering a midlife crisis and paralyzing writer’s block. Within a decade Yeston began writing a musical based on what he’d seen on screen. In 1982, that musical, “Nine” — starring Raul… Read More →
Maddie Corman has been waiting for this break — this Broadway break — all her life. “I discovered I wanted to be an actress pretty much on the Irvington Town Hall Theater stage that my mom was instrumental in resurrecting. To think that I’m going to Broadway now and my… Read More →
Went to Westlake High School yesterday for rehearsals of “The Music Man.” Watched “Shipoopi” and a couple of scenes. At Westlake, which shares its campus with the middle school’s 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders, it’s a tradition to include middle-schoolers in the show. Talked to a few sets of siblings. Pretty… Read More →
I chatted with Oscar-nominee Stanley Tucci, who’s in rehearsals for his Broadway-directorial debut with “Lend Me a Tenor,” Ken Ludwig’s door-slamming farce. He had some interesting things to say about comic timing, so vital in farce. “If somebody doesn’t have a natural ability for it, it’s not going to happen,”... Read More →
Yesterday was one of those whirlwinds that become the norm come HSM season. Started the day in Somers where a small band of students showed up despite the winter break to work on “Anything Goes” under choreographer Linda Duci and director Ann Ferraro. Notable was Jen Milde, 17, a senior,... Read More →
I wrote about ArtsRock — a group of arts refugees from Riverspace — a bit back. Now comes the news that they’ve secured a big ol’ grant to further their goal of presenting arts throughout Rockland County. Arts patrons Mr. & Mrs. Hal Coon have given ArtsRock $15,000. This is… Read More →
Croton Teen Theater and Croton-Harmon High School PTSA are cooking up a Comedy Night on Feb. 27 to raise money for both groups. The Night will be held at Holy Name of Mary Church in Croton-on-Hudson, with cocktails at 7 and the show at 8:30. The $50 tickets cover hors d’ouevres,... Read More →
This Sunday, Valentine’s Day, is important to the people at the Tarrytown Music Hall. For one thing, Sunday marks the 30th anniversary of the venue’s rescue by the nonprofit organization Friends of the Mozartina. For another, those who volunteer at the Music Hall consider it a labor of love. And… Read More →
Terry O’Brien, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s artistic director — fresh from auditioning interns in Minnesota, but stuck in the airport thanks to a wintry blast in the East — called to deliver some news: The third play in the festival’s 24th season will be “The Bomb-itty of Errors,” a hip-hop… Read More →
Visited two schools yesterday. At North Salem, director Doug Coates ran the orphans of “Oliver!” through their paces in “Food, Glorious Food,” “Pick a Pocket,” “Hurry Up But Be Back Soon” and the title song. The sixth- through ninth-graders — 40 stage-filling orphans — were in fine voice and had… Read More →
Wondering what your director—in high school, community or even professional theater—says when a rehearsal is going downhill fast. Millions of years ago, when I was in high school, my drama teacher, the lovable retired Marine sergeant (you’re never a “former” Marine) Mr. Gaines, used to yell “You’re wrecking it!” and… Read More →
When some people turn 70, their friends throw a party. American playwright Israel Horovitz’s friends at the Barefoot Theatre Company have been marking his 70th birthday curating a year-long global festival of his works, 70 in all. The “70/70 Horovitz Project” will wrap up March 31, 2010, on the occasion… Read More →
Everything’s coming up Shakespeare this year, as New Rochelle Council on the Arts plans an ambitious “Sound Shore Shakespeare Festival” with a grant from New York Council on the Humanities. The festival, which runs March through May, folds some already established works under the umbrella of the over-arching effort, including… Read More →
Just a few words of praise for “Bronx Kiss,” Purchase College’s second foray south to the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck. First, the piece — a culling-together of scenes by Pulitzer Prize-winner John Patrick Shanley — is ideally suited to the intimate venue it now calls home. Director Benard Cummings leads… Read More →
PMT Productions’ annual fund-raiser — the Westchester Teen Idol contest — is well under way. Auditions held on Jan. 9 determined the finalists for the Feb. 27 concert at Irvington Town Hall Theater. The judges for the contest are: Broadway’s Carole Demas, Michael James Leslie, Craig Schulman and composer and… Read More →
Danielle Rudess, producer of the Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, emailed today to mention that the deadline for the 2010 Metros — the Oscars of the high-school-musical realm across the Lower Hudson Valley — is fast approaching. February 15 is the deadline to enter for consideration for the 2010 Metropolitan Awards,... Read More →
“When you read about Lincoln, you find so many points of view that you have to locate Lincoln within your own sensibility, withing your own world view, within your own class, within your own race. That’s what we do with icons.” Choreographer Bill T. Jones has been thinking Lincoln for… Read More →
