As the children of Metropolitan Opera tenor Michele Farruggia and soprano Barbara de Deo, New City’s Robert and Cristina Farruggia have spent their lives in musical theater. On May 18, 2003, they were on stage at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre — representing the next generation of musical theater artists as members… Read More →
If you turned on a TV talk show in the ‘70s, Paul Williams was everywhere you looked. The diminutive songwriter with the long blonde hair and the nasal voice made 50 appearances on “The Tonight Show,” and showed up on “Mike Douglas,” “Dinah Shore” and “Merv Griffin.” Put out a… Read More →
By John P. McCarthy/For The Journal News To successfully mount a restoration comedy requires a seasoned cast capable of handling tongue-twisting verse and Baroque plotting. It’s all the more impressive if they can do so in a converted rail station with trains passing by. Hats off to the talented troupe… Read More →
If the address 221B Baker St., London, means anything to you, word that “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is now on stage at Penguin Rep in Stony Point might prompt you to don your deerstalker hat and head to Crickettown Road, magnifying glass in hand. Baker Street, after all, is… Read More →
It would seem like the summer of star-crossed lovers. Shakespeare on the Sound is staging “Romeo & Juliet,” as is Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, in a production directed by Christopher V. Edwards. At Hudson Valley, Edwards has the benefit of a seasoned Romeo: Carl Howell played the Montague for much… Read More →
“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” one of this summer’s offerings under the tent at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, is about people who say one thing and do another. Yes, the King of Navarre wants to head off into the woods with his pals and live a rustic life free… Read More →
It’s not Shakespeare, but “The 39 Steps” — the third show in the season’s repertory at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison – is entirely in the spirit of the “third shows” past. Like “Bombitty” (the hip-hop “Comedy of Errors”) and “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” and last… Read More →
Penny Cherns has directed Shakespeare in the Catalan language of Spain. “I can only speak Catalan Shakespeare,” she says with a laugh. “I can’t ask for bread and butter, but I can say ‘The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements’... Read More →
By day, B.J. Markus plays the bad cop, as assistant principal at a New York City school. By night, the former social-studies teacher plays Andrew Jackson, the hot-blooded seventh president of the United States, a man who drips sex, profanity and, yes, populism. Markus stars in the New York regional… Read More →
Now that the nominations are out, it’s time to think about getting to the Paramount on June 4. The show runs from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Producer Danielle Rudess has added an online-ordering component to the ticket-buying process. File photo by Vinnie DiSalvio: The crowd outside last year’s Metropolitan… Read More →
Here are the nomination tallies for 2012 Metro Awards, excluding those for technical merit, for which a school may be a multiple nominee. THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | RUNNING LINES VIDEOS
I logged a lot of miles during the high-school-musical season, talking to kids and shooting videos of them delivering favorite lines from their musicals. Here are Running Lines videos from 2012 Metro-nominated shows in Westchester and Rockland counties. THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS Archbishop Stepinac High… Read More →
Archbishop Stepinac High School’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” leads the field with 15 nominations for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4 at Peekskill’s Paramount Center for the Arts. The all-boys Catholic high school in White Plains… Read More →
Here, from producer Danielle Rudess, are the nominees in the Production (Technical) Categories for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4, 2012 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS | RUNNING LINES… Read More →
Here, from producer Danielle Rudess, are the nominees in the Artistic (Performance) Categories for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4, 2012 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. Photo by Barry Sabino/The Photo Shoppe: Nominees Nicole Heney and Albert Stanaj… Read More →
Producer Danielle Rudess and her team are compiling and cross-checking the nominations for the 14th Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, which we’ll announce here at 8 tonight. I call it the loudest, proudest moment in the high-school-musical season, when schools from Westchester, Rockland and Bergen counties converge on Peekskill’s Paramount… Read More →
It’s official: The opening left by the closing of “Leap of Faith” at the St. James Theater will be filled by “Bring It On,” the musical based on the 2000 Kirsten Dunst cheerleading movie. When it starts previews July 12 — for a rare Broadway summer opening on Aug. 1… Read More →
When the curtain rises on “Annie” in the fall — at a yet-to-be-named Nederlander theater on Broadway — the young actress playing the coveted role of Molly, the little orphan who Annie takes a shine to — will be Scarsdale’s Emily Rosenfeld. Emily, who is 8, is a veteran of… Read More →
This was too funny. Have to try to find some teachers who’d be up for it. I think John Gwardyak at Eastchester could be a contender….
One of the happiest local-theater developments in recent years has been the breathtaking rise of the Westchester Sandbox Theatre in Mamaroneck, which this spring hosted the New York regional premiere of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s “Next to Normal.”
Had a nice visit at Children’s Shakespeare Theatre earlier in the week, watching the unsinkable Diana Green putting her cast through its paces. The actors were not children, but adults, members of The Strange Bedfellows, a group that formed a few years ago from the ranks of parents who had… Read More →
Actors Conservatory Theatre—Arlene Wendt’s first-rate community theater in Yonkers—presents “Songs From the Home Front,” billed as “a nostalgic trip back, in words and music, to the World War II era.” Directed by Mauro Cantrastano, with musical direction by MaryAnn Ivan, the cast includes Miguel Acevedo, Ruth Chismulera, Contrastano, Jeannine Padula… Read More →
Reviewed by John P. McCarthy/For the Journal News “Hairspray,” the Tony-winning musical based on John Waters’ 1988 movie — which was then remade for the multiplex in 2007 — gets an enjoyable staging at Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford. Only a curmudgeon could fail to be won over by this… Read More →
Lower Hudson Valley theatergoers have two productions of the musical “The Secret Garden” to choose from, starting this week. White Plains PAC presents the musical setting of the classic children’s story — about an orphan girl who arrives at her uncle’s cold, forbidding estate and discoveries, well, a secret garden. With… Read More →
Eight hours before tonight’s sold-out opening night of “The Way of the World” at Garrison’s Depot Theater, John Christian Plummer was busy. It was opening night busy, with a thousand details to attend to. But it was a different busy than the busy of last year’s “The Seagull,” by Anton… Read More →
There are so many theater options in the Lower Hudson Valley this weekend. Here’s just a sampling: “The Way of the World” in Garrison: See below
If you can’t get a ticket to the Music Box Theatre, you can still see seven-time nominee “One Man, Two Guvnors” — at a fraction of the price — in Pleasantville. The National Theatre’s “NTLive” series — which beams live shows from the banks of the Thames to movie theaters… Read More →
Greenville Community Theater presents “FOURPLAY”—four original one-act plays, winners of the community theater’s play-writing contest—at the Edgemont High School Theater in Greenburgh.
Children’s Shakespeare Theatre presents its final two performances of “As You Like It” Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15, $12 seniors, $10 kids 18 and under. At Palisades Presbyterian Church, Washington Spring Road, Palisades. 845-205-2772. Email Childrens.Shakespeare@gmail.com. *** On the horizon Later this month: The adult troupe… Read More →
“Talley’s Folly,” Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winner — now in a pitch-perfect production at Briarcliff’s Hudson Stage through May 12 — is achingly beautiful to watch. There is Matt Friedman, a Jewish accountant from St. Louis, the ultimate outsider here in Missouri in 1944, who has done his best to lose… Read More →
