Word: broadway
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...here they are, at Encores!, for us to follow in their ascendancy to Broadway stardom. In 1999, when Nathan Lane headlined a delicious revival of the Styne-Betty Comden-Adolph Green "Do Re Mi," the male and female second leads were Mitchell and Heather Headley; the following year those two won the Tony's top musical awards (for their work in "Kiss Me, Kate" and "Aida"). At Encores! the veterans also mix collegially with the newbies - as Mitchell and Gravitte did with the beautiful 19-year-old soprano Anne Hathaway (star of "The Cinderella Diaries" and "Ella Enchanted...
...This past season emphasized the familiar - familiar, at least, to its core audience of Modern Maturity musical mavens. Both "Can-Can!" and "Bye Bye Birdie" had long Broadway runs and upmarket movie adaptations; in the 90s, "Birdie" was remade for TV, with Vanessa Williams in the female lead. The revivals were spiffy as always, and better than that if Patti LuPone and Karen Ziemba (the respective stars) fit your definition of Broadway mesmerizers...
...This particular pliable poultry belongs to a Broadway subgenre - which includes Encores! honorees "Du Barry Was a Lady" and "A Connecticut Yankee" - that Viertel describes as "the 'hero-hit-on-the-head-with-a-bottle' musical." The conked conqueror in "English" is a genteel Brit, Michael Bramleigh, who, after a head-bump, becomes Goto Schmidt, owner of Dresden's notorious night spot Klub "21." (Both roles are played, with an expert counterfeit of charm, by Brian d'Arcy James.) Goto and his girlfriend Gita Gobel (Emily Skinner) are forever threatened by the pompous Police Commissioner (Imus' man of a thousand...
...Thus each production might be a sweet secret shared by the 12,000 or so people who see it over its long weekend. But the Encores! people are not averse to making a commercial buck by fleshing out their shows for the wider Broadway audience. Perhaps once a season, talk surfaces of a possible transfer (for "Strike Up the Band," "Hair," "Carnival," none of which occurred). "Chicago" did make that move, in just six months in1996, to the joy and profit of all involved...
...rave from New York Times critic Ben Brantley for the 42-year-old Murphy and 19-year-old Laura Benanti. (Another gifted starlet coming off of a the train.) At the Saturday night performance I ran into Harvey Weinstein, the Miramax Films co-chairman who has backed such Broadway shows as "The Producers," "Sweet Smell of Success," Baz Luhrmann's "La Boheme," and who would win an Oscar for Best Picture when he produced the 2002 movie version of "Chicago" (directed by Kathleen Marshall's brother Rob). Weinstein told me he might be interested in a mainstem transfer for "Wonderful...