Word: hal
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...pretty much the same opportunity to make money," says Jay Larkin, an executive producer at Showtime, responsible for Cantone's show, Laugh Whore. And since many of the shows are built around stars with a presold audience, they're easier to promote. "We've got to be realistic," says Hal Luftig, the lead producer of Whoopi. "We're asking people to pay a lot of money. There's comfort in knowing what they're getting...
Comfort, alas, is the problem with too many one-person shows. Transforming a historical figure or show-biz great into the vehicle for a star turn (from Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight to Tovah Feldshuh's Golda's Balcony, which opened last season and is still running--so make that six!) seems a lazy way of making rich subject matter easy to digest--and almost guaranteeing a Tony acting nod in the bargain. Then there are the autobiographical shows, which can occasionally be dishy and inspired (Elaine Stritch at Liberty) but just as often superfluous ego trips (Bea Arthur...
...subject matter, kept him shuttling in and out of jail--and provided a model for every antiestablishment comic who followed. Now Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware, a six-CD set due out this week from Shout! Factory, will give the most complete account yet of why. Producer Hal Willner, working with Bruce's daughter Kitty, listened to more than 200 hours of Bruce's private recordings and other long-unheard tapes. Two-thirds of the material has never before been released, ranging from Bruce's show-biz debut--on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1948, doing Jimmy Cagney...
...show - Crawford appears in a fat suit that renders him unrecognizable. Lloyd Webber insists that he wasn't trying to make Phantom II, but comparisons are inevitable, and unflattering. Phantom was about more than atmospherics: it had a focused narrative drive and a brilliant illusionist production by Hal Prince. Woman, by contrast, is often pallid and dramatically confused. This is a disappointment not just for Lloyd Webber fans but for theaterland as a whole. These are tricky times for musical theater: the genre seems unable to produce successful new material, and depends too much on yesterday's tunes - shows based...
...Guant?namo was not the result of the actions of a few bad apples of inferior rank but a calculated policy formed in the upper reaches of the Bush Administration. How did we sink so low? Liberals and conservatives alike shudder as they contemplate this betrayal of American values. Hal Barwood San Anselmo...