These dates are coming up in the the coming months:
May 12: The Merry Widow, 9:30 pm Eastern time
June 18 (Jeanette’s birthday):
Smilin’ Through, 6 am Eastern time
Rose Marie, 8 am Eastern time
June 23: The Sun Comes Up, 7:45 am Eastern time
No dates given yet for any planned screenings on Nelson’s birthday, June 29. We’ll keep you posted!
March 24 (Bloomberg) — The 50th anniversary production of “West Side Story” will arrive on Broadway just in time — for year 52. Credit Arthur Laurents for both the revival of the landmark show and the tardy party.
“It wasn’t feasible,” said Laurents, who wrote the book for the show, for which Leonard Bernstein composed the score and Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics.
It’s shocking that this 1957 masterwork’s golden anniversary passed without so much as a whimper, let alone a rumble, on Broadway….
`Not Adorable’
“They’re not adorable street kids,” Laurents said. “They’re killers, each and every one of them. They’re vicious and they have to be played that way.”
In his production, he says, he’ll also emphasize “the real difference between the Puerto Ricans and so-called Americans, not just what color they’re wearing,” Laurents said. “Look at all this immigration stuff now — if that isn’t about race, I don’t know what is. It’s a national issue.”
As for the love story of Tony and Maria, Laurents wants hot- blooded passion, not sanitized stick figures.
``When they sing ‘Tonight,’ it’s like Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy,” Laurents said. “It’s hard for them to sing because they’re so sexually involved. They’re all over each other.”
…Senator Edward Kennedy, abandoning old friend and ally Bill Clinton and wife Hillary , is set to endorse Barack Obama’s presidential bid. The recognized patriarch of America’s most prominent political family has signified his intention to campaign actively for Obama in what is seen by some as a major setback to the Clinton campaign.
But honestly, apart from his home state of Massachusetts, how much does an endorsement from Ted Kennedy still count ? To be sure, the illustrious Kennedy name still carries a lot of clout in Democratic circles. And Ted Kennedy has been a major figure in party politics for over four decades. But the Man-Who-Would-Never-Be-President, in his twilight years, has lost a lot of his charisma. He waffled on whether to remain neutral in the Democratic race, and it was only after his niece and JFK daughter, Caroline Kennedy, made a public pitch for Obama that he got on the bandwagon.
Sen. Kennedy can firm up support for Obama from the unions and Hispanics, his traditional political base, but the days when the Kennedy name alone could swing huge voter blocks are long gone. Thanks, in large part, to a long history of scandal that has kept the Kennedy name in the front papers of tabloids for years. A lot of the credit goes to Ted Kennedy, at times a tragic, even noble, figure and at others a complete and utter buffoon. As famously observed by the late journalist Michael Kelly:
“Edward Kennedy was once the handsomest of the handsome Kennedy boys, with a proudly jutting chin, a Nelson Eddy jaw and Cupid’s-bow lips under a thatch of chestnut hair. When he is dieting and on the wagon, there is a glimpse of that still, which makes it all the harder to see him as he more often is. There is a great desire to remember him as we remember his brothers….”