Stage Door: Ghost Musical, War Horse, Sandra Bernhard, Tony Predix

Future Live Blog Alert! The Tony Awards are this Sunday evening, June 12th on CBS with Neil Patrick Harris hosting. We'll do a live blog even though we haven't seen most of the productions. It's still the Tonys which means: song, dance, celebrity, weird gaffes that you'd think wouldn't be possible in a show celebrating LIVE performances... i.e. shouldn't they know how to handle live events?

So be here if you're so inclined. Now on to our four theater topics with film tendencies.

1. GHOST THE MUSICAL 
Since all hit films (from 1984 and onwards) are now required to become stage musicals at some point, this had to happen. Should we predict right now that whoever plays Oda Mae Brown wins the Tony when this hits Broadway? 

I was going to write up this "preview" embedded below but sometimes you gotta admit that there's no topping another write up. I challenge anyone to beat Movie|Line's headline... "YOU IN DANGER, LEGIT THEATER"

2. WAR HORSE THE PLAY / MOVIE
I've been a bad Oscar pundit and haven't yet picked up the novel on which this hit play and Steven Spielberg's upcoming movie are based. From what I've gleaned about the show and its competitors, I can see where Michael Muston at ArtsBeat is coming from when he says:

“War Horse” is a children’s story. It’s not a remarkable piece of dramaturgy. It’s all in the staging. People are going to conflate in their heads the play with the staging, and it’s going to win the Tony.

As for Steven Spielberg's film version... there hasn't been all that much news yet but when I saw this tweet from MTV's Josh Horowitz I initially interrupted it as "he's seen the movie!". Overexcitability much, Nathaniel?

One assumes, after smelling salts, that Josh meant the play and has already imagined its suitability for hankies, Oscars, and iconic bearded auteurs.

3. SANDRA BERNHARD
For my birthday celebration my friends took me to see Sandra Bernhard's new show "I Love Being Me, Don't You?" which was indecent with 'look how many famous friends I have!' shenanigans: Justin Bond, Rufus Wainwright and Liza Minnelli came out for duets and Chaddo Ralph Rucci designed her stunning wardrobe.

Though thrilling on paper, the guest appearances were too unrehearsed to be the highlight of the show. The best moments were 100% undiluted Sandy... (More Sandra --with video -- and the Tony Award Predictions)

Click to read more ...

Links Unchained

Twitch is following the tweets on the casting of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. I have to say it's a little disappointing to hear the name Leonardo DiCaprio. One of Tarantino's greatest gifts is finding A list ready performances from B and C listers and if it's DiCaprio AND Will Smith...
Deadline They're always threatening it but it's actually happening again. Craig Brewer hired to reboot Tarzan. I will be crushed, crushed I tell you, if they don't hire an unknown for the ape man.
Pajiba has an open letter to Blake Lively's publicists concerning the nude pics. Very funny. Love the ending.

Awards Daily I was going to post a "Cast This!" game for the proposed Liz & Dick movie from Martin Scorsese, but Sasha beat me to it. I kind of love her second choice: Charlize Theron. Charlize, with dark hair, would make a FAR  more convincing Elizabeth Taylor than Angelina Jolie would, I must say. Just because Jolie is the closest thing we have to Liz in terms of global icon or wealth and glamour with fascinating love life does not mean she really looks like her.
Stirred Straight Up With a Twist Friends of Dorothy (Malone). Teehee
Antagony & Ecstasy on Terrence Malick's Badlands
My New Plaid Pants Quote of the day: Bradley Cooper on Wet Hot American Summer
Stale Popcorn asks a question that does haunt me on occasion: which is the better Marilyn Monroe performance: Bus Stop or The Misfits?
Serious Film I was late linking up to this in the Moulin Rouge! post but it's definitely worth a read. Michael has a push/pull love/hate relationship with Baz Luhrmann's polarizing musical... still!

Off Cinema
TV|Line Mad Men Season 5. The writers are back in the room. Ugh, such a long wait.
Winter is Coming Bitches Hilarious Game of Thrones tumblr
TV|Line Jane Lynch to host the Emmys. 5 things we want to see. I would like to co-sign on #4 (Best in Show related gag) and hoist it up to #1.
Sketchy Details surveys the "Original Score" contenders at the Tony Awards.
Boing Boing which keys on your computer do you hit the most?
Playbill the Spider-Man musical on Broadway owes Julie Taymor tons of funny. See, this is why you pay your bills on time... how embarrassing to have to pay someone who made it such a fiasco after the fact! ;)

And here's the new Robyn video simply because we love her. So should you. And we also love anything that reinforces the potency of the unbroken take; you don't need to cut every .5 seconds to generate visual energy!

There's just something about Robyn's voice. It was created in a beeker labelled "perfect pop star pipes"

Tony Nominees 2011

Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose announce the nominees

Bright and early, that's how all awards nominations are announced. Tony winners Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose, read the names at 8:30 AM. Broderick, who had a very famous run as a movie star in the 80s, actually won his Tony in 1996 for the musical revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Sixteen years later, another revival of that same musical opens with another famous young movie actor, the boy wizard himself Daniel Radcliffe. But he wasn't nominated so no history repeating itself this time.

New musicals The Book of Mormon (from the South Park guys), The Scottsboro Boys and the raved revival of Anything Goes with Sutton Foster and Joel Grey (still doing 8 shows a week at 79 years of age) lead the nomination tally with 14, 12 and 9 nominations respectively.

Notable Celebrity Snubs: The Tony nominating committee has gotten a lot of flak over the years for valuing performers with off-stage celebrity over those with impressive Broadway credits. But this year maybe they're slightly working against the FAME trend. Celebrities Robin Williams (Benghal Tiger) and Kathleen Turner (High) were both left off their category's lineups and obviously Harry Potter fans won't be happy to see Radcliffe snubbed. James Earl Jones was also snubbed for his Driving Miss Daisy performance. 

Swenson, Butler and Radcliffe. All snubbed for roles you've seen at the movies!

Stage-Star Snubs: Will Swenson (Priscilla) and Aaron Tveit (Catch Me If You Can) were undone by competing against their co-leads (who were nominated). Future movie star Benjamin Walker, who ruled the nation onstage with huge charisma inBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson should have been recognized. Former Xanadu headliner Kerry Butler, who is always a joy to watch, did not win a nomination for Catch Me If You Can (she was in the Amy Adams role) continuing her rough relationship with Tony. Xanadu aside, she's been snubbed the other three times she's been eligible despite well received work or hit shows. What's that about?

Triple Crown Alerts? None that I see on first run through. Vanessa Redgrave, nominated for Jessica Tandy's Oscar winning Driving Miss Daisy role, already has the Oscar-Emmy-Tony triple. So does Al Pacino who is nominated again for The Merchant of Venice. Frances McDormand, nominated for Good People, only has the Oscar so she'd still need an Emmy if she wins this year's Lead Drama Actress prize.

Sutton Foster Break! I'm sorry but I just l-o-v-e her. Seeing her onstage is always a thrill. Here she is rehearsing with Oscar and Tony winner Joel Grey.

A complete list of nominations is after the jump divvied up into Plays and Musicals.

Click to read more ...

Stage Door: Kathleen Turner in "High"

The Film Experience has always loved talking up theater, the true 3D experience. So let's do it weekly, even if it's brief. We'll make it movie adjacent: films adapted from stage, movies hitting the boards in a new form or worthy crossovers of any sort... that sort of thing. The lines in entertainment are much blurrier these days, aren't they? Many actors now do all three (tv, film, theater) with increasing regularity, don'cha know, no longer defining themselves as one medium actors.

Kathleen Turner on Opening Night | Turner w/ Evan Jonigkeit in "High"

I recently had the opportunity to see one of my all time favorite actresses on stage again: Kathleen Turner. Her major film career dwindled in the 90s but she's become a regular on Broadway and she's now starring as a foul-mouthed nun in Matthew Lombardo's drama "High". But not for much longer. It was announced yesterday that the show is closing Sunday after only 8 regular performances. Ouch. We're two weeks away from Tony nominations and we'd assumed that Kathleen would be nominated. But maybe not.

So is the play really that bad? The answer is a simple no. But it is a play that lacks the mythic enormity that you sometimes just have to have to fill up a big house with energy if not ticket buyers. Lombardo's last play "Looped" about the final movie performance of Tallulah Bankhead (played by Valerie Harper) had a similar problem though it was a much stronger show all told and was really helped by a transcendent sequence in the second act that was creatively staged as Tallulah remembers performing Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Both Looped and High are very simple in format -- which is not really a problem if the writing or story are superb -- but they rely too entirely on the star charisma of the lead actress, who is often monologuing, to really push them over.  High recounts the counselling sessions between a recovering alcoholic nun / social worker who is working with an unrepentant gay hustler and drug addict who has recently been involved in the overdose death of a teenager. How involved he was he won't say. The show has only three characters and while the nun and the drug addict have somewhat meaty if very traditional arcs, the Father character who pushes them together, just doesn't work in the writing or performing.

I'm glad I saw it and I hope Kathleen is Tony nominated being much stronger than the show but even she of that inimitable arresting rasp and considerable star charisma is unable to elevate it beyond its limitations. It might have worked far better as a made for TV movie, not for the subject matter exactly but for the intimacy that that medium can bring to small human struggle stories.

Stage/Screen News of the Moment
New York City Opera remember that Oscar nominated 60s movie Seance on a Wet Afternoon? It's now an opera by Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz. Should I see it and write about it?
Playbill an unauthorized musical parody of The Silence of the Lambs comes to Off Broadway in June.
Rama's Screen has the breakdown on the Rock of Ages cast -- who is playing who -- including a new character to be played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. So happy about this one as we needed Velma in another musical. I haven't seen the show -- I was put off by the American Idol stunt casting at the opening -- but now I'm curious and I have heard that it's very funny.