Almost There: Rita Moreno in "The Ritz"

by Cláudio Alves

She just turned 90, but Rita Moreno is on the top of her game. The 1961 Best Supporting Actress champion is back on the silver screen thanks to Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. While not playing Anita this time around, Moreno still manages to steal the spotlight and deliver one of the movie's most impactful songs, the emotional high point of the entire production. As pundits argue over the nonagenarian's Oscar chances, it's a good time to look back at her filmography and consider the last time she was in the awards conversation. After the success of West Side Story, Moreno's most acclaimed movie role was probably that of Googie Gomez in the big-screen adaptation of The Ritz…

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Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Back in the early days of the internet, when listserv discussions were the norm, I remember engaging in a robust discussion about what the best musical ever written was. Someone said "the one about the murderous barber and the meat pies" and online friends began riffing on that response. Answers followed like "fairy tale characters collide" "a commitment-phobe turns 35", "a French pointillist epic " and "the one about old showgirls reuniting / reiminiscing". It took a while before the spell was broken and a musical not written by Stephen Sondheim entered the discussion and even some of those, like "the rise of a burlesque star and her overbearing mother" and "two street gangs in New York City" had Sondheim's fingerprints on them. While the conversation began in a tongue-in-cheek way, the answers were genuine. It was hard to shake the realization that there were at least a half dozen shows by the same artist that could legitimately battle for the title of Greatest Show Ever Written. It was, quite frankly, awe-inducing.

I've never felt more spiritually transported in a Broadway house than during Sunday in the Park with George. And reverence is what everyone who knows what there is to know about musicals feels for Sondheim. Especially now. Nevertheless, a caveat: Reverence is not always the best way to approach art. Sondheim's work is complex and lively and varied enough to invite many moods in. Adjectives that are or should be frequently thrown at his work -- multi-faceted, polyphonic, panoramic, prismatic -- all suggest a difficult plurality...

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"Wicked" Movie announces its Elphaba and Glinda casting! What about the other roles?

by Nathaniel R

After years of fan-casting and online speculation we finally know who will be following in Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth's footsteps in that Emerald City of stage and screen legend. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande will be taking on the iconic roles of Glinda and Elphaba in the big screen adaptation of Broadway behemoth Wicked which is, if you've been sleeping under a rock, about the witches before the events of The Wizard of Oz. The news was announced tonight by the film's director Jon M Chu. 

How are you feeling about this news? Well how am I feeling? Not even sure and I'll tell you why...

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Beauty Break: Tony Awards Best Dressed

by Nathaniel R

BERNADETTE PETERS, LESLIE ODOM JR, JEREMY POPE

The following stars are presented In no particular order, just the looks we loved the most on Tony night. Turtlenecks are definitely back for men as is lots of color (which has been decades in coming and for which we could not be more grateful) and as with the Emmys, basic black for women is gaining renewed force. 

Fashion is of course highly subjective and what looks great on one person could well look hideous on other but that's why it's fun to gawk at and think about. Which were your favourite looks from the big night?

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Tony Awards 2021: Winners, Performances, and Takeaways

by Nathaniel R

The incredible Audra McDonald hosted the 74th annual Tony Awards last night

Did you watch the Tony Awards on Paramount Plus or the "Broadway's Back" concert on CBS last night? Two years and three months after the 73rd Tony Awards and 11 months after the nominations were announced the 74th "Annual" Tony Awards were finally held. Those awards were celebrating the very short very depressing theater season of 2019/2020 which ended with lots of sickness (Moulin Rouge the Musical in particular was hit very hard by COVID-19 in the spring of 2020) and lots of crushed dreams as several shows never opened and others were pushed back two years and some had to close well before they ran out of steam. Cut to September 2021 and the shows that did somehow survive the two years shutdown are reopening or will reopen by the end of the year.

Let's look at the winners, the hightlights, and what we can clean from all of this after the jump... 

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