Tag: 06.09.03

Runaway Hairspray

“Slickly produced to the point of corporate blandness, the three-hour telecast featured generally well-mounted selections from the five nominated musicals and two youth-market swatches of ‘Def Poetry Jam,’ winner of best special theatrical event. The show also sold Broadway artistry short by consigning the design awards, including best scenic design and lighting for ‘La Boheme,’ to brief tape-delayed snippets.”

Sorting Through The Orwell Noise

George Orwell has become a symbol for many justifications… “Scholars and public intellectuals use him as a pretext for preening about the clichés of the moment. Self-regarding leftists assail him as a renegade and alleged ‘snitch’ because he denounced Stalinists. Revisionist historians of the Spanish Civil War, seeking to burnish the reputation of the Stalinists in that conflict, have made him their chief object of hatred. Certain diehard leftists, on the other hand, insist that had he lived Orwell would have remained faithful to socialism, not to capitalist democracy. Feminists use him as a target for their obsessions, projecting on him, decades back in time, their insistence that nobody of traditional masculine habits and prejudices can be considered worthy of respect.”

Study: Canada’s Troubled Orchestras

Canadian orchestras commission a study on the state of their business. The results are sobering. “Among its findings? That many orchestras lack a clearly articulated vision of what they are about. That boards are often untrained and imperfectly informed. That managers are so overworked that little time is devoted to planning. That close to a decade of budget cuts has begun to erode artistic quality.”

Night Of Stars

“This year the program felt less rushed, and it included some clever promotional touches, like having Jason Alexander and Martin Short, stars of the Los Angeles production of “The Producers,” announce the best-musical winner from the stage of their show. The cadre of presenters came from the worlds of film, theater and television, all delivering tributes to their roots (or brief stints) on the stage. The luminaries ranged from Sarah Jessica Parker and Benjamin Bratt to Rosie Perez and Danny Glover.”

Celebrating French

Music of the French Baroque is very popular right now. And no one has done more to popularize it than conductor William Christie. “Why this sudden surge of interest in music ignored by the public for 250 years? Partly it’s a matter of the larger early-music movement and our culture’s growing fascination with its own cultural legacy. That fascination has its healthy and unhealthy aspects, suggesting a welcome attention to its past and perhaps a waning interest in its creative present.”

Peters Loses To Newcomer

“Seldom on Broadway does a kid topple an icon, but Bernadette Peters, musical theater’s top female box office draw, lost the top prize to newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur, the bubbly fat girl who stars in “Hairspray.” In the past, Peters has usually bested the competition, once even picking up a Tony for “Annie Get Your Gun” in which she was hilariously miscast. But in the case, the kid benefited from the icon’s enduring difficulties playing Momma Rose, the ferocious stage mother who turned her mousy daughter into the celebrated stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee.”

Honors All Around

“Broadway found a way to honor everything from a Eugene O’Neill masterpiece to a play about a baseball player’s coming out; from hip-hop poetry and opera to a dance-driven show and movie-inspired musical based on a John Waters cult hit and a Federico Fellini film.”