Elliot Lanes - Page 12

Sometimes a singer just needs a microphone and a killer accompanist to create a fine evening of music. Of course, it helps if the singer's material is good as well. Tony and Emmy Award-winning singer/actress Kristin Chenoweth combined these few simple ingredients, walked out onto the stage of The Music Center at Strathmore, and treated her audience to an audible feast.

Oh bother! Adventure Theatre is currently presenting a hunny of a show with Le Clanché du Rand's delightful stage adaptation of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh.  Under the fine direction of Shirley Serotsky, Milne's 100 Acre Wood and its inhabitants magically come to life with a story of lost tales, huffalumps, and much more.

Today's subject, Kristin Chenoweth, has been living her theatre life to the fullest since 1993 when Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ cast her as the ingénue in their production of Animal Crackers. The show effectively launched her career and she went on to become a Tony Award-winning actress, and a highly successful recording and concert artist. She has also made many appearances on television and in film. On April 8th you will have the privilege of seeing this immense talent live onstage at The Music Center at Strathmore and, judging from past performances, it's going to a great evening of music.

Life in the theatre is hard enough without having a diva in your show. As the title character in a well known play by a certain Norwegian playwright you would think that she would play along with what she was given. In this case the playwright is that king of mirth himself Henrik Ibsen and the diva in question is Hedda Gabler. Gabler, after many productions over the span of many years, decides she doesn't want to die by gunshot at the end of every performance. You might be asking how did she get this kind of power. For the answer you need to check out Washington Stage Guild's (WSG) hilarious and (per usual) well presented production of Jon Klein's Resolving Hedda. The show is a DC area premiere.

Today's subject Laura Giannarelli has been living her theatre life for many years now on both sides of the footlights. As a performer she just completed a star turn in Gulf View Drive at Washington Stage Guild (WSG), the company she helped found back in 1986. The company's current show Resolving Hedda runs through April 14th at their home at The Undercroft Theatre at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church.

As a playwright you always hope that your script gets a first class production at a top theatre. Today's subject, Heather McDonald, is currently living her theatre life on a high as her world premiere play Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity is receiving such royal treatment. Featuring the likes of performers Holly Twyford, Felicia Curry, and Yesenia Iglesias, the production plays through April 7th in Signature Theatre's ARK space.

Sometimes a particular genre of theater isn't necessarily popular with a general audience. Theater of the Absurd might be the biggest example of this. Playwrights like Eugene Ionesco and others have left audiences scratching their heads for years as to what they were trying to say within their plays.

You most likely know today's subject Nicholas Rodriguez from his many area appearances at Arena Stage. Who could forget his Billy Bigelow in Carousel or his Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady or Curly in Oklahoma!? The latter garnered Nicholas a Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Oooh la la, the good folks at Imagination Stage have a Parisian musical spectacular in store for you with the non- cheesy story about a couple of mice out to save the cheeses of Paris. Anatole: Mouse Magnifique features a dynamic and fun score by James Valcq (Music), book and lyrics by John MacLay and Lee Becker, and a terrific no-holes-like-a-piece of-Swiss-cheese-staging from Tom Story.

Over the years, Charles Dickens' works have been turned into many stage and film adaptations. I'm sure we've all seen A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist in one form or another. While both are set against some bleak backdrops, they feature some larger-than-life characters that make them ripe for theatrical presentation.

The art of tap dancing is taken to new heights…literally…in the high octane, high energy worldwide sensation known as Tap Dogs. Not only do the eight male performers do traditional tap routines in this 80-minute industrial extravaganza, they take it to places tap hasn't gone before incorporating, water, scaffolding blowtorches, and more.

Today's subject disproves the theory that you can't be good at everything. Kevin Laughon is the Production Associate at Theater J, but his long career of working in the theatre has taken him on both sides of the footlights.

With all of the media options at their disposal today, creating theater pieces that will keep young people totally engaged is getting to be more and more of a challenge. Kennedy Center's Theater for Young Audiences (TYA) division's latest attempt at something fresh sometimes succeeds and sometimes doesn't. Most of the success in She A Gem can be attributed to the oh so fly direction of Paige Hernandez and her talented cast and design team. Whether or not the playwright Josh Wilder was up for the challenge is open to debate.

The 1985 Broadway season might have been one of the weakest on record for musicals; in fact, only three shows were nominated for Best Musical at the Tony Awards that year. We had an Ellie Greenwich jukebox musical (Leader of the Pack), one of Harold Prince's big budget disasters (Grind), and a musical based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Big River). Needless to say, at least in my opinion, Big River won the Tony Award for Best Musical and several other awards in part due to a lack of competition. Despite some catchy songs by Roger “King of the Road” Miller the show suffered, in my opinion anyhow, from there simply being too much of it. William Hauptman's book tried to focus on multiple stories as opposed to having Huck and his relationship with runaway slave Jim be the true heart.

Today's subject, Kevin McAllister, always has dynamic stage presence no matter the production. Currently he is living his theatre life onstage at Signature Theatre singing the Ken Page track in Ain't Misbehavin'. The production runs through March 10th in Signature Theatre's MAX space.

The recording artist/composer/free spirit known as Nellie McKay is not your typical performer to be sure. It's actually hard to even associate her with a particular musical genre because she performed a little bit of everything in her concert at Kennedy Center as part of the Renée Fleming VOICES series.

There are certain performances from Broadway history that can never be replicated, one of which is Robert Preston's star turn as the flimflamming boys band sales man Harold Hill in the 1958 Tony Award winning musical The Music Man. It was a bit of a shock when it won best musical that year because it beat out the revolutionary West Side Story. Ah well, commercialism nearly always wins.

Today's subject, Sarah Marshall, has had a long and distinguished DC theater career that spans over three decades. You can currently see her in Admissions at Studio Theatre – one of her theater homes. The production runs through March 3rd.

Today's subject, Jonathan David Martin, came to Washington, DC after accepting a job as Associate Producer of Theater J, but he is currently living his theatre life back onstage in The Heiress at Arena Stage in the role of Morris Townsend This production, which marks his Arena Stage debut, begins performances on February 8th. It plays through March 10th in Arena's Fitchandler Stage space.

It's hard to believe that it's been over 40 years now since a little revue that started at New York's Manhattan Theatre Club took Broadway by storm. The show was Ain't Misbehavin' and if you didn't know who composer Thomas “Fats” Waller was before, you did after seeing this show. It also made Nell Carter a star and garnered her a television series called Gimme a Break. Besides Carter the cast was comprised of Charlaine Woodard, Armelia McQueen, Andre De Shields, and Ken Page. When the original cast returned for a Broadway revival of the show in the 80's, Nell Carter received star billing even though the show is truly an ensemble piece. Ah, the power of television.