Posted by Jrand55 @ 11/24/2002 11:33 AM PST

Yikes - I meant Salome.....salami...baloney.

Posted by Jrand55 @ 11/24/2002 11:34 AM PST

How about some Spam with that Yam? Okay, I couldn't resist!

Posted by Angela D. @ 11/24/2002 11:34 AM PST

"Solome" sounds like it would be more "Unotette".

As for yams, BK, are you sure you had a yam and not a sweet potato? They are not the same root vegetable, although sweet potatoes are often called yams in the South. Yams are, I believe, of Caribbean origin. Sweet potatoes are far more common, well, easier to find is a kinder way of saying that. (They also come in a variety of textures and colors, so if you don't like eating them you can display a variety as a pretty centerpiece instead. How Christopher Lowell of me!)

Posted by S. Woody White @ 11/24/2002 12:12 PM PST

Sweet Potatoes are a favourite in this house. (They are often referred to as "yams" here too). Favourtie dish is havinf the pres cooked and then baking them in a slow oven with sultanas after marinating them in brandy. Marinating my cook is also fun.

Missed out on much yesterday. I had to rush off to help with a friend (who has dementia). She broke her hip and will be operated on today. I'm the one with the "legal power". - frightening when you have "that" decision to make when surgery is being undertaken.
Was longing to hear Ron's(On's) report on the Barbara Cook concert. glad you were in no way let down by expectations.
In Melbourne (my home city), it would be a REAL emergency if someone left their seat during a performance. Even if you hated the show, people would wait until the interval. My experience of Londona audiences was the same.
Thanks for the reassurance Allan. I too think we are all special. We are on this site after all.
Should it be the salami head that is on a plate being presented to Herod. Maybe that is an obscure baptist reference.

Posted by Tom from OZ @ 11/24/2002 01:39 PM PST

The countdown begins… 14 days until BK’s birthday.

Posted by The count @ 11/24/2002 02:04 PM PST

I posted the following this morning and then realized that many people don't check out the final Saturday posts on Sunday. This is in reference to things posted yesterday:

Allan---
Thanks a million. I've had a little trouble getting e-mails from "across the pond", but I appreciate the effort and will watch the mails in a couple of weeks. Try e-mailing me again when it goes out and I'll see if I get that e-mail.

I've always prefered "Rocky Horror" without an audience. A little bit of feedback is okay, but you can't even hear the dialogue and lyrics when there is a crowd of screaming fans.

How about Debbie Gravitte as the witch in INTO THE WOODS?

Posted by William E. Lurie @ 11/24/2002 02:08 PM PST

Hello everyone!

The special Thanksgiving edition of the Broadway Radio Show is now up and running. I hope you all enjoy and I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Donald

Posted by Donald Feltham @ 11/24/2002 02:23 PM PST

Ah, I must have had a sweet potato not a yam. Whatever it was, it was quite yummy (I suppose if it had been a yam it would have been quite yammy). Let's get some discussion going here. I am writing away and I do need a diversion every now and then and Luckie is currently sleeping.

Posted by bk @ 11/24/2002 02:48 PM PST

The Rodgers/Hart/Fields musical CHEE CHEE has not been revived since it’s original production 74 years ago (where it was one of their few flops). I have read about it and was curious to see it. Now that I have, I know why it will be at least another 74 years before it is done again. First of all a plot summary: Before he became the Grand Eunuch of China, Li-Pi-Siao , was a family man with a son and a daughter. He has decided that he wants his son Li-Pi-Tchou to follow in his footsteps as the next Grand Eunuch, but Tchou is too much in love with his wife Chee Chee. Tchou and Chee Chee run away where, after getting advice from a singing owl, Chee Chee helps Tchou out of many problems by sleeping with whoever is causing the problem (and adding to her jewelry collection at the same time). Yet Tchou thinks his wife is virtuous! After several scenes of S&M torture of Tchou, Chee Chee visits the Gallery of Tormentors who try to convince her that she is guilty of adultery. However she escapes and they return home. However before Tchou is to be made Grand Eunuch Chee Chee sleeps with the man who is to perform the castration (adding a nice bracelet to her collection) so he only pretends to do the deed. Meanwhile the Grand Eunuch’s daughter Li-Li-Wee wants to become one of the Emperor’s concubines (#82) but when her father refuses she falls in love with the Emperor’s son and they disguise themselves as Buddhist Monks so they can be together.

I SWEAR THIS IS THE ACTUAL PLOT!!!

As for the score, let’s say it is better than the book , although it keeps switching from operetta to 20s pop. There are several Rombergesque men’s chorus numbers (including “Singing A Love Song”, the best song in the score) and a couple of nice R&H duets (two of which were recorded on Ben Bagley’s first R&H Revisited), but they had done better before and would do better again.

As for the Musicals Tonight production, let’s just say that they have done better too. A woman who was a Juanita Hall look-alike played the Grand Eunuch. I kept expecting them to add “Bali Hai” or “Chop Suey” for her. The two younger female leads were okay and the chorus sang well but lacked any stage presence. The Owl was good.

A bad book will be featured in the Next Musicals Tonight show: ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT, SMELL OF THE CROWD but that show has such a great score that you don’t mind the book. George S. Irving will star in the Cyril Ritchard role.

By the way, the Musical Director was James Stenbourg whose program bio states that he was musical director for the first two Lost in Boston CDs.

If CHEE CHEE was like watching a train wreck --- so fascinating that you can’t take your eyes off the wreckage --- it was all forgotten after today’s Encores 10th Anniversary Bash featuring highlights from the first 9 years.

To try and list the highlights of the highlights is impossible. Most shows were included (although no LI’L ABNER). Jonathan Tunick arranged and orchestrated an “Overture of Overtures” featuring about a dozen songs from shows they did. To mention only a couple of numbers, Tyne Daly did two numbers from CALL ME MADAM. She looked wonderful – although with her hairdo and figure she now looks more like Sophie Tucker than Sharon McKnight did last season at the York where she played Sophie. The big audience favorites (most entrance applause) were Kristen Chenowith and the team of Reinking & Neuwirth, both dancing better than ever. Showstoppers included Brent Barrett’s “Hey There”, Melissa Ericco (one of the four AMOUR people in the cast) doing “That’s Him”, Donna Murphy’s “One Hundred Easy Ways”, the Luker/Berry/Gravite rendition of “Sing For Your Supper”, and the chorus led by Hugh Panaro and Patti Cohneour doing the little known Kern/Hammerstein gem “Some Girl Is On Your Mind”. The show closed with the entire cast singing “Make Someone Happy” as a caricature of Adolph Greene was projected.

By the way, the sad thing is that even though this was a dream cast and featured some of the most talented performers working today, most are known only to regular theatre fans. The typical 21st Century American would probably only know Tyne and Bebe (and maybe Kristen). Their loss!

Posted by William E. Lurie @ 11/24/2002 02:49 PM PST

Just got in from the matinee of MAN OF LA MANCHA with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Mary-Elizabeth Mastroantonio. GO SEE IT IF YOU CAN! It's fantastic. The set blew my mind and the performances were pretty great too.

Posted by Jason @ 11/24/2002 03:20 PM PST

Now this is a most unseemly lull. 3 hours between posts?!?!? Some things we will not, we can not allow!

Re: Chee Chee
As I commented when the show was first mentioned here a couple months back, it's a good thing Lorenz Hart wrote better lyrics in his career than:
When you were a little crescent,
Your manners were as soft as wool.
Now you're getting effervescent-
But maybe that's because you're full.

Ugh.

Posted by Jed @ 11/24/2002 06:13 PM PST

I feel that I should post, but I will confess that all the pertinent, profund and pithy things I thought of earlier have left my mind. So, I AM posting, but it is an empty post.

Yesterday, I thought of first loves and started to write my post, and I felt compelled suddenly to write, "Who am I anyway....." I thank you, Michael, for finishing the song. So pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; he just seems to be in an odd mood. I don't know if it stems from coming back to earth after skydiving or if we can blame it on the full moon.

Dear Reader Laura sent me a link which informed me that Elaine Stritch and Barbara Cook are doing their shows in Los Angeles this next year. I now have to figure out a way I can go to them.

Posted by Kerry @ 11/24/2002 06:23 PM PST

Empty posts sometimes turn out to be full without the poster even meaning for them to be. And, of course, they are better than no posts. Now, you errant and truant Hainsies/Kimlets, enough of the lazy loafing, let's go out with a burst of posts on any topic you wish. A burst I said, a veritible burst because if we don't then we shall have to remove the "r" from "burst" and we will be a bust. We must not be a bust we must be a burst.

Posted by bk @ 11/24/2002 06:34 PM PST

The following was in the tv section of today's New York Post. The italics and bold are as theirs, not mine (A Styne/Comden/Greene reference).

How not to get publicity: Penn & Teller's new show, whose title can't be printed in a family newspaper, premieres Jan 24 on Showtime.

BK - Can you print the title on this here website?

Posted by William E. Lurie @ 11/24/2002 06:58 PM PST

William E. Lurie, in his review of CHEE CHEE, mentioned that "The Owl was good." Was it served with a savory sauce, or sweet?

(Sorry, we've been discussing cookbooks on another site, and I seem to have gotten myself stuck on the topic.)

Der Brucer has been listening to the Show Tunes channel on cable TV all day. Yes, he finally got tired of the same old same old on the news channels. What we hadn't realized is that we finally have a 24/7 Show Tunes channel; it used to be in a rotation with bluegrass and banjo favorites, with the Show Tunes limited to playing usually from three in the morning until five in the morning.

What's fun with this channel is trying to guess, in the fewest possible notes, the show, the song, the singer. This is particularly challenging when we haven't yet heard the score for a particular show, like "Hairspray," which I was able to name because I knew about the host of the TV show within the show, who is named in the spoken intro to the title song. (Gee, it's fun pulling stunts like that and watching der Brucer's reaction.) What we have decided we DON"T like about the channel is that they don't list who wrote the songs being played. They did, however, play a stellar rendition of "The Heather on the Hill," as sung by Brent Barrett and Rebecca Luker.

Whew! I just got through two paragraphs without mentioning cooking! I'm just glad they didn't play my favorite song from ON THE TOWN, or I'd have gone schitzophrenic!

Posted by S. Woody White @ 11/24/2002 07:03 PM PST

Yes, I can print the title: It's called Penn and Teller's Bullshit.

Posted by bk @ 11/24/2002 07:12 PM PST

Another semi-empty post. I'm back after watching the Sopranos, taking a nap, finishing wrapping my niece and nephew's Christmas presents so they can be mailed out tomorrow so they will arrive in Minnesota well before Christmas and before that I walked my Anthony to the subway so he could go to mid-town to catch the van to go to Connecticut to do the Sunday matinee of Babes in Toyland which I saw last night. I got there via Metro-North railroad and we had to come back the same way and since the show is out at 10:15pm and the next train (and last train I might add) is at 11:38 we didn't get home until after 1am so I spent much of the day sleeping! At least the previous spiel was not one long sentence (it only seemed like one long sentence).

Anyway, it's 10:19 here and if I plan on attending the chat for any length of time tomorrow evening, I needs must go to bed, since the chat is at 10:30 East Coast time.

Anyway, again, I also wanted to mention to Kerry, Hooray for your courage. The thought of jumping out of a plan would have me jumping out of my skin. I have done some brave things in my life, but I don't know if I could skydive. Bravo my friend.

Posted by Ben @ 11/24/2002 07:19 PM PST

Since I have nothing really interest to say today I thought I'd post something personal

On these next few days I am about to undertake the most expensive purchase I have undertaken. I am going to buy a Nissan Altima SL. Red exterior and blond leather interior. I'm excited about it. I even have my own hammer to go up against the car dealership's hammer. I fully underdstand why the car salesman are hated so much.

Posted by Michael Shayne @ 11/24/2002 07:26 PM PST

Why, Dear Reader Kerry -- Getting to LA is very simple. Just take I-10 West until you hit all the traffic. We can take my car.

Posted by Laura @ 11/24/2002 07:29 PM PST

I also have emptiness to post.

Michael, Yippee-kay-aye for the Nissan! At least it's R-E-D!

I just caught a few minutes of "Martin & Lewis" on CBS. Martin (Jeremy Northam was good; Sean Hayes was not).

Posted by td @ 11/24/2002 07:36 PM PST

Good evening.

Had first run-thru of South Pacific this afternoon. Not bad at all for a first run-thru. Now it's just tweak, tweak, tweak.

For those of you interested, the cast list - with bios and other information to follow - can be found on Arena Stage's web-site: http://www.arena-stage.org

*Yet one more site that will come up when I do a google search for my name. ;-)

-On my way back from rehearsal, I had the "scary" realization that we go into tech next Sunday, and that we have first preview next Friday! Wow, time truly does fly when you're having fun! -And we are having fun.

**And to "reward" myself for a long week of rehearsals, I treated myself to a wonderful massage earlier tonight. And since I was the last person my masseuse was working on today, I got an extra fifteen minutes!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm gonna head to bed, and get some sleep. I'm off tomorrow during the day, but I'll be working on keyboard programming, and then we have second orchestra rehearsal tomorrow night. -So, I will miss yet one more chat... I really wish I could participate, but once the show opens, I should be available for the Monday night chats at least.

Goodnight.

Posted by Jose C. SImbulan @ 11/24/2002 08:08 PM PST

Bruce, any idea if Penn And Teller, will be on in Canada, because here we do not get Showtime.

Posted by Brandon @ 11/24/2002 08:29 PM PST

S. Woody---
The fun part of the 24 hour Broadway Music Choice is to read their facts... like "FOLLIES is based on a book by James Goldman". Who researches and writes those things?

Posted by William E. Lurie @ 11/24/2002 09:11 PM PST

My dear William...do you mean to tell me you believe these folks do research?

Some do, of course.

But by and large, we are living in an age of revisionism based on things folks think they know and things other folks, whom they don't know well, tell them.

Sigh.

Posted by Ron Pulliam @ 11/24/2002 10:57 PM PST

I'm just glad there are stations that carry show tunes at all! I've always known I can do a better research job than most, and I've never been NYC based, so a lot of the research materials wouldn't be easy to get my hands upon. What amazes me is that these people are able to put together programs of music that flow as well as they do, with contrasting songs but not clashingly different. That is a skill in itself.

By the way, William, on that other site I was mentioning earlier one of the regulars also saw CHIM CHEE, and gave it a much better review than you. I've a hunch, however, that he was trying to support the notion that the show was an early example of music being integrated with the music, something he'd read "somewhere." He's probably still torked at my suggesting that many of the song and script writers of the 1930's could have learned much of their techniques in Hollywood as well as in New York City. Your review certainly provided the much needed grain of salt.

Posted by S. Woody White @ 11/24/2002 11:43 PM PST

I have been errantly and truantly away all day and have been home now for only about an hour and a half. I was moving the last of my stuff from my sister's house (with whom I have been living these last five and a half years) into my very own apartment! Now all I have to do is to get EVERYTHING out of boxes (clothes, CDs, bills to be paid, etc....), then I'm set.

I have digital cable in my new place and it includes different themed radio stations, much like what S. Woody described. A couple of years ago, friends of mine had gotten this and there was a 24-hour show tunes channel, also. I was so looking forward to this! HOWEVER, when it was all set up, I scrolled through all the available stations AND IT WASN'T THERE! I don't know how long it's been, but it's no longer a choice. I am so disappointed! :-(

On another sad note (G flat), I will not be able to partake of tomorrow's chat. But it's for a happy reason. For the last couple of years I have been taking a vocal workshop with an incredible jazz pianist/vocal coach here in Olympia. Our group (there are about four of us) haven't met with him in several months because HE just moved across town, also. Finally I'll be able to work on stuff that I really want to do without the pressure of a performing deadline. Now, all I have to do is just figure out what I really want to do.

Well, it's been more than 2 hours since anyone posted. But I gladly have done my obligatory duty and posted. Have a good chat. I hope someone will save the chat transcript so that those of us who are (sadly) unable to chat ourselves may at least read what happened and find out who the mystery guest was.

Posted by George @ 11/25/2002 02:04 AM PST