gerard conway wrote:
I met Richard O'Brien some twenty or even thirty years ago at a friend's house. I'll never forget the evening where Richard entertained us, singing and playing on the piano, to his latest songs which he was putting together for a new musical. Among the songs was one called " The Little Black Dress"...a marvelous song which I've never heard since. I also recall,in detail, his eccentric dress. I liked him enormously. I look forward to seeing his next show.
August 18, 2009 6:15 AM BST
R L wrote:
I believe "Little Black Dress" was written for the sequel of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", "Rocky Horror Shows His Heels". Unfortunately, 20th Century Fox didn't stick with the script and the project developed into the under-rated equal "Shock Treatment". Richard actually sings this song with Patricia Quinn, Barry Humphries, Jessica Harper and Nell Campbell in that film. But I've always wanted to see the original idea for the sequel come to life. Did Richard say anything about the "Rocky Horror" sequel that was rumoured to be coming to the stage a few years ago?
August 18, 2009 7:42 AM BST
RL is me!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Richard O’Brien: Rocky Horror? It was all about my mother
From The Times
August 18, 2009
Richard O’Brien gave the world The Rocky Horror Show. Now he reveals its secret origins for the first time
Dominic Wells
Richard O’Brien dabs at his eyes with a white linen napkin. Somehow the waitress chooses this moment to take our order, and is waved away. We’ve met to discuss O’Brien’s new project, The Stripper, a revival of his 1982 musical, which previously has played only in Australia. Instead, just 20 minutes in, the writer and star of The Rocky Horror Show and host of The Crystal Maze is choked with emotion.
“Not so long ago,” he confides, “I fell off the wagon, stepped into the abyss.” He is small but elegant, like a cashmere jumper washed on too high a heat. His porcelain features, sardonic smile and shaved head strip two decades from his 67 years. And what does he mean exactly, “stepped into the abyss”? “Oh,” O’Brien replies, with a studied attempt at nonchalance, “I went completely crackers.
“All my life,” he explains with mounting emotion, “I’ve been fighting never belonging, never being male or female, and it got to the stage where I couldn’t deal with it any longer. To feel you don’t belong . . . to feel insane . . . to feel perverted and disgusting . . . you go f***ing nuts. If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think the term ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ would exist: you’d just be another human being.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as such a surprise from the man who wrote the song I’m just a Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, and dressed his entire cast in basques, high heels and fishnet stockings. Yet apart from some elliptical programme notes about being “confined to a life in no man’s land”, O’Brien has never spoken in public of his sexuality. And to find a man of his age and success so confused . . . what happened?
“I’d been fighting, going to therapy, treating what I was as though it were some kind of illness to be cured. But actually, no, I was basically transgender, and just unhappy.” He’s centred enough now to explain the difference calmly: he’s not transsexual, which would mean he felt like a woman, to the extent of wanting an operation to turn him into one; but transgender, which means feeling like neither quite man nor woman. “There is a continuum between male and female,” he says. “Some are hard-wired one way or another, I’m in between. Or a third sex, I could see myself as quite easily.” But at the time, he was not so phlegmatic. “I lost the plot. Paranoid delusions, the works. It was at the time when Bush and Blair ruled the f***ing world, and trying to claw my way back to sanity, I saw no standard norm. I wanted to get back to normal, but where’s the benchmark of sanity? I was drowning and couldn’t find a surface. And then I was talking to my son in Canada, and he told me how much he loved me, how he absolutely . . .”
O’Brien shakes his head in wonder. “It was my children’s love that gave me a centre again. They gave me acceptance of myself, and allowed me to be myself.”
Surely his kids had already guessed that he wasn’t, shall we say, a traditional dad? Even on The Crystal Maze, the Nineties game show that was often Channel 4’s highest rated programme, O’Brien would leap about in skin-tight leather trousers and furry jacket, and speak archly of a backroom figure called “Mumsie”.
“Ha! You’re right!” O’Brien hoots. When he finally plucked up the courage to tell his children he was transgender, their first reaction was: “Dad, and your point is?”
When The Rocky Horror Show opened at the Royal Court Upstairs in 1973, it was joyous, liberating, shocking. A rock’n’roll musical about two clean-cut college sweethearts who spend a life-changing night in a castle with Dr Frank N. Furter and his eccentric retinue, it can be read as an allegory of a drug trip, a paean to (or warning about) sexual experimentation, a love letter to old B-movies, even as a satire on the political degeneracy of America: the 1975 film version, which has repaid its $1 million budget more than a hundredfold, is pointedly set on the night of Nixon’s resignation.
More simply, it’s a contemporary panto that for 35 years has given the audience an excuse to drag up, shout out the best lines, and pelt the screen with bread when Frank calls for “a toast!”. And it’s Frank — dangerously charismatic, thoroughly amoral and joyously polysexual, gloriously played by Tim Curry in the film version and by David Bedella in the forthcoming stage tour — who gives the show its beating heart.
And here a truly surprising thing happens. “He’s a drama queen, really,” O’Brien says of Frank. “He’s a hedonistic, self-indulgent voluptuary, and that’s his downfall. He’s an ego-driven . . . um . . .” and here his voice lowers to a stage whisper, “I was going to say, a bit like my mother.” What was that? Is O’Brien really revealing after all these years that the inspiration for Dr. Frank N. Furter is his mother? This psycho scientist in fishnets who creates a muscle-bound zombie to be his sex toy? Who beds first the innocent Janet and then her straight-as-a-die fiancé Brad? Who seemingly cares for no one and nothing beyond his own gratification? O’Brien’s mum?
“My mother was an unpleasant woman,” O’Brien says with sudden venom. “She
came from a working-class family: wonderful people, not much money, undereducated but honest, a great moral centre of honesty and probity. And she disowned them. She wanted to be a lady. And consequently became a person who was racist, anti-Semitic . . . It’s such a tragedy to see someone throwing their lives away on this empty journey, and at the same time believing herself superior to other people.
“I loved her, but stupid, stupid woman, she wouldn’t understand the value of that. She was an emotional bully. And sadly all of us, my siblings and I, are all damaged by this. She was bonkers, my mother, and I think by saying that I’m allowing her to be as horrible as she was without condemning her too much.”
This, it transpires, is the real reason O’Brien’s parents uprooted the family from Gloucestershire when he was 10 to a 120acre farm in New Zealand: so that Mumsie could reinvent herself as posh. Small and effeminate, the young O’Brien was no one’s ideal of Antipodean manhood, and he was routinely caned by teachers. He left school at 15. After five years training as a barber, of all things, he hopped on a boat to London just in time for the Sixties to swing. His breakthrough, ironically, was touring with Hair. The director Jim Sharman then cast him in Jesus Christ Superstar, after which they worked together on a musical O’Brien was calling They Came from Denton High. Sharman suggested the title The Rocky Horror Show, and the rest is hysteria.
If O’Brien ever doubts his legacy he need only remember this: in his home town of Hamilton, New Zealand, there now stands, bigger than life, a bronze statue of himself in his Rocky Horror guise.
And now comes The Stripper, a tale of “blondes, burlesque and bullets” that he adapted from a pulp novel by Carter Brown who, O’Brien says, “never introduced a girl unless he introduced her breasts at the same time”. O’Brien himself will play a cameo. And there’s yet another touring production of The Rocky Horror Show.
O’Brien gets all the devilish parts: the Child Catcher in the recent Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stage show; a one-man cabaret show as Mephistopheles; a corrupt druid in Robin of Sherwood on ITV; an alien in Dark City. You believe him when he says: “I’ve got a really bad temper. I get a few dinosaurs in the street, calling out comments when I’m all dressed up, and I’m like,‘You’re f***ing with the wrong drag addict’.”
Yet he’s a pussycat, really. He’s not currently in a relationship, and says he adores “pottering about” on his own: “You should never go looking for love. One day it will hit you smack in the face.” He’s been married twice, happily, and says of sexual attraction that he doesn’t see the gender, he sees the person.
He’s forgotten, but I first interviewed him more than 20 years ago. He flirted outrageously. “Did I?” he asks, in mock surprise. And as we part this time, no firm handshakes: instead he reaches up and softly strokes my cheek. And then he’s off, through the streets of Soho. In skinny white Armani jeans, a jacket with the shoulders cut off, chunky crosses, and a woman’s wraparound cardigan, he may be still somewhere between male and female, still in that sexual no man’s land. But at long last he’s called a ceasefire.
The Stripper is at Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, Essex (01708 443333), Aug 29-Sept 19; Milton Keynes Theatre (0844 8717652), from Sept 21; King’s Theatre, Glasgow (0870 0606648), from Sept 28. The Rocky Horror Show previews at Wimbledon Theatre, London (0844 8717646) from Sept 17 before a national tour: www.rockyhorror.co.uk
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6799279.ece
August 18, 2009
Richard O’Brien gave the world The Rocky Horror Show. Now he reveals its secret origins for the first time
Dominic Wells
Richard O’Brien dabs at his eyes with a white linen napkin. Somehow the waitress chooses this moment to take our order, and is waved away. We’ve met to discuss O’Brien’s new project, The Stripper, a revival of his 1982 musical, which previously has played only in Australia. Instead, just 20 minutes in, the writer and star of The Rocky Horror Show and host of The Crystal Maze is choked with emotion.
“Not so long ago,” he confides, “I fell off the wagon, stepped into the abyss.” He is small but elegant, like a cashmere jumper washed on too high a heat. His porcelain features, sardonic smile and shaved head strip two decades from his 67 years. And what does he mean exactly, “stepped into the abyss”? “Oh,” O’Brien replies, with a studied attempt at nonchalance, “I went completely crackers.
“All my life,” he explains with mounting emotion, “I’ve been fighting never belonging, never being male or female, and it got to the stage where I couldn’t deal with it any longer. To feel you don’t belong . . . to feel insane . . . to feel perverted and disgusting . . . you go f***ing nuts. If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think the term ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ would exist: you’d just be another human being.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as such a surprise from the man who wrote the song I’m just a Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, and dressed his entire cast in basques, high heels and fishnet stockings. Yet apart from some elliptical programme notes about being “confined to a life in no man’s land”, O’Brien has never spoken in public of his sexuality. And to find a man of his age and success so confused . . . what happened?
“I’d been fighting, going to therapy, treating what I was as though it were some kind of illness to be cured. But actually, no, I was basically transgender, and just unhappy.” He’s centred enough now to explain the difference calmly: he’s not transsexual, which would mean he felt like a woman, to the extent of wanting an operation to turn him into one; but transgender, which means feeling like neither quite man nor woman. “There is a continuum between male and female,” he says. “Some are hard-wired one way or another, I’m in between. Or a third sex, I could see myself as quite easily.” But at the time, he was not so phlegmatic. “I lost the plot. Paranoid delusions, the works. It was at the time when Bush and Blair ruled the f***ing world, and trying to claw my way back to sanity, I saw no standard norm. I wanted to get back to normal, but where’s the benchmark of sanity? I was drowning and couldn’t find a surface. And then I was talking to my son in Canada, and he told me how much he loved me, how he absolutely . . .”
O’Brien shakes his head in wonder. “It was my children’s love that gave me a centre again. They gave me acceptance of myself, and allowed me to be myself.”
Surely his kids had already guessed that he wasn’t, shall we say, a traditional dad? Even on The Crystal Maze, the Nineties game show that was often Channel 4’s highest rated programme, O’Brien would leap about in skin-tight leather trousers and furry jacket, and speak archly of a backroom figure called “Mumsie”.
“Ha! You’re right!” O’Brien hoots. When he finally plucked up the courage to tell his children he was transgender, their first reaction was: “Dad, and your point is?”
When The Rocky Horror Show opened at the Royal Court Upstairs in 1973, it was joyous, liberating, shocking. A rock’n’roll musical about two clean-cut college sweethearts who spend a life-changing night in a castle with Dr Frank N. Furter and his eccentric retinue, it can be read as an allegory of a drug trip, a paean to (or warning about) sexual experimentation, a love letter to old B-movies, even as a satire on the political degeneracy of America: the 1975 film version, which has repaid its $1 million budget more than a hundredfold, is pointedly set on the night of Nixon’s resignation.
More simply, it’s a contemporary panto that for 35 years has given the audience an excuse to drag up, shout out the best lines, and pelt the screen with bread when Frank calls for “a toast!”. And it’s Frank — dangerously charismatic, thoroughly amoral and joyously polysexual, gloriously played by Tim Curry in the film version and by David Bedella in the forthcoming stage tour — who gives the show its beating heart.
And here a truly surprising thing happens. “He’s a drama queen, really,” O’Brien says of Frank. “He’s a hedonistic, self-indulgent voluptuary, and that’s his downfall. He’s an ego-driven . . . um . . .” and here his voice lowers to a stage whisper, “I was going to say, a bit like my mother.” What was that? Is O’Brien really revealing after all these years that the inspiration for Dr. Frank N. Furter is his mother? This psycho scientist in fishnets who creates a muscle-bound zombie to be his sex toy? Who beds first the innocent Janet and then her straight-as-a-die fiancé Brad? Who seemingly cares for no one and nothing beyond his own gratification? O’Brien’s mum?
“My mother was an unpleasant woman,” O’Brien says with sudden venom. “She
came from a working-class family: wonderful people, not much money, undereducated but honest, a great moral centre of honesty and probity. And she disowned them. She wanted to be a lady. And consequently became a person who was racist, anti-Semitic . . . It’s such a tragedy to see someone throwing their lives away on this empty journey, and at the same time believing herself superior to other people.
“I loved her, but stupid, stupid woman, she wouldn’t understand the value of that. She was an emotional bully. And sadly all of us, my siblings and I, are all damaged by this. She was bonkers, my mother, and I think by saying that I’m allowing her to be as horrible as she was without condemning her too much.”
This, it transpires, is the real reason O’Brien’s parents uprooted the family from Gloucestershire when he was 10 to a 120acre farm in New Zealand: so that Mumsie could reinvent herself as posh. Small and effeminate, the young O’Brien was no one’s ideal of Antipodean manhood, and he was routinely caned by teachers. He left school at 15. After five years training as a barber, of all things, he hopped on a boat to London just in time for the Sixties to swing. His breakthrough, ironically, was touring with Hair. The director Jim Sharman then cast him in Jesus Christ Superstar, after which they worked together on a musical O’Brien was calling They Came from Denton High. Sharman suggested the title The Rocky Horror Show, and the rest is hysteria.
If O’Brien ever doubts his legacy he need only remember this: in his home town of Hamilton, New Zealand, there now stands, bigger than life, a bronze statue of himself in his Rocky Horror guise.
And now comes The Stripper, a tale of “blondes, burlesque and bullets” that he adapted from a pulp novel by Carter Brown who, O’Brien says, “never introduced a girl unless he introduced her breasts at the same time”. O’Brien himself will play a cameo. And there’s yet another touring production of The Rocky Horror Show.
O’Brien gets all the devilish parts: the Child Catcher in the recent Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stage show; a one-man cabaret show as Mephistopheles; a corrupt druid in Robin of Sherwood on ITV; an alien in Dark City. You believe him when he says: “I’ve got a really bad temper. I get a few dinosaurs in the street, calling out comments when I’m all dressed up, and I’m like,‘You’re f***ing with the wrong drag addict’.”
Yet he’s a pussycat, really. He’s not currently in a relationship, and says he adores “pottering about” on his own: “You should never go looking for love. One day it will hit you smack in the face.” He’s been married twice, happily, and says of sexual attraction that he doesn’t see the gender, he sees the person.
He’s forgotten, but I first interviewed him more than 20 years ago. He flirted outrageously. “Did I?” he asks, in mock surprise. And as we part this time, no firm handshakes: instead he reaches up and softly strokes my cheek. And then he’s off, through the streets of Soho. In skinny white Armani jeans, a jacket with the shoulders cut off, chunky crosses, and a woman’s wraparound cardigan, he may be still somewhere between male and female, still in that sexual no man’s land. But at long last he’s called a ceasefire.
The Stripper is at Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, Essex (01708 443333), Aug 29-Sept 19; Milton Keynes Theatre (0844 8717652), from Sept 21; King’s Theatre, Glasgow (0870 0606648), from Sept 28. The Rocky Horror Show previews at Wimbledon Theatre, London (0844 8717646) from Sept 17 before a national tour: www.rockyhorror.co.uk
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6799279.ece
Friday, August 14, 2009
'SPIDER-MAN' LOSES THE GIRL
ACTRESS' AGENTS SEEKING NEW ROLES
MICHAEL RIEDEL
Last updated: 1:20 am
August 14, 2009
Posted: 12:06 am
August 14, 2009
HELLO Entertainment, the com pany run by twisting-in-the- wind "Spider-Man" producer David Garfinkle, continues to issue press releases insisting that this $45 million fiasco, which has suspended production, will start up again once "cash flow issues have been resolved" and begin previews Feb. 25 at the Hilton Theatre.
Hello Entertainment (which I suspect we'll soon be calling Goodbye Entertainment) might want to tell that to Evan Rachel Wood, who's playing Peter Parker's girlfriend, Mary Jane.
Wood, a charming actress, turned down a couple of movie roles to do the show. This week, her agents have been scrambling to get those offers back on the table.
"As far as they're concerned, it's over," says a source. "She's available for other work."
Garfinkle -- as well as Sony, which is co-producing "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" (better title: "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Show") -- may soon have some other headaches as well.
First of all, Julie Taymor, who's directing the show, is said to be steaming that she's being blamed for driving the production budget higher than the Himalayas.
Her defenders point out that an artist of her caliber can't worry about pesky little things like "cash flow." That, they say, is Garfinkle's job, and if the show is over budget, blame him.
(You won't get any objection from me!)
Meanwhile, Bono and The Edge, who've written the score, are, according to a source, "embarrassed" by the turn of events, although the source adds that at least they have something of value: their songs, which they can recycle as singles should "Spider-Man" vanish.
"You have a very unhappy and a very angry creative team," another source says. "Even if you can get the show going again, are they going to have any faith in the producers?"
On another front, Garfinkle and Sony, which is co-producing the show, may soon feel the wrath of Live Nation, which owns the Hilton.
The theater was being gutted for the production and is now in "a shambles," says a source.
Live Nation was hoping to sell it, but in its current state it's just a worthless barn.
(Even before it got torn up, it was a worthless barn, where big, lumbering shows such as "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Young Frankenstein" came to die.)
"Somebody's going to have to pay to put it back together," a veteran producer says of the Hilton. "It'll cost millions. There's going to be a major lawsuit here."
This week, there were rumors that a group of new producers -- including Fran and Barry Weissler ("Chicago") -- had been asked by another of Garfinkle's producing partners to take over the show.
The Weisslers have been down this road before, and it wasn't pleasant.
When jailbird Garth Drabinsky's company went bankrupt, they took over his show "Seussical: The Musical." Despite their best efforts, the show lost $12 million.
I pointed that out to Barry Weissler yesterday.
"You sure know how to hurt a guy!" he said, laughing.
He declined to comment on
"Spider-Man," but a source says that any rescue operation is a long way off.
"No one's seen the material, no one's seen the budget, no one knows the extent of the mess," this person says.
Before anybody steps in, "Spider-Man," as currently configured, is going to have to implode.
Only then can experienced producers take a look at it -- and, if they like the book and the score, persuade Taymor to create a musical that doesn't cost as much as the international space station.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08142009/entertainment/theater/spider_man_loses_the_girl_184431.htm
MICHAEL RIEDEL
Last updated: 1:20 am
August 14, 2009
Posted: 12:06 am
August 14, 2009
HELLO Entertainment, the com pany run by twisting-in-the- wind "Spider-Man" producer David Garfinkle, continues to issue press releases insisting that this $45 million fiasco, which has suspended production, will start up again once "cash flow issues have been resolved" and begin previews Feb. 25 at the Hilton Theatre.
Hello Entertainment (which I suspect we'll soon be calling Goodbye Entertainment) might want to tell that to Evan Rachel Wood, who's playing Peter Parker's girlfriend, Mary Jane.
Wood, a charming actress, turned down a couple of movie roles to do the show. This week, her agents have been scrambling to get those offers back on the table.
"As far as they're concerned, it's over," says a source. "She's available for other work."
Garfinkle -- as well as Sony, which is co-producing "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" (better title: "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Show") -- may soon have some other headaches as well.
First of all, Julie Taymor, who's directing the show, is said to be steaming that she's being blamed for driving the production budget higher than the Himalayas.
Her defenders point out that an artist of her caliber can't worry about pesky little things like "cash flow." That, they say, is Garfinkle's job, and if the show is over budget, blame him.
(You won't get any objection from me!)
Meanwhile, Bono and The Edge, who've written the score, are, according to a source, "embarrassed" by the turn of events, although the source adds that at least they have something of value: their songs, which they can recycle as singles should "Spider-Man" vanish.
"You have a very unhappy and a very angry creative team," another source says. "Even if you can get the show going again, are they going to have any faith in the producers?"
On another front, Garfinkle and Sony, which is co-producing the show, may soon feel the wrath of Live Nation, which owns the Hilton.
The theater was being gutted for the production and is now in "a shambles," says a source.
Live Nation was hoping to sell it, but in its current state it's just a worthless barn.
(Even before it got torn up, it was a worthless barn, where big, lumbering shows such as "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Young Frankenstein" came to die.)
"Somebody's going to have to pay to put it back together," a veteran producer says of the Hilton. "It'll cost millions. There's going to be a major lawsuit here."
This week, there were rumors that a group of new producers -- including Fran and Barry Weissler ("Chicago") -- had been asked by another of Garfinkle's producing partners to take over the show.
The Weisslers have been down this road before, and it wasn't pleasant.
When jailbird Garth Drabinsky's company went bankrupt, they took over his show "Seussical: The Musical." Despite their best efforts, the show lost $12 million.
I pointed that out to Barry Weissler yesterday.
"You sure know how to hurt a guy!" he said, laughing.
He declined to comment on
"Spider-Man," but a source says that any rescue operation is a long way off.
"No one's seen the material, no one's seen the budget, no one knows the extent of the mess," this person says.
Before anybody steps in, "Spider-Man," as currently configured, is going to have to implode.
Only then can experienced producers take a look at it -- and, if they like the book and the score, persuade Taymor to create a musical that doesn't cost as much as the international space station.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08142009/entertainment/theater/spider_man_loses_the_girl_184431.htm
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Dacal is Alice in Wildhorn's Wonderland; Mason, Llana, Snelson to Go Down Rabbit Hole
By Kenneth Jones
11 Aug 2009
Broadway stars will populate the world premiere of Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center announced on Aug. 11. Karen Mason, Janet Dacal, Darren Ritchie, Jose Llana and more will bring the new Frank Wildhorn show to life, opening Dec. 5 in Florida.
Gregory Boyd, artistic director of Houston's Alley Theatre, directs the show inspired by Lewis Carroll's 19th-century fantasy fiction for kids. The music for Wonderland is from composer Frank Wildhorn (The Civil War and Jekyll & Hyde) with lyrics by Jack Murphy (The Civil War). The book is by Murphy and Boyd.
Wonderland is the first initiative of the Broadway Genesis Project at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Broadway Genesis is intended to help create new works of American theatre to play the Tampa market, and then possibly tour other performing arts centers or move to Broadway. It will launch at TBPAC's Ferguson Hall.
The principal cast will include Julie Brooks (Fiddler on the Roof national tour) as Chloe, Janet Dacal (In the Heights, Good Vibrations) as Alice, Eugene Fleming (Fosse) as the Caterpillar, Jose Llana (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as El Gato, Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!) as the Queen of Hearts, Darren Ritchie (Dracula: The Musical) as Jack/White Knight, Nikki Snelson (Legally Blonde) as the Mad Hatter and Ed Staudenmayer (Forbidden Broadway) as the Rabbit.
The ensemble includes Tad Wilson, who will also take on the featured role of the Jabberwock, along with Grady Bowman, Sae La Chin, Dan Domenech, Mallauri Esquibel, Lori Eure, Derek Ferguson, Wilkie Ferguson, Ashley Galvan, Laura Karklina, Autumn Hurlburt, Rachel Markarian, Mary Mossberg, Julius Anthony Rubio, Melinda Sullivan, Chelsea Traille and Danny Stiles.
This entire company, along with the recently announced creative team, will begin rehearsals in Tampa on Oct. 12.
Wonderland: Alice’s New Musical Adventure will play TBPAC through Jan. 3, 2010, with preview performances scheduled Nov. 24 through Dec. 4 (the opening is Dec. 5).
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/131869-_Dacal_is_Alice_in_Wildhorn_s_Wonderland%20_Mason%20Llana%20Snelson_to_Go_Down_Rabbit_Hole
11 Aug 2009
Broadway stars will populate the world premiere of Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center announced on Aug. 11. Karen Mason, Janet Dacal, Darren Ritchie, Jose Llana and more will bring the new Frank Wildhorn show to life, opening Dec. 5 in Florida.
Gregory Boyd, artistic director of Houston's Alley Theatre, directs the show inspired by Lewis Carroll's 19th-century fantasy fiction for kids. The music for Wonderland is from composer Frank Wildhorn (The Civil War and Jekyll & Hyde) with lyrics by Jack Murphy (The Civil War). The book is by Murphy and Boyd.
Wonderland is the first initiative of the Broadway Genesis Project at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Broadway Genesis is intended to help create new works of American theatre to play the Tampa market, and then possibly tour other performing arts centers or move to Broadway. It will launch at TBPAC's Ferguson Hall.
The principal cast will include Julie Brooks (Fiddler on the Roof national tour) as Chloe, Janet Dacal (In the Heights, Good Vibrations) as Alice, Eugene Fleming (Fosse) as the Caterpillar, Jose Llana (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as El Gato, Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!) as the Queen of Hearts, Darren Ritchie (Dracula: The Musical) as Jack/White Knight, Nikki Snelson (Legally Blonde) as the Mad Hatter and Ed Staudenmayer (Forbidden Broadway) as the Rabbit.
The ensemble includes Tad Wilson, who will also take on the featured role of the Jabberwock, along with Grady Bowman, Sae La Chin, Dan Domenech, Mallauri Esquibel, Lori Eure, Derek Ferguson, Wilkie Ferguson, Ashley Galvan, Laura Karklina, Autumn Hurlburt, Rachel Markarian, Mary Mossberg, Julius Anthony Rubio, Melinda Sullivan, Chelsea Traille and Danny Stiles.
This entire company, along with the recently announced creative team, will begin rehearsals in Tampa on Oct. 12.
Wonderland: Alice’s New Musical Adventure will play TBPAC through Jan. 3, 2010, with preview performances scheduled Nov. 24 through Dec. 4 (the opening is Dec. 5).
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/131869-_Dacal_is_Alice_in_Wildhorn_s_Wonderland%20_Mason%20Llana%20Snelson_to_Go_Down_Rabbit_Hole
Casting complete for TBPAC's new 'Wonderland' show
By John Fleming, Times Performing Arts Critic
In Print: Wednesday, August 12, 2009
TAMPA — Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure is all set and ready to go. The new Frank Wildhorn musical, which is being produced by Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and will have its premiere there on Dec. 5, officially announced complete casting Tuesday.
Janet Dacal will play Alice, as first reported in July by the St. Petersburg Times from an interview with composer Wildhorn. Dacal, a Cuban-American who lived in Miami, is now playing Carla, the ditsy redheaded beauty salon assistant in In the Heights, the Tony Award-winning musical set in the Manhattan barrio.
"If you don't have the right Alice, the show won't work," said Jack Murphy, who is writing the book and lyrics of the musical, inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Though Alice is a British expatriate children's book author living in New York in the musical, the character won't change with a Latina in the role, Murphy said.
"We were very excited to get Janet. This is not going to be your mother's Alice in Wonderland. This is a modern woman who speaks to today's audience."
Tuesday's announcement confirmed that principal cast members include Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!) as the Queen of Hearts, Eugene Fleming (Fosse) as the Caterpillar and Nikki Snelson (Legally Blonde) as the Mad Hatter.
The 25-member cast also has Julie Brooks playing Alice's 10-year-old daughter, Chloe; Jose Llana as El Gato; Ed Staudenmayer as the Rabbit; and Sarasota native Darren Ritchie as Jack/White Knight. For the complete cast see blogs.tampabay.com/arts.
Wonderland, directed by Gregory Boyd, begins rehearsals at the TBPAC on Oct. 12. The show will be staged in Ferguson Hall and start preview performances Nov. 24 and open Dec. 5. After the Tampa run closes on Jan. 3, the production will make a quick transfer to the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas, where Boyd is artistic director. It will play the Alley Jan. 15-Feb. 14.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs at Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.
http://www.tampabay.com/features/performingarts/article1026845.ece
In Print: Wednesday, August 12, 2009
TAMPA — Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure is all set and ready to go. The new Frank Wildhorn musical, which is being produced by Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and will have its premiere there on Dec. 5, officially announced complete casting Tuesday.
Janet Dacal will play Alice, as first reported in July by the St. Petersburg Times from an interview with composer Wildhorn. Dacal, a Cuban-American who lived in Miami, is now playing Carla, the ditsy redheaded beauty salon assistant in In the Heights, the Tony Award-winning musical set in the Manhattan barrio.
"If you don't have the right Alice, the show won't work," said Jack Murphy, who is writing the book and lyrics of the musical, inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Though Alice is a British expatriate children's book author living in New York in the musical, the character won't change with a Latina in the role, Murphy said.
"We were very excited to get Janet. This is not going to be your mother's Alice in Wonderland. This is a modern woman who speaks to today's audience."
Tuesday's announcement confirmed that principal cast members include Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!) as the Queen of Hearts, Eugene Fleming (Fosse) as the Caterpillar and Nikki Snelson (Legally Blonde) as the Mad Hatter.
The 25-member cast also has Julie Brooks playing Alice's 10-year-old daughter, Chloe; Jose Llana as El Gato; Ed Staudenmayer as the Rabbit; and Sarasota native Darren Ritchie as Jack/White Knight. For the complete cast see blogs.tampabay.com/arts.
Wonderland, directed by Gregory Boyd, begins rehearsals at the TBPAC on Oct. 12. The show will be staged in Ferguson Hall and start preview performances Nov. 24 and open Dec. 5. After the Tampa run closes on Jan. 3, the production will make a quick transfer to the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas, where Boyd is artistic director. It will play the Alley Jan. 15-Feb. 14.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs at Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.
http://www.tampabay.com/features/performingarts/article1026845.ece
Spider-Man The Musical Is Dead Dead Dead!
As we previously mentioned, the upcoming Spider-Man Broadway musical has run out of $$$$$$, and….
The entire cast - including Evan Rachel Whore - has just been released from their contracts and the crew has been put on "hiatus" until further notice because the $45 million dollar musical broke the bank!
Spider-Man, with Julie Taymor on board as director and music penned by Bono and The Edge, was destined to be a mess from the beginning.
Taymor devised an "installation show" for the musical, but sources say the director was in over her head with the amount of special effects she hoped to include in the show.
The show was said to have a running cost of $900,000 a week, which would have required the show to sell out at New York's Hilton Theater every night for five years straight just for the producers to break even!
Ridiculous!!!
Spider-Man is still set to open for previews on February 10th, 2010.
Yeah right!
Posted: August 12, 2009 at 2:30 pm
http://perezhilton.com/2009-08-12-spider-man-the-musical-is-dead-dead-dead
The entire cast - including Evan Rachel Whore - has just been released from their contracts and the crew has been put on "hiatus" until further notice because the $45 million dollar musical broke the bank!
Spider-Man, with Julie Taymor on board as director and music penned by Bono and The Edge, was destined to be a mess from the beginning.
Taymor devised an "installation show" for the musical, but sources say the director was in over her head with the amount of special effects she hoped to include in the show.
The show was said to have a running cost of $900,000 a week, which would have required the show to sell out at New York's Hilton Theater every night for five years straight just for the producers to break even!
Ridiculous!!!
Spider-Man is still set to open for previews on February 10th, 2010.
Yeah right!
Posted: August 12, 2009 at 2:30 pm
http://perezhilton.com/2009-08-12-spider-man-the-musical-is-dead-dead-dead
Spiderman Needs Some Ca$$$h
Oops!
Someone forgot to tell the producers of the Broadway-bound Spiderman show that we are in economic crisis! One of the backers of the lavish production, Hello Entertainment, are halting production on the show due to "unexpected cash flow problem."
So you ran out of money? Got it!
The studio released this statement explaining the hold-up: "Plans necessary for this correction are in hand now and it is expected that activities, including work in the theater, will resume within the immediate future."
Not likely. Not many people have thousands of dollars lying around to save a Broadway show.
Good luck with that!
Posted: August 10, 2009 at 2:22 pm
http://perezhilton.com/2009-08-10-spiderman-needs-some-cah
Someone forgot to tell the producers of the Broadway-bound Spiderman show that we are in economic crisis! One of the backers of the lavish production, Hello Entertainment, are halting production on the show due to "unexpected cash flow problem."
So you ran out of money? Got it!
The studio released this statement explaining the hold-up: "Plans necessary for this correction are in hand now and it is expected that activities, including work in the theater, will resume within the immediate future."
Not likely. Not many people have thousands of dollars lying around to save a Broadway show.
Good luck with that!
Posted: August 10, 2009 at 2:22 pm
http://perezhilton.com/2009-08-10-spiderman-needs-some-cah
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