Never mind that she’s best known as a dramatic TV actress — dubbed “the First Lady of Knots Landing” for her portrayal as Karen on that long-running prime-time CBS soap from the ’80s — Michele Lee styles herself as a funny lady.
“I wish I could be half-comedian, but I’m probably 10-percent comedian,” Lee cracks during a phone interview from New York, one she wishes could have been face-to-face, over lunch — or better yet, cocktails. “Oh yeah, let’s go to cocktails,” she says. “Forget that lunch thing.”
Lee is a hoot, an all-around, honest-to-goodness entertainer, the likes of which you don’t often see these days. Born Michele Lee Dusick, Lee got her start on Broadway at the age of 19 with small roles in plays and musicals, including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. She recently returned to Broadway, as Madame Morrible in the long-running Wicked.
This Friday, Nov. 6, Lee performs a one-woman show as part of Barbara Cook’s Spotlight cabaret series at the Kennedy Center. The focus is on the music of Broadway composer Cy Coleman, whose 1973 musical See Saw earned Lee her first Tony nod. “Cy Coleman was an incredible artist,” she says. “The songs that I’ve chosen tell just a wonderful story about all his music…and my personal stories with him.”
Lee was going to perform a cabaret focused more on her varied career, but the brand-new Coleman show got such “fabulous reviews in New York,” she opted to go with it instead. Lee says she’d be delighted to come back to the Kennedy Center to perform her more personal cabaret, which includes a salute to Knots Landing. Asked if that cabaret also includes reference to another role in particular, from the hit 1968 Disney movie featuring a cognizant car, Lee just laughs. “There’s no song in The Love Bug that I would sing. But I do tell some funny stories about it.”
"Depending on the cities that we're in, people have more or less familiarity with the piece, and with the song specifically," says Matt Rodin of the Stephen Sondheim classic "Getting Married Today."
The showstopper is a highlight of the composer's Tony Award-winning musical Company, and Rodin, who performs it in the production now at the Kennedy Center, refers to it as a "rollercoaster."
Company debuted on Broadway in 1970 with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Firth. Director Marianne Elliott conceived of this production before the pandemic as a way to mark the musical's 50th anniversary.
David Archuleta has been through a lot in the past several years.
He came out as gay and left the Mormon church, which had been a huge part of his life. As an artist, he’s now looking to mine his past experiences – and even his trauma – to make something beautiful out of an experience that must have been incredibly difficult. That's exactly what he's managed to do with “Hell Together,” his latest single.
The former American Idol star dropped “Hell Together” last week after teasing new music was coming. The track is a gospel-tinged affair, a nod to his past and the story he tells in the song.
"We market ourselves as all-male," says Bobby Carter, a longtime member of the New York-based Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. "And yes, we are, for the most part, what one would consider drag queens, because we do use the modalities of dressing as women to emphasize the characters that we're portraying."
Carter is quick to point out, however, that "the drag an element of what we do, but it's not the reason, and it's not the main focus."
He continues: "I always have to stress that we are first and foremost a ballet company. Yes, we all happen to be gay -- I'm not necessarily trying to out my colleagues, but not many people join this company in search of doing the male roles." At that, Carter can't help but let out a hearty laugh.
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