By Randy Shulman on June 7, 2018 @RandyShulman
When the scribes write the ultimate history of Broadway, one thing will become crystal clear: Michael Urie was destined to play Bud Frump.
“When I was 16, my sister and I went to the Dallas Summer Musicals production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” says the effervescent 37-year-old during a break from rehearsal. “It was the national tour that starred Ralph Macchio as Finch and Roger Bart as Frump. It was seminal for me. It totally changed the way I looked at theater. I loved it more than anything. I thought, ‘This is a musical I could be in!'”
Urie almost got his chance at Frump — the nemesis to window washer-turned-corporate exec J. Pierrepont Finch — in the 2011 Broadway revival starring Daniel Radcliffe. “They hired me. And then, through a series of very sad circumstances which I won’t go into, I ended up not getting to keep the job. It was like a showbiz tragedy.” Christopher Hankey took on the role, but Urie finally got his chance in 2012, replacing Hankey at the same time Nick Jonas stepped in as Finch.
“I can’t ever remember being that purely happy doing a job,” he glows. “There have been other jobs that have meant more to me or been more challenging, but doing this show is just like a big bowl of ice cream!”
Urie is feasting on another helping of that ice cream, as the hit-packed, Pulitzer Prize-winning Frank Loesser musical plays this weekend as part of the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage, a magnificent new series that has already mounted electrifying semi-staged concerts of Chess and In the Heights. Directed by Marc Bruni, How to Succeed features Urie as Frump, Betsy Wolfe as Rosemary Pilkington, Nova Payton as Miss Jones, John Michael Higgins as Biggley, and Pitch Perfect‘s Skylar Astin as Finch.
“He’s got such great energy,” Urie, last seen here at the Shakespeare Theatre in a powerful take on Hamlet, says of Astin. “He sings so well and he’s got great comic sensibility and is filled with ideas. He’s perfect for the role.”
In addition to his quick stint in How to Succeed, Urie is busy prepping for the Broadway revival of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, part of a sudden resurgence of seminal LGBTQ plays on Broadway that includes Boys in the Band, starring Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, and Matt Bomer, and Angels in America, starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane.
“It seems to be something in the ethos,” he says of the perfectly-timed trio. “I feel in some ways it’s a victory lap for the LGBTQ community. But it may be a call to arms for the rights that are being stripped away by the current Administration — a reminder of what we could lose. That could be it.” He pauses. “I think it could also be coincidence.”
Broadway Center Stage: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying runs through Sunday, June 10 in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. Tickets are $59-$175. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org.
By Doug Rule on June 4, 2022 @ruleonwriting
The vaunted New York City Ballet returns for its annual run of performances at the Kennedy Center, this season in recognition of the institution's 50th anniversary.
During the week-long engagement, the organization's dancers will perform two different programs, each with live musical accompaniment from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, kicking off with a nod to the next 50 years.
The first program, performed twice next week, offers a showcase of new works by three choreographers heralded as "Visionary Voices," Sidra Bell, Jamar Roberts, and Justin Peck.
Bell's Suspended Animation creates an introspective world accented by Bauhaus-inspired costumes by Christopher John Rogers and set to musical selections from composers Nicholos Britell, Oliver Davis, and Dosia McKay across four movements; Roberts's Emanon -- In Two Movements offers a playful response to a jazzy orchestral score by Wayne Shorter with eight dancers outfitted by costume designer Jermaine Terry; and Peck's Partita grows from Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning a cappella composition in four movements that was inspired by Wall Drawing 305 by visual artist Sol LeWitt, whose daughter Eva LeWitt serves as set designer for the production.
By MW on June 25, 2022
It holds the record as the highest-grossing non-musical play in Broadway history -- and in this case, that history is remarkably fresh. Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird is still best known in its original form, as Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel dating to 1960.
Surprisingly, the work, a tale of racial injustice and childhood innocence, has only been adapted for the screen once, and that 1962 film continues to rank as one of the greatest movies of all time.
It had only been adapted once for the stage -- with the annual, only-in-Alabama production developed by Christopher Sergel -- before Aaron Sorkin decided to put his stamp on the piece a few years ago.
By Doug Rule on June 7, 2022 @ruleonwriting
It takes a village to bring Our Town to life on stage. Especially during an ongoing global pandemic.
"It's been one of the craziest things, putting on this show in the time of COVID," says Alan Paul, associate artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, who directed the organization's current production of the Thornton Wilder classic.
Initially scheduled to run the first two months of 2022, the show was postponed until May in an effort to steer clear of this winter's first wave of COVID's omicron variant. "And then when we were getting ready to open the show, a bunch of people in the cast got COVID. Eventually, it just became clear that we were going to have to open the show with understudies. So we opened the show with six understudies. That's one of the wildest things I've ever done."
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