Kulish, Gwynne, Bologna to Depart ‘Billy Elliot’

Kiril Kulish, one of the three extraordinary young actors to create the role of Billy in the award-winning Broadway musical Billy Elliot: The Musical, is one of three performers to be departing the Broadway production this fall. Kulish, a Tony Award winner in rotation with Trent Kowalik and David Alvarez in the title role of Billy Elliot, will perform his final show with the production at the Imperial Theatre on Oct. 3, and he’ll be succeeded in the musical by Alex Ko, who will make his Broadway debut and join the other Billys starting Oct. 5.

Kulish isn’t the only actor to leave the production, however. Haydn Gwynne, who has played Mrs. Wilkinson in the production since its opening in the U.K., will also depart Billy Elliot on Oct. 4, set to be replaced by Canadian actress Kate Hennig on Oct. 6. David Bologna, who has played the role of Michael in the Broadway musical, will also end his Billy Elliot run on Sept. 27, set to be replaced by understudy Keean Johnson in rotation with Trevor Braun. Billy Elliot has been a shining star on the Broadway scene since Nov. 13, 2008, when it opened at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 31, 2009 - Post a comment

Posey Bows Out of ‘This’ with Health Issue

Actress Parker Posey was scheduled to star in the upcoming off-Broadway stage production of This, but she has since pulled out of the role, as the 40-year-old actress has recently been diagnosed with a developing case of Lyme disease. The disease, often caused by a tick bite that has a certain bacteria, is treatable if caught early on, as Posey’s was, and it’s expected that the actress will make a healthy recovery, though she’s had to sacrifice her role of a single-mom poet in the upcoming Melissa James Gibson production This. Though the news of Posey’s acquisition of Lyme disease was devastating in the theatrical realm, the show must go on for This, which will still begin previews as scheduled on November 6. A replacement for Posey has yet to be announced, but This will still debut at the Mainstage Theater this fall.

Parker Posey is best-known for her feisty roles in films such as Dazed and Confused, Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. Here’s to wishing Parker a speedy recovery and all the best as she skips out on the off-Broadway play This to overcome Lyme disease.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 28, 2009 - Post a comment

Kerry Butler Joins ‘Rock of Ages’ in September

The very talented Kerry Butler, who scored a Tony nod for her standout performance as “Kira” in the production Xanadu, has been announced as the newest addition to the Broadway rock musical Rock of Ages, which she will join starting September 21 on a sixth-month limited engagement. Butler will take over the role of “Sherrie” in six performances a week during the Rock of Ages run, yielding the Sunday performance of the role to the character’s understudy. Lead producer Carl Levin welcomed Butler to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where she will soon begin performing, saying, “Kerry is one of my favorite Broadway performers and I cannot tell you how lucky we feel to have her. She’s funny, she’s beautiful, and most importantly she can sing like a rock star.”

Though she’s coming from a prior engagement with Xanadu, Kerry Butler will now transition into the music of ’80s rockers like Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Whitesnake, Pat Benatar, Foreigner and the like, as Rock of Ages presents an ’80s-themed love story with rock music at its forefront. The cast of Rock of Ages also features Constantine Maroulis as “Drew”, James Carpinello as “Stacee Jaxx”, Mitch Jarvis as “Lonny”, Don Stephenson as “hertz” and Wesley Taylor as “Franz”. Rock of Ages premiered on Broadway on March 17, 2009 with an official opening on April 7, and now the famed production will run through this fall at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 27, 2009 - Post a comment

Ambivalence of Spanish in ‘West Side Story’ Continues

The revival of the Broadway classic West Side Story has drawn in spectators both young and old over the last few months, but the production is making headlines this week for its vacillating use of Spanish. Before its opening, the West Side Story revival announced that it would be partly bilingual, with a handful of songs and dialogue in the show performed in Spanish. This received rave reviews from some critics, but the production announced earlier this week that it’s changing well-known songs “A Boy Like That” and “I Feel Pretty” back into English - a disappointment, to some.

Director Arthur Laurents commented on the change of language to select songs in the current revival, saying, “From the outset, the Spanish in West Side Story was an experiment. It’s been an ongoing process of finding what worked and what didn’t, and it still continues.” The songs “A Boy Like That” (”Un Hombre Asi”), sung in the musical by Karen Olivo, and “I Feel Pretty” (”Siento Hermosa”), sung by Josefina Scaglione, will now be reverted back to their original tunes in English, while the song “Tonight” remains delivered in Spanish. The changes to the bilingual West Side Story were implemented again last Thursday, August 20, and will remain the new norm for the musical - for now, at least.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 26, 2009 - Post a comment

Dance Fever Hits Broadway

There’s nothing like a full-blown dance performance to illuminate stages to the fullest, and that’s exactly what the captivating ballroom dancing Broadway production Burn the Floor has done over its originally-scheduled 12-week limited run, which has now been extended into January 2010. Currently in play at the Longacre Theatre and featuring Dancing with the Stars pros Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff, Burn the Floor has announced its extension through January 3, 2010, months after its original October 18 end date.

Now that the Jason Gilkison-directed and choreographed Broadway production Burn the Floor has announced its extension, it has also welcomed So You Think You Can Dance fan favorites Anya Garnis and Pasha Kovalev, who have taken the place of the featured couple Chmerkovskiy and Smirnoff as the two Dancing with the Stars figures return for an upcoming season of their televised celebrity dance competition. Burn the Floor features 32 award-winning ballroom dancing professionals from around the world, including dancers from Australia, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Russia, the Philippines, Great Britain and the U.S. The show includes everything from the jive and paso doble to the cha-cha, waltz, quickstep, mambo and more, and theatergoers can now enjoy Burn the Floor through January at New York City’s Longacre Theatre.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 25, 2009 - Post a comment

Diana DeGarmo Joins off-Broadway Production of ‘The Toxic Avenger’

Former American Idol contestant and Season 3 runner-up Diana DeGarmo is back in the limelight, this time tackling the off-Broadway production of The Toxic Avenger, a moody favorite on the theatrical scene. DeGarmo made her debut in The Toxic Avenger on Friday, August 14, taking over the role of the sexy blind librarian Sarah by succeeding Celina Carvajal in the musical. DeGarmo, who’s recently been spotted on Broadway in the hit production of Hairspray, recently spoke of her new onstage role, saying, “I am so excited to be coming back to New York to join the cast of The Toxic Avenger. When I saw the show, I laughed my head off. I can’t wait to start rehearsal - and to be blonde again!”

Diana DeGarmo joins a colorful cast that also features Nick Cordero, Demond Green, Jonathan Root and Nancy Opel in the current off-Broadway production of The Toxic Avenger, which is performing on an open-ended run at New World Stages. Direction for the New York production is led by John Rando, and the rock musical also features a book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Bon Jovi’s David Bryan.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 24, 2009 - Post a comment

Christmastime Favorite to Tour Several Cities

The seasonal Irving Berlin’s White Christmas comes around just about every holiday season, and this year the Christmastime musical comedy will once again make a cameo on the big stage, albeit with a different strategy than in recent years. Typically, White Christmas plays during the winter months at one or two cities on long holiday runs, but this year the musical is spreading the wealth, selecting seven cities to tour in three months.

Casting for the Walter Bobbie-directed large-cast musical White Christmas has yet to be announced, but the production will likely feature Broadway veterans crooning the Irving Berlin holiday staples “Happy Holiday,” “Count Your Blessings,” “I Love a Piano” and more. White Christmas has been a Christmastime favorite for several years, and the production “tells the story of two showbiz buddies putting on a show in a picturesque Vermont inn, and finding their perfect mates in the bargain.”

The schedule for the ‘09 tour of White Christmas is as follows:

Omaha, NE: Nov. 1-7
Cincinnati, OH: Nov. 10-22
Philadelphia, PA: Nov. 24-Dec. 6
East Lansing, MI: Dec. 8-13
St. Louis, MO: Dec. 15-27
Louisville, KY: Dec. 29-Jan. 3, 2010
Kansas City, MO: Jan. 5-Jan. 10, 2010

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 21, 2009 - Post a comment

National Tour of Rent will Run Through January 2010

Original Rent stars Adam Pascal (”Roger”) and Anthony Rapp (”Mark”) are currently touring the country on the Broadway national tour of the smash hit, and it’s just been announced that the two leading actors will take Rent into 2010, as the national tour of Rent will run through January 31, 2010, when it will come to a close in Madison, Wisconsin. Rent, the edgy rock musical about a group of artists trying to make a living in New York City in the age of AIDS and other troubles, also features Gwen Stewart (”Seasons of Love” soloist), Nicolette Hart (”Maureen”), Justin Johnston (”Angel”), Lexi Lawson (”Mimi”), Michael McElroy (”Tom Collins”), Jacques C. Smith (”Benjamin Coffin III”) and Haneefah Wood (”Joanne”). The rest of the touring schedule for the Rent tour is as follows:

Aug. 7-30: Tokyo, Japan - Akasaka ACT Theatre
Sept. 8-20: Seoul, South Korea - KBS Performing Hall
Oct. 6-18: San Francisco, CA - Curran Theatre
Oct. 20-25: Costa mesa, CA - Orange County Performing Arts Center
Oct. 28-Nov. 1: Cincinnati, OH - Aronoff Center for the Arts
Nov. 3-8: Appleton, WI - Fox Cities Performing Arts Center
Nov. 10-15: Des Moines, IA - Civic Center of Greater Des Moines
Nov. 17-22: Providence, RI - Providence Performing Arts Center
Dec. 1-6: Orlando, FL - Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre
Dec. 8-13: Miami, FL - The Fillmore, Miami Beach
Jan. 19-24, 2010: Toronto, Canada - The Canon Theatre
Jan. 26-31, 2010: Madison, WI - Overture Center

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 20, 2009 - Post a comment

Taylor Swift Talks Broadway

Country music’s curly-haired princess Taylor Swift is one of the brightest stars in the entire music industry right now, and the wide-eyed vocalist has already made the successful crossover from country to pop over the last year. Now that she’s a dominating figure on the music scene, does Swift have plans to get into other industries - namely Broadway? “I grew up in Pennsylvania and the first couple times I went to New York I was auditioning for Broadway and off-Broadway plays,” Swift recently told MTV, “so my first ventures into music and performing were trying out for theater and Broadway, and New York is where you go for that so I used to go to voice lessons every single week in New York City when I was nine and 10 and 11 years old, so New York has been one of my favorite places for a really long time.”

Is this a hint that Taylor Swift wants to make the leap to Broadway anytime soon? Well, with a booming career in the country music industry right now, Swift is still making the rounds across the nation on her Fearless Tour, but anything is possible for this teenage superstar, so be sure to scour Broadway news over the next couple months to see if anything materializes for the glowing Taylor Swift, whose music videos give a taste of her penchant for theatrics.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 19, 2009 - Post a comment

Final Performances Sell Out for Little Mermaid

There are only 16 more Broadway performances of Disney’s The Little Mermaid before it goes off Broadway, and tickets have already been snapped up for all 16 performances of the sold-out affair, a sign that this very popular production will go out with a bang. The Broadway rendition of The Little Mermaid has been hailed “one of the most ravishing shows I have ever seen on a Broadway stage” by TIME magazine’s Richard Zoglin, and the production was the No. 1 selling new Broadway musical of 2008, making its mark on the Broadway realm over the past year.

The current cast of The Little Mermaid includes Chelsea Morgan Stock as Ariel, Faith Prince as Ursula, Drew Seeley as Prince Eric, Norm Lewis as King Triton, Rogelio Douglas Jr. as Sebastian, Eddie Korbich as Scuttle, Jonathan Freeman as Grimsby, Tyler Maynard as Flotsam, Eric LaJuan Summers as Jetsam, Robert Creighton as Chef Louis and Major Curda/Brian D’Addario as Flounder. Timeless songs like “Part of Your World” and “Under the Sea” have made the musical The Little Mermaid one of the highest-grossing productions of the year, and even after the Broadway run at the Lunt-Fontanne, theatergoers can still catch The Little Mermaid on stages across the country soon, as the national tour of the Disney favorite will begin in the fall of 2010.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 18, 2009 - Post a comment


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