My First Show in Every Broadway Theater

A recent trend on Facebook is to list the first show you saw in every Broadway theater. I thought it would be easy for me, but my memory is not as razor sharp as it used to be. Plus I no longer keep all my Playbills in either chronological or alphabetical order. So I had to go online and actually do research. Internet Broadway Data Base (ibdb) which lists every show ever played in every theater, was most useful. Other sites only listed major long-running hits. It was fun and raised a lot of memories. Here's my list along with anecdotes and thoughts. 

Ambassador: DREAMGIRLS--a revival
American Airlines: THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER--This was the first production in the new AA Theater
Atkinson: THE DRESSER--on a trip to NYC while I was in college in Philly.

Robert Duvall, John Savage, and Kenneth McMillan
in David Mamet's American Buffalo

Barrymore: LILLIAN--Zoe Caldwell in a one-woman show as the playwright Lillian Hellman.
Beaumont: THE FRONT PAGE (John Lithgow, Richard Thomas)
Belasco: AMERICAN BUFFALO (w/Robert Duvall)--I was in high school and my family took a trip to NYC for a weekend and I crammed in as many shows as possible. Duvall was brilliantly scary.
Bernard B. Jacobs (Royale): YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (Eddie Albert, Frances Sternhagen, Colleen Dewhurst, George Rose)--I got cheap seats from Audience Extras when I first moved to Gotham. This revival had been running a while. Eddie Albert had replaced Jason Robards as Grandpa.
Booth: GOOD--a British play about a well-meaning German who gradually becomes a high-ranking Nazi.
Broadhurst: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey)

3 Degrees of Separation Among Best Picture Nominees

Michael Stuhlbarg

Let's play three degrees of separation among this year's front-runners for the Oscars. Michael Stuhlbarg is in three of this year's possible Best Picture Oscar nominees--Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, and The Post. Timothee Chalamant is touted as Best Actor for Call Me By Your Name and has a small role in Ladybird. Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and Tony winning actor Tracey Letts is in The Post and Ladybird (Letts also starred in The Lovers, a small independent film). Laurie Metcalf is a favorite for Best Supporting Actress for Ladybird as Letts' wife and Saoirse Ronan's mother. She won a Tony last year for A Doll's House Part 2. Stephen McKinley Henderson was in the replacement company of Doll's House and has a supporting role in Ladybird. Lucas Hedges is in both Ladybird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Lois Smith is also in Ladybird and Marjorie Prime--she also did the play version and she is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for the movie.

Oprah Emerges as Possible Prez and Trump Reveals His Racism

Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globe Awards

In 2004, CBS ran a short-lived drama series called Century City. It starred Viola Davis and Hector Elizondo, was set in the year 2030 and combined elements of science fiction and legal procedural. In one episode, it is revealed that Oprah Winfrey is president and her VP is an openly gay, one-armed, retired general. The show only ran four episodes before it was cancelled and has been forgotten. But it may be remembered for predicting our next president, ten years early. Winfrey gave such a stirring speech at last Sunday night's Golden Globes Awards upon receiving the Cecil B. De Mille Lifetime Achievement Award that it sparked calls for her to ran for Chief Executive in 2020.

Donald E. Trump: Super Genius!

Wile E. Coyote (r.) with
the explosive Tallullah Bankhead-like robot

Our idiot president's declaration that he is a "very stable genius" on Twitter in response to Michael Wolff's book "Fire and Fury," caused innumerable social media wits to compare him to the immortal Warner Brothers character Wile E. Coyote who was constantly bragging about his intellect when pursuing Bugs Bunny. Wile E. is more famous for the series of cartoons he starred in with the Road Runner, which later served as the basis for a Saturday morning series on ABC. (It later expanded to the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour.) The difference between the two series is Wile E. remains mute in his encounters with the RR while he builds more and more elaborate contraptions--usually employing supplies from the Acme Company--to ensnare his feathered prey. In his jousts with Bugs, Wile E. is extremely verbal, bragging about his colossal intellect and that Bugs should give up since he can never win in their battle of wills.

Forgotten Musical: 'Give a Girl a Break'

Marge Champion, Helen Wood and
Debbie Reynolds in Give a Girl a Break (1953).
Under another name, Wood would star in porn films in the 1970s.

Hollywood produced dozens of movie musicals from the late 1940s into the mid-1950s. Many such as Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Easter Parade, Summer Stock, A Star Is Born, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, are regarded as classics by fans and scholars today. Yet there are many minor cinema tuners worthy of savoring. Give a Girl a Break (1953) is one of these. Largely forgotten, it's difficult to find. I had to pay $10 to order it in digital form on Amazon video. I watched it during the Christmas-Hanukkah-New Year's break. It's now obscure, but it has a simple charm and features a fascinating cast. I have a vague memory of watching it at my aunt's house in Philadelphia on the late Sunday afternoon TV movie when I was a kid.

A Very Special Bewitched with Special Guest Star Donald Trump

In response to a Breitbart article stating feminist witches were casting hexes on Donald Trump:

The scene: The home of Darren and Samantha Stephens. Samantha is preparing dinner in the kitchen and feeding toddler Tabitha.

Tabitha: Mommy, why can't I have dinner with you and Daddy tonight?

Samantha and Endora prepare for Trump's visit

Samantha: Because darling, we have a very important visitor. The President of the United States. Daddy's being considered to head his new public relations unit and convince the American people he's not a jackass.

Tabitha: Is he a jackass, Mommy?

Samantha: Whether he is or isn't is not the point, sweetheart. Daddy's job is to make the people believe he's not.

(Lighting flashes, thunder roars, and Endora, Samatha's mother, suddenly appears)

Samantha: Mother, I've asked you not to make such a dramatic entrance.

Tabitha: Grandma!

Endora: Hello, darling! Samantha, is it true what I've heard on the witches' grapevine? You are actually allowing that vile reptile Donald Trump into your home? Have you gone mad? The fumigation bills alone will break poor Durwood.

Samantha: For the thousandth time, his name is Darren, not Durwood.

B'way Update: Logjam in Spring 2018; Early 2018-19 Announcements

Jim Parsons will star in a revival of The Boys in the Band,
which will be eligible for 2018-19 Tonys.

So many Broadway theaters are booked and so few shows are closing there is a logjam of venues this spring. Therefore many shows have announced their openings for the next fall. Usually a number of productions shutter right after the holiday season, but in addition to the perennials like Wicked, Lion King, and Chicago, a number of productions which received middling reviews but strong word of mouth are still going into 2018 including Anastasia, A Bronx Tale and School of Rock, as well as Tony winners Dear Evan Hansen, Come from Away, and Kinky Boots. Tracey Letts' The Minutes has an announced opening of March 8,

Glenda Jackson will return to Broadway
after a 30-year absence in Three Tall Women.

but no theater yet. They'd better hurry and grab one. The all-star revival of The Boys in the Band with Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, and Andrew Rannells had originally been slated as an April opening in order to qualify for the Tonys, but it's just been announced as opening on May 31, meaning it will eligible for the 2019 awards. The shift may have been due to director Joe Mantello's heavy workload. He will also be staging the revival of Three Tall Women starring Glenda Jackson in her first Broadway role in 30 years (the Scottish play with Christopher Plummer in 1988 was her last) which opens just two months earlier on March 29. Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill are the other two women. 

Additional shows making early announcements for 2018-19 include To Kill a Mockingbird, Getting the Band Back Together, King Kong, The Prom, Pretty Woman, a Kiss Me, Kate revival from Roundabout starring Kelli O'Hara, and the Cher Show. Cher is not the only pop artist to have a musical based on her life and/or work in the planning stages. Others include Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (which has booked the Lunt-Fontanne for this April according to Michael Riedel of the NY Post), Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical, Jagged Little Pill (Alanis Morrisette), and a Pat Benatar musical.