edjames

Sorry guys, I was disappointed. There were wonderful performances (Rylance, great) and singers, however, by Act 2 I was a bit bored. I think part of my problem is my historical confusion about this king of Spain and one of his predecessors. Shame on me, I should have googled them before the show. I got a GREAT center orch seat on TDF, so given the deeply discounted price, in the end it was worth it to this production. Give Mr Rylance another Tony?

Your right Ben, it's a fine price, however, many cannot sit in the balcony. First it's a long haul to get up there and those of us with foot, hip and leg issues just cannot do it. Waitrin for the City Center elevator is a major chore. Secondly, if you have eyesight or hearing problems, well, its another reason. I just won't do it and prefer to splurge on a orch seat (but that's just the royalty within me!). Just my opinion. NYTimes reviewed this production this morning: Review: An Anthology of B-List Broadway in ‘Hey, Look Me Over!’ ENCORES! � HEY, LOOK ME OVER! By JESSE GREENFEB. 8, 2018 Musical theater history, no less than the regular kind, is told by the winners. Triumphs like “Show Boat,” “West Side Story” and “Hamilton” are the works that give you the shape of their times, both as social documents and as cultural products. None of the old musicals sampled in the new Encores! anthology called “Hey, Look Me Over!” made or make that kind of history. Added together, the nine shows didn’t run as long as the original production of “My Fair Lady,” and not one has ever been revived on Broadway. Only one won a Tony Award, and that was for featured actress. If any were to show up on a best-of list, I would suspect family connections. That’s never been disqualifying data for the series, which began its 25th season on Wednesday night at City Center with this unusual entry, a revue made up of scenes and songs from shows that opened between 1957 and 1974. The Encores! mandate has always been to present items from Broadway’s trunk that, despite intermittent felicities, were otherwise unlikely to emerge from it again. Sometimes the idea has outwitted itself in the process, as when “Chicago” and “Wonderful Town” proved surprisingly viable, and moved on to commercial runs. More often, Encores! has honored the lesser work of the form by letting us hear it in full and as close as possible to the way first-nighters did. That’s not what “Hey, Look Me Over!” — a peculiar and inevitably incoherent assemblage conceived by the Encores! artistic director, Jack Viertel — sets out to do. Rather, as Bob Martin, the evening’s host, explains at the start, the production is more of a highlights program. In the fiercely finicky style of Man in Chair, the musical-obsessed character he played in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” Mr. Martin tells us that he himself has curated “Hey, Look Me Over!” as a kind of corrective to the series’ “shocking omissions over the years, perfectly respectable shows that never made it to this stage for unknown reasons.” Carolee Carmello, left, and Britney Coleman, joining for a duet on the song from the musical “Wildcat” that gives “Hey, Look Me Over!” its title. CreditEmon Hassan for The New York Times Those reasons do not remain unknown for long, as Mr. Martin cedes the stage to and dull opening scenes of “Wildcat,” a 1960 Lucille Ball vehicle with a score by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh. That show’s big number, which provides the evening’s apt overall title, is , and having Carolee Carmello belt it (with assistance from the newcomer Britney Coleman) is a delight. But if seven or eight minutes of “Wildcat” is long enough to reveal how bad the show is otherwise, it is not long enough to let us understand how it might also have been a little bit good. And that’s the way “Hey, Look Me Over!” — shaggily directed by Marc Bruni — proceeds. Though Mr. Martin’s interstitial jokes are often funny, they are not substantive enough to make the selections seem anything more than convenient. He is oddly unopinionated about the actual material. From “All American,” the second show extracted, we thus get three numbers by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, all charming (especially when sung by Judy Kuhn) but only obscurely related to one another and begging for tart commentary. Surely we deserve to know from Mr. Man in Chair why we are not being offered the musical’s campy showstopper, an astonishingly homoerotic beefcake parade called “Physical Fitness” that would have made more sense with the evening’s concept. But the concept is not exactly ironclad. When, in the next excerpt, Vanessa Williams swans on to sing two comic Harold Arlen-E. Y. Harburg songs from “Jamaica,” a 1957 Lena Horne vehicle, she seems to have interloped from a different idea entirely, perhaps a gloss on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Her numbers — “ ” and “Push De Button,” both calypso pastiches — are too alike in tone and style, and too unmoored to any sense of story, to make a sufficient impression. That’s a shame because a substantive selection from a show that focuses on black characters would have helped support the theme that gradually emerges from “Hey, Look Me Over!” Leaving aside (for the moment) the selections from “Milk and Honey,” in which American widows looking for husbands tour Israel in 1961, the rest of the evening seems to be wrestling, albeit at several removes, with the transformation of American identity that was and remains the key subject of musicals from midcentury on. “Wildcat” is about frontier spirit, “All American” about immigration; in the second act, “Greenwillow” (with a strange and haunting score by Frank Loesser) is about wanderlust, and “Sail Away,” though it’s by Noël Coward, is about the emerging American booboisie. Photo Bebe Neuwirth performing a song from “Sail Away,” originally made famous by Elaine Stritch, in “Hey, Look Me Over!” CreditEmon Hassan for The New York Times There are remarkable performances along the way, especially from Clifton Duncan singing the rangy arias of “Greenwillow” and Bebe Neuwirth snarling Elaine Stritch’s songs from “Sail Away.” But it is perhaps no surprise that the most trenchant comment on American character comes from the best show of the lot, that perpetual coulda-been-a-contender “Mack & Mabel.” In just two of its Jerry Herman numbers — “Movies Were Movies,” blisteringly delivered by Douglas Sills, and vividly sung by Alexandra Socha — everything you’d want a show to say about reality and representation, identity and transformation, is said in a few hummable, well-rhymed stanzas. The best musicals are solid-state, everywhere dense with their core ideas. They are excerptable. Lesser shows may produce a song or two that can kill in the cabaret — or are even worth a full staging at Encores! — but they fall apart when sliced into wedges as they are here. Despite references to current politics (there’s a nice surprise after the curtain call, so stick around), the lack of thematic unity turns out to be more damaging than the Encores! team evidently imagined. Attempts to repair that with contemporary commentary are undercut by scenes like the ones from “Milk and Honey,” which for obvious reasons ignore politics entirely. At least there’s a hora (choreographed by Denis Jones) in “Milk and Honey”; this production is otherwise too light on dance. In the final number — inevitably “Give My Regards to Broadway” from “George M!” — we finally get a thrilling taste of what tapping can do to tighten loose material. (We also get another little surprise, which I won’t spoil.) But for the most part “Hey, Look Me Over!” has little new to say about its old sources. It will be of interest to historians, if not to history.

yes, on TDF, HOWEVER...balcony (nosebleed) seats!

The short answer is "yes, John was gay," however he was described as "intensely private, therefore he did not wish to discuss it. God bless and keep him at peace. He was a great actor and his portrayal as Frasier and Nile's dad, Martin Crane, was great. He was in the gay film "Lonely Hearts Club."

As expected, their CBS bio does not mention the word "gay," or "dating." Shame! Well-strung is 4 young talented men who play mend pop/classical tunes together. I've seen the group perform several times here in NYC and also several times up in Provincetown. I've met them at their "meet and greets" and they are all friendly and personable. Trivia fact...all 4 guys live together. http://well-strung.com/images/main/splash.jpg

It was a moment to remember. More importantly is the backstory of this performance and how she and Sir. Andrew have reached what Patti calls "detente"! Don't know if this will lead to anything but its always nice to move on. Patti is headed to London for a revival of Company in Marianne Elliot's gender-bending revival. Patti LuPone and Andrew Lloyd Webber finally bury the hatchet One of Broadway’s juiciest, longest-running feuds may have just ended. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Patti LuPone haven’t spoken to each other since the composer fired the diva from “Sunset Boulevard” in 1994. But on Thursday, at the old Hit Factory on West 54th Street, they met to rehearse “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” which LuPone will sing Sunday night at the Grammy Awards. Lloyd Webber arrived first. LuPone swept in a few minutes later. Witnesses held their breaths as she picked up a microphone. “Hello, Andrew,” she said and then, turning to the others in the room, added, “This is détente, ladies and gentlemen.” There were big laughs, Lloyd Webber and LuPone embraced — and went to work. The Grammy telecast is giving a nod to Broadway with a salute to Lloyd Webber and Leonard Bernstein, who would have been 100 this year. Ben Platt, who won a Tony for “Dear Evan Hansen,” will perform a medley of Bernstein songs. LuPone, Broadway’s original “Evita,” readily agreed to sing the show’s biggest song, which, because of the show’s time constraints, needed to be cut by one minute. Sources say LuPone insisted that Lloyd Webber do the trimming. Then she brought down the rehearsal studio by singing the song in its original key. “She’s in spectacular voice,” a source says. “Andrew was blown away.” LuPone congratulated Lloyd Webber on Wednesday’s 30th anniversary of “The Phantom of the Opera,” and they chatted privately for a few minutes. Sources say Lloyd Webber made her laugh when he suggested it was time for an “Evita” revival. (Ricky Martin starred in one in 2012.) And so détente it appears to be. The “Sunset Boulevard” saga is legendary. (It certainly made for a juicy chapter in LuPone’s memoir a few years ago.) Lloyd Webber cast LuPone as Norma Desmond in the London production in 1993. She had it in her contract that she would open the show on Broadway the next year. But Glenn Close opened the show in Los Angeles, got rave reviews and wound up with the Broadway production. Wounded, LuPone sued and won what was reportedly a $1 million settlement from Lloyd Webber. As she writes in her memoir, she used the money to put in a pool on her property in Connecticut. She called it “The Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool.” The feud flared up again last year when LuPone knocked the composer during an interview with New York 1’s “On Stage.” Knowing LuPone and Lloyd Webber would meet again had everyone at Wednesday night’s “Phantom” party recalling that feud. “It’s time to move on,” a Lloyd Webber associate told me. “Andrew has.” Broadway fans will be on the edge of their couches Sunday night, waiting for the “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” moment. It comes in the 10 o’clock hour.

Looks pretty damn fine here, but that was probably a staged photo shoot. In this past weeks episode we had a flash of his buns as he jumped into bed with a cute young guy and had his way with him in from of Gianni. And, yes, it probably is a hairpiece to reflect the '90's. It looks awful.

See this show Monday and it was terrific. Loved Jonathan and was unexpectedly wowed by his performance! Bobby was perhaps under rated during his career and he was a prolific songwriter and performer. His life is an interesting tale of a poor boy from East Harlem to Hollywood success. Along the way he had hit tunes and personal struggles. His death at age 37 was tragic. The supporting cast of two guys and gals were good and the small backup orchestra was great. I think the show needs a little fine tuning but the audience loved it. NYPost columnist Michael Reidel raves about Jonathan's performance in today's paper and predicts it is bound for Bway.

If you are looking to kick-start your weight loss, a spa might help you shed a few pounds, but don't look for dramatic results after a couple of weeks. Yeah, you'll eat healthy, portion controlled meals, be provided with exercise programs, get pampered and massaged and lose a few pounds but what are you going to do when you arrive home? My suggestion is to find yourself a good dietician who will work with you to avoid all the mistakes and temptations you've faced in the past. In conjunction with this, hire yourself a gym trainer that will provide you with an exercise program that meets you needs. A "diet" or spa week is not the answer to your problem. You are wasting your money on a spa program. You're starting off all wrong! This is not a "gay" thing and you should focus your efforts on realistic and healthy ways to lose weight. A drag queen fitness instructor or a flaming chef ain't gonna do it (LOL). You need to learn to control your eating habits long term and adopt a full time exercise program. This is a life commitment, not a short term solution. Good luck.

Oh God! What a mind numbingly boring production!!!! I left at intermission. On the coldest day in this 13 day arctic blast that has hit much of the United States, I ventured out for what I had hoped to be an entertaining afternoon of theater. All the signs were in its favor. A classic gothic tale of horror, a handsome and talented leading man, Robert Fairchild, who choreographed his role, and a music program including works by Liszt, Schubert, and Bach, I had high hopes that I would enjoy this production. Not so! A boring script and performances that were less than professional, I was bored to death. I can only say that despite terrific effort by the handsome Mr. Fairchild, even he could not say or life this production above the "meh' level. AND, a lady in front of me that whipped out her cell one and began surfing the net 10 minutes into the first act! Here what the NYTimes said: Review: In ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,’ a Monster to Love MARY SHELLEY�S FRANKENSTEIN By LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESDEC. 27, 2017 Robert Fairchild, left, and Rocco Sisto in “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” an Ensemble for the Romantic Century production. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” begins in a gothic-horror rainstorm, with flashes of lightning and the kind of organ music that sends a tingle up the spine. The teenage Mary Shelley lies sleeping, and in her dreaming mind, a monster jolts to life, electrified. Hooked up to wires, then writhing on the floor, the creature is a nightmare vision. Yet he has the great fortune to be played by the dancer Robert Fairchild, who possesses a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-him eloquence of movement and facial expression. Mr. Fairchild, who created his own choreography, morphs into a monster of delicate, disarming beauty, an innocent perambulating through a world he flounders to understand. In this “Frankenstein,” the latest multimedia fusion of classical music and theater from Ensemble for the Romantic Century, Victor Frankenstein’s monster is enchanting, endearing, irresistibly alive. He is, startlingly, a monster to love. He is also trapped, unfortunately, inside an ambitious but awkward production whose elements battle one another more often than not. Directed by Donald T. Sanders on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center, the show sounds beautiful. Three musicians perform works by Liszt, Bach and Schubert on oboe (Kemp Jernigan), piano (Steven Lin) and organ and harpsichord (Parker Ramsay), while a glorious mezzo-soprano, Krysty Swann, gentles the anguished monster with song. If this were simply a concert that included dance layered with intricate projection design (by David Bengali) and a moody soundscape (by Bill Toles), it would make quite an atmospheric evening. But “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is a play of sorts, created by the ensemble’s executive artistic director, Eve Wolf, using excerpts from “Frankenstein” and Shelley’s letters and diaries. It aims to tell a story whose strands refuse to twine smoothly together: the tragic tale of the monster and the grief-scarred life of Shelley, whose mother — the writer Mary Wollstonecraft (“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”) — died shortly after giving birth to Shelley in 1797. She lost two babies and a toddler of her own and became a young widow when her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned while sailing in a storm. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” begins in a gothic-horror rainstorm, with flashes of lightning and the kind of organ music that sends a tingle up the spine. The teenage Mary Shelley lies sleeping, and in her dreaming mind, a monster jolts to life, electrified. Hooked up to wires, then writhing on the floor, the creature is a nightmare vision. Yet he has the great fortune to be played by Robert Fairchild , who possesses a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-him eloquence of movement and facial expression. Mr. Fairchild, who created his own choreography, morphs into a monster of delicate, disarming beauty, an innocent perambulating through a world he flounders to understand. In this “Frankenstein,” the latest multimedia fusion of classical music and theater from Ensemble for the Romantic Century, Victor Frankenstein’s monster is enchanting, endearing, irresistibly alive. He is, startlingly, a monster to love. He is also trapped, unfortunately, inside an ambitious but awkward production whose elements battle one another more often than not. Directed by Donald T. Sanders on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center, the show sounds beautiful. Three musicians perform works by Liszt, Bach and Schubert on oboe (Kemp Jernigan), piano (Steven Lin) and organ and harpsichord (Parker Ramsay), while a glorious mezzo-soprano, Krysty Swann, gentles the anguished monster with song. If this were simply a concert that included dance layered with intricate projection design (by David Bengali) and a moody soundscape (by Bill Toles), it would make quite an atmospheric evening. But “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is a play of sorts, created by the ensemble’s executive artistic director, Eve Wolf, using excerpts from “Frankenstein” and Shelley’s letters and diaries. It aims to tell a story whose strands refuse to twine smoothly together: the tragic tale of the monster and the grief-scarred life of Shelley, whose mother — the writer Mary Wollstonecraft (“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”) — died shortly after giving birth to Shelley in 1797. She lost two babies and a toddler of her own and became a young widow when her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned while sailing in a storm. In a program note, Ms. Wolf writes that she wanted to explore “the connections between the author and her Monster from a woman’s point of view” — links that “may have been unconscious to Mary” but are “glaringly clear” to Ms. Wolf. Beyond the obvious one, the motherlessness of both Shelley and her monster, those connections are not, alas, clear in Ms. Wolf’s text. She puts much emphasis on the deaths of Shelley’s children and on a harrowing miscarriage, but most of that pain was yet to come when Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” in her late teens. So the juxtaposition feels forced and unilluminating. Photo Mr. Fairchild and Mia Vallet. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times Worse, the play’s dialogue has a way of shattering the mood created by the music, Mr. Fairchild’s movement and those projections — falling rain (the monster opens his mouth to taste it) or a swooping bird (he chases it with canine delight) or the roiling waves that swallow Percy Shelley. The production elements that succeed appear to have received more tender care than those that don’t. The acted scenes are so tonally off that they seem like an afterthought. Mia Vallet’s Mary and Paul Wesley’s Percy are jarringly contemporary in affect and lack a vital spark. Rocco Sisto is more solid as Mary’s father, the philosopher William Godwin, and as a blind man who encounters the monster. Vanessa James’s set, too, is puzzling, given that it needs to work with the projections. Instead it works against them, particularly in Act II, when the hulking gateway that stands upstage center casts a giant shadow on the mountains and sea projected behind it. In the program, Ms. Wolf writes that this “Frankenstein,” like her ensemble’s other shows, is intended to be “more than a concert or a play.” It is more than a concert. It is less than a play. In 1831, nine years after her husband’s death, Mary Shelley wrote the introduction to a revised version of “Frankenstein.” In it, she recalled the challenge that Lord Byron had issued to her and Percy in the rainy summer of 1816. “We will each write a ghost story,” Byron said, and from that prompt came “Frankenstein.” But Mary Shelley noted that Byron and Percy, a pair of poets, had experienced trouble assembling their tales. Her husband, she wrote, was “more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language, than to invent the machinery of a story.” In “Frankenstein,” Ensemble for the Romantic Century is similarly better at poetry than sustained storytelling. For all of the show’s flashes of beauty, it remains a collection of disparate parts, not a whole charged with lightning and brought to animated life.

‘Angels in America’ Casts Stephen Spinella and Bob the Drag Queen By ISAAC OLIVERJAN. 4, 2018 Berkeley Repertory Theater in California announced Thursday that Mr. Spinella — who won two Tony Awards as Prior Walter in the original two-part Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” — will play Roy Cohn in a production there this spring. Caldwell Tidicue — an actor better known as Bob the Drag Queen, the winner of Season 8 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — will play the nurse Belize in his first role in a major stage production. Mr. Tidicue’s acting credits include appearances on HBO’s “High Maintenance” and in the films “Rough Night” and “Cherry Pop.” The cast will also include Randy Harrison (Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” and USA’s “Mr. Robot”) as Prior. Tony Taccone, the Berkeley Rep artistic director, will direct; the play was originally commissioned by the Eureka Theater when Mr. Taccone was artistic director there. Performances are scheduled to start April 17 and run through July 22. A new Broadway revival of “Angels in America” is also planned to open at the Neil Simon Theater in March, starring Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn.

This in the NYTimes: Bobby Darin Who? Jonathan Groff Gets It Now By ELYSA GARDNERJAN. 4, 2018 Jonathan Groff, the star of “The Bobby Darin Story,” which will open the new season of the “Lyrics & Lyricists” series at the 92nd Street Y.CreditIke Edeani for The New York Times When he was first asked if he’d want to play Bobby Darin in an upcoming production in the long-running “Lyrics & Lyricists” series at the 92nd Street Y, Jonathan Groff wasn’t sure how to respond Mr. Groff, who became a Broadway star at 21 in the 2006 production of “Spring Awakening,” knew little about the entertainer and songwriter who, in a tragically brief career, was one of the biggest pop stars and most accomplished performers of the late 1950s and early 60s “My only reference point was seeing the movie with Kevin Spacey,” Mr. Groff explained during a recent interview, referring to the 2004 biopic which earned lukewarm reviews and flopped at the box office, even well before accusations of sexual misconduct abruptly derailed Mr. Spacey’s career. (Mr. Spacey’s lugubrious performance of Darin’s “The Curtain Falls” at the end of last year’s Tony Awards did little to help that singer’s faded reputation.) But the morning after Ted Chapin, the new “Lyrics & Lyricists” producer, mentioned Darin’s name to him over a post-theater dinner, Mr. Groff was hooked. “I went on YouTube,” said Mr. Groff, speaking before an early rehearsal at the Y, where “The Bobby Darin Story” will kick off the new “Lyrics” season from Jan. 20 to 22. “I watched all these TV performances, from the beginning to the end of his career, and I was blown away by his versatility. The rock & roll and the standards, the dancing, the folk songs. The duets with George Burns and Judy Garland. His life was insane.” Photo Bobby Darin performing on “American Bandstand” in 1959. CreditABC Photo Archives, via Getty Images Mr. Groff — also known for his cheekily effete, Tony-nominated performance of King George III in “Hamilton,” and TV roles in “Glee,” “Looking” and “Mindhunter” — was discussing his new “obsession” with the show’s director Alex Timbers, the music director Andy Einhorn and Mr. Chapin. Mr. Timbers, the director of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Here Lies Love,” was brought into the project by Mr. Groff. The two had met last spring to discuss another collaboration, but couldn’t coordinate their schedules. Mr. Timbers said he was intrigued by the chance to reconsider the performer’s career. “It’s interesting to ask if Bobby Darin’s legacy has been negatively impacted by the fact you couldn’t put him in a box,” said Mr. Timbers. “He was always chasing the next wave in music. In one of our first conversations, we were talking about people like Madonna, how she was ahead of the whole EDM thing with ‘Ray of Light.’ Or U2, when they released ‘Pop.’ ” If Darin’s singing could seem slicker and less distinctive than that of his more celebrated contemporaries, his range was indeed expansive, encompassing rock (“Splish Splash”), lush and jazzy pop (“Dream Lover,” “Beyond The Sea”) and show tunes and songbook staples (“Mack the Knife,” most famously). He also ventured into film acting, founded a record label and music publishing company, and, as his political awareness grew, crafted “Simple Song of Freedom,” a pacifist anthem for the Vietnam era. Darin pursued goals like he was running out of time — “like he had a stopwatch on his life,” noted Mr. Timbers. And with good reason: childhood bouts with rheumatic fever had left the performer’s heart severely weakened; he would die at 37. He nonetheless proceeded at a breakneck pace: marrying movie sweetheart Sandra Dee; collecting an Oscar nomination; holding court at the Copacabana and in Las Vegas; campaigning for Bobby Kennedy before returning to nightclubs. “It’s an extraordinary trajectory for a guy who was told he’d be dead by the age of 15,” said Mr. Timbers. While Darin was prolific in the studio, evidence suggests his live performances could be looser, and swing harder. In the “Mack the Knife” captured on “Darin At the Copa,” his voice sounds grittier than on the hit single, and his syncopation is more playful. “As with so many great performers,” said Mr. Einhorn, “there was clearly something about being in the room with him, this great kinetic energy. That’s often where you discovered what he could really bring to the music.” Photo From left, the creative team of “The Bobby Darin Story”: the director Alex Timbers; the producer Ted Chapin (back to camera); the music director Andy Einhorn; and Mr. Groff, who performs the title role.CreditIke Edeani for The New York Times While in Australia in 2016, Mr. Chapin caught the jukebox outing “Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Musical” and began to think that Darin’s work might an attractive subject for the “Lyrics” series. “There was so much about his story I didn’t know,” he said. Though “Lyrics” shows have focused more on writers known for their work in theater — the new season will include tributes to Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Lynn Ahrens — Mr. Chapin said he thought, “Well, Bobby Darin did write his own songs, so there is that aspect to it.” After getting the blessing of the “Dream Lover” producers (who hold worldwide rights to Darin’s story, via his estate), Mr. Chapin assembled his team and hunkered down. Getting rights to the songs Darin had written, of which there are 160 titles, proved tougher than expected: “I could get my hands on only 25 of them. One piece I actually bought on eBay for $35.” Like previous installments of the “Lyrics” series, “The Bobby Darin Story” will not be a book musical. (Nor are the creators banking on a fuller production.) But there will be something of a narrative line, written by Mr. Chapin, as well as other performers joining Mr. Groff to tell the story of Darin’s roller coaster life, which included a “midlife meltdown,” in Mr. Chapin’s words, precipitated by the late-in-life discovery that the woman he thought was his older sister was actually his mother. “There aren’t characters speaking dialogue, having conversations on stage,” Mr. Timbers said. “It will show emotion through music, and narration. That section toward the end of Darin’s life, this sort of downward spiral, could have been tricky in musical theater, where it can become less exhilarating when you don’t have a protagonist making choices, taking positive action. But Ted has been able to focus on the coolest, juiciest stuff about Bobby Darin.” Mr. Groff’s own research has included “Dream Lovers,” an unsparing account of Darin and Ms. Dee’s lives together written by their son, Dodd Darin. “There’s this quote that basically says that after all the things Bobby Darin did, in the end, he felt most powerful and most alive and most himself performing in a nightclub setting,” Mr. Groff said. Mr. Timbers added: “He lived a gritty, driven life. He hurt people along the way and people hurt him. “It would be easy to do a hagiography, a scrubbed-clean look at the meteoric rise of a pop sensation who bottoms out in midcareer and then has a resurgence. But I think this will be more ornery and strange and idiosyncratic. As befits Bobby Darin.”

Can't say I hated it, but I wasn't overwhelmed either. Written by Steve Martin, directed by Jerry Zaks, and starring the very popular Amy Shummer and Keegan-Michael Key this production ends its run on January 21. It’s a hot night in Ojai, California, and Corky (Amy Schumer) and her husband Norm (Jeremy Shamos) are having another couple over for dinner. But Laura (Laura Benanti) and Gerald (Keegan-Michael Key) aren't looking for a casual evening of polite small talk with new friends. Eventually, the two couples find themselves in a marital free-fall matched in velocity and peril only by the smoldering space rocks tearing through the sky. Entertaining has never been more entertaining than in this “cosmic comedy from the master of the American absurd” (Variety). Bizarrely funny and widely strange, it runs 80 minutes. Amy has proven to be a big box-office draw and the advanced sales went through the roof.

As expected, Ben loved it... Review: Mark Rylance Returns to Broadway as a Mad Monarch to Cherish FARINELLI AND THE KING Closing Date: March 25, 2018 Belasco Theater, 111 W. 44th St. By BEN BRANTLEY DEC. 17, 2017 Mark Rylance, left, as Philippe V, and Melody Grove as Isabella Farnese in “Farinelli and the King” at the Belasco Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times His Majesty is not himself today. His most unserene highness, the King of Spain, does not know who or what he is, except that he’s not where he belongs. Approach him with caution: He bites. And allow me, if you will, to advise you never to take your eyes off him. Not that you’ll want to. As was observed of another stark raving royal (named Hamlet), “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” This is especially true when a great one is portrayed by one of the greatest actors on the planet. Uncork the Champagne and unfurl the straitjacket. Mark Rylance is once again ruling audiences at the Belasco Theater, where the strangely enchanting “Farinelli and the King,” Claire van Kampen’s shimmering fairy tale for grown-ups, opened on Sunday night. Mr. Rylance, a three-time Tony winner (and an Oscar and Olivier Award winner) was last seen at the Belasco four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. At that time, he alternated in the roles of the uncertain Countess Olivia (in “Twelfth Night”), for whom falling in love becomes an existential crisis, and the demonically assured title character of “Richard III.” In “Farinelli and the King,” also a Globe production, he occupies a poignant middle ground between those two Shakespearean archetypes, as a troubled soul who shifts between lyric melancholia and splenetic rage. That’s Philippe V of Spain, an early-18th-century monarch whose mental health was of great concern to an already unsteady Europe. His Majesty is not himself today. His most unserene highness, the King of Spain, does not know who or what he is, except that he’s not where he belongs. Approach him with caution: He bites. And allow me, if you will, to advise you never to take your eyes off him. Not that you’ll want to. As was observed of another stark raving royal (named Hamlet), “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” This is especially true when a great one is portrayed by one of the greatest actors on the planet. Uncork the Champagne and unfurl the straitjacket. Mark Rylance is once again ruling audiences at the Belasco Theater, where the strangely enchanting “Farinelli and the King,” Claire van Kampen’s shimmering fairy tale for grown-ups, opened on Sunday night. Mr. Rylance, a three-time Tony winner (and an Oscar and Olivier Award winner) was last seen at the Belasco four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. At that time, he alternated in the roles of the uncertain Countess Olivia (in “Twelfth Night”), for whom falling in love becomes an existential crisis, and the demonically assured title character of “Richard III.” In “Farinelli and the King,” also a Globe production, he occupies a poignant middle ground between those two Shakespearean archetypes, as a troubled soul who shifts between lyric melancholia and splenetic rage. That’s Philippe V of Spain, an early-18th-century monarch whose mental health was of great concern to an already unsteady Europe. At this point, you may think the last person you want to spend time with is a crazy, capricious head of state with the power to wage cataclysmic war. But fear not. You are far more likely to see yourself in this sad King, who worries that he is an impostor of the highest order, than any resemblance to a certain contemporary world leader. What’s more, unlike the current resident of the White House, Philippe comes to see art as a healing and redemptive force. And with art given sublime voice here by the British countertenor Iestyn Davies, you are unlikely to argue with the King’s belief in its holy transcendence. Mr. Davies does not portray the celebrated countertenor of the play’s title, who is recruited to soothe the King’s savage breast. Or not exactly. Yes, he appears on stage in full 18th-century costume but only to sing (blissfully) arias by Handel. Farinelli, the young Italian opera star who was castrated at the age of 10 by his musician brother, is affectingly embodied by another, identically dressed actor, Sam Crane. This unconfident man does not feel he produces, much less owns, the exquisite notes that come out of him. That voice, which has made a freak as well as an idol of Farinelli, is somehow something apart. His famous self is its own autonomous being. Such a fission between person and persona is a divide with which Philippe can well identify. Or as the King says to his loving and sorely tried wife, Isabella (a warm and centered Melody Grove), “Everything produced in this world has its shadow even at the beginning; when we are taken from the safety of the dark then are we no longer wholly ourselves; we have been claimed by others.” That’s quite a mouthful, even for an un-self-edited monarch. I didn’t entirely absorb that speech’s implications about the nature of celebrity and identity when I first heard it. Ms. van Kampen, a composer and the founding director of theater music at Shakespeare’s Globe, is not by nature a playwright. The language of her script, which combines Shakespearean pastiche with Pirandellian philosophizing and latter-day jokiness, doesn’t always flow melodically. But Ms. van Kampen has an illuminating appreciation not only for period music but also for the gap between artists and their art, and what separates the nimbus of fame from those who are enhaloed by it. (She is married to Mr. Rylance, so she should know.) The physical production — directed by John Dove and designed by Jonathan Fensom — provides the ideal frame for such contemplation. The Belasco has been reimagined as a courtly theater with onstage seating for audience members, blurring the distinction between public and private performance. (That distinction will be further — and most charmingly — erased at the beginning of the second act.) Mr. Rylance, center, a three-time Tony winner, was last seen at the theater four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times This world is illuminated by the glow of candles, real and extrapolated (by the lighting designer Paul Russell), and a feeling of twilight reverie pervades every scene. The music that emanates from the onstage ensemble, performing on period instruments, matches the sense of a distant age burnished by memory. The look is “once upon a time” incarnate. When we first meet our storybook King, he is in bed, fishing in a goldfish bowl. As he converses — and, implicitly, identifies with — the confined creature in the bowl, he seems to belong to the species of charming lunatics who populate the whimsical works of French dramatists like Anouilh and Giraudoux. But the pain and anger beneath make this man a danger, even to those he loves. Philippe, the grandson of the grandest king of all, France’s Louis XIV, believes everyone is plotting to usurp him. (He’s not entirely wrong.) Those he suspects include his chief minister (Edward Peel, looking like a Hogarth caricature of a desiccated politician); the royal doctor (Huss Garbiya) and even the steadfast Isabella. It is she who introduces Farinelli, who is managed by a hapless English entrepreneur (Colin Hurley, in a classic comic man-of-the-theater turn), into the court. The King is not initially smitten by this human novelty. And then Farinelli sings. Isabella spoke earlier of being transported by the sound of that voice, and Mr. Davies, improbably, matches her account. That is crucial to our acceptance of the transformation the king will undergo. So is the sight of Mr. Rylance listening to Mr. Davies sing — “as if he is leaning in,” Farinelli marvels later, “to hear it more particularly.” In the paradoxically plaintive and joyous sound of a castrato’s voice channeling Handel’s music, the King has glimpsed a paradise beyond his fractious court and his burdened royal self. Trying to create that idyllic vision in the real world, in a rustic outpost in the forest in the second act, is an experiment doomed to failure. But watching Mr. Rylance’s Philippe experience Farinelli’s voice, we hear what he hears. And an actor and a singer temporarily turn a night at the theater in an anxious city into an Eden beyond worldly care, all the more precious for its evanescenc

NYPost reports the musical will open on Broadway in the spring before the Tony's and to avoid competition next fall with the Cher Show... Donna Summer musical producers are scared of Cher By Michael Riedel December 14, 2017 | 7:45pm | Updated A giant disco ball called “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” is headed to Broadway earlier than expected. The $12 million show, produced by music legend Tommy Mottola, will open at the Lunt-Fontanne in April, just before the Tony Award cutoff date, sources tell The Post. “Summer” opened last month at the La Jolla Playhouse to mixed reviews, including a blistering notice in the Los Angeles Times that would have killed disco. “I don’t need this flimsy bio musical and neither do you,” wrote critic Charles McNulty. “In a musical form not known for literary finesse, ‘Summer’ lowers the bar … The lack of playwriting imagination is startling. If the program didn’t state otherwise, I’d be sure the writing was outsourced to Wikipedia.” “Sweeney Todd” it’s not. But Mottola and his co-producers, Dodgers productions, are confident that those killer tunes, coupled with a slick production by director Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo, will overcome stuffy critics who can’t dance. “The show’s a hoot,” says a theater executive who caught it in La Jolla. “I’m not going to make a case for its artistic merits, but everybody’s going to be dancing at the curtain call.” “Summer” is coming in this season to avoid a showdown with “The Cher Show,” which opens in the fall. Both musicals show their diva at three different stages of her life. In “Summer,” Storm Lever plays Duckling Donna, a gawky kid who grew up in Boston in the 1950s, sang in church and landed a role in a German tour of “Hair.” Ariana DeBose takes over as Disco Donna who, under the guidance of record producer Giorgio Moroder, storms the charts with “Love To Love You, Baby,” “Dim All the Lights,” “MacArthur Park,” “Heaven Knows,” “Hot Stuff,” and that song that clears every wedding reception, “Last Dance.” All those hits plus a few lesser-known gems make up the score. LaChanze is Diva Donna, rebuilding her career after alienating her gay fans by saying “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” (Summer died of lung cancer in 2012.) Not all the reviews were as dismissive as the one in the LA Times. “While this version of her life isn’t quite Broadway ready, it has … potential,” wrote a Hollywood Reporter critic. “I feel love.” The San Diego Reader called it “the most dazzling show ever staged at the La Jolla Playhouse.” That may be overstating the case, but with a Broadway audience made up largely of tourists looking for a good time, “Summer” probably has a shot. Not with critics or Tony voters, perhaps, but with the one place that matters most: the box office. Michael Stewart, who died in 1983, wasn’t a flashy Broadway personality, but he co-wrote some of its best-loved shows: “Bye, Bye Birdie,” “Hello, Dolly!” “42nd Street” and “Barnum.” His work will be celebrated at a benefit Monday at the Urban Stages Theater, 259 W. 30th St. Chita Rivera, Lee Roy Reams, Jim Dale and Charles Strouse are set to perform; tickets at UrbanStages.org. FILED UNDER BROADWAY , BROADWAY MUSICALS , CHER , DONNA SUMMER SHARE THIS ARTICLE: Facebook Twitter Google Email Copy

OK, so I gave in an we got TDF tickets for last night's performance. I have to agree with the critics. This is a FUN show with great songs, dancing, cast, lighting, costumes and scenic design! I will be the first to admit that I have never seen SpongeBob, so I was not going in knowing a lot. The majority of the audience however were all SpongeBob fans and enjoyed every moment. There was a group of 20-something year-olds that were in my row howling and laughing it up. The lead actor Ethan Slater is adorable and very talented. Yes, children were in the audience but overall I'd have to say they were well-behaved. Some of the adults weren't!

You realize you don't have to patronize this dentist?. Despite the short walk, I'm sure the neighborhood is full of other dental professionals. I would sit the dentist down and have a little chat about her "overselling". Tell her you want to have specific problems identified and what the corrective alternatives are. Remind her again that you are a "man of a certain age" and that it is imperative for you to follow the 6 month check up rule your dental plan dictates. If she doesn't like it, then its not worth the effort. Health care professionals should be willing to work within your insurance and budgetary restraints, if not find someone else. A few years ago I had a chat with my dentist, also a female practitioner, and I made sure she, and her staff understood my concerns and budget. I too have good dental insurance, but despite my dentist's pleas, I declined having all new veneers.

And today's NYPost had this to say: The ‘SpongeBob’ musical could be a surprise hit By Michael Riedel https://nypost.com/2017/12/05/the-spongebob-musical-could-be-a-surprise-hit/ December 5, 2017 “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” scrambled aboard a lifeboat Tuesday and it looks as if it could float — at least until the Tony Awards in June. The $20 million musical about colorful creatures under the sea was, many on Broadway thought, headed for that iceberg dead ahead. Advance ticket sales were anemic, and many Broadway insiders were dismissive of a kiddie cartoon turned into a musical. And yet Monday’s opening-night crowd of skeptics were charmed by the sets, Tina Landau’s direction and a kid you’ve never heard of who’s destined to be a star: Ethan Slater, the 20-something playing SpongeBob. Some tough critics were charmed, too, giving the show surprisingly good reviews. As one production staffer said, “We were prepared for the worst, but when the reviews came out we were, frankly, stunned.” Viacom, which owns the “SpongeBob” franchise, is about to throw some big marketing money at the show. Sources say Viacom was holding back out of concern that “SpongeBob” wasn’t selling; although the long-running TV show has made billions around the world, it opened with just $3.5 million in the bank. Rumors were swirling that Viacom was going to pull the plug by the end of the year. But at a production meeting Tuesday, Viacom executives arrived smiling. They dodged a bullet, and while I can’t say they have another “Lion King” on their hands, they have a show worth fighting for. The plan is to exploit an untapped market: families who want to go to the theater, but who’ve been scared away by skyrocketing ticket prices and the sense that Broadway is only for the 1 percent. “SpongeBob” has lots of tickets to sell at a reasonable price. Before the show opened Monday, it was averaging $78 a ticket. That’s clicked up to about $98, which is still a steal compared to what people are paying to see Bette Midler in “Hello, Dolly!” and Bruce Springsteen in that little show of his. “There’s a market they’re going for, and they should,” says a top theater executive. “Will they make back $20 million on Broadway? No. But the show is good; there will be a tour, and it can be done all over the world.”Inside Broadway baseball here, but let’s go for it: Producers are suing casting directors who are trying to form a union. The producers are carrying a big stick and making loud noises through their trade organization, the Broadway League.

It got great reviews! NYTimes loved it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/theater/spongebob-squarepants-broadway-musical.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftheater&action=click&contentCollection=theater&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront Review: ‘SpongeBob SquarePants,’ a Watery Wonderland on Broadway SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL By BEN BRANTLEY DEC. 4, 2017 Ethan Slater is the energetic title character in “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” at the Palace Theater. “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” the ginormous giggle of a show that opened on Monday night. This ginormous adaptation of the beloved Nickelodeon television series perfectly captures the innocently idiotic spirit of its prototype. what it’s worth — and we’re talking millions of dollars here — you are never going to see as convincing an impersonation of a two-dimensional cartoon by a three-dimensional human as that provided by Ethan Slater at the Palace Theater. Mr. Slater plays the title role in “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” the ginormous giggle of a show that opened on Monday night. This may sound like dubious praise. But think about it. How many of those legions of figures who gambol through stage adaptations of animated movies — teapots, lions, fake Russian princesses, ad infinitum — seem to have been transliterated from the screen without any dilution of their inked-in essence? The 24-year-old Mr. Slater, making his Broadway debut in Tina Landau’s exhaustingly imaginative production, achieves this metamorphosis sans prosthetics, skin dye or a facsimile costume. (He wears suspendered plaid trousers, with a shirt and tie.) And he’s playing a sea creature from a television children’s show, for God’s sake, one that appears to be a bright yellow, rectangular kitchen sponge. But though he is neither square-shaped nor visibly jaundiced, I, for one, never doubted that Mr. Slater is SpongeBob to the tips of whatever the underwater phyla equivalents of fingers are. Try that on for size, Mr. Christian Bale, and all you other body-morphing Method boys. Mr. Slater, I should hasten to add, shares the stage with a peer in capturing exactly the innocently idiotic spirit of the Nickelodeon television series — and $13 billion retail merchandising empire — that inspired this lavish production. By whom I mean the designer David Zinn, whose sets and costumes raise the bar for trippy visuals in mainstream theater. Similarly, in recreating the series’ submarine town of Bikini Bottom, Mr. Zinn shows the wonders that can be worked on everyday rec-room items by hyper-magnification and coats of psychedelic color. Giant plastic party cups and pool noodles are combined in immense clusters to evoke underwater flora and fauna, with matching costumes that might have been assembled from Salvation Army bins. The effect is of a D.I.Y. playpen-aquarium as it might have been conceived by an industrious five-year-old. Or a five-year-old with an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail and a budget of the reported $20 million invested in this production. Overseeing this grandly infantile universe is Ms. Landau, who made her name as boundary-testing director of the avant-garde. She turns out to have been just the person for the job, never betraying the tone of instructive anarchy — packaging life lessons in Looney Tune-style adventure yarns — that has always been the hallmark of “SpongeBob SquarePants.” In other words, you will probably adore this musical if: a) “SpongeBob” was a formative influence of your childhood; b) you are a stoner who tokes up to watch reruns of the show on YouTube (categories a and b are not mutually exclusive); or c) if you are (like my date for this show) a parent of “SpongeBob”-bingeing progeny and found its sensibility crept into, and wallpapered, your weary mind. If you are none of the above, you will find your patience sorely tested. But if you are obliged to accompany one of the “Sponge”-happy types listed above, might I suggest you do what I did? That would be to immerse yourself in random (preferably early) episodes of the series, and then marvel at how the creative team here replicates their seemingly inimitable tone and substance. (Or you could indulge in some illegal inhalation, although I didn’t say that.) Still, you may indeed enjoy such improbable spectacles as a misanthropic squid named Squidward (Gavin Lee, wearing four-legged pants) doing a virtuosic four-footed tap dance with a Busby Berkeley kick line of pink-sequined sea anemones. Or a heavy-metal boy band made up of sea skates on skateboards, with music by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith. Oh, I forget to tell you. The show’s songs (supervised, arranged and orchestrated by the composer Tom Kitt) have been written by a plethora of pop-rock eminences, including John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, Lady Antebellum and They Might Be Giants. But a lot of these numbers register as polyphonically enhanced variations on the kinds of instructional ditties once heard on “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” starting with the opener, “Bikini Bottom Day” (by Jonathan Coulton, known for his songs for the “Portal” games). There’s even one called (shoot me now) “BFF” (by the Plain White T’s), performed by SpongeBob and his bestie, the indolent starfish Patrick Star (a very good Danny Skinner). As for Kyle Jarrow’s script, it also honors its bright yellow template. SpongeBob, a relentlessly cheery fast-food worker with self-esteem issues, learns that his beloved Bikini Bottom is in danger of being destroyed by a volcano. So he, Patrick and the brilliant scientist Sandy Cheeks (Lilli Cooper, in an astutely underplayed performance), a squirrel (don’t ask), must come up with a plan to save their world. And this in the face of all sorts of topical horrors, since even children have their apocalyptic fears these days. Photo The musical number “Hero Is My Middle Name” features these three friends: Danny Skinner (left) as Patrick Star, Mr. Slater as SpongeBob SquarePants and Lilli Cooper as Sandy Cheeks. Among the obstacles on the path to hero-hood: xenophobic prejudice (Lilli is disdained as a mammal), the bureaucratic paralysis of the mayor (Gaelen Gilliland), panic-rousing media coverage (Kelvin Moon Loh is fabulous as a glam-rock newscaster) and the villainous obstructions of the evil Sheldon Plankton (Wesley Taylor, who isn’t scary, presumably by design) and his wife, Karen the Computer (Stephanie Hsu). Did your brain just freeze? If you’re a “SpongeBob” virgin you will only short-circuit if you try to make scientific sense of this water wonderland. Instead, tune out until the next amazing set piece, and then gape at the ingenious reconfigurations of objects like packing crates and parasols. Christopher Gattelli’s choreography of his sexually ambiguous ensemble (genders blur when wet) is perversely brilliant, suggesting piscine movement through breakdance and vogueing gestures instead of the expected swimming motions. But no one matches Mr. Slater in conveying the physicality of the life aquatic. An uncannily bendy-bodied figure, he is so springy and supple that you’re not surprised when one of his arms suddenly stretches across the stage. Possessed of a squeaky-clean belter’s voice, he is steeped in a sunny (or sunshine-yellow) chipperness that can absorb all gloom and doubts. Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Slater seems destined to be identified forever with what is surely a once-in-a-lifetime match of actor and character. He might want to consult with Joel Grey (eternally remembered as ) or Carol Channing (the same with “Hello, Dolly!”) about dealing with the attendant blessings and burdens.

The Townhouse Bar is on east 58th St between Third and Second Avenues, so you are a very very short walk from there. I haven't heard about Evolve since Tim and his troupe stopped having their parties there. I thought the owners were trying to attract a straight crowd. Also Uncle Charlie's is located on East 45th St, 2nd floor, between Lexington and Third Avenues. other than theses locations, your not far from Hell's Kitchen across town. A short cab ride to many gay bars. Good luck and have a nice stay.

Today's latex sex scandal headline... New York City Ballet Investigates Sexual Harassment Claim Against Peter Martins By ROBIN POGREBINDEC. 4, 2017 Peter Martins of New York City Ballet.CreditIlya S. Savenok/Getty Images Peter Martins, the longtime leader of New York City Ballet, has been removed from teaching his weekly class at the School of American Ballet while the two organizations jointly investigate an accusation of sexual harassment against him. The accusation against Mr. Martins, 71, was made in an anonymous letter, both organizations confirmed on Monday. Mr. Martins is the artistic director and chairman of the faculty of the ballet school. He has led City Ballet, the company founded by the famed choreographer George Balanchine, since the 1980s. “The safety and well-being of our students is our absolute priority,” the school said in a statement, adding that it “recently received an anonymous letter making general, nonspecific allegations of sexual harassment in the past by Peter Martins at both New York City Ballet and the school.” “We, together with New York City Ballet, promptly engaged an independent law firm that specializes in such matters to conduct a thorough investigation, despite the anonymous nature of the letter and the lack of specifics,” the statement continued. “Thus far, the investigation has not substantiated the allegations in the letter or discovered any reason to be concerned about student safety.” City Ballet issued a similar statement, which said, in part, “the ongoing inquiry has not substantiated the allegations.” Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the ballet, said on Monday night Mr. Martins remained in his position as head of the ballet. Reached by telephone on Monday, Mr. Martins said in response to the accusations, “The company has already addressed it.” Asked if he had anything to add, he said, “At this point, no.” The two organizations have retained a lawyer, Barbara Hoey, to conduct the investigation. Ms. Hoey, the chairwoman of Kelley Drye’s labor and employment practice group, declined to comment. As part of the investigation, Mr. Martins is believed to have discussed romantic relationships he has had with female dancers, according to a former official at City Ballet with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Mr. Daniels, the ballet spokesman, said that since 2010 the company “has had a policy precluding a reporting relationship between a supervisor and subordinate where a romantic relationship exists.” Along those lines, Jed Bernstein was forced out last year as president of Lincoln Center — which has such a policy — after an anonymous complaint revealed that he had been involved in a consensual relationship with a woman who worked for him, and whom he had twice promoted. In recent interviews, two former City Ballet dancers and three former students at the school described a culture in which Mr. Martins was known for sleeping with dancers, some of whom received better roles because of their personal relationships with him. The world of ballet is a fuzzy area, those involved say, in which people are regularly touching one another through choreography and instruction. An artistic leader like Mr. Martins looms large — particularly among up-and-coming, young dancers — as a producer who decides which ballets are performed; as a casting director who determines which dancers land the best parts; and as a father figure who designates dancers for promotion. Balanchine, who was known as Mr. B, wielded tremendous power over the lives of the dancers in his company. He famously discouraged female dancers from marriage and from having children; he insisted that their boyfriends leave them at the stage door — not enter the theater — and that dancers wear different perfumes so that he could easily identify them. In a 2012 article on Balanchine in Psychology Tomorrow, Wilhelmina Frankfurt, a former City Ballet dancer, said: “The only way that Peter rivaled Mr. B. was as a Casanova. However, where Mr. B. was charm incarnate, Peter was a basher.” In 1992, Mr. Martins was charged with third-degree assault against his wife, Darci Kistler, then a principal dancer in the company. Ms. Kistler told the police that her arms and legs had been cut and bruised. The misdemeanor charge was later dropped. In 2011, Mr. Martins was arrested on New Year’s Day and charged with driving while intoxicated. Mr. Martins was a star of the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen when he joined City Ballet in 1970. In 1983, he became co-ballet master in chief with Jerome Robbins, taking over that role entirely in 1990.

I was there a few weeks ago. Downstairs bar venue. It wasn't very crowded and there were about 4 dancers. Friendly guys working the room in their briefs. One dancer at a time on a tiny platform.

Alas, the "rumors" are true and another brilliant career is gone. Used to see James at the infamous Rounds bar back in the day... Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine facing sexual misconduct probe By Tom Hays, Verena Dobnik | Associated Press http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/entertainment/2017/12/03/metropolitan-opera-conductor-james-levine-facing-sexual-misconduct-probe/_jcr_content/par/featured_image/media-0.img.jpg/931/524/1512286474980.jpg?ve=1&tl=1&text=big-top-image Music director James Levine conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra on its opening night at Tanglewood in Lenox., Mass., July 7, 2006. (Associated Press) NEW YORK – New York's Metropolitan Opera said Saturday it will open an investigation into allegations that its longtime conductor, James Levine, sexually abused a man three decades ago beginning when the man was a teenager. Levine's accuser, now middle-aged, contacted the police department in Lake Forest, Illinois, in October of 2016 to report that he'd had sexual contact with the conductor when he was under age 18. He said he was reaching out to police in Lake Forest because some of his encounters with Levine took place there in the mid-1980s. Levine served as music director at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, from 1973 to 1993. Details of the police report were first reported Saturday on the website of the New York Post. Met officials said they learned of the police report last year. "This first came to the Met's attention when the Illinois police investigation was opened in October 2016," the Met said in a statement. "At the time, Mr. Levine said that the charges were completely false, and we relied upon the further investigation of the police. We need to determine if these charges are true and, if they are, take appropriate action. We'll now be conducting our own investigation with outside resources." "We need to determine if these charges are true and, if they are, take appropriate action." - Metropolitan Opera statement An email to Levine's manager seeking comment on the accusations was not immediately returned. The accuser, whose name is being withheld by The Associated Press, contacted reporters from several news organizations and posted a handful of items on social media accusing Levine of abusing him when he was young. The Lake Forest department assigned a detective who spent at least seven months investigating the allegations, according to a redacted copy of her written reports on the case. The accuser, who at the time was hoping for a career in music, told police the conductor had invited him to audition for him in New York and then encouraged him to engage in sexual "experimentation." He also said that his relationship with Levine extended well into adulthood and that the composer gave him money over the years when he was having financial problems, amounting to more than $50,000. The man told police he last spoke with Levine in 2014. At the time, he said, Levine said he wouldn't send him money anymore. The Associated Press does not generally name alleged victims of sexual abuse without their consent. In this case, the man asked that his name not be published and declined to be interviewed on the record. The accusations against Levine, among the most prominent classical music conductors in the world, are the latest in a stream of sexual misconduct charges involving high-profile men in entertainment and the media that have rocked the nation since accusations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein were reported in October. Levine served as music director of the Met from 1976 to 2016, when he assumed the position of music director emeritus. Levine has struggled with health problems including Parkinson's disease in recent years but is scheduled to conduct several productions this season.

Just saw this film at The Paris Theater here in NYC. I had no sight line problems and the theater had plenty of empty seats, just in case you were blocked from see the sub-titles, which are only in certain scenes. I had a problem at the Paris because due to construction next door there was a very audible rat-a-tat throughout the movie! Apparently signs were up at the box office but not in prominent places. Anyway, that said, the film is very touching and the storyline is handled well. Of note is the touching scene at the end when the father sits and talks to his son about his life choices. Did anyone see think the actor resembled Robin Williams? Bravo! ED

I cannot confirm this but years ago, speaking to several gay male masseurs, they admitted Lauer was a client who liked more than a rub. One of the guys was very trustworthy. Rumor has it that David Geffen is next on the list of those who acted inappropriately!