Theatre News and Reviews

“The Rocky Horror Show” brought the clan from Transylvania back to Chico Cabaret just in time for Halloween.

The Friday production of the show was deranged, raw, raunchy and crude, but oh so much fun.

Would you expect anything else from this preposterous 1975 cult classic by Richard O’Brien?

Phil Ruttenburg, Chico Cabaret artistic director, skillfully guided a tip-top cast in the theater’s fourth revival of this rock musical and science fiction-horror spoof.

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Charles Darwin would have relished the scene: A small, overcrowded theater, buzzing with people eager to hear the naturalist’s theories and life story more than 120 years after his death.

The hubbub surrounded a performance of the one-man musical, Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert, in New York City. Anthropologist and songwriter Richard Milner created the show as a tribute to the legendary naturalist, born February 12, 1809. He has performed it across the country and in Australia, Germany and Darwin’s native England.

Milner draws on historic photographs, illustrations and thousands of letters between Darwin and his contemporaries, punched up with Gilbert and Sullivan parodies. He performed the show, wrote the lyrics and co-wrote most of the music.

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The neon green sign that read “McHale’s” looked like it could be on a small town bar anywhere in the country, but instead it illuminated the corner of 46th Street and 8th Avenue in the giant city of New York. Inside the establishment that it promoted a visitor found a suitably dark watering hole, something straight out of an old detective story.

“It’s a Broadway institution,” Matthew Broderick, starring a block away in The Odd Couple, said while having a recent post-show drink at the establishment. Sweeney Todd star Patti LuPone liked the place so much she is immortalizing it in the art for her upcoming Ghostlight Records recording The Lady With The Torch (to be released April 25)—the cover and inside of the CD booklet will be filled with pictures of LuPone at the pub. “It’s a working class bar,” LuPone explained to Broadway.com on the chilly Tuesday night of her photo shoot. “And we are all working class stiffs, however much we pretend to be something else. This is a home.”

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The veteran English director, Anthony Page, seems to be in the process of creating the theatrical equivalent of Mount Rushmore on Shaftesbury Avenue.

Already running at the Lyric, there’s his fine account of Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, starring Woody Harrelson. This has now been joined, next door at the Apollo, by the London transfer of his superb Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Kathleen Turner, which opened in triumph last night. All we need is an Arthur Miller drama at the Queen’s and a Eugene O’Neill epic at the Gielgud to complete the full presidential quartet.

Virginia Woolf is, of course, Albee’s “long night’s journey into day”. This booze-fuelled marital slug-fest on a New England campus harks back to Strindberg and Coward in its savagely comic take on love-hate co-dependency and on the coded, blithely conscienceless war-games that bamboozle and blister the scandalised, dullard civilians who are forced into participation.

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The creative team behind the upcoming West End production of Evita announced further plans for the new mounting, the first major London revival of the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, at a press conference in London on January 31. Evita will start performances at the Adelphi Theatre on June 2, with an opening set for June 21.

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Chico Cabaret’s production of Guys & Dolls starts this Thursday. The show runs Th/Fri/Sat at 7:30 through Feb 18th with a Sunday matinee on Feb 12th @ 2 PM. This could be the best show in Chico this year with an incredible set, some amazing voices, and great acting.

UPDATE 1/31/06 - Guys & Dolls is in full swing with three more weeks to go! Get your tickets ASAP ’cause it has been selling out.

Theatre news on Slashdot? Yeah, it happens occasionaly: The MIT Musical Theatre Group will be staging a musical version of the Star Wars Trilogy (Eps. IV through VI). There will be tap-dancing stormtroopers, singing Ewoks, etc.

Tickets for the pre-Broadway world premiere engagement of Lestat, the new Elton John-Bernie Taupin musical based on the vampire characters of Anne Rice are now on sale.

Tickets for the Dec. 17-Jan. 29, 2006, San Francisco run went on sale 10 AM Oct. 30. The production at the Curran Theatre is presented as part of the 2005-2006 Best of Broadway season, under the direction of Carole Shorenstein Hays and Scott E. Nederlander.

Lestat will arrive on Broadway in spring 2006 at the Palace Theatre following the California engagement.

Inspired by novelist Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles,” Lestat is the first theatrical score from the legendary pop songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and has a book by Linda Woolverton.

Directed by Robert Jess Roth with musical staging by Matt West, Lestat stars Hugh Panaro in the title role, Carolee Carmello as Gabrielle, Jack Noseworthy as Armand, Jim Stanek as Louis, Roderick Hill as Nicolas, Michael Genet as Marius and Allison Fischer as Claudia.

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Hot Feet, a new dance musical conceived by Maurice Hines, will make the jump to Broadway next year. Previews will begin on April 15, 2006 and officially open April 30th at a theater to be announced. Before coming to Broadway the musical will play Washington DC’s National Theatre from March 18th through April 9th.

Hot Feet features a book by Heru Ptah, music and lyrics by Earth, Wind and Fire founder Maurice White and will be directed and choreographed by Maurice Hines.

White has written original music and lyrics, along with his past hits, “Shining Star,” “September,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “After the Love Has Gone.” Maurice Hines said in a statement “The music of Maurice White inspires me. It’s an honor for me to be collaborating with him.” White said “Working with Maurice Hines has been a blast. He makes my music and lyrics come alive in ways I never would have imagined.”

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This Friday and Saturday (28th & 29th) is your last chance to catch Chico Cabaret’s Twist and Shout Sock Hop. The Buzz called it an ‘atmosphere of good, clean fun. Audience members tapped and sang along with many of the numbers from “My Boyfriend’s Back” to “Bobby’s Girl.”‘ So get to the Cabaret and win some prizes and enjoy some great performances!

Young newlyweds Corine and Paul Bratter are back on Broadway for the first time since Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park premiered in 1963!

Up-and-coming stars Amanda Peet (best known for the films The Whole Nine Yards and Something’s Gotta Give and recently seen at the Public Theater in Neil LaBute’s This Is How It Goes) and Patrick Wilson (a Tony nominee for The Full Monty and Oklahoma! who also starred in the big screen The Phantom of the Opera) will step into the roles played by Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in the well-loved film version of the comedy.

Rounding out the leading cast are Jill Clayburgh as Corie’s mother and Tony Roberts as the eccentric upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco. Acclaimed director Scott Elliott (The Women, Hurlyburly) will stage this highly-anticipated revival, which starts previews in late January on Broadway.

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