Theatre News and Reviews

The Broadway revival of “La Cage aux Folles” is in an open-ended run at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway. Ticket and performance information: (212) 307-4100 or ticketmaster.com.

If any singer can wrap his voice around a glorious Jerry Herman melody, it’s Robert Goulet, one of the last booming baritones of Broadway’s Golden Age.

Goulet gets a chance to do just that in the revival of “La Cage aux Folles,” having replaced Daniel Davis as one half of a gay couple who run a saucy drag nightclub on the French Riviera.

And if the star -at age 71 - isn’t as physically spry or as verbally nimble as he was in the glory days of “Camelot,” which was his Broadway debut 45 years ago, no matter.

There’s an affable, self-deprecating charm to Goulet’s performance that gives this production of “La Cage” a gentle, heartwarming lift. You actually believe he is Georges, the well-meaning father of a heterosexual son who wants Dad to hide his gay relationship so the offspring can impress his future in-laws.

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Gabriel Byrne will star in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet at Studio 54 in the fall. The production, directed by Doug Hughes, is scheduled to begin performances on November 11 and open on December 8.

Byrne began his acting career with the Focus Theatre in Dublin and subsequently became a member of the famous Abbey Theatre. He made his Broadway debut in 2000 in another O’Neill play, A Moon for the Misbegotten. He most recently appeared on the New York stage in 2002 in The Exonerated. His film credits include Miller’s Crossing, Polish Wedding, A Dangerous Woman, Point of No Return, Little Women, Into the West, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Usual Suspects, The Man in the Iron Mask, Stigmata, End of Days, Ghost Ship, Spider, Vanity Fair, P.S. and Assault on Precinct 13. His book Pictures in My Head became a bestseller in Ireland and was published in the United States in 1998. He also starred in a short-lived ABC television series Madigan Men in 2000.

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The Starliners at The Paris Cabaret are back, bringing with them selections from Broadway and beyond-even comedy-right at your dinner table. A once very popular dinner theatre in the 80’s with a waitlist of close to two years- the Starline Room has been revived with a brand new talented and dynamic cast, delicious menu and amazing ambiance. Now, enjoy the fun of a night out at the theatre without having to drive into Boston and pay expensive ticket prices.

The Paris Cabaret offers “Broadway at Your Table” - dinner and entertainment all wrapped up into one fun, interactive, entertaining night. The cast also waits on tables, creating an intimate environment where the audience gets to know the performers one-on-one. Through June, The Starliners will perform two fully-staged musical revues each evening, which include songs from shows by the legendary Kander and Ebb whose Broadway hits include “Chicago” and “Cabaret.” The dinner theatre features a full menu of fine dining which includes everything from slow roasted prime rib au jus to fresh baked Boston scrod and a delicious dessert selections.

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Women’s movement pioneer — and the co-founder of the Ms. Foundation — Gloria Steinem will host a special sneak preview of the new musical A Woman of Will May 5 in Manhattan.

The musical, written by Amanda McBroom and Joel Silberman, is scheduled to open at an Off-Broadway theatre-to-be-announced some time in fall 2005. Originally titled Lady Macbeth Sings the Blues, the production premiered in June 2004 at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, CA.

The May 5 reading, featuring a performance by singer-composer McBroom, will also include the announcement of a new relationship between the musical and the Ms. Foundation. The foundation will receive a portion of A Woman of Will ticket and merchandise sales as well as 40% of the sales of the musical’s cast album.

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As Michael Ritchie shared his thoughts on what lies ahead for downtown’s 38-year-old Center Theatre Group, he appeared to be driven by a sense of childlike wonderment, tempered by mature wisdom gained in more than two decades of acclaimed professional accomplishments. He accepted the new post Jan. 1, following nine years as producer at the highly regarded Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. He replaces CTG’s former leader, Gordon Davidson, who is now titled founding artistic director and who will serve as consultant to the company for the next few years. Ritchie recently revealed his selections for the 2005–06 seasons at the Ahmanson Theatre and Mark Taper Forum, with news of the next season’s bill of fare at CTG’s third venue, the new Kirk Douglas Theatre, expected to arrive within two months.

“You know, it’s one thing to put it on paper and another to bring it all to the stage, but I’m always happy when people are pleased with the possibilities of what is planned,” he remarked with a note of cautious optimism. Ritchie exudes strong self-confidence but with a welcome touch of sincere humility that makes him easy to converse with. He’s wisely taking his time to gain a more concrete feel for the local theatre scene and the range of what can be done at the CTG theatres before narrowing the artistic sphere in which he will work. He’s big on “variety and theatricality” and said he wants the CTG stages to include works that are intellectually and emotionally stimulating, while remembering that works revolving around entertainment for its own sake can be a viable part of the mix, as long as they are given high-quality productions. He said his tastes are wide-ranging. The mix of dramas, musicals, and comedies for his first season bear that out.

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New Broadway theatre web site: I love NY Theater.com.

Fifty years of theatrical innovation will be celebrated during the New York Public Library’s upcoming exhibit A Community of Artists: 50 Years of The Public Theater.

The exhibition, which will be on view June 21 through Oct. 15, traces the history of the Public Theater, which is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. A Community of Artists spotlights the thousands of artists who have been part of the landmark Off-Broadway theatre as well as the numerous works that have been presented at the theatre since its inception.

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Certain songs just seem to belong to the people who made them famous. “Over the Rainbow,” for instance, belongs to Judy Garland even though it was written by E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen.

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin wrote “The Trolley Song” and Harburg and Arlen wrote “I Could Go On Singing” - but these too are somehow hers.

Vocalist Linda Stieber has taken these and other Garland hits and woven them into a two-act tribute to the singer entitled, “Get Happy: The Music of Judy Garland.” The show opened in the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center on Friday, with David Brady as music director/pianist.

Stieber’s selections are great representations of what was the golden age of American pop music. Tunes such as “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” “Get Happy” and “I Wish I Were in Love Again” are tough to beat. She also includes an oddity or two such as “The Jitterbug,” a tune that was cut from “The Wizard of Oz.”

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Having taken a heavily European-influenced stance on recent programming, London’s Gate Theatre turns its attention across the Atlantic for its autumn season with two American pieces, including the first-ever musical to be produced at the venue.

Gate associate director Daniel Kramer (Woyzeck at the Gate, Through the Leaves at Southwark Playhouse and in the West End) will direct a 20-strong production of Hair at the 70-seat Gate, running from 22 September to 8 October (previews from 12 September).

As the press release points out, although the self-styled “American Tribal Love Rock Musical”, written for the then burgeoning youth movement in the US, is usually done on a larger scale, its first outing was in a 90-seat Off-Broadway theatre. The original Broadway production, premiered at the Biltmore Theatre in 1968, ran for four years while a more recent West End revival had a brief season at the Old Vic in 1993. Hair was also famously made into a 1979 film, directed by Milos Forman and starring John Savage, Treat Williams and Beverley D’Angelo.

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A reviewer would surely seem churlish to dislike a play in which a theater critic is: hit in the head with pasta; attacked by a producer’s dog; punched in the mouth by a playwright; and barred from a group hug because he isn’t really “in the theater.”

And he would have to actually be churlish to avoid being charmed by Profile Theatre Project’s energetic and superbly cast production of Terrence McNally’s terrifically funny, theater-world-skewering comedy, “It’s Only a Play.”

Set entirely in the upstairs bedroom of a posh Manhattan apartment, “It’s Only a Play” lifts the curtain, so to speak, on the private world of those involved with a Broadway opening. McNally has called it his most autobiographical work. It may also be his funniest.

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WHEN Irvine Welsh’s Edinburgh-set novel, Trainspotting was published in 1993, it shocked the literary world, writes Emma Durdle.

His blunt warts-and-all tale about a group of young people whose lives were dominated by their addiction to heroin was a gritty subject presented with wry humour which became an unlikely bestseller.

The film adaptation came in 1996 and was equally as shocking, or arguably more so, because the images were there on our screen in full colour (anyone one who has seen the scene where Renton fishes out opium suppositories from a filthy toilet bowl will know what I mean).

But having seen the stage adaptation now nearly 10 years after first watching the film, I found it difficult to be shocked.

Not difficult because smack addiction is something we take lightly today, or because the play is any less graphic, but because the story itself tells us nothing new. Harry Gibson’s adaptation, now showing at the Broadway Theatre, Catford, under the direction of Cameron Jack is kept close to the original tale, but it offers us nothing more than what we know already.

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