Anything Goes at the Tony Awards

Posted by Bruce Miller
Part of what makes watching the Tony Awards so much fun is when you know someone involved with a nominated show. The theatre community is relatively small. If you stick around in the business long enough, you wind up knowing a lot of people who work on Broadway. When it comes to Anything Goes, Sunday night’s Tony winner for Best Revival of a Musical, there are at least two representatives of the Richmond theatre community working in the production.

Michelle Lookadoo joined the company of Anything Goes last night, and she was there on Sunday to experience the thrill of victory with the rest of her cast. Michelle is in the ensemble and covers the leading role of Hope Harcourt, the beautiful socialite who wins the heart of Billy Crocker, the dapper hero of the show.

Michelle began her musical theatre career in Barksdale’s 1999 production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She moved to New York immediately thereafter, and her career has been going great guns ever since. She was in the Broadway casts of Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and then Mary Poppins. While in Mermaid, she was the stand-in for the leading role of Ariel and played the role during several performances. Michelle returned to Barksdale this past season to star as Judy Haynes in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.

On Sunday night, she celebrated the Tony win with the company of Anything Goes, including Tony-winning director and choreographer, Kathleen Marshall. (See the two of them together in the photo above.)

Also working on Anything Goes is Monica Costea (her self-portrait photo is posted to the right). Monica worked for Theatre IV, TheatreVirginia and King's Dominion in the 1980s and 90s. Like Michelle and a large number of Broadway professionals, Monica tends to flow from show to show. She is a hair stylist. She joined Anything Goes this winter, leaving the hair styling department at Billy Elliott, where she had been working since that show opened in 2008.

When Phil and I led our group of theatre patrons to New York last March, both Michelle and Monica came to speak to our hearty troop of Richmond theatergoers about their extensive experiences on the Great White Way.

We wish the two of them, and everyone in the company of Anything Goes, years of success.

--Bruce Miller

In Memoriam: Jack Parrish

Posted by Bruce Miller
Sharing the sadness that so many in the Richmond theatre community are feeling this evening, I’m sorry to report on the passing of Jack Parrish (pictured to the right with Cathy Shaffner standing and Jan Guarino in Money Matters). Jack was an outstanding Richmond theatre artist and a longtime friend to many of us who’ve been walking these boards for a while. After a lengthy battle with lung cancer, Jack only recently went into hospice care and died this afternoon.

I met Jack in the early 70s when I was rising in the ranks of the theatre program at U of R and Jack was similarly placed in the theatre program at VCU. One of my favorite Jack memories from those early days was when he starred in a wonderful VCU production of As You Like It, I think during one of the FanFare summers. FanFare was VCU’s erstwhile summer theatre operation.

Jack moved out of town after graduating from VCU, worked a few years in New York, landed some soap opera work, and then worked mainly in regional theatre. He played Dexter Haven in The Philadelphia Story, Uncle Ernie in The Who’s Tommy, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and many other dashing roles (Jack was good at dashing). He appeared at prestigious professional theatres including The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Asolo Theatre in Florida, and Mill Mountain Playhouse in Roanoke.

Jack returned to Richmond in the late 80s, maybe early 90s, to star at Theatre IV as the dashing spy in the classic Civil War melodrama, Secret Service. His other major Theatre IV roles were as The Man in the Yellow Suit in Tuck Everlasting, and as an unforgettable Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

At Barksdale, Jack starred in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Little Foxes, The Crucible, James Joyce’s The Dead, Scapino!, the world premiere of Money Matters, and Anything Goes.

Shortly after his foray into Cole Porter, Jack moved to Lexington KY to share a city with his great friend, Rick St. Peter, and to lead the theatre program at a local university. He returned to Richmond during the summers to star in the Henry plays at Richmond Shakespeare, having to leave his role two summers ago when he was first diagnosed and began chemotherapy.

Jack also was an acclaimed director, rallying the forces of several of Theatre IV's touring productions. His contributions to Richmond theatre are immeasurable, and he will be greatly missed. Our deepest sympathies go out to Jack’s wife, Kathy, their son, Clay, and the rest of his family.

With love and respect, Barksdale will dedicate The Grapes of Wrath, our upcoming co-production with TheatreVCU, to Jack’s abiding memory.

--Bruce Miller

Casting and Comments - Part II

Posted by Bruce Miller
In a previous blog, I jumped recklessly into the ongoing debate regarding whether Barksdale and I (and by extension all Richmond theatres and directors) are open to casting newcomers. As I have stated, I believe that all of us are not only open to new talent, we’re downright eager to introduce new faces to our audiences.

Still, the perception persists that directors prefer to cast a disproportionate number of those whom we already know and love.

To test my belief against that perception, I decided to go back and review my casting record for the dozen shows I’ve directed at Barksdale since becoming artistic director in 2001. Here are the results.

I use the words “pals,” “friends” and “colleagues” interchangeably. If I say someone was “new to me” or “never worked with me,” I mean I hadn’t cast or directed them before, not necessarily that I’d never made their acquaintance, heard of them, or seen their work, although that is often true. In like fashion, the term “newcomer" means new to Barksdale.

I suspect I’ve made a mistake or five. A fair amount of this was done from memory. As you notice that I’ve left someone out, screwed up the math, misspelled a name, or mislabeled a “newcomer” or a “veteran,” please let me know and I’ll fix it.

I’ll leave it to you to determine what, if anything, this casting history suggests.

The Little Dog Laughed – Cast of four. I brought veteran Susan Sanford back from LA, and I cast Laine Satterfield, who had been in one Barksdale show previously but was new to me. I also cast two newcomers, John DeBoer and Matt Hackman.

Swingtime Canteen – Cast of five. I cast Vilma Gil, Jan Guarino, Audra Honaker, Katrinah Lewis and Debra Wagoner, all of whom had worked at Barksdale before.

Smoke on the Mountain – Cast of seven. I cast Julie Fulcher and Eric Williams, who were Barksdale veterans and longstanding friends of mine. I cast David Janeski who had acted at Barksdale in two previous shows, but had never worked with me. I cast Billy Christopher Maupin and Aly Wepplo, both of whom had acted once previously at Barksdale, but had never worked with me. I also cast two newcomers, Emily Cole Bitz and Drew Perkins.

Over the River and Through the Woods – Cast of six. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Jolene Carroll, Matthew Costello, Jackie Jones and Stephanie Kelly (Dray), all of whom were Barksdale veterans, and four of whom had worked previously with me. I also cast newcomer Christopher Clawson in the lead.

No Sex Please, We’re British – Cast of nine. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Dave Clark, Larry Cook, Jan Guarino, Cathy Shaffner and Erin Thomas, all six of whom were Barksdale veterans and longstanding pals of mine. I cast Jeff Cole and Chris Stewart, both of whom had worked with me and with Barksdale on one show prior to this one. I also cast newcomer Monica Dionysiou.

The Lark – Cast of 15. I cast Andy Boothby, Rick Brandt, Dave Bridgewater, Larry Cook, Matthew Costello, Debbie Gayle Taylor and Erin Thomas, all seven of whom were Barksdale veterans and prior colleagues of mine. (Allow me to note that Debbie Gayle hadn’t done a show at Barksdale in more than 20 years.) I cast Stephanie Kelly (Dray) and Roger Gregory who were new to me, but who had done one Barksdale show previous to this one. I also cast five newcomers: Pam Arkin, Jeff Cole, Jeff Hendrickson, Stephanie O’Brien and Chris Stewart, three of them in leading roles.

The Man Who Came to Dinner – Cast of 24. I cast Larry Cook, Lauren Leinhaas Cook, Matthew Costello, Thomas Cunningham, Robyn O’Neill, Joe Pabst, Derek Phipps, Susan Sanford, Jill Bari Steinberg, Jody Strickler and Joy Williams, all 11 of whom were Barksdale veterans. I also cast 13 newcomers: Brett Ambler, Josh Bufford, Jeff Clevinger, Sam Cook, Frank Creasy, Barry Ellenberger, Jonathan Hardison, Leigh McSweeney, Scott Melton, Curt Miller, Daniel Strickler, Kim Weeda and Lynn West.

Anything Goes – Cast of 24. I cast Larry Cook, Heather Fox, Jan Guarino, Jennifer Hammond, Robin Harris, Audra Honaker, Chase Kniffen, Richard Koch, Mollie Meagher, Robyn O’Neill, Jack Parrish, Derek Phipps, Russell Rowland and Cathy Shaffner, all fourteen of whom were Barksdale veterans and had worked with me before. I cast Matt Shofner, Jonathan Spivey and Alex Teachey, all three of whom were appearing at Barksdale for the second time, but had never worked with me. I also cast seven newcomers: Brandon Becker, Liz Blake, Charlie Chan, Ryland Dodge, Alexis Goldstein, Travis Kendrick and Eddie Tavares.

Fifth of July – Cast of eight. I cast Steve Perigard, Jody Strickler and Scott Wichmann, three Barksdale veterans who’d worked with me before. I cast Riley Koren, who had done one show with me and Barksdale previously. I cast Chris Evans and Jennifer Massey, both of whom had acted in one Barksdale show previously but had never worked with me. I also cast two newcomers: Peter Schmidt and Jill Bari Steinberg, plus a third newcomer Kristen Swanson, who replaced Jen Massey when she had to leave the show for a prior commitment.

Annie Get Your Gun – Cast of 24. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Billy Dye, Robert Fix, Jan Guarino, Michael Hawke, Chase Kniffen, Robyn O’Neill, Steve Perigard and Susan Sanford, all nine of whom were Barksdale veterans and old pals. I cast Crystal Bailey and Annie Hulcher, both of whom had done one show previously at Barksdale, but were new to me. I also cast 13 newcomers: Gray Crenshaw, Heather Fox, Emily Gatesman, Josh Lane, Craig McFarland, Andy McLeavey, Mollie Meagher, Juli Robbins, Russell Rowland, Gavin Waters, Cory Williams, David Winning and Tamia Zulueta.

The Crucible – Cast of 19. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Matthew Costello, Lou DiLalla, Richard Koch and Jack Parrish, all five of whom were Barksdale veterans who had worked with me before. I cast Kelly Kennedy, who was a Barksdale vet but was working with me for the first time. I also cast 13 newcomers: Pat Anthony-Aleman, Amy Barrett, Dale Church, Jamme Coy, Stephen Coy, Kady Fleckenstein, Chelsea Franges, Arthelia Gatling, Audra Honaker, Riley Koren, Joe Mattys, Alice Schreiner and Dan Summey.

The Little Foxes – Cast of ten. I cast Matthew Costello, Jack Parrish and Jody Strickler, all three of whom were Barksdale veterans and longstanding colleagues of mine. I cast Kweli Leapard and Robbie Winston, both of whom had been in one previous Barksdale production. I also cast five newcomers: ‘Rick Gray, Daniel Moore, Erin Thomas, Timothy Thomas and Harriet Traylor.

Total Actors Cast – 156
Total Newcomers – 65 (42%)

Among the “newcomers” – Brett Ambler, Frank Creasy, Audra Honaker, Heather Fox, Daniel Moore, Russell Rowland, Jill Bari Steinberg, Chris Stewart, Erin Thomas, Harriet Traylor and David Winning – all of whom would now be considered Barksdale Theatre and/or Richmond Theatre All-Stars.

--Bruce Miller

Word of the Week - BROMIDIC

Posted by Hannah Miller
This week’s theatre artist is the late and luminous Broadway orchestrator ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT, who won a posthumous Tony Award last Sunday, which was the 114th anniversary of his birth. Bennett was born on June 15, 1894, and survived a sickly childhood to live to the ripe old age of 87. His posthumous Tony Award recognized his incomparable contributions to many of the greatest musicals of the 20th Century, including the current Tony-winner for Best Revival, South Pacific.

His Word of the Week is from the lyric of one of the South Pacific songs he so memorably arranged. The song is A Wonderful Guy, and the Word of the Week is BROMIDIC.

If he knew prior to his birth that he wanted to be an orchestrator, then Bennett picked the right parents. His dad was a violinist with the Kansas City Symphony, and also an accomplished trumpeter. His mom was a piano teacher. As a toddler, Bennett contracted polio. His parents filled his hours with music. At the age of 3, he surprised everyone by picking out on the piano the tune to a Beethoven sonata that his mother had recently played. At the age of 4, Bennett and his family moved to a farm south of Kansas City because the doctor suggested that the rural environment would benefit his recovery.

While living on the farm, his father started a band and engaged his son as a sub whenever one of the other musicians was unable to play. Through these gigs and rigorous home schooling, Bennett learned to play pretty much any instrument he could get his hands on. When he was 15, the family moved back to Kansas City where Bennett found work as second violinist with the Symphony. He also played piano for silent movies, and various instruments with the pit orchestras of live theatres. When he turned 22, he collected all his savings and moved to New York with a total of $200 in his pocket.

Once in Manhattan, Bennett earned his keep playing in dance halls and restaurants. He also landed a job as a copyist with the music publishing house of G. Schirmer. At the start of WWI, he volunteered for the Army. Due to a crippled foot (the last vestiges of his childhood polio), he was not sent overseas. He was assigned to Camp Funston, Kansas, and named director of the 70th Infantry Band. When the war ended, Bennett returned to New York.

In 1919, he was hired to provide music lessons at one of NYC’s prestigious finishing schools. He applied for work in Tin Pan Alley, the center of New York’s world-famous music publishing business. He was given the chance to audition at T. B. Harms, the firm that sat at the top of the Tin Pan Alley heap. The orchestration he created during his “audition” was for Cole Porter’s An Old Fashioned Garden. It wound up becoming the biggest pop music hit of 1919.

As might be expected, Bennett won the job of orchestrator at T. B. Harms. That same year, he married Louise Merrill, the daughter of the prominent society woman who was the headmistress of the finishing school where he worked. Bennett and his wife had one daughter, Jean, born in 1920.

Early in his career at T. B. Harms, Bennett was asked to orchestrate not just single songs, but entire musical theatre scores. Over the subsequent 45 years, he would work with almost every major Broadway composer of his lifetime, contributing to over 300 shows.

His credits included orchestrations for Rose Marie (Rudolph Friml – composer, 1924), No No Nanette (Vincent Youmans, 1925), Show Boat (Jerome Kern, 1927), Of Thee I Sing and Porgy and Bess (George Gershwin, 1931 and 1935), Anything Goes (Cole Porter, 1934), Annie Get Your Gun (Irving Berlin, 1936), Lady in the Dark (Kurt Weill, 1941), Oklahoma and Carousel (Richard Rodgers, 1943 and 1945), Finian’s Rainbow (Burton Lane, 1947), Kiss Me Kate (Cole Porter, 1948), South Pacific and The King and I (Richard Rodgers, 1949 and 1951), My Fair Lady (Fritz Loewe, 1956), Bells are Ringing (Jule Styne, 1956), Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music (Richard Rodgers, 1958 and 1959), Camelot (Fritz Loewe, 1960), and On a Clear Day … (Burton Lane, 1965).

About Bennett, Richard Rodgers wrote, “I give him [the credit] without undue modesty, for making my music sound better than it was.”

In South Pacific, Bennett orchestrated Richard Rodgers’ beautiful score, capturing the exotic harmonies of the Pacific islands and the corn-fed American exuberance of the young men and women stationed there with the U. S. Navy during World War II. The brilliant lyrics were by Oscar Hammerstein II.

In A Wonderful Guy, Ensign Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse, sings about her unabashed love for the expatriate French planter Emile de Becque. The photo to the right shows Kelli O'Hara singing A Wonderful Guy in the current Broadway revival.

"I'm as trite and as gay as a daisy in May,
A cliché coming true!
I'm BROMIDIC and bright as a moon-happy night,
Pouring light on the dew!"

BROMIDIC seems to have firmly entered the language by 1913, at least that’s when the word BROMIDE first appeared in Webster dictionaries. In the war era of South Pacific, BROMIDE was readily recognized to have three related but different definitions:
1. any of the salts of hydrobromic acid, used as a sedative; or
2. a person who is conventional and commonplace in his habits of thought and conversation; or
3. a conventional or trite saying, a boring cliché.

The root syllable brom means dullness of mind. Based on the above three definitions, BROMIDIC would mean:
1. like a medicine that causes dullness of mind, or
2. like a person who has a certain dullness of mind, or
3. like a saying that prompts dullness of mind in the listener.

In his 1906 book, Are You a BROMIDE?, the author, art critic and social commentator Gelett Burgess wrote, “The BROMIDE conforms to everything sanctioned by the majority, and may be depended upon to be trite, banal, and arbitrary.”

Nellie Forbush, when she refuses to marry Emile de Becque because he is older and “foreign,” certainly fits Burgess’s definition of BROMIDIC.

Robert Russell Bennett, never BROMIDIC in the least, lived a full life, continuing to orchestrate and compose until his death. He was commissioned to write several symphonic pieces for our nation’s bicentennial in 1976. He died of cancer in 1981. The great choral director Robert Shaw wrote, “And it is just as certainly because of his kindness, honesty, humor, and wisdom that our hearts are warmed to see Robert Russell Bennett without peer in his field.”

--Posted by Hannah Miller

Sneak Peak at Rehearsals - Swingtime Canteen

Posted by John Steils

I think Swingtime Canteen is going to be a GREAT show, and the rehearsals have been fascinating to watch. The marketing office at Theatre IV is connected to the tech booth of the Little Theatre. Nosy marketing interns (who, me?) can watch what’s going on in the Little without disrupting anything. And with Swingtime Canteen rehearsing on the Little stage, a LOT’s been going on.

Steve Liebman, who smiles in real life a lot more than he’s smiling in this internet photo, came down from New York to vocal direct the production. Steve is much beloved in Richmond, I’m told, for his work at TheatreVirginia, where he played Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the radio D J in A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline. Liebman fans should know that he’s just as warm and hilarious as a music director as he is as the star of a show.

For a week and a half he led Vilma Gil, Jan Guarino, Audra Honaker, Katrinah Lewis and Debra Wagoner through their vocal paces. They’re an amazing, hard-working cast, and the three, four and five-part harmonies in Swingtime make the most of their talents. That's Audra in the photo to the left, appearing as Little Red Riding Hood in last summer's Into the Woods, opposite Russell Rowland.

Weeks before Steve arrived, Bruce Miller (director of the show, pictured below and to the right) began hunting for a pianist to play the run. The usual suspects were all booked. So the net was expanded and a parade of previously unknown pianists (at least unknown to Bruce) began arriving one by one.

The biggest challenge, it seemed, was the loosey-goosey nature of Swingtime’s printed score. Pianist after pianist would come in, look at the hand-written and photocopied sheet music, struggle to decipher the musical penmanship of the arranger, and ultimately throw his or her hands up into the air.

Sam French, if you’re reading this, the musicians in Richmond all agree that it’s time to upgrade the Swingtime orchestra materials to something more complete and more readable!

Finally Bruce connected with Ryan Corbitt, a professional jazz pianist who has taken this lemon of a printed score and made lemonade. (Ryan is the tuxedoed young man in the photo to the left with jazz great James Moody.) In Ryan's talented hands, the improvised sections soar and the authentic 40s flavor of the vintage arrangements is beginning to emerge.

After the week and a half of singing, Bruce and Jan Guarino (choreographer, pictured to the right) spent a week staging the 30+ numbers. Bruce and Jan make an excellent team, and apparently have worked together on lots of previous hit musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun and Anything Goes. The staging of the Andrews Sisters Medley is 90% Jan and 10% Bruce. The rest of the movement is probably 70 / 30. Maybe even 60 / 40.

Bruce calls himself the “anti-choreographer,” and one look at him trying to demonstrate a move that he wants the women to do justifies his terminology. With all due respect, Bruce dances like a gorilla impersonating Homer Simpson. But he comes up with some really fun staging ideas, and then Jan “translates” his moves into something that can actually be replicated by a human. They have a lot of give and take, and obviously a lot of respect for each other’s talents.

All five women in the cast are terrific dancers and phenomenal singers. And they all seem custom-made for their characters. I can’t imagine a more talented or “perfect” cast, anywhere. That's Katrinah Lewis to the right, performing with Hannah Zold in last summer's Into the Woods.

Vilma Gil, the strongest dancer in this troupe of strong dancers, is still recovering from the major knee surgery she had just a few months ago. During a dance mishap at another theatre, Vilma did some serious damage to her knee joint, and wound up having her left knee replaced with bones from a cadaver. That’s right folks. “Cadaver knee” jokes have been flying left and right as decisions were made regarding which knee to pivot on, etc.

This week, Bruce and stage manager Joseph Papa are beginning to add props to the show, and they include everything from a vintage Roy Rogers double holster (complete with dye-cast cap guns) to authentic Zippo lighters to Hollywood Canteen aprons to two air cannons that will fire, over the sixteen week run, a thousand dollars worth of red white and blue streamers over the heads of the audience.

Interestingly, the cap guns were among the hardest things to find. After careful searches through Toys-R-Us, KayBee Toys, Wal-Mart, Target, Party City and several variations of the Dollar Store, no holstered cap guns were to be found in Greater Richmond. Eventually the perfect set was purchased on line.

If the performances of Swingtime are half as much fun as the rehearsals, we’re in for a great run. That's Debra Wagoner in the photo to the right, and she sings her heart out in Swingtime Canteen. The show opens Nov 16 at Hanover Tavern, and has already been extended to run through March 2. Thankfully, tickets are going fast. Call for yours today!

--John Steils