It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's....

I've loved the score for the 1966 Broadway musical SUPERMAN since I was a teenager with its smashing music & lyrics by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams and some of the best orchestrations (by Eddie Sauter) of the period.

Now Encores has brought the show back in high style for six performances and I sat there with a happy grin on my face from start to finish.

Ed Watts, who spent most of Kathie Lee Gifford's musical SCANDALOUS in a state of undress, puts his muscular frame and booming voice to much better use as Superman/Clark Kent. In Act Two, when he has lost the respect of the citizens of Metropolis, Superman sits in his apartment eating peanut butter out of the jar and sings of his sadness as he distractedly bends a standard lamp in half.

I've always adored Patricia Marand's singing as Lois Lane on the original cast album so I was delighted to discover the wonderful Jenny Powers who is as good if not better performing the title song and "What I've Always Wanted" and "We Don't Matter at All".

 Ali Mauzey, on a break from playing Glinda in WICKED, takes the role created by Linda Lavin who introduced the show's hit song "You've Got Possibilities", and was the audience favourite.

 Best of all were two time Tony nominee David Pittu as the mad scientist Abner Sedgewick, looking disturbingly like Zoe Caldwell, and my darling Will Swenson as scumbag reporter Max Mencken.
Will had the unenviable task of following original top-billed star Jack Cassidy but he tore into the role like a hungry tiger and mined any and every comic possibility. The pair's duet "You've Got What I Need" was a good, old fashioned showstopper.

 I couldn't have liked it more.

Second Anniversary

Will Swenson and I received an email this morning from Nick Adams reminding us that PRISCILLA opened on Broadway exactly two years ago today.

I asked them both to please stop pestering me as I have moved on and SO left the two of them behind. I am now working for free in a theatre that holds nineteen people.

Will Swenson has also asked us to cease and desist as he is doing porn.

More Backwards

Photos by Stephen Sorokoff

with Jim Brochu

with Judy Kaye and Anita Gillette

with Doris Roberts

"Be Happy"

Post-show party with Jamie De Roy

With an oblivious Sean Ewing

Backwards is Behind Us

Oh, what a night! I am so very honoured to have been a part of it and director/creator/choreographer Rob Bartley fashioned the most wonderful storyline for Jim Brochu and I which served as the thread for the entire evening.

My thanks to Jim B and Steve Schalchlin for the rehearsal and post-show pics

Doris Roberts ("Everybody Loves Raymond") played my mother

Judy Kaye and Anita Gillette sang "Three Sunny Rooms" from RAGS

Karen Ziemba tap danced in a lesbian bar to "I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean"

Kyle Dean Massey, Mo Brady and co. did an all-male "A Weekend in the Country" from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC set in a gym

and Estelle Parsons sang a glorious "September Song" from KNICKERBOCKER HOLIDAY

Curtain call with Stephanie J. Block ("Edwin Drood")

Partying with Jim Brochu and Karen Ziemba

Playbill writer Harry Haun

Bruce Vilanch in a Sheldy Brochu sandwich

A Dabble in the Dada

(tt)   A tribute to the surreal with a find from a bonfire we had in the Valley.

Now I am home in Katoomba and I have a permanent mounting for the objet