Shows that opened April 30

Shows which opened on April 30:
L'Assommoir	04/30/1879
Assommoir	04/30/1879
Borderside	04/30/1900
The Viceroy	04/30/1900
Robin Hood	04/30/1900
A Night in Venice	04/30/1900
The Crown Prince	04/30/1904
Cousin Louisa	04/30/1906
The District Leader	04/30/1906
A Square Deal	04/30/1906
The Flag Station / The Lemonade Boy / The Monkey's Paw - The Flag Station - The Lemonade Boy - The Monkey's Paw	04/30/1907
The Climax	04/30/1910
His Little Widows	04/30/1917
The Inspector General	04/30/1923
Bad Habits of 1926	04/30/1926
The Little Show	04/30/1929
Congratulations	04/30/1929
Iolanthe	04/30/1934

Spring Awakening !! A blurb From POP EATER

'Terminator Salvation' helmer McG is in talks to direct a big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical 'Spring Awakening,' The Hollywood Reporter has learned. McG, whose 'Terminator' was recently toned down to get a PG-13 rating, is reportedly keen to maintain the edginess of the play, which is set in 19th century Germany and centers on a group of teens discovering their sexuality and dealing with such touchy subjects as masturbation, abortion, rape and suicide. (April 14)

I'M BAAACK!!

Hey everyone its me you host DU JOUR TJ!!!
I am back from my vacation and very rested up! I will fill in everyone on the details very soon! Lots of love!

TJ

Any Dream Will do! The search for the next Joseph

OK for those of you that don't know me I am a big Reality TV buff everything from Groomer has it to ANTM and by far my favorite Project Runway!

But I was a little downed when Reality TV Hit Broadway!
Ok Needless to say I despised Your the one that I want a show aimed at finding a new Danny Zucho and Sandra Dee.

I was excited to see "Legally Blond on MTV what a better way to introduce people that woulden't ordinarily like Showtunes to Broadway! But then there was the Search for the next Elle Woods! Now I love Seth Rudetsky and am a big fan and idolize him but the parts of the show not involving him irked me a little. Hayley Duff looked and acted as if her career was coming to an end and well showed less than enthusiasm in announcing the winner.

But getting to the point I was watching BBC America when I ran upon Any Dream Will do The Search for the next Joseph! I sat back in awe this was reality theater television I could sink my teeth into. First Graham Norton is the host an have been a big fan of his for many years. Of course Sir Andrew LLoyed Webber took a much more active role in the show than I would have ever thought. The guest Judges were constructive and edgy like american Idol meets ANTM. and I feared the show would consist of hours of hours of "Joseph" music being sung by less than talented men. Overall it was wonderful and am mad I ran into it late but I am watching re-runs. And the Finally of the show is every Theater Geeks Dream! Its close every door and a de-coating ceremony followed by the contestants singing Poor Poor Joseph! and The Loser sings the final few bars! I love it! the jackets are cute and I love the LOGO! I am looking for the new show "I'll do Anything" and as you guessed it involves Oliver!.

http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/351/contestants.jsp
PS Check out the Gorgeous Jackets and and contestants!

XOXO
Theater Geek and Host dejour
TJ

New York Post Review of Rock of Ages

Big-Hair Rockers Return in a New Arena: Broadway

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: April 8, 2009

When it comes to hair — long beautiful hair or gleaming streaming hair or flaxen waxen hair — I am afraid that sweet nostalgia trip about flower children and free love has already become an also-ran on Broadway.

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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Constantine Maroulis, left, and Amy Spanger in a scene from the ’80s-rock musical, “Rock of Ages.” More Photos »

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Big Hair and Denim Dreams

Related

Songs to Mock and to Love (April 5, 2009)

Theater Review | 'Rock of Ages': Never Mind the Mullet; It’s the Tunes (October 27, 2008)

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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

James Carpinello plays the rocker Stacee Jaxx and Amy Spanger an aspiring actress. More Photos >

You want hair? Big hair? Hair you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley?

The champ is unquestionably “Rock of Ages,” a seriously silly, absurdly enjoyable arena-rock musical that thrashed open at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on Tuesday night in front of a bobbing sea of cigarette lighters waved aloft. The frothing piles of pleated, teased, bleached, dyed and fried tresses being tossed around in this new show about the good old days — in this case the 1980s on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles — make “Hair” look tame indeed, virtually Rogaine-ready, the Yul Brynner of musicals.

Fortunately, and I must say surprisingly, the attractions of this latest in the ceaseless parade of jukebox musicals on Broadway extend well beyond the extensions. Written with winky wit by Chris D’Arienzo, directed with zest by Kristin Hanggi, sung with scorching heat by a spirited cast, and featuring a towering stack of heavy-rotation favorites from the glory years of MTV — hits from Journey and Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar and Poison, Whitesnake and Twisted Sister — this karaoke comedy about warped-vinyl dreams is about as guilty as pleasures get. Call it “Xanadu” for straight people — and straight-friendly people too.

The volcanic locks and endless guitar solos are tethered to a thin plot concocted from showbiz clichés spruced up in skin-hugging leather and acid-washed denim. But so what if the story is stale as the air in a dive bar at 6 a.m.? Mr. D’Arienzo, Ms. Hanggi and their ace designers (costumes by Gregory Gale, hair and wigs by Tom Watson and sets by Beowulf Boritt) mockingly evoke the sights, sounds and smells of the era with an affection so pure and an aesthetic so archly on-target that the familiar is freshened by a festive parade of gumdrop-colored lingerie and pungent grunge. When somebody pulls out a four-pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, the audience roars as if at a punch line of supreme perceptiveness.

Drew (Constantine Maroulis) is a shy kid from Michigan who sweeps the floors at the Bourbon Room, a legendary club on the Strip, while he waits for his dream of guitar-god stardom to materialize. Rocking his world one day is Sherrie (Amy Spanger), an aspiring actress from small-town Kansas also hoping to make it big in Hollywood. When her classic Farrah Fawcett meets his mid-period Steven Tyler, it’s love at first stroke of the brush.

Dating at least back to “Babes in Arms” is the subsidiary plot about a greedy German real estate developer (Paul Schoeffler) and his effete son (Wesley Taylor) who want to raze the Bourbon Room — and the rest of the Strip — to rebuild it along more profitable lines. Under threat of eviction, the club’s proprietor, Dennis (Adam Dannheisser), an old pothead and rock dog, hatches a plan to rescue the club by hosting the farewell concert from the mega-band Arsenal, which got its start there. On the momentous night Drew gets his big break as the opening act but also has his heart nearly broken when Stacee Jaxx (James Carpinello), the bleach-brained singer of Arsenal, puts the moves on the sequin-struck Sherrie.

Dressing up these story lines like studs on a belt are more than two dozen radio-rock hits from the era. Audiences to whom this music is utterly foreign will no doubt view “Rock of Ages” as they might an unusually raucous couple of hours in the monkey cage at the zoo. You don’t have to truly like the music to succumb to the tug of remembrance it inspires, but you have to recognize it. If Proust had never tasted that first madeleine, the last wouldn’t have had quite the same impact.

I was an adolescent pop snob in the ’80s, turning up my nose at the vulgarity of straight-up guitar-driven rock to seek out adventurers on the fringe, which is to say anything British involving big, bad hair of a different sort. But while waiting impatiently for MTV to vouchsafe a morsel of Siouxsie or the Smiths, I absorbed an awful lot of thrashy pop.

“Rock of Ages” made me realize with humility how time can play appalling tricks on taste; songs that used to make my skin crawl and my lip curl, having now acquired the patina of age, brought forth a stream of affectionate recollection. “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “We Built This City” are not the musical equivalents of classic Bordeaux vintages, but I never would have guessed that wine coolers could age this well.

The performances blend sincere conviction and knowing parody. Mr. Maroulis, an alum of “American Idol,” possesses a soulful, pure and intense voice that negotiates the mountains of melisma and cuts through the electricity with ease. He isn’t required to do anything intense in the acting department, but has a natural, laid-back presence that invites you to root for Drew. Ms. Spanger, a veteran of several Broadway shows, sings with a matching ferocity, and plays the hard-used heroine with a smidgen of real winsomeness.

The supporting players are just as terrific. Mr. Carpinello, got up in a sequined zebra-stripe tank top and white leather suggestive of Cher at her least demure, plays the drug-dazed egomaniac Stacee with commanding sexual charisma, blasting his big solo, Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” (a song I furtively loved even back in the day), to the back wall of the theater. Mr. Taylor, in rosy-cheeked Pee Wee makeup and goofball German accent, shares a preposterously funny duet with Lauren Molina, as an earth-girl activist, on Ms. Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Just as amusing is the unexpected duet performed by Mr. Dannheisser and Mitchell Jarvis, who plays Dennis’s right-hand man at the club, on REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” — a dreadful song, yes, but repurposed to sweetly subversive effect here.

Mr. Jarvis’s hilarious, pop-eyed performance as the evening’s narrator is among the show’s zaniest and most original delights. Sporting a spiked mullet and a series of tacky T-shirts, he zips around the stage merrily, adding comic commentary or plugging a hole in the plot. It’s as if a perky, wise-cracking woodland animal from a Disney cartoon had leaped off the screen, become human and acquired a taste for both illicit drugs and ballet.

“Rock of Ages” does not possess the deadpan brilliance of the classic mock-doc “This Is Spinal Tap” (what does?), and two-plus hours may seem a long time to spend inside a David Lee Roth video. But in These Straitened Economic Times the allure of nostalgia cannot be underestimated. “Rock of Ages” does not aspire to be a Broadway musical for the ages, but for anyone whose youth coincided with the time period in question, the siren call of those screaming guitars and singalong choruses may be impossible to resist.

ROCK OF AGES

Book by Chris D’Arienzo; directed by Kristin Hanggi; music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations by Ethan Popp; choreography by Kelly Devine; sets by Beowulf Boritt; costumes by Gregory Gale; lighting by Jason Lyons; sound by Peter Hylenski; projection design by Zak Borovay; hair and wig design by Tom Watson; makeup design by Angelina Avallone; associate choreographer, Robert Tatad; associate director, Adam John Hunter; associate producer, David Gibbs; technical supervisor, Peter Fulbright; music director, Henry Aronson; music coordinator, John Miller; original arrangements, Mr. Gibbs. Presented by Matthew Weaver, Carl Levin, Jeff Davis, Barry Habib, Scott Prisand and Relativity Media in association with Cornerstore Fund, Janet Billig Rich, Hillary Weaver, Ryan Kavanaugh, Toni Habib, Paula Davis, Simon and Stefany Bergson/Jennifer Maloney, Charles Rolecek, Susanne Brook, Craig Cozza, Israel Wolfson, Sara Katz/Jayson Raitt, Max Gottlieb/John Butler, David Kaufman/Jay Franks, Mike Wittlin, Prospect Pictures, Laura Smith/Bill Bodnar, Happy Walters and the Araca Group. At the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, Manhattan; (212) 307-4100. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

WITH: Constantine Maroulis (Drew), Amy Spanger (Sherrie), James Carpinello (Father/Stacee Jaxx), Adam Dannheisser (Dennis/Record Company Man), Mitchell Jarvis (Lonny/Record Company Man), Michele Mais (Justice/Mother), Lauren Molina (Regina/Candi), Paul Schoeffler (Hertz) and Wesley Taylor (Franz).

Some Articles About the 24 hour musical in New York

April 13, 2009, 7:31 pm

The 24 Hour Musicals: Countdown (No Naps, Please)

By Erik Piepenburg

6:30 p.m., 90 minutes before curtain.

Rehearsals have been in high gear all day: tech rehearsals, sound rehearsals, movement rehearsals, not to mention costume fittings and mic checks.

At this moment, Richard Kind is sitting on a couch in the Gramercy Theater’s lounge, which is playing the part of green room, catering hall and press check-in He has been rehearsing all day for “Islands,” which he decribes as a show about a “Bernie Madoff character who is getting kicked out of his house and who yearns to escape his life and go to Staten Island.”

“I need a nap,” he says. “I need to let my brain go down and then rev it up again.”

Guests are now arriving for the pre-show party. Curtain, they say, is still at 8 p.m. sharp.

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April 13, 2009, 4:17 pm

The 24 Hour Musicals: Memory Test

By Erik Piepenburg

Lunch is over and rehearsals have started again. The room in which “Rachel Said Sorry” is rehearsing is hotter than it was this morning. The actors’ faces are pinker, and sweatier, too. The goals for this afternoon are to block the show, make sure the vocal arrangements are to the liking of the musical director and the actors and to finalize the choreography. Next up are costume fittings and the wrangling of props.

It’s fascinating to watch how different actors memorize their lines. Rachel Dratch is sitting in a chair saying her lines under her breath, lips slighty moving, as she subtly sways back and forth, as if deep in prayer. Another actress in the hallway has her eyes closed and fingers over her ears. An actor down the hall is staring out a window, script in hand.

For Ms. Dratch, the lines may be at the top of her to-do list this afternoon, but finding her character — the woman in the title, who is also named Rachel — is not so urgent.

“I think I’m just going to play myself,” she said. “It’s not a very character role, so I’m just going to be myself.”

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April 13, 2009, 2:52 pm

The 24 Hour Musicals: New Shows and No-Shows

By Erik Piepenburg

The final casts for the four shows in “The 24 Hour Musicals,” to be seen this evening at the Gramercy Theater, are:

“Multiphobia” : Nellie McKay, Michael Longoria, Theresa McCarthy

“Islands”: Richard Kind, Capathia Jenkins, Tamara Tunie, Alicia Witt

“Dr. Williams”: Cheyenne Jackson, Scarlett Strallen, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Roger Bart

“Rachel Said Sorry”: Rachel Dratch, Tracie Thoms, Marnie Schulenburg, Mandy Gonzalez

So far there are two previously announced participants who have not been seen: Bebe Neuwirth, who bowed out before Sunday night’s first meeting, and Idina Menzel. A spokesman for the event said it was unclear whether Ms. Menzel would participate.

Hey Everyone your HOST DEJOUR HERE!!!
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I have added lots of new music!!!!!! Crazy for you! A funny thing Happened on the way to the Forum! Moulin Rouge! The Color Purple and other cool music tune in to relax!!!! I even Have the Lord of the Rings musical!

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