|
Menchu Lauchengco
Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo (born 2 July 1963) is a Filipina musical theatre actress widely considered the "first lady" of Philippine musical theatre. She is well known for her roles as Diana Goodman in '' Next to Normal'' and Mrs. Lovett alongside Audie Gemora as Sweeney Todd in '' Sweeney Todd''. She is the artistic director for Resorts World Manila and a founding member of Actor's Actor Inc. Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo is the sister of balladeer Raymond Lauchengco. Career Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo first entered theatre at 15 years old, auditioning for Repertory Philippines in a production of '' The King and I'' with her brother, Raymond Lauchengco. Being too old to be child but too young to be a wife, she did not get in. Her next audition was in 1978 for ''Fiddler on the Roof'', where she was part of the chorus. In 1980, she auditioned for the role of Luisa, the 2nd daughter of Captain Von Trapp in '' The Sound of Music''. However, the directors had a different part for her in mind and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Next To Normal
''Next to Normal'' (stylized in all lowercase) is a 2008 American rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt. The story centers on a mother who struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effects that managing her illness has on her family. The musical addresses grief, depression, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and the underbelly of suburban life. Before its Off-Broadway debut, ''Next to Normal'' received several workshop performances and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Score and received Drama Desk Awards nominations for Outstanding Actress ( Alice Ripley) and Outstanding Score. After its Off-Broadway run, the show played from November 2008 to January 2009 at the Arena Stage while the theater was in its temporary venue in Virginia. The musical opened on Broadway in April 2009. It was nominated for eleven Tony Awards that year and won three: Best Original Score, Best Orchestration, and Best Perfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evita (musical)
''Evita'' is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. It concentrates on the life of Argentine political leader Eva Perón, the second wife of Argentine president Juan Perón. The story follows Evita's early life, rise to power, charity work, and death. The musical began as a rock opera concept album released in 1976. Its success led to productions in London's West End in 1978, winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical, and on Broadway a year later, where it was the first British musical to receive the Tony Award for Best Musical. This has been followed by a string of professional tours and worldwide productions and numerous cast albums, as well as a 1996 film adaptation. The musical was revived in London in 2006, and on Broadway in 2012, and toured the UK again in 2013–14 before running for 55 West End performances at the Dominion Theatre in September–October 2014. Synopsis Act I On 26 July 1952, a crowd in a Buenos Aires, Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love Letters (play)
''Love Letters'' is a play by A. R. Gurney that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play centers on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the notes, letters and cards – in which over nearly 50 years, they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats – that have passed between them throughout their separated lives. The play is a performance favorite for busy name actors, for it requires little preparation, and lines need not be memorized. It was first performed by the playwright himself with Holland Taylor at the New York Public Library, then opened in 1988 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein. Plot Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, both born to wealth and position, are childhood friends whose lifelong correspondence begins with bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Last Five Years
''The Last Five Years'' is a musical written by Jason Robert Brown. It premiered at Chicago's Northlight Theatre in 2001 and was then produced Off-Broadway in March 2002. Since then it has had numerous productions both in the United States and internationally. The story explores a five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress. The show uses a form of storytelling in which Jamie's story is told in chronological order (starting just after the couple have first met) and Cathy's story is told in reverse chronological order (beginning the show at the end of the marriage). The characters do not directly interact except for a wedding song in the middle as their timelines intersect. In 2023, the musical will premiere in its first ever production in Greece, at the alternative stage of the Greek National Opera House. Background ''The Last Five Years'' was inspired by Brown's failed marriage to Theresa O'Neill. O'Neill sued Bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Once On This Island
''Once on This Island'' is a coming-of-age one-act stage musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. It is based on the 1985 novel ''My Love, My Love; or, The Peasant Girl'' by Rosa Guy, a Caribbean-set retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale ''The Little Mermaid''. It concerns a peasant girl in the French Antilles who falls in love with a rich boy and makes a deal with the gods to save his life. The original Broadway production ran from 1990 to 1991, and the West End production opened in 1994, where it won the 1995 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. The musical was revived on Broadway in a production that opened on December 3, 2017 at the Circle in the Square Theatre. The revival was showered with critical acclaim, with ''New York Times'' critic Jesse Green describing it as "ravishing" and ''The Huffington Post'' praising it for creating "an aesthetic experience unlike anything seen on Broadway." It won the 2018 Tony Award for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Rose Tattoo
''The Rose Tattoo'' is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1949 and 1950; after its Chicago premiere on December 29, 1950, he made further revisions to the play for its Broadway premiere on February 2, 1951, and its publication by New Directions the following month. A film adaptation was released in 1955. ''The Rose Tattoo'' tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has withdrawn from the world after her husband's death and expects her daughter to do the same. Productions The original Broadway play starred Maureen Stapleton, Phyllis Love, and Eli Wallach. Other original cast members of the 1951 Broadway play included Martin Balsam and Vivian Nathan. The original production of ''The Rose Tattoo'' premiered February 3, 1951, at the Martin Beck Theatre (now known as the Al Hirschfeld Theatre) and concluded October 27, 1951, with a total of 306 performances. It was produced by Cheryl Crawford, written by Tennessee Williams; incidental music by D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arsenic And Old Lace (play)
''Arsenic and Old Lace'' is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra. The play was produced by Lindsay and Crouse and directed by Bretaigne Windust, and opened on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre on January 10, 1941. On September 25, 1943, the play moved to the Hudson Theatre, closing there on June 17, 1944, having played 1,444 performances. The West End production - directed by Marcel Varnel and produced at London's Strand Theatre - enjoyed a similarly long run. Opening on December 23, 1942 and closing on March 2, 1946, it totalled 1,337 performances. Of the 12 plays written by Kesselring, ''Arsenic and Old Lace'' was by far the most successful. According to the opening night review in ''The New York Times'', the play was "so funny that none of us will ever forget it." Plot The play is a farcical black comedy revolving around the Brewster fami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amadeus (play)
''Amadeus'' is a play by Peter Shaffer which gives a fictional account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, first performed in 1979. It was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's short 1830 play '' Mozart and Salieri'', which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used in 1897 as the libretto for an opera of the same name. The play makes significant use of the music of Mozart, Salieri and other composers of the period. The premieres of Mozart's operas ''The Abduction from the Seraglio'', '' The Marriage of Figaro,'' '' Don Giovanni'', and ''The Magic Flute'' are the settings for key scenes. It was presented at the Royal National Theatre, London in 1979, then moved to Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End followed by a Broadway production. It won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play and Shaffer adapted it for the 1984 film of the same name. Plot ince the play's original run, Shaffer extensively revised his play, including changes to plot details; the following is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Little Foxes
''The Little Foxes'' is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman, considered a classic of 20th century drama. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 of the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in 1900, it focuses on the struggle for control of a family business. Tallulah Bankhead starred in the original production as Regina Hubbard Giddens. Plot The play's focus is Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th-century society where fathers considered only sons as their legal heirs. As a result of this practice, while her two avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar have wielded the family inheritance into two independently substantial fortunes, she's had to rely upon her manipulation of her cautious, timid, browbeaten husband, Horace. He's no businessman, just her fina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Laughter
''Present Laughter'' is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1939 but not produced until 1942 because the Second World War began while it was in rehearsal, and the British theatres closed. The title is drawn from a song in Shakespeare's ''Twelfth Night'' that urges '' carpe diem'' ("present mirth hath present laughter"). The play has been frequently revived in Britain, the US and beyond. The plot depicts a few days in the life of the successful and self-obsessed light comedy actor Garry Essendine as he prepares to travel for a touring commitment in Africa. Amid a series of events bordering on farce, Garry has to deal with women who want to seduce him, placate both his long-suffering secretary and his wife, cope with a crazed young playwright, and overcome his impending mid-life crisis (he has recently turned forty). The character is a caricature of the author's real-life persona, as Coward acknowledged. Coward starred as Garry during the original run, which began with a lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Chorus Line
''A Chorus Line'' is a 1975 musical with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante. Set on the bare stage of a Broadway theater, the musical is centered on seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line. ''A Chorus Line'' provides a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer, as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers. Following several workshops and an Off-Broadway production, ''A Chorus Line'' opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway July 25, 1975, directed by Michael Bennett and co-choreographed by Bennett and Bob Avian. An unprecedented box office and critical hit, the musical received twelve Tony Award nominations and won nine, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The original Broadway production ran for 6,137 performances, becoming the longest-running production in Broadway history until surpasse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scrooge (musical)
''Scrooge: The Musical'' is a 1992 stage musical with book, music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. Its score and book are closely adapted from the music and screenplay of the 1970 musical film '' Scrooge'' starring Albert Finney and Charles Dickens' 1843 novella ''A Christmas Carol''. Bricusse was nominated for an Academy Award for the song score he wrote for the film, and most of those songs were carried over to the musical. Synopsis Act One The musical opens with the company singing a Christmas carol medley as the city of London begins to reminisce over the coming of Christmas ("Sing A Christmas Carol"). Meanwhile, Scrooge and his clerk Bob Cratchit are visited by Scrooge's nephew Harry, who in contrast to his uncle, is excited for Christmas and deplores how he is making Cratchit still work at 7pm on Christmas Eve. Scrooge asks him to leave. After work, Bob Cratchit, his disabled son Tiny Tim and his daughter Kathy go Christmas shopping on the streets of London ("Christmas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
