Broadway: July 2008 Archives

Mario Lopez is all smiles here as he is being inducted onto the Wall of Fame at Tony's Di Napoli Restaurant in Times Square. Mario's stint on "A Chorus Line" ends soon but it has been eventful. Among the most amusing news has had to do with his equally buff co-star Nick Adams whose guns Mario allegedly wanted covered up while he was next to him on stage. But they look chummy in the photo below.

That Tony Awards hosting gig last month musta given Whoopi Goldberg the Broadway bug again.

Whoopi said this morning on "The View" that she is going to be spending her month off from the morning chatfest in August as a cast member of the musical "Xanadu."

"I always wanrt to be on a stage somewhere and I wanted something fun," Whoopi said. "If I have vacation, it's dangerous."

Whoopi's role in the roller-skating musical "Xanadu" is as one of the show's evil sisters, Caliope. Her previous Broadway stints were her own one-woman show as well as in revivals of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

She begins her six-week "Xanadu" run on July 29.

...Broadway star (and stud) Cheyenne Jackson who turned 33 today! He makes us proud by being an openly gay perfomer as he basks ib the success of the Tony Award nominated musical "Xanadu."

Cheyenne earned a 2008 Drama Desk Award nomination for outstanding actor in a musical In June 2007 for a role he assumed less than a week before the scheduled opening night,. He replaced actor James Carpinello who had been injured during rehearsal.

The performer also starred in the 2005 musical "All Shook Up" and won the 2005 Theatre World Award for outstanding Broadway debut. He had previosly understudied the leads in ."Thorougfly Modern Millie" and " Aida." In film, Cheyenne won praise for his performance as Mark Bingham in "United 93."

Next up: a New York production of "Damned Yankees."

Well, well, I just became Facebook friends with "A Chorus Line" star Nick Adams - the hunk who is outhunking Mario Lopez on stage - and he had posted some photos of himself and friends from the benefit "Broadway Bares 18." Above, he is with Brian Patrick Murphy and below, with Tommy Berklund.

I. Can't Breathe.

Earlier post:
-- Mario vs. Nick: Battle of the Broadway hunks rages on...
-- Mario Lopez: Is he starring in "A Chorus Line" or "Top Guns"?

This is an excerpt from a column Alec Baldwin recently wrote for The Huffington Post:

Before I get into Obama, the SAG strike and renewable energy, I wanted to talk about Patti LuPone. Yeah. That's right. Patti LuPone. What the world needs now is Patti LuPone. I have worked in my business since 1980 and I have seen a lot of changes. One thing that hasn't changed is Patti.

That year, the year I started, Patti won the Tony for Best Actress in a musical for Evita. And now, more than twenty-five years later, Patti is as heartbreaking and wicked and volcanic and gorgeous as ever. Maybe more so. Go see her in Gypsy on Broadway. Surrounded by Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti (both also Tony winners for this show), Patti makes the story of Mama Rose worth seeing again and then some.

Where movies today all too typically use the name of a big star to draw you into a theatre, only to have special effects people take over, what happens at the St. James theatre is live. Real. It is a stage covered with remarkable actors, directed by Arthur Laurents himself, breathing new life into an old story. And, it is Patti. As I left the theatre. a young man turned to me and said, "I liked that a lot and I normally don't go to musicals." Another woman near us smiled and said, "That was no ordinary musical. That was Patti." I told the young man to consider himself lucky. "You're not likely to see that again on Broadway for a long time.

"Go see Gypsy. Go see Patti LuPone, one of the great actresses of all time, give the performance of her life.