Bay Area Stage

I think next year I will audition for American Idol. My first audition song will be Volare (the Dean Martin arrangement). Following that I will do my best rendition of My Uncle Used to Love but She Died, then Kung Fu Fighting followed and in the final rounds I will pull out my own arrangement of Edelweiss. I figure with this line up I can't lose.

My Thoughts on The OSCARS

• All right, I don't get it. What's the big deal about Clint Eastwood? He's fine as an actor I suppose. But why does everyone call him a genius? Even he looks confused when they do it. I suppose they could all just be kissing butt. I remember a few years ago it was the in thing to call Warren Beatty a genius.
• Jamie Foxx has got a lot of heart. I like that guy.
• Hillary Swank, what's with the plumber butt crack dress? Not that I minded it, mind you. From the front she looked like a nun, from the back she looked like well...heaven.
  
• Why did Beyonce get to sing every damn song? Not that I minded, mind you. And the make up!! She looked like the M.C. in Cabaret.
  
• Why does Antonio Banderas seem to get to do so much fun stuff? And what's with his hair? Is he trying to "out ugly" his wife?
  
• Yo Yo Ma seemed to be crying after playing the tribute music during the ode to all the fallen celebs. Now he's a genius!
  
• Chris Rock did much better than I expected. But I still wish he could have let loose. I think the Oscars should move to HBO so that our government will let Chris Rock say nasty things.
• Sean Penne looked like he put a bowl on his head and cut around it this morning. And Sean, lighten up, man!! Chris Rock is a comic. He makes jokes. He was making jokes!!
  
• Was Dustin Hoffman drunk? Methinks so.
  
• What about the poor saps who had to accept their awards while seated in row 65? What was with that?
  

Mrs. Lovett (Diana Torres Koss) and Sweeney Todd (James Monroe Iglehart) conspire as fellow Londoners look on.

This is an interesting review written by an audience member.

We had the best audience ever tonight! They sounded like a laugh track on I Love Lucy. It was awesome!

Theatre Bay Area Critics Circle Nominations Awards for 2004

The Theatre Bay Area Critics Circle Nominations for 2004 are here!

Ragtime at Foothill Music Theatre received ELEVEN nominations!!! Cabaret at Broadway by the Bay also got a nomination for Best Choreography!

One thing that I am really enjoying about Sweeney is the pre-show. We all mill around the theatre and mingle with the audience and each other, in character. It's fun to see the little improvisations that have developed and now seem to be carrying over from one night to the next. There's a certain character that happens to be an orange seller who is making quite a nice little living for herself! I am a policeman in the pre-show and one of the characters continually tries to get me to look for her lost cat. Others urge me to arrest the Orange Lady. One guy steels the oranges and I then proceed to chase him around the theatre making the eventual arrest. We have a tailor, a ratcatcher, a baker, a gypsey and others. It's a lot of fun and the audience really seems to enjoy the atmosphere it creates.

Sweeney gets another steller review this time from The Palo Alto Weekly

We got a couple of good reviews for Sweeney!

San Mateo County Times
Step back in time with Foothill's delicious 'Sweeney Todd'


San Jose Metro
The proof is in the filling in Foot Music Theatre's delicious 'Sweeney Todd'

How does a guy name Benjamin Barker ( quite a common sounding name) decide to change his name to "Sweeney Todd"? I've never heard of the name "Sweeney". Is it really a name? I wonder.

Martin who is playing The Beadle in Sweeney has his own BLOG.

Here is the official BLOG for Foothill Music Theatre and all the latest information on Sweeney.

Well it looks like there is a good review coming soon for Sweeney. Read all about it here on Talkin' Broadway.

It's great to have a couple of days off from the show. Saturday I start rehearsals for 4 short plays I will be directing at The Pear Avenue Theatre.
It's called Pear Slices II. We have a very active playwrights group at The Pear and eitght of the authors have written 8 short plays. Another director is staging the other 4 works.

Today I am going to go visit my 95 year old grandmother who lives up in Gold Country. Her name is Santina and her parents arrived in San Francisco from Berceto, Italy at the turn of the last century. She's a wonderful person and my hero.

Sweeney is a hit. Last night the barber chair collapsed when one of the victims was being slashed but James and David (I think it was him?) made a bit out of it and it worked. On to the matinee now with headache in tow. I better take a bottle of Excedrin with me to the theatre.

We opened Sweeney Todd last night at Foothill. The audience seemed to really have a good experience of exciting theatre. I am so glad tech week is behind us. This has been the most exhausting experience. Sweeney Todd is not just another piece of American style musical theatre. It's also an opera. The music is difficult to learn and the staging is challenging. But if done well, I think it might be one of the best shows ever written for the American stage.

I believe that I may have the most costume changes of anyone in the show. Most of the ensemble wears one costume all night. A few wear two. But I have four! The difficulty presents itself when I have to run around the outside of the building to make entrances on the correct side of the stage. But that in itself is not really the issue. The crucial thing is to make sure the correct costume is there waiting for me. Last night, I left my policeman's hat on the wrong side just minutes before my entrance. So, I had to sprint around the building, find the hat, sprint back around and run on the stage in the nick of time.

Another moment of mirth emerged last night when Anthony, dropped the gun in Fogg's asylum. What is supposed to happen is that Johanna is supposed to pick it up and shoot Fogg (that's me). But when he dropped the gun, it broke into two pieces. Keite Davis, playing Johanna, slyly picked up the gun like nothing happened in it's two pieces, held them together and shot me anyway with the broken gun. I heard a few chuckles in the front row.