‘Some Like It Hot' makes Rochester debut
Based on the 1959 film, which starred Marilyn Monroe, it's the story of two musicians who are forced to flee Chicago during Prohibition after witnessing a mob hit.
Devon Goffman plays Spats, and Tarra Conner Jones stars as Sweet Sue. Check out their interview from our Sunrise studio in the player on this page.
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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Inside The Business Of Luxury Dining At Hotel Bel-Air
Hotel Bel-Air has never been in the business of chasing the new. Its market position has always been about constancy: a place that can command the loyalty of high-net-worth regulars while still holding enough cultural cachet to attract the city's cyclical cast of celebrities. And boy, have they. Marilyn Monroe's final magazine shoot took place here. Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned here. Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Howard Hughes—the guest list reads like a condensed history of 20th-century glamour. But, as many-a-shuttered Old Hollywood institution can attest to, legacy alone isn't enough to keep a property at the top of Los Angeles' fiercely competitive luxury landscape. And the Dorchester Collection knows it. Since the operator took over management in 2008, the strategy has been to preserve the hotel's history while methodically modernising its most public-facing spaces. The latest example is The Restaurant at Hotel Bel-Air, its all-day dining room and terrace, which has just emerged from a targeted revamp under culinary director Joe Garcia. The design changes are subtle to the casual eye, but calculated. The hotel's signature pale pink palette (or, as they'd call it, 'blush') now extends across the terrace, connecting the indoor and outdoor areas. Alcove seating has also been reconfigured for privacy—a priceless commodity in La La Land—while a new marble bar draws guests in earlier, keeps them later and increases bar spend without needing to upsell a second entrée. With that said, the food has had a phenomenal little facelift of its own. For Garcia, who joined in 2022, the mission was to modernize carefully and slowly, as opposed to a scattergun embrace of trends. 'I take inspiration from the Spanish Colonial architecture and the hotel's legacy,' he says. 'I want to reinterpret classic dishes and flavor combinations with modern equipment, contemporary techniques, and locally-sourced ingredients.' That philosophy has translated into a menu that is smaller, more focused, and, in my personal opinion, faultless. The loup de mer is crisp-skinned over eggplant caviar, roasted sweet peppers, tomato confit, and basil, finished with a saffron bouillon poured to order. Elegant without tipping into impractical ceremony. The sweetcorn Agnolotti, with butter-poached Maine lobster, preserved lemon, and compressed French tarragon, has the richness to justify the price point but the acidity to keep guests coming back to repeat tastes. The Onion Dip, a play on the retro party food classic, is the very definition of culinary indulgence; a blend of sweet, caramelised Vidalia onions and crème fraîche, garnished with pickled pearl onions, crispy onions, chives, and caviar (of course). What Garcia doesn't do is create highly-orchestrated Instaplates designed to succeed in a single edited image, which can't survive a 50-cover dinner service. 'That's not how a real kitchen with real customers operates,' he says. 'I'd rather remain timeless and let the ingredients we spend so much time sourcing speak for themselves.' With that said, he knows looks are paramount—especially in Bel-Air. 'I'll never forget one of the first lessons I learned as a young cook when I heard that 'the eye eats first.' I always keep this in mind and make sure that there is plenty of color on the plate. It is very rare to go to a restaurant in LA these days and not see people at times spend more time taking pictures of the food than they do eating it, so it's my job to make sure that the food is being presented in an elegant but not overly opulent way.' His Pommes Lyonnaise is a perfect example. 'Knowing what the traditional Pommes Lyonnaise consists of, combined with an understanding of the traditional cooking method and how it is usually served, empowers you to take liberties such as deciding what type of fat you use to cook the potatoes. 'What kind of allium would you like to use? The dish is traditionally made with onions—but why can't shallots be used? Or Leeks? Would you like to use duck fat? What about clarified butter? Why not brown butter? What about dry-aged beef tallow? Can I add black truffles? The innovative possibilities are endless.' Beyond his core menu, Garcia and his team have also put a huge amount of effort into the pastry cart, appearing each morning carrying almond croissants, cream puffs, cinnamon rolls—all from The Patisserie. 'We are very proud of the work and research and development that was required to get our Viennoserie to the point where it is now,' Garcia says. 'It is really a showcase of the hard work and dedication that our bakery team puts in on a daily basis.' Like every tweak, the cart serves multiple purposes: it drives visibility for the pastry team, creates a secondary sales channel, and allows the kitchen to test items in front of a captive audience before committing to production-scale rollout. Programming has been recalibrated to encourage local loyalty. The Sunday Night Dinner series—held on the first Sunday of each month—offers family-style menus that change with the season, filling a gap in LA's luxury weekday-power-lunch dining calendar. September's End-of-Summer Barbecue will be the opposite: a one-day, $350-per-head event with chefs like Burt Bakman, Saw Naing, Jackson Kalb, Ray Garcia, Jeremy Fox, and Ashley James, backed by sponsors including Louis XIII and Telmont. Of course, the competitive set for The Restaurant isn't every high-end dining room in LA, but other hotel restaurants with comparable brand equity: The Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel (thankfully, also a Dorchester Collection gem), Jean-Georges at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, The Belvedere at The Peninsula, et al. Each certainly has its draw, but Hotel Bel-Air's undeniable advantage is discretion, a guest list that doesn't leak, a property layout that lets dining feel genuinely separate from the rest of the city, and that all-important no-picture protocol. That's one of the many reason why the redesign works. The cosmetic updates are not just for aesthetis—they drive dwell time, boost beverage revenue, and improve the experience for both locals and in-house guests. The programming serves both audiences without cannibalising either. And the hotel's history only goes to bolster their five-star efforts. Though some may try to accuse them of it, The Restaurant isn't betting on nostalgia. It's betting that in a city addicted to it, there's still a market for precision, privacy, and a product that knows exactly what it is. The harder—and more valuable—way to secure a restaurant a legacy of its very own.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Richard Thomas dons wig and mustache to play icon Mark Twain in one-man play touring the US
NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Thomas has not one but two big shoes to fill when he goes out on the road this summer in a celebrated one-man show. The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the great American writer Mark Twain in a play written and performed for decades by the late Hal Holbrook. Thomas immediately accepted the offer to star in the 90-minute 'Mark Twain Tonight!' that tours more than a dozen states this summer and fall before wondering what he'd gotten himself into. 'I walked down to the street and I said, 'Are you crazy? What are you out of your mind?'' he says, laughing. 'I had to grapple with who's the bigger fool — the man who says, 'Yes, I'll do it' or the man that says, 'No, I won't'?' Holbrook portrayed the popular novelist and humorist for more than a half century starting in 1954, making over 2,300 performances to a collective audience of more than 2 million. He and Thomas were fond of each other and would see each other's work. The show mixes Twain's speeches and passages from his books and letters to offer a multidimensional look at an American icon, who toured the U.S. with appearances. 'I'm going to feel very much like I'm not only following in Hal's footsteps, but in Twain's as well,' says Thomas, who began his career as John-Boy Walton on TV's 'The Waltons' and became a Broadway mainstay. Thomas jokes that Holbrook had 50 years to settle into the role and he has only a year or so. 'I have the advantage on him that he started when he was 30 and he was pretending to be an old man. I'm 74 so I'm right there. That's the one area where I'm up on him.' 'It's time for Twain' The new tour kicks off this week in Hartford, Connecticut — appropriately enough, one of the places Twain lived — and then goes to Maryland, Iowa, Arkansas, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, Utah, California, Arizona, Alabama, Utah and Florida by Christmastime. Then in 2026 — the 60th anniversary of the Broadway premiere — it goes to Texas, Colorado, Wisconsin and Ohio. 'It's time for Twain, you know? I mean, it's always time for Twain, always. He's always relevant because he's utterly and completely us, with warts and all,' says Thomas. The actor will travel with a stage manager and a trunk with his costumes, but all the other elements will be sourced locally by the venues — like desks and chairs, giving each show local touches. 'There's something about doing a show for people in their own community, in their theater that they support, that they raise money for. They're not coming to you as tourists. You're coming to them.' Thomas has done a one-man show before — 'A Distant Country Called Youth' using Tennessee Williams letters — but that allowed him to read from the script on stage. Here he has no such help. 'One of the keys is to balance the light and the shadow, how funny, how outrageous, the polemic and the darkness and the light. You want that balanced beautifully,' he says. Twain represents America Other actors — notably Val Kilmer and Jerry Hardin — have devised one-man shows about the creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, who still manages to fascinate. A new biography of Twain by Ron Chernow came out this year, which Thomas is churning through. Thomas sees Twain as representing America perfectly: 'He just lets it all hang out there. He's mean-spirited; he's generous. He's bigoted; he is progressive. He hates money; he wants to be the richest man in America. All of these fabulous contradictions are on display.' Thomas has lately become a road rat, touring in 'Twelve Angry Men' from 2006-08, 'The Humans' in 2018 and starring as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from 2022-24. Orin Wolf, CEO of tour producer NETworks Presentations, got to watch Thomas on the road in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and says having him step into Twain will strengthen the theater community across the country 'It's so rare nowadays to have a true star of the road,' Wolf says, calling Thomas 'a breed of actor and artist that they rarely make anymore.' 'I'm delighted to be supporting him and delighted that he's chosen to do this because I think this is something he could also take on for hopefully many years,' he adds. After Twain, Thomas will next be seen on Broadway this spring opposite Renée Elise Goldsberry and Marylouise Burke in David Lindsay-Abaire's new comedy, 'The Balusters.' But first there's the eloquence and wry humor in a show about Twain that reveals he was often a frustrated optimist when it came to America. 'I think it reflects right now a lot of our frustration with how things are going,' says Thomas. 'Will things ever be better and can things ever better? Or are we just doomed to just be this species that is going to constantly eat its own tail and are we ever going to move forward?'
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
Theater to Stream in August: ‘Hamilton' and a Comedy About Immigration
'Hamilton' Stream it on Disney+. 'A toast to the groom, to the bride,' … and to the fans! Lin-Manuel Miranda's beloved musical about one of America's unsung heroes, Alexander Hamilton, just celebrated its 10th birthday and continues to find new political and cultural relevance. The Broadway hit that coupled hip-hop music with the founding fathers — an unlikely paring that forever changed ticket prices and spurred an era of race-conscious casting — went on to win 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for drama after its debut in 2015. Luckily for 'Hamilton' fans, the show was filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theater in Manhattan the following year, meaning you can take in the musical with most of its original Broadway cast. The live-capture version, recorded with nine cameras and more than 100 microphones, has been available on Disney+ since its release during the pandemic. But come next month, fans will also be able to watch it on the big screen; the filmed production hits movie theaters nationwide on Sept. 5. 'Alterations' Stream it on National Theater. Michael Abbensetts, a Guyana-born British playwright, died in 2016, but thanks to a revival by Britain's Royal National Theater this past spring, his 1978 play has received a new life. Set in an alterations shop crammed with suits and clothing racks, this comedic drama follows a tailor as he navigates two types of race: the sprint to finish sewing a large order overnight for a demanding client, and discrimination in a culture hostile toward immigrants. Both pressures amount to a portrait of Black entrepreneurship in 1970s London. Scenes are punctuated with bursts of Reggae, and a spiritual yearning — to return to Guyana, to join Britain's middle class — is threaded throughout. The revived production, directed by Lynette Linton and starring Arinzé Kene, was filmed earlier this year, cementing Abbensetts's work in the theater's Black Plays Archive. 'Chicago' Stream the film on Amazon Prime, Paramount+ and Apple TV. This summer marked the 50th anniversary of two musical theater juggernauts: 'Chicago' and 'A Chorus Line.' In 1975, Bob Fosse's depiction of 'merry murderesses' seeking justice (and fame) for killing their lovers was upstaged by Michael Bennett's portrait of artists trying to make it big, but a 1996 revival of 'Chicago' reversed its critical fortune. Winning six Tony Awards, it went on to become the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. The 2002 movie adaptation was equally triumphant. Rob Marshall's sleek film debut, starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones as dueling 'scintillating sinners,' grossed $300 million worldwide and took home six Academy Awards, including best picture. It turns out 1920s vaudeville has timeless appeal — when paired with murder. The story 'seeks to literalize the showbizification of American justice by performing it as a series of variety acts,' the theater critic Jesse Green wrote, adding, 'because we still live in that world — celebrity remaining the best get-out-of-jail-free card — it seems inevitable that the show has proved eternal.' 'A Chorus Line' Stream the film on Tubi. 'It starts on a bare stage and it pretty much stays there,' the critic Clive Barnes wrote in his 1975 review. Bennett's stark portrayal of Broadway hopefuls lining up for roles of a new show instantly became a darling of musical theater when it opened. Barnes called it 'one of the greatest musicals ever to hit Broadway, and quite possibly the simplest and the most imaginative.' Where 'Chicago' sneers, 'A Chorus Line' veers earnest. That sincerity — watching dancers desperately learn a routine does something to the hearts of artists and critics alike — earned the show nine Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. What could be more vulnerable than an open-call audition? Watching those dancers flail. Richard Attenborough's 1985 film adaptation is no Oscar winner, but it's a facsimile of that 'singular sensation,' which has comforted aspiring stars for decades. 'Mamma Mia!' Stream the film on Netflix. Here it goes again. 'Mamma Mia!' is back on Broadway after a decade away. The Abba musical was a hit onstage in London and New York, and then again on film (in large thanks to a giddy, wriggling Meryl Streep in its starring role). Now it's at the Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan, the show's home for most of its previous run. For a refresher on the story, which could also be titled 'Are You My Daddy?,' look no further than the frothy film version. A wedding on a fictional Greek island serves as the perfect scheme for 20-year-old Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) to discover which of her mother's former suitors is her father. As the film critic A.O. Scott put it: 'It's Greece! It's bellybuttons! It's Meryl Streep! It's Abba!' It's also Colin Firth, Christine Baranski and a dance number involving a towel turned diaper. It's a good time for some good old escapism.
