Latest news with #ALittleNightMusic
Boston Globe
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A raucous night at the Elliot Norton awards
The cast of the Sullivan Rep performs a song from "A Little Night Music." JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE There were, as always, heartwarming stories. Jenny Tsai, who won outstanding music direction for Sullivan Rep's 'A Little Night Music,' told us that when she came to the US from Taiwan at age 23, she knew nothing about musical theater. Accepting outstanding lead performance in a musical for her work in 'Next to Normal,' Sherée Marcelle said, 'There was a time that I was told I was not cut out for this industry,' before confessing, 'This is only the second professional show of my career.' Advertisement Armando Rivera, who directed Gloucester Stage/Teatro Chelsea's 'The Hombres' (outstanding play and outstanding director in the midsize division), said, 'We Latino hombres are not bad men, we are human,' and 'If you tell stories in any language, I promise you will be understood. Because the heart is there.' Winners for outstanding sound design (large) for the Huntington's 'Toni Stone,' Lucas Clopton and Aubrey Dube hugged each other at the podium before Clopton explained that 'We haven't seen each other for a year' and Dube gave a shout-out to his native Botswana. From left, Aubrey Dube and Lucas Clopton celebrate their prize for Outstanding Sound Design in a large play for their work on "Toni Stone." JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE There's always room for humor at the Norties. When it seemed no one from American Repertory Theater was coming to accept the outstanding lighting design (large) award, BTCA member Bob Verini offered to fill in: 'I saw 'Gatsby' and I'll be happy to tell you about the lighting.' Presenting the outstanding featured performance (midsize) award, a cheeky Mishka Yarovoy caught the audience off guard with 'And the winner is' before the nominees had even appeared on the screen. A special citation honoring the Boch Center Wang Theatre's 100th anniversary was unexpectedly interrupted by the opening bars of 'The Music of the Night' from 'The Phantom of the Opera,' prompting the observation that 'There are ghosts in these old theaters.' Presenter Paul Melendy appeared in a T-shirt bearing the image of this year's Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence recipient, Kathy St. George, and announced he'd be selling copies from the back of his Subaru after the show. St. George's five-minute acceptance speech was a show in itself, as the Stoneham native told the crowd how at age seven she decided she wanted to be a second-grade teacher and that she actually taught second grade before becoming an actress. In New York, she played a life-size Lamb Chop alongside Shari Lewis; she answered an ad to 'Work on Broadway this Christmas' and got the part — as an elf at Macy's. Her real Broadway debut came in 1981 when she was cast in the Jerome Robbins–directed 'Fiddler on the Roof.' Advertisement But Boston called her back: 'You are my people. Being part of the Boston theater community is the best thing ever.' Channeling her one-woman show 'And Now Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Judy Garland,' she whispered mischievously toward the wings, 'Auntie Joyce?,' before concluding, three times, 'There's no place like home.' Even then St. George wasn't done: she appeared in the musical number 'Streets of Dublin,' from SpeakEasy Stage Company's ' Four awards were given in memory of theater luminaries whom we lost over the past year. Former BTCA member Terry Byrne remembered James Earl Jones. Lenelle Moïse recited a poem to honor South African playwright Athol Fugard. Paula Plum recalled getting her first job in Boston from Lyric Stage Boston co-founder Ron Ritchell. And Scott Edmiston extolled 'Falsettos' creator William Finn. As the ceremony wound down, I created a couple of unofficial awards. The Huntington's ' Advertisement Despite giving out 39 actual Elliot Norton Awards, the BTCA wrapped up the show in just over three hours. In what's become an Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony tradition, the entire BTCA crew assembled on stage to announce the outstanding ensemble winner. After they'd shouted out 'Titanic' and no one from NSMT immediately responded, Kulhawik peered anxiously into the audience and wondered, 'Did the ship go down?' It didn't; the award was accepted and the Boston theater community sailed exuberantly into the ceremony's afterparty. Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at
Boston Globe
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Leopoldstadt,' ‘Next to Normal,' and ‘The Piano Lesson' among winners at Elliot Norton Awards
In the midsize theater division, Gloucester Stage and Teatro Chelsea's ' Jade Guerra, Anthony T. Goss, Jonathan Kitt and Omar Robinson in Actors' Shakespeare Project's production of August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Nile Scott Studios Advertisement In the combined midsize or small theater category, 'The Piano Lesson' also won for outstanding scenic design (Jon Savage). Outstanding lighting design went to Jeff Adelberg for Arlekin Players Theatre's ' Topping the small theater honors was 'The Dybbuk' as outstanding play. Apollinaire Theatre Company's ' 'Next to Normal' garnered outstanding musical, outstanding lead performance in a musical (Sherée Marcelle), and outstanding featured performance in a musical (Cortlandt Barrett). Outstanding music direction went to Jenny Tsai for Sullivan Rep's 'A Little Night Music.' Ayodele Casel won the outstanding choreography award for American Repertory Theater's 'Diary of a Tap Dancer.' Jenece Upton gave the outstanding solo performance in Merrimack Repertory Theatre's 'Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.' Outstanding new script went to Mfoniso Udofia for the Huntington's ' Of the previously announced awards, the outstanding visiting play was ' Advertisement This year's Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence went to longtime Boston favorite Kathy St. George. Rehearsal for Life received the 2025 Elliot Norton Arts Education Award. Special Citations were given to the Boch Center Wang Theatre (100th anniversary), Apollinaire Theatre Company (30th anniversary), Greater Boston Stage Company (25th anniversary), and [Expletive]-Faced Shakespeare (10th anniversary).
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Jane Krakowski: My career was supposed to be over when I was 40
Stephen Sondheim has been a bedrock of Jane Krakowski's career almost since the beginning. The Tony and Olivier award-winning actress — and the mighty comic dynamo of TV's 30 Rock and Ally McBeal — played Fredrika in an off-Broadway production of A Little Night Music when she was 14. Ten years later she starred in a Broadway revival of Company. 'And now, at 29, here I am!' Krakowski, 56, says with more than a trace of the indomitable Jenna Maroney, her reality-defying prima donna from 30 Rock. And Here We Are indeed — that's the title of Sondheim's final, posthumous musical, which is having its UK premiere at the National Theatre in London in a cast led by Krakowski, Rory Kinnear and Tracie
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fred Anzevino, founder of Theo Ubique Theatre, dies at 67
Fred Anzevino, a touring Broadway performer turned Chicago director who created one of Chicago's most distinctive and successful neighborhood theater companies, died Monday at home in Evanston at the age of 67. Anzevino's death was announced Monday night by the board of directors of the Theo Ubique Theatre Company, the company he founded. He had been in the midst of rehearsals for his next show. Anzevino was the passion behind the strangely named Theo Ubique, a Greek-Latin hybrid meaning 'God present in everything,' a theater company he founded in 1997. He said at the time that he had grown weary of the increased commercialization of musical theater even though he had been a busy touring actor. 'Theater heals through honesty, concentration, simplicity, awe,' he told the Tribune. 'If one can evoke elements of the spiritual on stage, it can heal all people.' He relished staging Broadway musicals in a tiny space. First at the Heartland Studio Theatre, then at the 60-seat No Exit Cafe, both in in Rogers Park, and finally in a custom-designed theater on the Howard Street border of Chicago and Evanston, Anzevino worked his magic through countless jewel-box productions of titles from Stephen Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' to 'Pump Boys and Dinettes.' Several Chicago companies went on to produce so-called micro musicals in the city, but Anzevino was the first to do so with equal measures of integrity and success. His secret sauce was his ability to spot, and then snag, formidable young talent. And then figure out how to make them shine. His musicals often were cast with recent graduates of the city's leading musical-theater training programs, thrusting forward the careers of young graduates, many of whom went on to major careers. He also was able to forge relationships with two highly talented musical directors in Austin Cook and then Jeremy Ramey; Ramey worked with Anzevino on 42 shows over a 12-year period and said Monday night that he was 'heartbroken and devastated.' 'Fred was an institution and a teddy bear, all at once,' said Sawyer Smith, an actor currently working at the Signature Theatre near Washington, D.C. 'I remember meeting him for the first time. I was so nervous. All of the actors I admired had cut their teeth at Theo with Fred. He saw you intimately and knew how to get you to dig deeper. Once you were under his wing, he was your biggest champion. He fought for who he believed in, for what he believed in.' 'What Fred did for storefront musical theater in this city will always be unmatched,' said Christopher Chase Carter, a choreographer who worked at Theo Ubique. 'He set the standard.' Born in 1957 in Providence, Rhode Island, Anzevino showed early promise as a baseball player but instead studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, at Rhode Island College and at George Washington University. As a young actor, he was part of the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical 'Big River.' Although the cause of his death has not yet been determined, Anzevino was open about being an AIDS survivor and was a man who long had lived with HIV. He considered himself deeply fortunate, and it was that seriousness of purpose that informed both his work with collaborators and his deeply emotional productions. At its creative peak between about 2008 and 2016, Theo Ubique shows dominated local awards ceremonies. Memorable productions also include stagings of 'Jacques Brel's Lonesome Losers of the Night,' 'Evita,' 'Chess,' 'Cabaret' and 'The Light in the Piazza.' Anzevino was not daunted by complexity nor by the seeming size of shows; everything, he believed, could be staged intimately, if you had talented collaborators. He staged 'Cats' in a room that many would have felt was barely big enough for a litter box. With help from supporters and Evanston officials, Anzevino managed to raise enough funds for a new theater space which opened on Howard Street in 2018, just managing to get on its feet prior to the pandemic. Thereafter, Anzevino, anxious to give younger artists opportunities and fearing his generation was becoming out of step, stepped back some. But at the time of his death, he remained Theo's artistic director and was in rehearsal for 'Diana: The Musical,' which he was co-directing with long-time collaborator Brenda Didier. Theo board chair Stephanie Servos said Monday night that the company's board of directors were devastated by Anzevino's death and that she hoped the company would be able to rename the theater in Anzevino's honor. 'Fred was like a father to me,' Servos said. 'The larger the theater gets, the more external problems there are and the more difficult it becomes for honesty to appear,' Anzevino told the Tribune in 1997. 'Spiritual and holy theater can only be performed in small and dingy spaces.' Dingy disappeared over the succeeding years. But never the small, and never Anzevino's insistence that his art, and his artists, had sacred purpose. Survivors include a sister, Joann Benedetti. 'He worried so much about me even though he was my little brother, Benedetti said Tuesday. 'Fred was just a very humble person. I'm going to miss him so much.' Plans for a memorial service are pending. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@
Chicago Tribune
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Fred Anzevino, founder of Theo Ubique Theatre, dies at 67
Fred Anzevino, a touring Broadway performer turned Chicago director who created one of Chicago's most distinctive and successful neighborhood theater companies, died Monday at home in Evanston at the age of 67. Anzevino's death was announced Monday night by the board of directors of the Theo Ubique Theatre Company, the company he founded. He had been in the midst of rehearsals for his next show. Anzevino was the passion behind the strangely named Theo Ubique, a Greek-Latin hybrid meaning 'God present in everything,' a theater company he founded in 1997. He said at the time that he had grown weary of the increased commercialization of musical theater even though he had been a busy touring actor. 'Theater heals through honesty, concentration, simplicity, awe,' he told the Tribune. 'If one can evoke elements of the spiritual on stage, it can heal all people.' He relished staging Broadway musicals in a tiny space. First at the Heartland Studio Theatre, then at the 60-seat No Exit Cafe, both in in Rogers Park, and finally in a custom-designed theater on the Howard Street border of Chicago and Evanston, Anzevino worked his magic through countless jewel-box productions of titles from Stephen Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' to 'Pump Boys and Dinettes.' Several Chicago companies went on to produce so-called micro musicals in the city, but Anzevino was the first to do so with equal measures of integrity and success. His secret sauce was his ability to spot, and then snag, formidable young talent. And then figure out how to make them shine. His musicals often were cast with recent graduates of the city's leading musical-theater training programs, thrusting forward the careers of young graduates, many of whom went on to major careers. He also was able to forge relationships with two highly talented musical directors in Austin Cook and then Jeremy Ramey; Ramey worked with Anzevino on 42 shows over a 12-year period and said Monday night that he was 'heartbroken and devastated.' 'Fred was an institution and a teddy bear, all at once,' said Sawyer Smith, an actor currently working at the Signature Theatre near Washington, D.C. 'I remember meeting him for the first time. I was so nervous. All of the actors I admired had cut their teeth at Theo with Fred. He saw you intimately and knew how to get you to dig deeper. Once you were under his wing, he was your biggest champion. He fought for who he believed in, for what he believed in.' 'What Fred did for storefront musical theater in this city will always be unmatched,' said Christopher Chase Carter, a choreographer who worked at Theo Ubique. 'He set the standard.' Born in 1957 in Providence, Rhode Island, Anzevino showed early promise as a baseball player but instead studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, at Rhode Island College and at George Washington University. As a young actor, he was part of the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical 'Big River.' Although the cause of his death has not yet been determined, Anzevino was open about being an AIDS survivor and was a man who long had lived with HIV. He considered himself deeply fortunate, and it was that seriousness of purpose that informed both his work with collaborators and his deeply emotional productions. At its creative peak between about 2008 and 2016, Theo Ubique shows dominated local awards ceremonies. Memorable productions also include stagings of 'Jacques Brel's Lonesome Losers of the Night,' 'Evita,' 'Chess,' 'Cabaret' and 'The Light in the Piazza.' Anzevino was not daunted by complexity nor by the seeming size of shows; everything, he believed, could be staged intimately, if you had talented collaborators. He staged 'Cats' in a room that many would have felt was barely big enough for a litter box. With help from supporters and Evanston officials, Anzevino managed to raise enough funds for a new theater space which opened on Howard Street in 2018, just managing to get on its feet prior to the pandemic. Thereafter, Anzevino, anxious to give younger artists opportunities and fearing his generation was becoming out of step, stepped back some. But at the time of his death, he remained Theo's artistic director and was in rehearsal for 'Diana: The Musical,' which he was co-directing with long-time collaborator Brenda Didier. Theo board chair Stephanie Servos said Monday night that the company's board of directors were devastated by Anzevino's death and that she hoped the company would be able to rename the theater in Anzevino's honor. 'Fred was like a father to me,' Servos said. 'The larger the theater gets, the more external problems there are and the more difficult it becomes for honesty to appear,' Anzevino told the Tribune in 1997. 'Spiritual and holy theater can only be performed in small and dingy spaces.' Dingy disappeared over the succeeding years. But never the small, and never Anzevino's insistence that his art, and his artists, had sacred purpose. Survivors include a sister, Joann Benedetti. 'He worried so much about me even though he was my little brother, Benedetti said Tuesday. 'Fred was just a very humble person. I'm going to miss him so much.' Plans for a memorial service are pending. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
