Latest news with #SweeneyTodd
USA Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Audra McDonald rejects Patti LuPone's Broadway rift claim: 'You'd have to ask her'
Audra McDonald rejects Patti LuPone's Broadway rift claim: 'You'd have to ask her' Show Caption Hide Caption Audra McDonald is Mama Rose in 'Gypsy' on Broadway: Watch Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald stars as Mama Rose in Broadway's "Gypsy," stepping into the role made famous by Ethel Merman and Patti LuPone. Audra McDonald is not being baited into dishing on a fellow Broadway veteran. In a preview from an upcoming interview shared by "CBS Mornings" on May 29, McDonald, 54, told interviewer Gayle King there's no bad blood on her end after Patti LuPone, 76, said in a recent New Yorker feature that McDonald is "not a friend." "That's something you'd have to ask Patti about," McDonald said on "CBS Mornings" (weekdays, 7-9 a.m. ET). "You know, I haven't seen her in about 11 years just because we've been busy just with life and stuff. So, I don't know what rift she's talking about, but you'd have to ask her." According to CBS listings, the full interview is slated to air June 3. What did Patti LuPone say about Audra McDonald? In her New Yorker feature, which was published May 26, LuPone shared the two had a rift long ago but declined to elaborate further. When the "Agatha All Along" actress was asked about McDonald's supportive reaction to a social media post accusing LuPone of racial microaggressions, LuPone said, "I thought, 'You should know better.' That's typical of Audra. She's not a friend." "When I asked what she had thought of McDonald's current production of 'Gypsy,' she stared at me, in silence, for 15 seconds," the New Yorker's Michael Schulman noted afterward. "Then she turned to the window and sighed, 'What a beautiful day.'" 'Not a friend': Patti LuPone talks alleged Audra McDonald feud McDonald and LuPone have worked together several times, including costarring in the concert version of "Sweeney Todd" in 2000 and LA Opera's 2007 production of "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny." McDonald is currently starring in "Gypsy" as Rose, a role for which LuPone won a Tony nearly two decades ago. She followed that win with a trophy for best actress in a featured role in a musical for "Company" in 2022. McDonald's latest role earned her a Tony nomination for best actress in a musical for the upcoming June 8 ceremony; her last win in 2014 reportedly made her the most-awarded performer in Tony history with six trophies.
Forbes
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Josh Groban Debuts His New Album At No. 1 On Multiple Charts
It's been half a decade since Josh Groban released his last studio album. Harmony arrived in late 2020, and in the years since, the singer has toured in support of that project and starred in the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which earned him a Tony Award nomination. Now, as he wraps his latest concert residency, he scores another musical win. The superstar vocalist collects another No. 1 album on several rankings in America this week, proving his fanbase remains loyal even without a steady stream of new music. Gems arrives on three Billboard-published tallies this frame, leading two of them and debuting inside the top 10 on the third. Groban's latest starts at No. 1 on both the Classical Albums and Classical Crossover Albums charts. On both of those tallies, which focus on classical music full-lengths, Groban collects his sixth No. 1. He has now sent a total of seven titles to those lists, with only one missing the top spot. Josh Groban in Concert fell short by just one position more than two decades ago and never managed to take a turn in the spotlight. Gems also enters the Top Album Sales tally, the all-genre ranking of the bestselling full-lengths and EPs throughout the U.S. On that competitive tally, the set launches at No. 6. It earns the singer his eleventh top 10 and fifteenth placement somewhere on the roster. Gems opens with just under 7,000 copies sold, according to Luminate. Groban scores the fourth-highest-ranking debut this frame on the Top Album Sales chart. He lands between new arrivals by Fuerza Regida (111XPANTIA, No. 2), Pink Floyd (At Pompeii - MCMLXXII, No. 3), and Eric Church (Evangeline Vs. The Machine, No. 4). Gems is an 18-track compilation largely made up of his biggest hit songs. But, as is common practice when musicians re-release older cuts but want to entice superfans to pick up a copy, he included a pair of never-before-heard tunes as well: 'Be All Right' and 'Open Hands.' The original material clearly helped push several thousand people to purchase the compilation, making it a bestseller immediately — and seemingly holding fans over while he likely works on his next full-length.
Telegraph
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
School uniforms are a great boon to poorer parents, Bridget Phillipson
The not-very-fancy Kent girls' school I attended aged 11-18 retained one touching affectation circa 1979: the suggested stockist for school uniform was Harrods. I had secured a bursary, due to our straightened circumstances, but Mum and I still made the pilgrimage to Knightsbridge to buy the requisite hideous brown-and-gold blazer and jumper. She purchased items so sturdily outsized that they not only saw me through my schooldays, but my little sister had to suffer them too. My mother was well-aware that uniform, worn dawn-to-dusk five days a week, saved money in the end – as it diminished any need for an extensive fashionable wardrobe. I followed her lead with my own sons, even though their primary and secondary schools in Cambridge never enforced uniform strictly. Branded school polo and sweat shirts are far cheaper than the Nike equivalents that parents get pressurised to buy otherwise. To state the obvious, it's also good for schoolchildren to feel camaraderie via the stitched logos that announce they are part of a certain institution. I'm no huge lover of pointless rules and conformity, but there's nothing for rebels to test their metal against without a few stern regulations. All of which makes it extra-baffling that Labour is currently pushing through measures that will make it harder to enforce state school uniform, by limiting the number of branded items of clothing to three (as part of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill). I don't recall any noisy demand for restrictions from parents, who are well served now by second-hand clothes sales and redistribution of unclaimed lost property. Yes, it might be true parents can buy cheaper shirts and trews from Asda, but if the quality is poor then it's a false economy. It's bad enough that supermarket socks feel like cardboard after two washes, but most of us stick with that Faustian pact as offspring scatter hosiery to the four winds. Official manufacturers of school clothing, who know their wares have to meet the demands of your average school day (my younger lad minces trouser knees like Sweeney Todd ripping through a Turkish barber), will be the first to suffer via these measures. Their goods may be marginally more costly, but they're made to survive multiple washes and impromptu rugby. The really exacting classroom expenses have long been non-school logo items like shoes, rucksacks and waterproofs. (Never ever cave in to the demand for a North Face windcheater, as I once did; some canny classmate will have it out of the gates and on to Vinted within seconds.) But the biggest cost to society will surely be the fact it will become far harder to identify which school a pupil attends, if they don't have institutional branding. The main deterrent for pupils who cause trouble outside the playground is the very real possibility they will be identified and punished. Shopkeepers phone schools to help pinpoint pilferers and parents are reliant on recognisable ties and sweaters to narrow down kids creating havoc. I've long remembered a summer of havoc when a group of semi-feral kids were nicking bikes, footballs and cash from smaller children in our local park. It took six parents, two community police officers, two heads and three WhatsApp groups to rein the culprits in. A feat that would have been impossible without school logos being visible. This obsolete branding directive costs Labour nothing and benefits almost nobody. If anyone asked parents what they really wanted the answer would be simple and somewhat more expensive: a world-class education for their children.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
School uniforms are a great boon to poorer parents, Bridget Phillipson
The not-very-fancy Kent girls' school I attended aged 11-18 retained one touching affectation circa 1979: the suggested stockist for school uniform was Harrods. I had secured a bursary, due to our straightened circumstances, but Mum and I still made the pilgrimage to Knightsbridge to buy the requisite hideous brown-and-gold blazer and jumper. She purchased items so sturdily outsized that they not only saw me through my schooldays, but my little sister had to suffer them too. My mother was well-aware that uniform, worn dawn-to-dusk five days a week, saved money in the end – as it diminished any need for an extensive fashionable wardrobe. I followed her lead with my own sons, even though their primary and secondary schools in Cambridge never enforced uniform strictly. Branded school polo and sweat shirts are far cheaper than the Nike equivalents that parents get pressurised to buy otherwise. To state the obvious, it's also good for schoolchildren to feel camaraderie via the stitched logos that announce they are part of a certain institution. I'm no huge lover of pointless rules and conformity, but there's nothing for rebels to test their metal against without a few stern regulations. All of which makes it extra-baffling that Labour is currently pushing through measures that will make it harder to enforce state school uniform, by limiting the number of branded items of clothing to three (as part of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill). I don't recall any noisy demand for restrictions from parents, who are well served now by second-hand clothes sales and redistribution of unclaimed lost property. Yes, it might be true parents can buy cheaper shirts and trews from Asda, but if the quality is poor then it's a false economy. It's bad enough that supermarket socks feel like cardboard after two washes, but most of us stick with that Faustian pact as offspring scatter hosiery to the four winds. Official manufacturers of school clothing, who know their wares have to meet the demands of your average school day (my younger lad minces trouser knees like Sweeney Todd ripping through a Turkish barber), will be the first to suffer via these measures. Their goods may be marginally more costly, but they're made to survive multiple washes and impromptu rugby. The really exacting classroom expenses have long been non-school logo items like shoes, rucksacks and waterproofs. (Never ever cave in to the demand for a North Face windcheater, as I once did; some canny classmate will have it out of the gates and on to Vinted within seconds.) But the biggest cost to society will surely be the fact it will become far harder to identify which school a pupil attends, if they don't have institutional branding. The main deterrent for pupils who cause trouble outside the playground is the very real possibility they will be identified and punished. Shopkeepers phone schools to help pinpoint pilferers and parents are reliant on recognisable ties and sweaters to narrow down kids creating havoc. I've long remembered a summer of havoc when a group of semi-feral kids were nicking bikes, footballs and cash from smaller children in our local park. It took six parents, two community police officers, two heads and three WhatsApp groups to rein the culprits in. A feat that would have been impossible without school logos being visible. This obsolete branding directive costs Labour nothing and benefits almost nobody. If anyone asked parents what they really wanted the answer would be simple and somewhat more expensive: a world-class education for their children. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Los Angeles Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Dead Outlaw,' a musical about a famous corpse discovered in Long Beach, makes its way to Broadway
NEW YORK — 'Dead Outlaw,' the offbeat musical from the team behind the Tony-winning musical 'The Band's Visit,' isn't mincing words with the title. The show, which had its official opening Sunday at Broadway's Longacre Theatre, tells the story of the unsuccessful career of a real-life bandit, who achieved more fame as a corpse than as a man. Born in 1880, Elmer McCurdy, a crook whose ambition exceeded his criminal skill, died in a shoot-out with the police after another botched train robbery in 1911. But his story didn't end there. His preserved body had an eventful afterlife all its own. 'Dead Outlaw,' a critics' darling when it premiered last year at Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre, may be the only musical to make the disposition of a body an occasion for singing and dancing. David Yazbek, who conceived the idea of turning this stranger-than-fiction tale into a musical, wrote the score with Erik Della Penna. Itamar Moses, no stranger to unlikely dramatic subjects, compressed the epic saga into a compact yet labyrinthine book. Director David Cromer, whose sensibility gravitates between stark and dark, endows the staging with macabre elegance. Yet Yazbek, Moses and Cromer aren't repeating themselves. If anything, they've set themselves a steeper challenge. 'Dead Outlaw' is more unyielding as a musical subject than 'The Band's Visit,' which is to say it's less emotionally accessible. It's not easy to make a musical about a crook with a volatile temper, an unslakable thirst for booze and a record of fumbled heists. It's even harder to make one out of a dead body that went on exhibition at traveling carnivals and freak shows before ending up on display in a Long Beach fun house, where the mummified remains were accidentally discovered by a prop man while working on an episode of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' in 1976. Stephen Sondheim might have enjoyed the challenge of creating a musical from such an outlandish premise. 'Dead Outlaw' evokes at moments the droll perversity of 'Sweeney Todd,' the cold-hearted glee of 'Assassins' and the Brechtian skewering of 'Road Show' — Sondheim musicals that fly in the face of conventional musical theater wisdom. As tight as a well thought-out jam-session,'Dead Outlaw' also recalls 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,' the Michael Friedman-Alex Timbers musical that created a satiric historical rock show around a most problematic president. And the show's unabashed quirkiness had my theater companion drawing comparisons with 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch.' Andrew Durand, who plays Elmer, has just the right bad-boy frontman vibe. The hard-driving presence of bandleader and narrator Jeb Brown suffuses the production with Americana authenticity, vibrantly maintained by music director Rebekah Bruce and music supervisor Dean Sharenow. Elmer moves through the world like an open razor, as the title character of Georg Büchner's 'Woyzeck' is aptly described in that play. A précis of Elmer's early life in Maine is run through by members of the eight-person cast in the bouncy, no-nonsense manner of a graphic novel. The character's criminal path is tracked with similar briskness — a fateful series of colorful encounters and escapades as Elmer, a turbulent young man on the move, looks for his big opportunity in Kansas and Oklahoma. Destined for trouble, he finds it unfailingly wherever he goes. Elmer routinely overestimates himself. Having acquired some training with nitroglycerin in the Army, he wrongly convinces himself that he has the know-how to effectively blow up a safe. He's like a broke gambler who believes his next risky bet will bring him that long-awaited jackpot. One advantage of dying young is that he never has to confront his abject ineptitude. Arnulfo Maldonado's scenic design turns the production into a fun-house exhibit. The band is prominently arrayed on the box-like set, pounding out country-rock numbers that know a thing or two about hard living. The music can sneak up on you, especially when a character gives voice to feelings that they can't quite get a handle on. Durand can't communicate emotions that Elmer doesn't possess, but he's able to sharply convey the disquiet rumbling through the character's short life. There's a gruff lyricism to the performance that's entrancing even when Elmer is standing up in a coffin. But I wish there were more intriguing depth to the character. Elmer is a historical curiosity, to be sure. And he reveals something about the American moneymaking ethos, which holds not even a dead body sacred. But as a man he's flat and a bit of a bore. And the creators are perhaps too enthralled by the oddity of his tale. The show is an eccentric wallow through the morgue of history. It's exhilarating stylistically, less so as a critique of the dark side of the American dream. Julia Knitel has a voice that breaks up the monochromatic maleness of the score. As Maggie, Elmer's love interest for a brief moment, she returns later in the show to reflect on the stranger with the 'broken disposition' who left her life with the same defiant mystery that he entered it. I wish Knitel had more opportunity to interweave Maggie's ruminations. The unassuming beauty of her singing adds much needed tonal variety. The musical takes an amusing leap into Vegas parody when coroner Thomas Noguchi (an electric Thom Sesma) is allowed to strut his medical examiner stuff. Ani Taj's choreography, like every element of the production, makes the most of its minimalist means. Wanderingly weird, 'Dead Outlaw' retains its off-Broadway cred at the Longacre. It's a small show that creeps up on you, like a bizarre dream that's hard to shake.
