Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: Good Vibrations
Next story: A Legacy of Jewish Composers

Stagefright

The fabulous Bernadette Peters (pictured above) is back on Broadway starring in the revival of Sondheim’s Follies playing Sally Durant (the show has just been extended through January 22). No stranger to Sondheim, Peters was in last season’s revival of A Little Night Music. She was also in the original productions of Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. Follies premiered in 1971 and was revived in 2001 with Judith Ivey playing the part of Sally.

Single tickets go on sale this week for the Toronto production of War Horse, which will officially open on February 28 at the Princess of Wales Theatre. Winner of last year’s Tony Award for Best Play, the show is still running at Lincoln Center and has already been made into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. A national tour will kick off in June in Los Angeles.

Matt LaChiusa’s new play Fred’s Requiem replaces the previously announced world premiere of composer Michael John LaChiusa’s dark comedy Sukie and Sue: Their Story in the Amerivan Repertory Theater of WNY lineup. The comedy will now have its world premiere at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood which has staged several of Michael John’s musicals in the past. The prolific composer is very busy these days: His new musical Queen of the Mist (based on the story of Anna Edson Taylor, the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel) opens in New York later in the month. Another new musical, Los Otros, commissioned by Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, will open there in May. And, a revised version of Giant (based on Edna Ferber’s epic novel), which premiered in Virginia in 2009, will be presented at the Dallas Theater Center in January (in a co-production with New York’s Public Theater).

After the current production of Martin Sherman’s Bent, BUA will continue its 20th-anniversary season with Charles Busch’s The Divine Sister, which had a very extended run last season off-Broadway. Directed by Chris Kelly, the production opens November 11 and will star Jimmy Janowski (as Mother Superior), Kerrykate Abel, Beth Donohue, Michael Seitz, and Caitlin Coleman (nee Bauemler).

Speaking of Coleman, her cousin Carolyn Bauemler, who has been acting in New York on a regular basis for several years (she was in the original Chronicles of Beebo Brinker), will return to Buffalo to star opposite Vincent O’Neill in the upcoming Irish Classical Theatre production of The Turn of the Screw. Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the classic gothic thriller by Henry James, the production will open on October 20. Bauemler just took part in New York Acting Company’s staged reading of Trouble in Paradise.

LOL, Loraine Out Loud!, a one-woman comedy and song show starring Loraine O’Donnell, will be presented at the Historic Palace Theatre in Lockport, October 22 & 23.

Up next for Musicalfare, the musical A Class Act, featuring songs by Edward Kleban, who was one of the lyricists for A Chorus Line. Directed by Randall Kramer, the production will star Louis Colaiacovo, Bobby Cooke, Doug Crane, Mary Coppola Gjurich, Adrienne Lewis, Marc Sacco, Nancy Sam, and Lisa Vitrano. It opens November 2. The company’s production of One More for My Baby, which played last July, starring John Fredo and Don Gervasi, will return to the stage December 14-18. Prior to that, the show has been announced for a mounting at one of the spaces of the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre in Rochester in October.

Theatre of Youth artistic director Meg Quinn and great Buffalo actress Anne Gayley joined Mark Poloncarz at an event for members of the arts and cultural community supporting his candidacy for Erie County executive.