Tag Archives: Piers Morgan

Playbill 7 Diva Performances Not to Miss in 2017 BY ANDREW GANS DEC 30, 2016 If the first half of the 2016-2017 Broadway musical season focused the spotlight more on the men—Josh Groban’s soaring vocals in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812; Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells’ heartfelt performances as Marvin and Whizzer in the revival of Falsettos;and the superbly gifted Ben Platt, whose performance in the title role of Dear Evan Hansen may have raised the bar even higher for male musical theatre actors—it is the women who seem poised to steal the limelight in the second half. In fact, following memorable fall performances by Rachel Bay Jones, Stephanie J. Block, and Denée Benton, there are seven major talents heading to The Great White Way in the New Year who, simply, should not be missed. These artists, arranged in chronological order by their show’s first preview dates, follow: =&0=&

=&1=& I spent a good deal of the mid-to-late ’90s (as well as several dates in the current century) catching the wonderful women who played deluded silent-screen star Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of the classic Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard. The many multi-talented actors who I feel privileged to have caught in the demanding role include Patti LuPone, Glenn Close, Betty Buckley, Elaine Paige, Karen Mason, Petula Clark, Florence Lacey, and Loni Ackerman. Although Close’s vocals couldn’t match the stellar work of many of the other musical Normas, there was a dramatic intensity to her performance that was riveting; in fact, it was hard to take one’s eyes off her any time she was onstage in the original production. More than 20 years after that Tony-winning performance, Close returned to the role on the other side of the Atlantic, earning a 2016 Evening Standard Award for her West End debut in the English National Opera production. That staging, including the transfers of Michael Xavier as Joe Gillis, Siobhan Dillon as Betty Schaefer, and Fred Johanson as Max von Mayerling, will now play a 16-week limited engagement on Broadway, and this Sunset fan can’t wait to enter Norma’s Hollywood mansion one more time. Let’s hope this semi-staged production, which will feature a 40-piece orchestra, will extend to allow many other greats the chance to don Norma’s turban.

=&2=& =&3=& When Miss Saigon opened on Broadway in 1991, following its debut in the West End, the musical made an international star out of Filipino actor Lea Salonga, who created the role of the ill-fated Kim, the young Vietnamese woman who desperately tries to secure a better life for her son, Tam, amidst the tragedies of war. Salonga’s beautiful voice and impassioned performance earned her Olivier and Tony Awards, subsequent roles in several animated Disney films, loyal fans all around the world, and, thankfully, several returns to Broadway. Now, 25 years later, another young actor, Eva Noblezada, has received a similar reception in the recent 2014 London revival of Saigon, which was preserved on film and recently screened in cinemas. I purposely avoided the screening, wanting to experience Noblezada’s performance in person when the Saigon revival transfers to Broadway later this season. The musical, for this writer, has always been the more moving of the two Alan Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg hits, and I’m eager to catch the Broadway debut of North Carolinian Noblezada, who was discovered three years ago by the Miss Saigon casting team at the National High School Musical Theater Awards. =&4=& =&5=&

It’s quite rare when a musical offers sizable roles to two of Broadway’s leading musical theatre stars, but that is exactly the case in War Paint, the new musical from the Grey Gardens team that played a sold-out, record-setting run this past summer at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The women—Patti LuPone (Evita, Gypsy) and Christine Ebersole (42nd Street, Grey Gardens) as Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, respectively—are both two-time Tony winners, and their combined theatrical powers promise one of the more exciting nights on Broadway this spring. LuPone and Ebersole are two stellar actors who also happen to boast two of the great voices that the musical theatre has produced: LuPone dazzles with her rich, soaring, and rangy alto, while Ebersole impresses with an equally rangy soprano that can be as delicate as it is powerful. Both, in fact, remain vocally, comedically, and dramatically in full command decades after their respective award-winning careers began. =&6=& =&7=&

In her two major New York theatrical outings to date—the Off-Broadway debut of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and the Public Theater and Broadway premieres of Hamilton—Phillipa Soo was equally magnificent, charming audiences with her beautiful soprano as Natasha and creating the most moving moments of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda musical as Eliza, wife of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. The young singing actor, it should be noted, earned her first Tony nomination for her work in the latter, and now she will return to Broadway in the title role of the new musical Amélie, based on the Academy Award-winning 2001 French film of the same name. The lonely French waitress who decides to act as a secret wish-fulfiller to the people who live around her seems a perfect match for Soo, who originated the role of Amélie in workshop productions of the musical and has an ethereal quality all her own.

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