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Arts & Culture
June 10, 2007 ·
Gerard Alessandrini is the creator of Forbidden Broadway, a show that spoofs hit Broadway shows. Alessandrini sees every show that opens, to mine its comic potential out of and create parodies. He offers his predictions for Sunday night's Tony Awards.
The late actor and director had many successes. But many will recall the TV game shows.
Brian McConnachie has been asking listeners to describe their impressions of famous voices.
Pop Culture
May 24, 2007 ·
High School Musical began as a modest made-for-TV movie about high schoolers producing their own musical. Now it's become a multimedia phenomenon. By this fall, more than 2,000 schools across the country will have staged the musical.
Remembrances
May 22, 2007 ·
Today marks the centennial of the birth of the 20th century's greatest classical actor. Laurence Olivier was also a 1940s matinee idol who married Scarlett O'Hara. NPR's Bob Mondello offers an appreciation.
May 15, 2007 ·
This year's Tony Award nominations have been announced. The musical Spring Awakening received 11 nominations making it the front-runner. It joins Curtains, Grey Gardens, and Mary Poppins for best musical.
April 29, 2007 ·
The complicated relationship between Kurt Weill, the composer of the standard "Mack the Knife," and his wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, is the subject of LoveMusik, which opens on Broadway this week.
April 29, 2007 ·
A new opera debuting this weekend in Lowell, Mass., features a blend of traditional Cambodian music, Western classical, and rock. The love story, sung in English and Khmer, unfolds in the horrific aftermath of Pol Pot's genocidal regime.
Interviews
April 28, 2007 ·
The son of a former priest and a one-time nun, John Fugelsang says he wasn't sure if he should have been born. He's turned funny stories from his life into a one-man show, All the Wrong Reasons. It's at the New York Theater Workshop until May 6.
Jazz
April 28, 2007 ·
Saxophonist Sonny Rollins has outlasted many of the jazz greats he played with. At age 76, he's now jazz's elder statesman, crossing another milestone in his 65-year career with a new CD, Sonny, Please, a new record label and a Web site.
April 27, 2007 ·
The Brig, a play about Marines abusing Marines in prison, is now being performed in New York for first time since 1963. The Kenneth H. Brown play is running at The Living Theatre.
NPR's 'World of Opera'
April 27, 2007 ·
The title character in Puccini's Manon Lescaut is a young woman torn between true love and a life of luxury. The production comes from the Washington National Opera, with stars Veronica Villarroel and Franco Farina, and conductor Placido Domingo.
People & Places
April 26, 2007 ·
Traversing the New York City subway system can be scary enough. But now the public has been invited to call a special phone number inside the Canal Street subway station to be guided through a murder mystery. A theater group sponsors this piece of "public art."
April 21, 2007 ·
Playwright David Rabe is renowned on Broadway having created powerful plays, including a Tony Award winner But it has been more than five years since one of Rabe's plays has opened in New York.
Remembrances
April 21, 2007 ·
Roscoe Lee Brown, the award-winning film, stage and TV actor, died from cancer last week in Los Angeles after more than 40 years as an entertainer.