By Laura L. Griffin 8/16/12 8:30am

the eight-day week

bryantpark

To Do Thursday: Radio Play

Sometimes you can’t make it to the Great White Way to take in a show—for lack of interest, funds or obstreperous relatives in town demanding entertainment. (Why can’t we just sit in a dark room not speaking?) Lucky for you, sponsor 106.7 Lite FM is offering an omnibus of the musicals currently on Broadway, to catch you up on all the performances you’ve neglected. Stars from Nice Work If You Can Get It, Bring It On: The Musical, Rock of Ages, the forthcoming A Christmas Story (fingers crossed for an appearance of the leg-lamp kickline!) and others will offer you musical highlights from their shows today at lunchtime, which is normally when your host for the afternoon, morning drive-time DJ Bob Bronson, starts to put on his pajamas. This is the last show in the summertime Broadway in Bryant Park series, and thus likely the final time you’ll see the plush puppets, courtesy of Avenue Q, in the light of day. (Those bootleg Elmos in Times Square certainly don’t count.) Read More

By Margaret Nickens 7/10/12 11:22am

memorials

TKTKTKTKTK.

Broadway’s Best Celebrate the Late Bradshaw Smith, Executive Producer of the Influential Broadway Beat

Speaking at yesterday’s memorial for the award-winning cabaret singer, producer and videographer Bradshaw Smith, actor and ventriloquist Todd Stockman announced to the somber crowd, “I have a surprise for you.” Bending down, he pulled a fire-haired puppet from a small black bag, a puppet he hasn’t performed with for 15 years. “Are Bradshaw and John in heaven?” the puppet asked Mr. Stockman, referring to Mr. Smith’s partner John Scoullar, who passed in March 2011. “Because I can smell the marijuana all the way down here.”

Mr. Smith, who died in January from a sudden stroke, began his career as a cabaret artist, winning the 1987 MAC Award for Best Male Vocalist and the 1985 Backstage Bistro Award. In 1885, Mr. Smith went behind the camera and began the cable television show, Cabaret Beat, which eventually morphed into Broadway Beat. The show featured over 1,000 Broadway and cabaret performances, interviews with artists, opening and award ceremonies and other theatre events. Read More

By Margaret Nickens 6/12/12 6:03pm

broadway benefit

Roosevelt Credit, Rita Harvey, Brigid Brady and Natalie Toro perform "Seasons of Love" from Rent with students from the Computer School.

Broadway Notables Perform with Kids in UWS Middle School Auditorium, Warm Fuzzy Feeling Ensues

“I think they heard him in New Jersey,” joked Stacia Teele, the emcee at Monday’s fifth annual “Night of Stars.” Broadway actor Roosevelt Credit’s impossibly loud voice had just reverberating through the halls of the Upper West Side’s Computer School, a small public school with a curricular focus on technology, during a star-studded musical event to benefit their music programs. Read More

By Lindsey Cherner 6/06/12 12:00pm

Broadway

Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli and Tony Danza. (Jonathon Ziegler/PatrickMcMullan.com)

Liza Minnelli “Suprised” to Receive Lifetime Achievement (from Mikhail Baryshnikov and Tony Danza!) at Astaire Awards

The Observer stood in front of a less-than-generous red carpet on Monday—more of a red doormat, really—flanked by photographers and awaiting the arrival of fashionably late Broadway dancers, choreographers and filmmakers.

We were at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts for the 30th annual Fred and Adele Astaire Awards, which recognizes outstanding achievement in dance on Broadway and film each season—the only award show of its kind, so they advertise. Read More