Online home and blog of Jere Keys, a 30-something queer activist, writer, aspiring lawyer and all-around decent human being living in Cincinnati and currently underemployed.
The opinions expressed on this blog are entirely those of the author and in no way reflect the views, opinions or beliefs of any organization, business or group with which I am affiliated.
Here’s a little factoid about me that I don’t believe I’ve shared on this blog before. Tennessee Williams is one of the great heroes in my life.
Ever since high school when we read The Glass Menagerie, I’ve been infatuated with the unique forms of symbolism crashing up against a movement toward method acting from this great American playwright. While others have pointed to Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill as the greatest American playwright, I never identified with any of their seminal works in quite the same way I was drawn to the collected works of Tennessee Williams.
In college, unable to direct full length productions of his scripts in our acting/directing labs, I chose instead to direct Christopher Durang’s Desire, Desire, Desire - an affectionate parody of Williams classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. I was also got to appear in a minor but awesome role in our college production of Camino Real, Williams’ under-appreciated surreal dream play.
I still have many of the movie adaptations on VHS (I should really splurge and get the DVDs).
I don’t know another person who has read his novel Moise and the World of Reason, and only one of my old drama professors had ever bothered to read his Memoirs.
I even got a pet iguana after watching The Night of the Iguana.
I wanted to be playwright like Tennessee Williams and for years I tried to mimic his style and skill with storytelling and dialog to little success.
It’s been quite a few years since I last obsessed over the author’s known and lesser-known works, but it might be time to revive the interest for a while. I just read news that they’re making a biopic movie about my hero.
Taylor Hackford is prepping to direct “Tenn,” a drama about the formative years of playwright Tennessee Williams, whose dysfunctional family life fueled some of his most acclaimed stage works.
Robin Shushan has written the screenplay.
…
Ohoven said the script was a close parallel to “Capote,” which turned the “In Cold Blood” author’s relationship with two murderers into a riveting drama.
“I had that same incredible feeling reading this script that I had on ‘Capote,’ and here again is an extremely dramatic story about how a torn and twisted life led Williams to write such great successes,” Ohoven said.
Hackford has directed movies like Ray and An Officer and a Gentleman.
Remember how I promised I’d stop loving every single movie I see this year?
I don’t get it. Mamma Mia has all the elements of a movie I would love. Hot guys, Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, people who burst into song and dance, disco music… somehow, though, it just didn’t come together for me.
Meryl Streep was great, of course, but that like saying “mom’s batch of secret-family-recipe eclairs taste yummy” - some things are just a given. Christine Baranski was born to play a liquor-drinking cougar. Julie Waters was delightful. And ABBA music is designed to stick in your head long after you’ve left the theater.
So where did it all go wrong? I think it might have been the fourth time Sophie inexplicably ran uphill to another picturesque but indistinguishable part of the island. Or maybe it was when Colin Firth put his fellow male actors to shame by deciding to buck the general trend and act despite the script calling for neither emotion nor personality in any character with testicles.
Dear Hollywood, I know that Rex Harrison’s performance in My Fair Lady is considered a classic. It’s also a classic of casting someone who can’t sing in a musical lead role and letting them act their way through it. Johnny Depp, bless his heart, still managed to make an interesting and watchable Sweeney Todd. Pierce Brosnan is no Rex Harrison. He’s not even Johnny Depp.
But you know what the real problem is? It’s a jukebox musical. Take the songlist of a particular band or artist and try to shove them into a plot they were never meant to support. ABBA only gave us about 100 songs to work with, so there will be some subplots that exist solely to make room for certain required billboard hits. Also, to pad out the story a bit, we’re going to waste lots of time watching pointless dance numbers on the beach or at the wedding because there just aren’t enough songs without them and there’s no way they can actually move the plot forward.
Mamma Mia runs 1hr, 48 minutes. The story could have been told in 48 minutes without sacrificing an iota of depth or plot. The only reason for the extra hour is to include more ABBA tunes. Normally that would be fine, I’m enough of a fan, but I can listen to ABBA Gold at home. By the time we hit the overblown adaptation of “Winner Takes it All” I was bored of the pathos, the strained conflict (I hate when the plot can be resolved by one character saying, “shut up for 1 minute and listen”), and the ooh-look-how-pretty Greek island.
I’m also going to complain that there weren’t enough scenes featuring shirtless Dominic Cooper. There were several, but not enough…
Bottom line, I wanted to like it, I really did, but I couldn’t wait to get out of the theater after about 45 minutes.
With less than a week to go until the 2008 Tony Awards, we’re at the final installment of my personal and completely subjective guide to the greatest moments in Tony history.
And there’s only one video this time… because it holds a special place in my personal history and heart. Last year in the weeks leading up to my 30th birthday, I decided that I didn’t want to reach 30 without having visited New York City at least once. I was only able to afford a one night stay tacked on the end of a work trip, so I was only able to plan one Broadway show.
That show was Spring Awakening, and it was wonderful. In fact, I enjoyed the show so much that I refused to leave early, even though it meant I barely made my flight home.
It was my first Broadway show. So watching it on the Tony broadcast (even with the awful censoring), watching it win the Best Musical award, was personally special.
Only one thing left to do, make my predictions (based entirely on my limited exposure to cast recordings and YouTube clips)…
Best Musical
Cry-Baby
In The Heights
Passing Strange
√ Xanadu
Best Book of a Musical
√ Cry-Baby
In The Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu
Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
Cry-Baby - Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
√ In The Heights - Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Little Mermaid - Music: Alan Menken; Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater
√ Passing Strange - Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald; Lyrics: Stew –I think it could go either way.
Best Revival of a Musical
Grease
√ Gypsy
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Sunday in the Park with George
Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park with George
√ Lin-Manuel Miranda, In The Heights
Stew, Passing Strange
Paulo Szot, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair – Although I’m largely unfamiliar with the other nominee’s performances.
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
√ Kerry Butler, Xanadu
Patti LuPone, Gypsy
Kelli O’Hara, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Faith Prince, A Catered Affair
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park with George – Although I think LuPone is a very strong contender.
Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Danny Burstein, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Robin De Jesús, In The Heights
√ Christopher Fitzgerald, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Boyd Gaines, Gypsy – Again, not really famiilar with the other performances.
Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical
de’Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
Laura Benanti, Gypsy
√ Andrea Martin, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Olga Merediz, In The Heights
Loretta Ables Sayre, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific – I wish Megan Mullally were nominated in this category, I thought her performances of “Please Don’t Touch Me” and “Deep Love” were the highlights of the cast album.
This video is popping all over the blogosphere today, but can you see too much nekkid Cheyenne Jackson alongside broadway showboys in dance belts? Dedicated to Rob in hopes his week gets better and my friends in Utah who are gearing up to celebrate Pride this weekend.
My roommates must hate me sometimes. I just realized that what started out as softly humming along with my music has gradually developed into full-on singing - the way I used to practice back when I was in musical theatre. Loud. And after midnight.
But, hey, after over a month of not smoking, some of my range is starting to come back to me.
We’re rapidly approaching D-day for the 2008 Tony Awards, and in my completely personal guide to the greatest moments in the Tony Awards we’re rushing toward the present day.
I watched the 2000, 2001 and 2002 awards shows. I know I did. I remember Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Gregory Hines and Bernadette Peters hosting. But after college I went through a bit of a theatre slump where I didn’t eat, sleep and breathe theatre all the time, and there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about the lineup of musicals over those years.
Apparently, most people agreed. In an attempt to revive the flagging ratings and save the show from permanent banishment to PBS, the 2003 Tony Awards pulled out all the stops with a handsome newcomer to Broadway who’d made a name for himself in a few movies you might have heard of like X-Men, Kate & Leopold and X2. The Australian hunk was currently playing gay in the Peter Allen biographical show The Boy from Oz. Could Wolverine Hugh Jackman save the Tonys?
At the end of the clip, Jackman jokes about singing “Rose’s Turn.” I would have loved to have seen that, but instead, he let the star of the 2003 revival of Gypsy do the honors. The woman I’d turn straight for (as long as she sang to me all the time and we never had to have sex)… Bernadette Peters.
But, of course, the big musical of the year was a quirky tale about a fat girl who longs to dance, segregation, and Harvey Fierstein in drag. This was my first exposure to Hairspray, and although I wouldn’t really fall in love with it until the movie version of the musical based on the original movie came out (I think I needed to see it to get it), this song is infectious no matter who you are.
Moving into 2004, this year was the battle of the sympathetic witch versus the naughty puppets. I was rooting for Wicked, but have to admit that I wasn’t completely disappointed when Avenue Q took home the best musical award. But that battle was nothing compared to the drama over which leading lady of Wicked would snag the best actress award. I feel bad for the three nominees who weren’t from Wicked, because this was a contest between Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth…
Menzel won (which I agree with), but Chenoweth had the most mainstream success when she appeared on The West Wing and landed a regular role in Pushing Daisies.
Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Sunday, June 15 when the 62nd annual Tony Awards take place at Radio City Music Hall. And check back next Monday for the final installment of the Music(al) Monday’s Countdown to the Tony Awards.
In other news, I said goodbye to Jennifer and Jacob tonight. Still holding it together. I don’t want to acknowledge my birthday this week, though. I think I’ll pretend it isn’t happening until I go home to Utah.
You know what’s nice about the Tony Awards? We know for sure that it will be over on June 15. No superdelegates to consider, no disqualified states, no 24-hour news punditry examining every angle and every conceivable racial/sexual/class breakdown of voters.
As we continue Jere’s guide to his favorite moments in the Tonys, we’ve come to 1997. There’s not much to say about this year’s show. I didn’t care much for the offerings in general and I think the most exciting part was Rosie O’Donnell’s amazing tour de force opening sequence. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it’s the best opening the show has ever had. In 14 minutes, Rosie managed to sum up everything that was relevent to late 1990s Broadway. Innovative musicals redefining the genre like Rent and Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, long-running holdovers of the 80s like Cats, jukebox musicals Smokey Joe’s Cafe, revivals with stunt casting like Grease, and the Disneyfication of Broadway Beauty and the Beast. It’s almost prophetic about the future of Broadway theatre. On top of it all, you can tell Rosie O’Donnell is living the dream - singing alongside some of the most celebrated performers of the decade and inserting herself into nearly everything playing on the Great White Way. Show me a showtune queen who wouldn’t kill to do exactly what she did.
And now, gentle reader, travel with me 12 calendar months into the future to the year 1998.
I don’t know what it was about that year, but never before or since have I cared quite so much about the results of the annual awards show. Perhaps it was because I was coming into my own as a full-fledged drama geek who had worked up the courage to sing onstage with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Perhaps because there was just a lot of good quality musical theatre that year. I don’t know. I just cared. A lot.
That’s me on the far right - I was skinny and had hair. Oh to be 19 and a virgin again. Wait, nevermind.
I’ll say this, going into the Tony’s I wanted Ragtime to win. To this day, I can’t think of a musical that has more songs that still feel like personal anthems in my life: “New Music” “Wheels of a Dream” “Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square” “He Wanted to Say” “Back to Before” “Make Them Hear You” and especially “Till We Reach That Day.” I thought the musical was pure, heart-tugging genius.
Although the show would lose the best musical statue, it did get best book (Terrence McNally), best original score (Music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens), and best featured actress in a musical (the stunning Audra McDonald). I think Marin Mazzie was robbed of Best Actress, but I liked Natasha Richardson well enough.
Speaking of Richardson, the revival of Cabaretliterally stunned people. In a work that has always vacillated back and forth between shocking audiences and playing it safe (controversial elements like bisexuality, abortion, pro-Nazi sentiment, and more have come and gone since the original stories published by Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s). In the 1998 revival (which more or less dropped the boldering Bob Fosse stuff), the emcee went from being a disconnected clown (see Joel Grey in the movie version), to an emotional and highly sexual character as created by Alan Cummings, who took home a statue for his troubles (I just hope that someday I can look at him without thinking of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion). Even in this censored-for-broadcast-television version of the show openner “Wilkommen” you can see the unique style and approach to a musical that had been revived a couple of times since it’s 1960s debut.
There were many other shows that year deserving of mention. 1776, The Scarlett Pimpernell, Side Show - not to mention plays like Art, Freak, Golden Child and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. But there’s no way around it. 1998 was dominated by one show (which is saying a lot considering everything else going on that year). It was favored by more people who bothered predicting such things, and despite my cheering for Ragtime, after seeing this performance, it became obvious why this show, helmed by Julie Taymor and backed by Disney, would take home numerous awards including Best Musical.
Ladies, Gentlemen, others, and prefer not to disclosers; I give you, The Lion King…
I mean, listen to it. Not the music - you can hear it in better quality on the CD. Listen to this crowd of presumably jaded long-time theatregeeks and professionals go crazy and applaud like children at the effects and the music. These aren’t polite end-of-number applause, there’s a light change near the end that gets applause! I mean, that alone should tell you something.
Anyway, for the purposes of my journey down memory lane vis a vis the Tony Awards, we’ve reached the end of the 90s.
“But wait, Jere, what happened to 1999?”
Excellent question, friend. In 1999, I was living in Alaska and the only television I had access to was in the employee housing rec room, which usually smelled like someone had farted and was always taken over in the evenings by dumb kitchen guys watching the sports through poor reception. Instead of watching the Tonys that year, I served old people salmon and ran the light board for the worst dinner theatre musical ever.
Next week, though, we’ll jump ahead into the 21st century and marvel at the Broadway of the future, where a gay adamantium-clawed mutant lights of the stage and everyone asks “hey, wasn’t that a movie before it was a musical?”
With only 4 weeks until the Tony Awards (the night before my LSAT - meaning I’ll be in Utah), I thought I’d devote the next couple Music Monday blogs to some of my favorite moments from the Tony Awards. It’s totally subjective, of course, and pretty much limited to the last 13 years, but if you want a survey of great moments at the Tonys from the 60s, 70s and 80s, I suggest you support your local PBS station.
To begin, we’re going to travel all the way back to 1995, which is the first time I remember watching the Tony Awards. If I’d watched them before, I don’t recall, but in the weeks right after my graduation from high school, I remember having a rare Sunday night off from a rather intense summer job schedule (saving money for college). I think I only half-heartedly watched the broadcast. One number stood out, though…
What can I say, I was young, not yet aware that I would study theater in college, and infatuated with Andrew Lloyd Webber. I would learn. Even having outgrown the Lloyd Webber spell, I still have to admit that Glenn Close owns this song.
In 1996, I’d been bitten by the theatre bug. After appearing in The Normal Heart and helping out in a few backstage roles, I was volunteering for a summer production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, coming out of the closet, starting to date a boy for the first time, and generally discovering myself. So I recall fairly vividly the 1996 Tony Awards and the first Tony Awards party I was ever invited to.
But, of course, in 1996, there was really only one show worth mentioning*. Redefining and reinventing not just Broadway, but fashion and politics, and following the untimely death of the show’s creator, this show enjoyed enormous buzz - far beyond that of most Broadway shows. 1996 was the year every bisexual, trisexual, homo sapien bohemian said “Act Up, Fight AIDS!” and “We’re not gonna pay…” Rent.
* There were other shows worth mentioning - Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, several notable revivals, and the scandal when Julie Andrews declined her Tony nomination for Victor/Victoria because the rest of the cast was overlooked. But in the long run, only Rent has had such lasting impact on me personally or the Great White Way.
Next week… the year I was most emotionally invested in the Tony’s.
Tony Award nominations are out. I wish I could make predictions, but I’m only familiar with a few of the shows. I’ve listened to Xanadu, parts of In The Heights, parts of The Little Mermaid, and Young Frankenstein. I guess I’d better brush up on the other nominees and/or just see what catches my eye during the actual show.
Although I already adore Xanadu (which AfterElton.com called “gayness on skates”) and hope it does well. I’m disappointed Cheyenne Jackson isn’t up for any awards, but I guess they don’t make those decisions entirely based on who I have a crush on.
Ever since high school when we read The Glass Menagerie, I’ve been infatuated with the unique forms of symbolism crashing up against a movement toward method acting from this great American playwright. While others have pointed to Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill as the greatest American playwright, I never identified with any of their seminal works in quite the same way I was drawn to the collected works of Tennessee Williams.
