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Nancye Hayes
Nancye Lee Bertles AM ( Hayes; born January 1943), billed under her maiden name as Nancye Hayes, is an Australian actress, dancer, singer and choreographer/director and narrator. She has been a leading figure in Australian musical theatre since the 1960s. Although her roles have been almost exclusively in theatre, she has briefly worked in television as a character actress, filling in for Judy Nunn on the soap opera ''Home and Away''. Early life and education Nancye Hayes was born in January 1943. She grew up in the Sydney suburb of Manly, an only child. At the age of seven, she had an operation to remove a growth in her hip joint, and the recovery included strapping her leg with irons. After her father died in a car crash when Hayes was eleven, her mother became a barmaid at the old Pacific Hotel in Manly. Nancye attended Stella Maris College, Manly, a Catholic school conducted by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. She began dancing lessons at age nine at Hazel and Vio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Todd McKenney
Todd McKenney (born 31 May 1965) is an Australian dancer, theatre performer and TV personality. He got his big break on the Chanel 7 Series, Simon’s Battered Sav. He is best known as a judge on the Australian television talent show ''Dancing with the Stars''. As a theatre performer, he has appeared in numerous productions, including singer Peter Allen in the theatre production '' The Boy from Oz''. Early life McKenney grew up in Perth, where his father was a jail warden and his mother a dance teacher. They separated when he was 9. He began his entertainment career on a children's television show as Percy Penguin. McKenney trained in jazz, tap, acrobatics and ballroom dancing. He represented Australia in ballroom and Latin American dancing, and won many international awards. Career McKenney has performed on stage since 1983 in productions including '' 42nd Street'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'', ''Camelot'', '' La Cage aux Folles'', ''Singin' in the Rain'', and '' Priscil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Boys From Syracuse
''The Boys from Syracuse'' is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, based on William Shakespeare's play '' The Comedy of Errors'', as adapted by librettist George Abbott. The score includes swing and other contemporary rhythms of the 1930s. The show was the first musical based on a Shakespeare play. ''The Comedy of Errors'' was itself loosely based on a Roman play, ''The Menaechmi, or the Twin Brothers'', by Plautus. The show premiered on Broadway in 1938 and Off-Broadway in 1963, with later productions including a West End run in 1963 and in a Broadway revival in 2002. A film adaptation was released in 1940. Well-known songs from the score include " Falling in Love with Love", " This Can't Be Love" and " Sing for Your Supper". Production history Abbott directed and George Balanchine choreographed the original production, which opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theater on November 23, 1938, after tryouts in New Haven, Connecticut and Boston ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
42nd Street (musical)
''42nd Street'' is a 1980 stage musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer and music by Harry Warren. The 1980 Broadway production won the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Choreography and it became a long-running hit. The show was also produced in London in 1984 (winning the Olivier Award for Best Musical) and its 2001 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival. Based on the 1932 novel by Bradford Ropes and the subsequent 1933 Hollywood film adaptation, this backstage musical follows the rehearsal process of a Broadway show staged during the height of the Great Depression. The show is a jukebox musical of sorts, in that, in addition to songs from the 1933 film ''42nd Street'', it includes songs that Dubin and Warren wrote for many other films at around the same time, including ''Gold Diggers of 1933'', '' Roman Scandals'', '' Dames'', ''Gold Diggers of 1935'', '' Go into Your Dance,'' '' Gold Diggers of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nine (musical)
''Nine'' is a musical initiated by and with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Arthur Kopit. Based on the film '' 8½,'' it tells the story of film director Guido Contini, who is dreading his imminent 40th birthday and facing a midlife crisis, which is blocking his creative impulses and entangling him in a web of romantic difficulties in early-1960s Venice. Conceived and written and composed by Yeston as a class project in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in 1973, it was later adapted with a book by Mario Fratti, and then with another book by Arthur Kopit. The original Broadway production opened in 1982 and ran for 729 performances, starring Raul Julia. The musical won five Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and has enjoyed a number of revivals. A film adaptation was released in 2009. Plot Guido Contini, a famous Italian film director, has turned forty and faces double crises: he has to shoot a film for which he can't write the script, and hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
''Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'' (often referred to simply as ''Sweeney Todd'') is a 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1970 play ''Sweeney Todd'' by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled ''The String of Pearls''. ''Sweeney Todd'' opened on Broadway in 1979 and in the West End in 1980. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical and Olivier Award for Best New Musical. It has been revived in many productions and inspired a film adaptation. The original logo for the musical is a modified version of an advertising image from the 19th century, with the sign replaced by a straight razor. There is also a woman wearing a blood-stained dress and holding a rolling pin next to the man. Background The character Sweeney Todd originated in serialized Victorian popular fiction, known as penny dreadfuls. A story called ''The String of Pearls'' was pub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guys And Dolls
''Guys and Dolls'' is a musical theater, musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" (1933) and "Blood Pressure", which are two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, such as "Pick the Winner". The show premiered on Broadway theatre, Broadway on November 24, 1950, where it ran for 1,200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical has had several Broadway and London revivals, as well as a Guys and Dolls (film), 1955 film adaptation starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, and Vivian Blaine, who reprised her role of Adelaide from Broadway. ''Guys and Dolls'' is considered one of the greatest Broadway musicals. In 1998, Vivian Blaine, Sam Levene, Robert Alda and Isabel Bigley, along with the original Broadway cast of the 1950 Decca Records, Decca cast album, were inducted into the Grammy Hall o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago (musical)
''Chicago'' is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the Jazz Age, the musical is based on a Chicago (play), 1926 play of the same title by Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal". The world premiere of the musical was a Broadway tryout from April 8, 1975, to May 3, 1975, at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia. The original Broadway theatre, Broadway production opened on June 3, 1975 at the 46th Street Theatre and ran for 936 performances, until August 27, 1977. Fosse directed and choreographed the original production, and his style is strongly identified with the show. It debuted in the West End theatre, West End in 1979, where it ran for 600 performances. ''Chicago'' was revived on Broadway in 1996, and a year later in the West End. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roxie Hart
Roxanne "Roxie" Hart is a fictional character. She is the main character of the 1926 play ''Chicago'' and its various remakes and derivatives. Development The playwright, reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, was inspired by the trials, both of which ended in acquittals, of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner (for separate crimes), which she covered for the ''Chicago Tribune''. Annan's story served as the basis for the play: she had killed her paramour Harry Kalstedt and was able to convince her auto mechanic husband Albert to pay for her successful defense, only to dump him the day after the trial. For the play, Annan was fictionalized as Roxie Hart, Kalstedt became Fred Casely, and Albert became Amos Hart. Some of the details of Gaertner's crime, including her past as a vaudeville singer (Annan was a bookkeeper) and blaming of her misdeed on getting drunk, were also applied to the Roxie character. The 1975 musical adaptation bases Hart's mannerisms on Helen Morgan. Character backgrou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annie (musical)
''Annie'' is a musical with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and a book by Thomas Meehan. It is based on the 1924 comic strip ''Little Orphan Annie'' by Harold Gray (which in turn was inspired from the poem '' Little Orphant Annie'' by James Whitcomb Riley). The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years, setting a record for the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre). It spawned numerous productions in many countries, as well as national tours, and won seven Tony Awards, including for Best Musical. The musical's songs " Tomorrow" and " It's the Hard Knock Life" are among its most popular musical numbers. Background Martin Charnin first approached Thomas Meehan to write the book of a musical about ''Little Orphan Annie'', in 1972. Meehan researched, by rereading prints of the comic strip, but he was unable to find any satisfactory material for a musical, other than the characters of Annie, Oliver Warbucks, and Sandy, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pippin (musical)
''Pippin'' is a 1972 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Roger O. Hirson. Bob Fosse, who directed the original Broadway production, also contributed to the libretto. The musical uses the premise of a mysterious performance troupe, led by the Leading Player, to tell the story of Pippin, a young prince on his search for meaning and significance. The fourth wall is broken numerous times during most traditional productions. The protagonist, Pippin, and his father, Charlemagne, are characters derived from two historical figures of the early Middle Ages, though the plot is fictional and presents no historical accuracy regarding either. The show was partially financed by Motown Records. As of January 2024, the original run of ''Pippin'' is the 37th longest-running Broadway show. Ben Vereen and Patina Miller won Tony Awards for their portrayals of the Leading Player in the original Broadway production and the 2013 revival, respectively, making them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sweet Charity
''Sweet Charity'' is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and book by Neil Simon, based on the screenplay for the 1957 Italian film '' Nights of Cabiria''. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon as a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall, alongside John McMartin. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966, where it was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Choreography. The production also ran in the West End and has run several revivals and international productions. It was adapted for the screen in 1969, directed and choreographed by Fosse in his feature-film directorial debut. Shirley MacLaine starred as the title character, and McMartin reprised his Broadway role as Oscar Lindquist. Plot Act I The young woman Charity Hope Valentine is a taxi dancer at a dance hall called the Fandango Ballroom in New York City. With a shoulder bag and a heart tattooed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Me (musical)
''Little Me'' is a musical written by Neil Simon, with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. The original 1962 Broadway production featured Sid Caesar in multiple roles with multiple stage accents, playing all of the heroine's husbands and lovers. One of the better-known songs from the musical is " I've Got Your Number". Background The musical ''Little Me'' is based on the novel by Patrick Dennis titled '' Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television/Belle Poitrine'', an illustrated autobiography of an imaginary diva (published in 1961). In his memoir ''Rewrites: A Memoir,'' Neil Simon wrote that aside from tailoring the musical's book to the talents of Sid Caesar, the second attraction of the project was a chance to work with choreographer Bob Fosse. "With the exception of Jerome Robbins, for my money Fosse was the best choreographer who ever worked in the theater." (Simon and Caesar had worked together on the television variety p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
