Summertime Broadway openings aren't entirely unknown; let's not forget Hairspray and Avenue Q. This year, Burn the Floor is set to bow on August 2. But such events are still rare. So, other than listening to cast albums and re-seeing favorite shows that opened during the previous season, what is a musical theater enthusiast to do until fall?
Well, for starters, he or she can attend the offerings of the Summer Broadway Festival at The Town Hall, one of this city's best performance venues. Unless you were lucky enough to be at the hall this past Monday, July 13, you've already missed the first of the festival's three 2009 presentations: "Broadway Winners!," an all-star concert of music from all-time classics (Cabaret, She Loves Me, Funny Girl, etc.) and terrific scores of more recent vintage (e.g., Next to Normal).
Among the show's highlights were Anika Noni Rose's vocally and dramatically stunning rendition of "Home" from The Wiz and Martin Vidnovic's powerful take on "I Am What I Am" from La Cage aux Folles. Other standouts were Alex Gemignani in the title song from She Loves Me, Donna Lynn Champlin in "Gooch's Song" from Mame, and James Barbour reprising his tour-de-force performance of "Molasses to Rum" from the recent Paper Mill Playhouse production of 1776.
If you missed Broadway Winners!, don't despair: This coming Monday, July 20, Town Hall will give us a Broadway Rising Stars concert featuring the brightest talent selected from some of the nation's finest musical theater schools -- including AMDA, CAP 21, Juilliard, CCM, Carnegie Mellon, NYU Steinhardt and Tisch Schools, Marymount, and The New School -- directed by Emily Skinner and Scott Coulter.
The following Monday, the 27th, such crooning hoofers as Joe Komara, Erica Mansfield, Jeffrey Schecter, and Ryan Worsing will strut their stuff as the festival concludes with an "All Singin', All Dancin'" program directed by Scott Siegel and Josh Prince, choreographed by Prince.
Make no mistake, Town Hall is home to lots of musical theater-related shows not just in summer but throughout the year, all of them put together and hosted by the intrepid Scott Siegel. Be sure to mark your calendar for November 16, when Siegel will present the next edition of "Broadway Unplugged," a concert in which great theater songs are performed by Broadway notables with no amplification whatsoever. Past participants have included Michael Cerveris, Sutton Foster, Cheyenne Jackson, Marc Kudisch, Beth Leavel, and Alice Ripley. This year's lineup has not yet been announced, but you can bet the farm that it will be stellar. See you there!
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(pictured: Anika Noni Rose, Scott Siegel)
