Thursday, November 29, 2018

We're going to PROM!

 The Prom opened on Broadway just this month (November, 2018),
 with music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics Chad Beguelin,
(this team wrote Elf The Musical, BTW)
and a book by Beguelin and Bob Martin
(Bob Martin? Drowsy Chaperone? You guessed it!).
It stars Brooks Ashmanskas (above) as Barry,
Christopher Seiber (below right) as Trent,
and Beth Leavel (below center) as Dee Dee.
Out-of-work, middle-aged actors look to 
"celebrity activism" to jump start their fading careers,
and find a midwest high school that's banned a prom
due to a certain 17-year-old lesbian.

 Jesse Green of the NYTimes:
"As in many of the greatest Golden Age musicals, 
they latch onto a subject of topical importance, 
using its gravity to anchor their satire and their satire to leaven its earnestness. In full “Hairspray” mode, they mostly succeed."

 Here's Beth from The Drowsy Chaperone,
with a favorite beverage,
and with her co-star in that show,
Sutton Foster.


 Two wonderful shows with Brooks:
Above as Brother Jeremiah in Something Rotten!
with Kate Reinders.
And below in Bullets Over Broadway,
with Helene Yorke.


 Bullets' curtain call,
with a much padded Brooks as Warner Purcell.

Brooks (age 49) hails from Salem, Oregon,
graduated from Bennington College,
and his first Off-Broadway success was in
Jason Robert Brown's Songs For A New World...
and Beth (63) is from Raleigh, North Carolina,
with a Broadway debut in 42nd Street (1985).
Since then, Crazy For You, Young Frankenstein,
Bandstand...and so many more!

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