Wednesday, September 28, 2011
SYNCHRONICITY DESK: Because it's a confluence of things that we love and because it's much been discussed in portions of the ALOTT5MA Twittersphere this evening, we feel compelled to note that 5-time Tony nominee and 2-time winner Sutton Foster has signed to play the lead in a new show from Gilmore Girls creator/mastermind Amy Sherman-Palladino. Despite consistently excellent stage work, Foster's done very little TV or film work (her most prominent role was as the girl who was so hot she was making Bret sexist on Flight of the Conchords), but her brassy style seems an interesting fit with Sherman-Palladino's trademark rapid-fire dialogue. The show is titled Bunheads (not to be confused with Josh Charles' girlfriend's debut novel of the same name), and Foster will play "a Las Vegas showgirl who impulsively marries a man and moves to his sleepy coastal town, taking a role at her mother-in-law's dance school."
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Speaking of Tony nominees, I've finally been listening this week to the cast album for The Last Five Years, from Parade writer Jason Robert Brown and starring Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz (this year's best musical actor winner). It's really, really really good with only one not-so-great song.
ReplyDeleteI always liked the dance school instructor on Gilmore Girls, so this bodes well.
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love that score, and would very much like to see a production one day. The conceit is so simple, so clever, and works great on disc, but I wonder how it plays as theater. I've recently been falling in love with Parade again too, and finally listened to the London cast recording courtesy of Spotify. When it comes to "new" musical theater composers, as much as I love Adam Guettel (who has managed what? 3 scores in 15 years?), Brown might be my favorite.
ReplyDeleteThe dance school in our town has, since I was a kid, been Miss Patti's school of dance (my kids go there now, and are taught by a 75-year old Miss Patti), so that corner of Stars Hollow always made me smile.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair Guettel dumped several years of work into "Princess Bride: The Musical," only to have it fall apart when Goldman demanded a biggest share of the pie.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that this TV show was designed for the demographic of me.
ReplyDeleteI just found this recently because of Pandora (comes up frequently on a Next to Normal playlist) and I bought the cd, which is pretty rare for me. The song where they meet in the middle and their time streams overlap just breaks my heart every single time I listen to it.
ReplyDeleteMatt - That still breaks my heart every time I hear about it. I thought that was a great match of composer and material. I had heard the "creative differences" angle, not the "Goldman was greedy" angle, which, as much as I love his writing, I can kind of believe.
ReplyDeleteAnd me.
ReplyDeleteAnd me. I am just pre-ordering Bunheads the novel as well.
ReplyDeleteOf course, to be fair, a new show from Amy Sherman-Palladino about a high-strung book editor played by Parker Posey and her formerly estranged sister played by Lauren Ambrose sounded pretty great a few years back, but Jezebel James was a mess.
ReplyDeleteI saw a nice production of it at a small theatre in Philadelphia maybe 8 years ago. It would be lost in a big theatre, but in a cozy space, it works very well.
ReplyDeleteAhem, Josh Charles's girlfriend, and my cousin, Sophie Flack. And I am not just saying the book is awesome because we are related ( and she, is also awesome), but it actually IS exceptionally well done.
ReplyDelete