Latest news with #OldFriends
New York Post
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Bringing down the dog house: cute pets gather with stars at Shubert Alley for Broadway Barks adoption event
The star-studded 27th annual Broadway Barks dog and cat adoption event went off without a hitch Saturday at Shubert Alley, the heart of the Great White Way. Broadway legend Bernadette Peters co-hosted the event with Beth Leavel, who just wrapped up an extended run in Stephen Sondheim's 'Old Friends.' 6 Puppies found in Queens got a lot of love from Broadway Barks attendees. Michael Nagle 6 A woman pets four-month old Terrier mix puppies rescued from Georgia. Michael Nagle 6 Doggie selfies were also taken during Saturday's eveny. Michael Nagle The presenters for this year's event included three-time Tony Award winning actor Andy Karl, 'Mary Poppins' star Gavin Lee, 'Hell's Kitchen' lead Jessica Vosk, and South African-born country singer and actor Orville Peck Erika Henningsen from 'Mean Girls,' Lesli Margherita from 'Gypsy,' Erich Bergen from 'Jersey Boys,' and Michelle Williams from Destiny's Child and 'Death Becomes Her' also served as presenters. 6 Broadway Cares Beth Leavel, left, and Bernadette Peters pose with rescue pups. Michael Nagle 6 This little lab mix was sent home with new owners. Michael Nagle 6 There was a great turnout for the event. Michael Nagle The event brings animal shelters and rescues from across New York into one spot, in hopes of finding forever homes for hundreds of loving pets. The event is produced by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and helps promote the importance of spaying and neutering throughout the Five Boroughs.
Arab Times
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab Times
Lea Salonga to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
MANILA, Philippines, July 3: Broadway and West End icon Lea Salonga is set to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has announced, though the official date has yet to be revealed. Salonga, most recently seen on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, is being recognized for her extraordinary career spanning stage and screen. Once dubbed the 'Shirley Temple of the Philippines' during her early days as a child star in Manila, Salonga rose to international fame with her groundbreaking performance as Kim in the original London production of Miss Saigon, the follow-up to Les Misérables by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Her portrayal earned her an Olivier Award in London and a Tony Award when she reprised the role on Broadway.
Forbes
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Stephen Sondheim's ‘Old Friends:' Don't Miss This Broadway Experience
Bernadette Peters on the opening night of "Old Friends" at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre The run of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, the posthumous musical love letter to Stephen Sondheim, has been extended on Broadway until Sunday, June 29th, 2025. The show offers musical theatre enthusiasts living near or visiting New York City the rare opportunity to experience the humor, joy and pathos of more than three dozen songs from Sondheim's most cherished musicals in one of Broadway's most intimate theaters. The program includes tunes from such Sondheim classics as Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Follies, and Into the Woods. Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga at a press event for "Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends" Old Friends was first conceived as a one-night concert in London's West End, but the loyal legions of Sondheim fans wanted more. The sold-out production was live-screened from the Gielgud Theatre in London and then broadcast on the BBC before being reprised on stage for 16 weeks. A North American premiere in Los Angeles preceded its arrival on the Great White Way. On Broadway, the show stars Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, who were part of the West End cast, joined by an array of talented performers from the London, Los Angeles, and New York productions. The company of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends Old Friends was brought to the stage by Cameron Mackintosh, a longtime friend and collaborator of Sondheim. The two developed the idea during the COVID lockdown, but Sondheim died in November 2021 at age 91 before it was realized. Bernadette Peters has often been called Sondheim's muse; she was a friend who worked closely with Sondheim and inspired him. He frequently praised the three-time Tony Award winner for her unique ability to express the depth of his music and lyrics in the roles she played: Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park with George, The Witch in Into the Woods, Rose in Gypsy, Desiree in A Little Night Music, and Sally in Follies. The revue celebrates Sondheim's extensive contributions to musical theater. Peters, who continues to bring the same vitality and joy she did decades ago, co-stars with the talented Lea Salonga. Best known for her Tony Award-winning performance in Miss Saigon, Salonga belts out memorable solos and duets with Peters. Although the songs are removed from the context of the musicals where they were first heard, the incredible Matt Kinley set design, staging by Matthew Bourne, 14-piece orchestra with arrangements by Stephen Metcalfe, and spectacular talents of the cast have created a virtual collage of Sondheim's talents in a single show. Stephen Sondheim in 1997 Sondheim is considered one of Broadway's most important musical innovators, credited with raising the bar on complex storytelling and sophisticated lyrics that advance a plot. Perhaps this show's name acknowledges the many friendships he forged during his career with musicians, composers and performers. (Old Friends was also the name of one of the songs from Merrily We Roll Along.) A protege of famed lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim became a mentor to numerous other composers, including Jonathan Larson (Rent) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton). His own debut as a lyricist was in the 1957 musical West Side Story in collaboration with composer Leonard Bernstein. Sondheim's obituary in The New York Times recounts his myriad contributions to musical theater, including a dozen Broadway shows, five of which garnered Tony Awards for Best Musical and six for Best Original Score. He also won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park. Old Friends marks the fifth revival of Sondheim's work since his death. Although there have been several revues of his music in the past, this retrospective tribute uniquely allows Sondheim fans to enjoy a wide breadth of his greatest hits in one sitting. It's impossible not to hum these energetic tunes long after the curtain closes. NY Times theater critic Jesse Green wrote about Old Friends: 'Any opportunity to experience how the feelings he channeled and the connections he made have mined our psyches and reshaped our world is an opportunity even old friends should take.' The limited Broadway engagement of Old Friends at the non-profit Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre will close on June 29, 2025. Running time is 2 hours 35 minutes with an intermission.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Here We Are, National Theatre, review: Stephen Sondheim musical is more Severance than sing-a-long
Here We Are review and star rating: ★★★★ Stephen Sondheim's final musical is nothing like his most famous works – in fact, it's barely a musical at all, but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. As Here We Are writer David Ives remarked, the legend relished in challenging his loyal followers with reinvention. 'Sondheim makes people crazy in all kinds of interesting and different ways.' An absurd comedy about a bunch of rich Americans who try to go for brunch but can't seem to get served, Here We Are is a barmy satire with the existential trappings of a Beckett play. Proferring a message about overconsumption, it is certainly no gentle nostalgia vehicle like Old Friends, the blast through Sondheim's most famous tunes that scored a five-star review from City AM in 2023. Inspired by Luis Buñuel's absurdist films The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, after Sondheim died aged in 2021 aged 91, there was controversy over whether the piece should be staged at all. Would this super experimental show dent Sondheim's legacy as perhaps the 20th century's greatest composer and lyricist, the man behind Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods? Unlikely: the reality is that even if Here We Are ruffles the feathers of Sondheim purists, it wouldn't be the first time. Many of his shows didn't do big box office numbers or become classics for years after release. We meet a highly-strung group of yuppies, including a plastic surgeon, an ambassador and an industrialist. Wealthy central couple Leo and Marianne Brink, played by Rory Kinnear and Jane Krakowski, struggle to land a brunch booking for their group, and things go awry when the six friends become entangled with the radical left-wing group Prada – 'not the shoes' – and are taken down an absurdist rabbit hole not dissimilar to the Apple TV show Severance, where dream sequences become indistinguishable from reality. As a satire on wealth, Here We Are has some hilarious and pertinent bits, including the lady cloning her dogs so her fluffy friends are with her no matter which country she's in, and the insufferable chef who goes from serving French Deconstructionist cuisine to Post-Deconstructive, where 'everything is actually what it is.' Ives finds his biting point in how desperately out of touch these people are with reality. 'I want things to be what they seem and not what they are,' groans one character in one of the show's many interesting meta parts. It also works as a fascinating physical piece. Choreographer Sam Pinkleton, alongside director Joe Mantello and set and costume designer David Zinn spent seven years in development to orchestrate this frankly incredibly weird show, in which characters speak and move in time with Sondheim's accompaniment, like characters in an old black and white movie. Much of the comedy is mined from Fawlty Towers-style farcical faffing – but on a grand, complex scale. It's the type of tomfoolery that might look silly but is pulled off vanishingly rarely. As for Sondheim, he must have loved Ives' script. As for his ditties, they serve as a function to enable the story rather than existing to entertain us in and of themselves. Songs including Here We Are (Overture), The Road and Waiter's Song are more a final reminder of the legend's skill at employing music to bolster the plot rather than songs that stand alone. One audience member who sat near me joked that the songs and accompaniments were stitched together from bits of music he'd left on his cutting room floor from other productions, but I don't think that's necessarily a criticism. They add to the production's bags of natural charm. In the main, it's just refreshing to see something this surrealist and bonkers getting a mainstream staging. Here We Are plays at the until 28 June Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in ‘Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends'
'It boggles my mind that this is actually happening,' admits Lea Salonga about the recognition she has been receiving for her performance in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Hours before joining Gold Derby to discuss the Broadway revue, the actress earned a nomination from the Drama League for Distinguished Performance in addition to her previously announced special recognition for Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre. She will celebrate the honors with her son, whose 19th birthday overlaps with the ceremony, and looks forward to toasting with the cast and crew. 'I think we're gonna be screaming quite a bit once I get to work. I think we're all going to be delirious with joy,' exclaims the actress (watch our full interview above). This is now Salonga's third production of Old Friends, having previously appeared in the West End and Los Angeles engagements of the show. The Tony winner notes how the current audiences process the revue differently. 'I think it's pretty safe to say New York audiences know Steve Sondheim's work better than any other audience does,' admits the star. The question the creatives and company had to answer was therefore, 'What do we do when it's an audience full of people that know the story probably better than we do?' She shares an anecdote from fellow cast mate Jeremy Secomb that held an answer: when he performed Sweeney Todd for Sondheim, the composer 'was laughing at all his own jokes,' and that spirit informs how the ensemble approaches the material. Salonga says, 'You will not be spoon-fed anything, but we will serve everything in the way that we should be serving everything.' The actress adds, 'It's been incredible performing this material. … There is just so much love.' More from GoldDerby Everything to know about the 'Malcolm in the Middle' revival: Returning cast, first photo, streaming info ... 'Predator: Badlands' trailer, Bill Hader heads to Jonestown for HBO, Cannes additions, and more of today's top news stories 'Adolescence' now predicted to receive 5 acting Emmy nominations: Odds update The Sweeney Todd section of the revue is a bravura one for Salonga, as she plays Mrs. Lovett opposite Secomb's demon barber, performing 'The Worst Pies in London' and 'A Little Priest' in a medley of five songs from the musical. 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having,' confesses the actress, who says she loves that she gets to 'disappear into a role far more than I do at any point during the show.' Unlike other numbers, the Sweeney ones find her transformed fully into character with 'wigs, makeup, blacked-out teeth, a costume, an accent.' She credits producer Cameron Mackintosh with the opportunity to play Lovett on Broadway – a role she has portrayed in productions in Manila and Singapore — and for seeing her 'in a way that other producers have not yet been able to. … He saw me as a 17-year-old in the Philippines, so much to cast me in Miss Saigon, and sees me on another level to be able to do this show… He took a risk also casting me as Eponine in Les Misérables.' SEE our interview with Natalie Venetia Belcon, 'Buena Vista Social Club' star One of Salonga's earliest numbers in Old Friends is 'Loving You,' a gorgeous ballad from Sondheim's late career musical Passion. In the context of the original musical, the song is performed by Fosca, an unwell cousin of an Italian colonel who falls into deep infatuation with Giorgio, an Italian military captain on assignment to a remote outpost. For her rendition, Salonga went to a more immediate source to conjure the number's intense emotions: her son, Nick. Before the West End run, Julia McKenzie, the show's artistic consultant who Salonga credits as 'one of the directors,' told the performer to 'just think of the person that you love the most in the world,' and she 'instantly' knew to whom she would now sing the piece. She says the 'beauty' of this revue is that it has 'given brand new meaning and given new life' to these numbers. Old Friends has given rise to many moments of unexpected resonance for Salonga. The Here Lies Love star closes out a six-song section from Into the Woods with the musical's final number, 'Children Will Listen,' and in the final moments, she is joined on stage by Bernadette Peters. 'It's crazy, it's really crazy,' thinks the actress, continuing, 'I'm standing face to face with the original Witch from the Broadway production of Into the Woods, somebody pinch me, please, I'm about to die.' The moment of connection has taken on additional meaning, too, as she will be playing the Witch in a production of the musical in the Philippines after Old Friends concludes and now feels like sharing the song with Peters is a moment in which her scene partner passes the torch and sends 'love and well wishes' to her for when she takes on the role herself. 'It feels deeply meaningful every time we share that moment in the show,' she adds. Near the end of Old Friends, Salonga delivers a rousing performance of 'Everything's Coming Up Roses,' the iconic Act 1 finale from Gypsy. The song has been done on Broadway by legendary actresses in the original production and numerous revivals, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Peters, Patti LuPone, and now Audra McDonald. A legend herself, Salonga did not try to 'live up' to all the versions that have come before, which would have been 'unrealistic.' Instead, she leaned fully into the reason producer Mackintosh asked her to do the song, explaining, 'He knows of my own history as a performer that started performing from a very young age, which means that I have a mother who managed my career and who shepherded me through so much of this crazy, crazy, sometimes predatory, fickle business. So I sing it as an homage to her, so I am pulling from real life, therefore I don't really need to pull emotionally from performances that have been done before.' The result is a deeply impassioned interpretation that serves as a part of the incredibly emotional climax of the revue. SEE Tony Talk: Our first Best Musical picks anticipate a showdown between 'Maybe Happy Ending' and 'Dead Outlaw' Seeing Salonga perform these extended excerpts from Sweeney Todd and this number from Gypsy have New York audience clamoring for the actress to star in a full production of a Sondheim musical on Broadway. 'Mama Rose is definitely something that I'm seeing on the horizon,' admits the Tony winner, who says fellow performer Joanna Gleason nudged her to tackle the role sooner than later. 'I'm definitely putting that on my list of Sondheim ladies that I'd like to be able to one day play while I'm still physically strong enough to do it, because that's a mammoth role and requires so much physical, vocal, mental, emotional energy,' explains the actress. Even though she's portrayed Mrs. Lovett elsewhere, she would love to revisit that character, because performing Sondheim is 'like doing roles in the Shakespeare canon,' as every new production offers a chance to explore 'how much more deeply this character goes.' Best of GoldDerby 'Death Becomes Her' star Jennifer Simard is ready to be a leading lady: 'I don't feel pressure, I feel joy' 'Boop! The Musical' star Jasmine Amy Rogers uses her own 'quirky little eccentricities' to bring iconic cartoon character to life Kennedy Center Honors: 50 entertainers who deserve to be selected Click here to read the full article.
