An actor in the Broadway show “The Little Mermaid” fell through a trap door on the deck of a suspended boat and onto the stage just before the start of the Saturday matinee performance, a spokesman for the production company said.
The actor was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center with broken wrists, and the performance continued after about a 60-minute delay, said the spokesman, Chris Boneau. The curtain had not yet been raised, so no one in the audience witnessed the fall, Mr. Boneau said.
The actor, Adrian Bailey, a 51-year old ensemble cast member, performs as a sailor in the opening scene of the play at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, at 205 West 46th Street.
He was with other actors on the boat, which starts out high above the stage and descends. But just before the start of the play at 2 p.m., Mr. Bailey fell through the trap door and landed 20 feet below on the stage, Mr. Boneau said. The Fire Department said it had received reports that a man had fallen 30 to 40 feet in the theater.
“I heard a thud and a couple of people gasping,” said Jim Robinson, 46, from Eatontown, N.J., who was there with his 6-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.
Who says there isn’t enough spontaneity in modern theater?
April 14th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Some younger Americans may not quite get Barack Obama’s swipe at Hillary Clinton, suggesting she is posing as Annie Oakley in his reference to her comments on guns — part of the increasingly aggressive tone between the two camps in light of the controversy over Obama’s comments about people in small towns being bitter.
READ THIS for a quick summary of Oakley, who was one of the Old West’s cultural figures, a legend in the late 19th and 20th centuries — and one of America’s first female superstars. In the late 20th century, her tale spawned movies, a TV show and — most famous of all — Irving Berlin’s immortal Broadway classic “Annie Get Your Gun.”
It’s usually a smart move when politicos use cultural references about their foes. Walter Mondale used the slogan from a commercial “Where’s the beef?” against Senator Gary Hart. It is said that Jackie Kennedy came up with the linkage of her assassinated husband JFK with the musical “Camelot,” and the song from the original cast album has been played on some tributes to him. You can also see the cultural reference technique used to great advantage, in terms of show business, in the employment of quick satire bits on the animated cartoon “Family Guy.”
Using a cultural phrase is “high concept” — immediately recognizable. In this case, Obama’s reference would have connected more to baby boomers. A cultural reference also conjures up a whole slew of other images associated with it. Used correctly, it could be an advantage.
Here is a rare treat that will explain the Annie Oakley reference to younger Americans. Here, from a very rare kinescope of the 1957 TV adaptation of the musical done live in front of a studio audience is Broadway legend Mary Martin (South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Peter Pan) playing Annie in the character’s most defining song — You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun. FOOTNOTE: To this day I remember watching this TV production live…I was in elementary school.
We’ve run several posts that had YouTubes showing performers from the era of vaudeville (way before my time) that sparked lots of positive emails from readers, particularly young TMV readers.
And, now, here is the BEST clip of all.CLICK HERE to go to The Glittering Eye and read the wonderful post — and be sure to click on the rare 80 year old clip that shows you an incredible performance by two of vaudeville’s largely-forgotten headliners. Read the rest of this entry »
The speaker was British actor Paul Scofield, who died today. He posed the question in response to queries as to why he didn’t want to be knighted, gaining the privilege of being called, “Sir.”
In spite of being in a very public profession, Scofield felt no need to be a public personality, a celebrity.
Scofield’s decision for ordinariness, in spite of his extraordinary talent, is a bit damning, however unintentionally, of those marginally talented celebrities with which the tabloids become so obsessed these days. And of the more talented persons who, once their sizzling fame has abated, can’t be content with simply continuing to do work, instead spending millions to remind us that they’re still around and still talented.
Scofield’s stance reminds us that there is a difference between success, on the one hand, and prominence, on the other. Scofield was a successful actor who received an Academy Award for his incredible performance as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. Yet he never became a celebrity.
His example might well be heeded beyond the field of entertainment. Politics, for example. Gore Vidal, a curmudgeon whose inventive, if destructive, violations of historical fact have sometimes angered me, is often cited as having said, “Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”
Vidal’s point, of course, is that if anyone has that peculiar combination of megalomania and gnawing insecurity necessary to say, “I want to be President,” they probably aren’t well-suited for the office. Read the rest of this entry »
David Mamet writes in the Village Voice Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ This remarkable author of soul searching plays about the choices we make when we are under stress reflects on his political beliefs. As a life long liberal he begins to reconcile his experiences with his beliefs and finds a weakness.
While the title makes it sound like he switches from liberal to conservative I think it is more accurate that he switches from liberal to independent with a new open mind that all government intervention is not effective and all market forces are not efficient.
February 25th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
MARCH 1962 TIME MAGAZINE COVER PORTRAIT BY BERNARD SAFRAN
It would have been a damned shame if Tennessee Williams couldn’t write, because I can’t think of any man of letters whose family and friends provided so much rich material.
Williams, who was a gifted playwright and a not bad short story writer, drew long and hard from the deep well of tormented and eccentric souls who populated his life from childhood on and appear in various guises in his best known works, including The Glass Menagerie (1945), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and The Night of the Iguana (1961).
Then there is A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was a Broadway hit with Marlon Brando, who played the immortal Stanley Kowalski, and Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy and Karl Malden. Two years later, Streetcar was remade more or less intact for the big screen with Vivian Leigh replacing Tandy.
I don’t think I was ever in the same place (which is to say probably a restaurant or bar) with Williams, although our paths might have crossed in Key West in the 1970s without me realizing it.
My appreciation for him was based solely on the movie versions of Cat, Iguana and Streetcar until I began working with scholars who visit the rare book and manuscript library where I work. They come to study our fine collection of Williams typescripts, most of them heavily annotated by the man himself, who was notorious for repeatedly rewriting big chunks of his plays, in the case of Streetcar right up to the night of its Broadway opening.
These typescripts are extraordinary windows into his creative mind.
If you peruse this list of policy initiatives provided by The White House in relation to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last night (transcript is here; C-SPAN video is here), you may notice that two topics concern science and technology, two topics concern education and no topics concern the arts.
[NB: The final topic on that list, about worldwide compassion, stands out to me because I recently read about Compassion, which is a faith-based initiative that will use word of mouth blog power in Uganda next month. (If you’re interested in how non-profits are trying to leverage blogs and blogging and bloggers’ enthusiasm, you might want to follow Beth Kanter’s blog and read about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media; she is one of the top experts in this area.) But I digress.]
So, while it’s nice that President Bush leaves us with his thoughts on science-related issues and makes sure to mention education (given No Child Left Behind’s continued existence, it’s unlikely we could forget Bush’s role there), some groups are demanding (or trying to demand) that the presidential candidates pay attention to their specific issues: Science Debate 2008, Ed in ‘08 and Arts Vote 2008 are three examples. Read the rest of this entry »
In last night’s Theater of the Absurd, a Lame Duck is quacking at the podium while the ducklings-in-waiting look on, pretending to listen before they waddle out for their turn on the TV stage.
You could have watched the President’s last State of the Union address with the sound off and not turned it up as his would-be successors did their predictable soliloquies–Hillary Clinton with a smile as tight as duct tape, dodging questions about Bill; Barack Obama modestly insisting he’s no JFK but basking in his Kennedy aura for the day; Mitt Romney mouthing “Washington is broken” platitudes followed by non-sequiturs that Harold Pinter would not have dared to write.
On his way out, George W. Bush is besieged by legislators holding out their programs to be autographed for some e-Bay auction years from now on another planet.
October 7th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Some readers emailed that they really enjoyed the You Tube here a few weeks ago that showed a key show-stopper from Mel Brooks’ Musical “The Producers” and asked for another.
So here is a key scene: where producer Max (Nathan Lane) seeks to sign up the very worst director to direct the pro-Hitler play “Springtime for Hitler” to ensure that it’ll flop. He goes to infamous director Roger Debris, played by Tony-winner Gary Beach, has some trouble with him — but finally convinces him. This song was one of the numbers critics most loved. Note an approving Brooks as he watches what they’re doing to his lyrics and music:
NOTE: The film version of this was a bit of a misfire, with the first 15 minutes until the second song filled with grimaces and mis-timed dialogue, but then it emerges as a fun film. Here’s the Amazon link to the Grammy-award-winning original cast album (the one that contains the performance featured above):
September 16th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Wasn’t television supposed to be The Universal Storyteller? Back in the 50s when televisions were the sizes of refrigerators and Univacs were the size of three room houses… television…. It was so promising wasn’t it?… education for everyone, the egalitarian programming of television would become ‘the electric storyteller’… a set of endless wisdom books inside the box.
Like a book, the many leaves of Television would magically flutter open, coming to life across the screen by simply plugging the cord of the mysterious box into an electrical outlet.
We would be engaged by Television.
We would be educated.
We would be lifted
and we would learn useful
and important things.
…but the reality was, we would become television’s roadkill, and yet, as though television were an electronic drug, we would become zombie-ized by television at the same time, increasingly being led around by its timing, not our own, its demand that we be present before its one glass eye at the appointed time, night after night.
Regarding ‘brainwashing,’ it is advised that to disturb the captive’s sense of time, to disorient them accordingly, is the direct way to control them.
As TV programming deteriorated into ‘son of clone of the already cloned’ many of us began looking like Death driving a sofa through the living room whilst eating saltines and peanut butter… and watching a pale blue glass screen flicker in time with our heartbeats. We found less and less jing in the deal.
Why did those in charge of content think we could never get enough of the TV spilling out insulting women who surely seem to have stingers growing out of their rear ends … and their poor husbands who are ever harangued about being too slobby, inept, stupid and disorganized… and their children who appear to be pretenders to the throne of ‘tiresome scathe.’
September 9th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
One of the FUNNIEST moments in motion picture musical comedy is from the 2005 film version of Mel Brook’s Broadway Smash “The Producers.” If you’re a younger reader who has never seen it make SURE you watch this.
If you don’t know about the film, the earlier version in the 60s wasn’t a musical. It was about two producers who try and put on a show so awful, so crass, so tasteless that it is BOUND to fail so they could run off with the invested money (except it doesn’t). So they decide to do it on Hitler and Nazi Germany. The highlight of that non-musical film was the “Springtime For Hitler” number where the audience sicks in shocked silence (but something happens to make them love the show). Brooks wrote the hilarious lyrics and wonderfully hummable melody.
In 2001, Brooks debuted a full Broadway musical comedy version of “The Producers” — and he wrote the book, music and lyrics — and won 12 Tony Awards (including for best score). The 2005 movie stars the original stars Nathan Lane and Mathew Broderick.
The musical film wasn’t considered as successful as the Broadway show (which is still on stages) but it is hilarious.
Here’s the pivotal “Springtime For Hitler” number — one of the most hilarious musical comedy numbers on film. The lyrics (not to mention the melody) are the work of a genius.
And next, below, watch Gary Beach (who portrays the play’s director who at the last minute steps into the Hitler role) as he recorded the same song for the earlier original Broadway cast album (the song is slightly different). Notice the joy, emotion and total energy he puts into the recording. A true artist. You’ll also see Mel Brooks in the audience (who is quite pleased by the rendition of his song). When you watch it, you’re seeing a Broadway “show stopper” number recorded for musical history.
PS: Brooks’ songs are as good as any Broadway composer’s. His late wife Ann Bancroft reportedly encouraged him to write the Broadway musical version of his original 1960s movie. The 81-year old Brooks is set to open ANOTHER one of his comedy films adapted as a musical: Young Frankenstein opens on Broadway November 8.
July 31st, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I saw ‘Persona’ with my aunt Terez who was wearing a hat with practically an entire pheasant sewn onto it. The Notre Dame students behind us kept saying, ‘I don’t get it, this is nuts, what’s this movie about?’ Terez who had just learned to speak some English kept saying ‘Shhhh, eets abowt drrreems. Go to sleep and you’ll understand it.’
What Bergman himself, the grand mind of another time and place, said: “Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
His crown was not like some directors, massive laden with tormentuous gems of a zillion gleams, but really, just a handful, a bracelet of films, most igneous… like ‘The Seventh Seal,’ a dream about the time of the Plague and the Crusades and Death being challenged by a Knight at the river to play an intermittent game of chess over a long period of time, a black and white film that near any frame, would be considered art for the walls of any museum of future-past. The film is drowned like a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia in slimy water with fresh flowers floating by… the symbols, related to spirit and death and life, are, well, rife with pagan and Christian leitmotifs. Yet Bergman said: “I hope I never get so old I get religious.” He was dreaming in his film, that’s for certain.
Sherman Alexie, the Seattle-Coeur d’Alene poet, author of ‘Indian Killer,’ and whose poetry has been made into two films, ‘The Business of Fancydancing,’ and ‘Smoke Signals,’ told me that the essence of screenplay is to write the best most spare poem you can so that the director can fill it.
What kind of artist poet was he? His films never got the pretty-gloss treatment, but rather always had something whipping its tail around underground… “Theater is the beginning and end and actually everything, while cinema belongs to the whoring and slaughterhouse trade.â€
There, there it is. The thing great art cannot be without. Some version of primal. Bergman was an oddity in that he could describe in just a few words, the essence of night dreams, that too, does not come from the alpha and omega, but from the shadow. Dreams come from what cannot be seen in daylight at high noon, only aslant.
Reading the various critics of Bergman, those who hung his lights over the moon, and those who took ten books to say, ‘He is good,’ and those few, who seemed to have their own preservative ‘issues,’ and seemed to have preferred times gone by more, or times not yet arrived… still, Bergman would perhaps have a question for us… who dreams for us collectively now? Who are the great deep dreamers of our culture now?
July 24th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Some musicians seem like they’re made to lead the world. Some seem born citizens of the earth, regardless whichever country, heritage, religion they’re born into. Regardless what their parents wanted for them; regardless of childhood introjects… they travel the world, often as what I’d call ‘rememberers,’ musicians who help us remember that water can flow through stone.
If spoken words are capable of too easily offending some, destroying and dividing us, then music seems far more often able to unite, to cross tightly controlled checkpoints that bar babblers and blabbers, but let through musicians carrying a stringed, wind, or percussion instrument… like water through stone. Maybe the musicians who are Rememberers could for a while, lead the detente talks, the conciliation talks, the cease fires and peace agreements. Arion of Methymna and Orpheus of Thrace are celebrated in song to this day, for Arion surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music, and Orpheus tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song. Some element inside the mythic is always very real.
Tisha B’av is about mourning what has been destroyed and finding a way to build a new, even more beautiful temple, whether cultural, personal, religious or creative. Here are some musicians who are pylons and piers and guy wires and girders for bridges across roiling waters:
Jewish-Muslim music: Gerard Edery…”I’m not naive about the political reality, or about how polarized Jews and Arabs have become.” Edery is a singer and classical guitarist …Standing before a room full of Muslims, this Jewish musician launched into “a very Jewish song” in Hebrew about Elijah the prophet. Then, “without even thinking,” he started teaching the audience the words. “At first, I sensed a hesitation from the audience… After a few measures…700 to 800 Muslims [were] singing with me in Hebrew.” Edery, who was born in Casablanca, moved to Paris at age 4 and then the United States at age 8… Like those of Central Asia, Jews and Muslims in pre-Inquisition Spain, the place of Edery’s maternal ancestry, “shared similar, musical, poetical and artistic” license. There was a tolerance and a cross-pollination…”I’m not a politician or a scholar. I’m a musician. And I believe in doing what I can through music…: “We should all delve into our past and embrace all our traditions, whether Jewish or Muslim. Let me sing to you in Arabic and you can sing to me in Hebrew and let’s realize, very specifically, that we Jews and Arabs are from the same soil.”
Hindu-Muslim music: Bismillah Khan’s ancestors were court musicians who played in Naqqar khana in the princely states of Bhojpur. His father was a shehnai player in the court of Maharaja Keshav Prasad. Despite his fame, Khan’s lifestyle retained old world Benares: his chief mode of transport was the cycle rickshaw. A man of tenderness, he believed in remaining private, and that “musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.” He was a pious ShiÃa Muslim and also, like many Indian musicians regardless of creed, a devotee of Mother Saraswati. He often played at various temples and on the banks of the river Ganga in Varanasi, besides playing outside the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India. He said, “Even if the world ends, the music will still survive… Music has no caste”.
AfricanAmerican-Jewish music: In New York, The American Symphony Orchestra wove this: concerts that “contribute to the current political debate by presenting a moment of history when matters were different. Not nostalgia, but rather the exploration of different models from which to draw inspiration for the present and future. The composers on this program born into Jewish families who integrated African-American materials in their work–Gershwin, Gruenberg and Gould–did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their African-American contemporaries and colleagues. The composers of African-American descent–Price, Ellington and Kay–who integrated European traditions with African-American traditions, did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their non-African-American contemporaries and colleagues. Read the rest of this entry »
American Ballet Theatre has presented six different productions of The Sleeping Beauty over the years. While the version that premiered last weekend on the Metropolitan Opera stage at Lincoln Center in New York City is recognizable to anyone familiar with the oft-told fairy tale, it is a radical departure in some respects, which begs the question as to whether it will stand the test of finicky critics and balletomaines who usually like their classics served straight up and expect nothing short of brilliance from this world famous dance company.
The Sleeping Beauty, like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker — all with music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky — is among the most beloved and oft performed classical ballets. No company worth its tutus fails to dance it — and dance it in a form that would be recognizable to Marius Petipa, its first and foremost choreographer (1890) as maître de ballet of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg.
The new American Ballet Theatre version that the Dear Friend & Conscience and I saw at the Met last night apparently is the first that is a collaboration between a company’s artistic director and a former ballerina who has danced the title role of Princess Aurora.
They would be Kevin McKenzie and Gelsey Kirkland, with a big assist from Kirkland’s husband, Michael Chernov, in the capacity of dramaturge (playright).
The dynamic trio’s production is more or less true to the original story:
The evil fairy Caraboose, upset that she has been omitted from the A-List for the christening of Princess Aurora, pricks the princess’s finger with a spindle, condemning her to death instead of a life of unimaginable perfection that would inevitably lead to marriage to an unimaginably perfect prince. The Lilac Fairy intervenes, promising King Florestan and his queen that Princess Aurora will not die, but instead will fall into a deep sleep which will end with the kiss of a king’s son who will marry her. Sigh.
The most ostensible departures in the new The Sleeping Beauty are . . .
May 3rd, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
If I were from Mars, I would wonder why human beings concentrate so hard on what I once heard a human being refer to as the “real estate†of the body… those ‘parts’ without armor that occur at the joining of their legs and torsos.
Modern humans seem to focus on this one tiny area on their bodies to the exclusion of all the rest of the body. What about the ears? The head? The brain? The heart? There must be something about those ‘parts’ that is as vital to life as food and water… In fact, perhaps it is the death of the life force flowing through those ‘parts,’ rather than loss of brain or heart activity, that causes real death in human beings.
Still, the focus on barriers and boundaries about how, when and where those ‘parts’ are used and by whom, seems odd. Human beings don’t seem to mind if people see eye to eye. They don’t mind if people go toe to toe. They don’t mind if people are cheek to cheek or elbow to elbow.
They don’t even seem to mind if this little piece of real estate at the V of the body is groomed, plowed, seeded, exchanged or whatever else amongst consenting grown ups, as long as it is accomplished free of charge.
To the Martian mind, it is puzzling that only when money is exchanged over these tiny clefts and prongs of the human body, that humans on earth seem to fly up in to the air in huge flapping excitement and horrification, and suddenly call forth many trackers to hunt for those who have done this…
And meanwhile, the humans who have presumably ‘not done this,’ begin generating stacks of paper and scribes to write it all down in detail, the who, and how and how much, but not so much a reasoned why…
And the same humans pay battalions of uniformed people a thousand times more money than was exchanged in the one original ‘real estate transaction’ to arrest these horrible developments and make them stop.
For some reason that is not clear to a Martian, showing that money was exchanged over these junctures of human bodies, makes many of the human beings accused, suddenly retire from work long before age 62.
It also appears to inhibit a natural function that humans have had from the time they were children: answering the bells that go to tiny silver boxes they talk into. A person who has dealt in this tiny real estate exchange for money seems to suffer a harsh side effect. They become deaf and can no longer hear the bells.
To the Martian mind, it seems that on earth those persons who kill one another or who harm the lives of others on purpose, or who neglect who is fragile and living… that these human beings in dire need receive far less attention that those who do various things with the ‘parts’ of their own tiny real estate… such as mentioned in this story
…. reported on by the terrestrials, Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwarz and Justin Rood over at ABC news….
March 30th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Here’s an interesting comparative study in The Independent of the present international conflicts and what Shakespeare wrote long ago.
Shakespeare could have been writing about Iraq or Afghanistan, his scenes of battle were so prescient, says Robert Fisk. “Shakespeare would certainly have witnessed pain and suffering in daily London life. Executions were in public, not filmed secretly on mobile telephones.
“But who cannot contemplate Saddam’s hanging - the old monster showing nobility as his Shi’ite executioners tell him he is going ‘to hell’ - without remembering ‘that most disloyal traitor’, the condemned Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth, of whom Malcolm was to remark that ‘nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it.’ Indeed, Saddam’s last response to his tormentors - ‘to the hell that is Iraq?’ - was truly Shakespearean.
“How eerily does Saddam’s shade haunt our modern reading of Shakespeare. ‘Hang those that talk of fear!’ must have echoed through many a Saddamite palace, where ‘mouth-honour’ had long ago become the custom, where - as the casualties grew through the long years of his eight-year conflict with Iran - a Ba’athist leader might be excused the Macbethian thought that he was ‘in blood / Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er’.
“The Iraqi dictator tried to draw loose inspiration from the Epic of Gilgamesh in his own feeble literary endeavours, an infantile novel which - if David Damrosch is right - was the work of an Iraqi writer subsequently murdered by Saddam. Perhaps Auden best captures the nature of the beast: ‘Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, / And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; / He knew human folly like the back of his hand, / And was greatly interested in armies and fleets…’
“In an age when we are supposed to believe in the ‘War on Terror’, we may quarry our way through Shakespeare’s folios in search of Osama bin Laden and George W Bush with all the enthusiasm of the mass murderer who prowls through Christian and Islamic scriptures in search of excuses for ethnic cleansing.
“Indeed, smiting the Hittites, Canaanites and Jebusites is not much different from smiting the Bosnians or the Rwandans or the Arabs or, indeed, the modern-day Israelis. And it’s not difficult to find a parallel with Bush’s disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq - and his apparent desire to erase these defeats with yet a new military adventure in Iran - in Henry IV’s deathbed advice to his son, the future Henry V:
‘…Therefore, my Harry, / Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out / May waste the memory of the former days.’
Meanwhile thousands of schoolchildren in the United Kingdom will soon be taught about Shakespeare by actors rather than their own teachers. “Pupils will take part in dramatisations of the plays they are studying and be given tips on how to interpret the various characters instead of sitting behind their desks reciting them in class…” Read on…
The speaker was British actor Paul Scofield, 
(the song is slightly different). Notice the joy, emotion and total energy he puts into the recording. A true artist. You’ll also see Mel Brooks in the audience (who is quite pleased by the rendition of his song). When you watch it, you’re seeing a Broadway “show stopper” number recorded for musical history.
