In honor of the passing of Dame Gillian Lynne, whose choreography graced two of the biggest musical theatre blockbusters of all time, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, I share this lovely moment from the early 80s when Andrew Lloyd Webber shared a bit of Cats on a talk show as the musical launched in the West End.
For soap opera fans, yes, that’s General Hospital’s Finola Hughes dancing the role of the white cat, ‘Victoria.’
Regular readers know that I was an actor and dancer for many years on Broadway and in national touring companies, and my first big break was as ‘the magical Mr. Mistoffelees’ in a new national touring company of Cats back in the mid-80s.
I smile thinking about my ‘Victoria,’ the now-super successful Broadway choreographer JoAnn Hunter (School of Rock, Disaster!, On a Clear Day). I watched JoAnn do this every night for hundreds of performances as the very next moment after her solo ended I made my entrance to ‘break the spell.’
So, I had more people reach out and ask if I’d seen this wild and wooly clash between Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro (who’s so far up Donald Trump’s backside to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions she can’t breathe) and The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg. And its everything people told me it would be. Via USA Today:
“You suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Pirro said, pointing at Goldberg. The term, which stemmed from “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” has been used by Trump supporters to suggest that those who do not support the president are unable to think clearly and logically about the state of the country.
“Let me tell you what I have,” Goldberg began. “I’m tired of people starting a conversation with ‘Mexicans are liars and rapists.’ I’m 62 years old. There have been a lot of people in office that I didn’t agree with. But I have never, ever seen anything like this. I have never seen anybody whip up such hate. I have never seen anybody be so dismissive.”
She continued: “Clearly, you don’t watch the show, so you don’t know that I don’t suffer from that. What I suffer from is the inability to figure out how to fix this.”
Goldberg then attempted to switch topics to the “deep state.” Instead, a shouting match erupted as both women debated what is most horrible about the country today: Pirro claimed those entering the country illegally were killing U.S. citizens; Goldberg countered that the president’s rhetoric was inciting violence toward minorities.
“Say goodbye. Bye. I’m done,” Goldberg said, ripping up her cue cards.
Whoopi don’t suffer fools lightly, kids. And that’s part of why we love her. Watch below. https://youtu.be/s_kuxgZJEus?si=wuB4EY9XfFINQ9Ov
During the Donald Trump/Vladimir Putin press conference on Monday, Trump praised Putin’s ‘offer’ to allow Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team to travel to Russia to ‘observe’ interrogations of the 12 indicted Russian military officers as ‘incredible.’
In exchange, however, Putin wants to question Americans including our former Ambassador to Russia who was critical of the Russian president.
Trump called the idea an “incredible offer” during the news conference. And on Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president would “meet with his team” on Putin’s proposal, setting off a Russia-related backlash against the Trump administration for the third straight day.
By Thursday, as the Senate prepared to formally rebuke Trump, the White House reversed course.
“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” Sanders said in a statement. “Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”
The Senate voted 98-0 for a resolution denouncing the idea that we would hand over our foreign diplomats, past or present, to Russian agents for interrogation.
By the way, a new poll by SurveyMonkey shows 79% of Republicans approve of how Trump handled the Monday press conference.
Compare that with 91% of Democrats who disapproved and 62% of Independents who disapproved.
Overall, the numbers fell pretty much in line with Trump’s usually polling – 58% disapproved and 40% approved.
• Russian singer Emin recently trolled the world with his new music video which utilizes lookalikes for Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, Stormy Daniels, Mark Zuckerberg, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
You may recall it was Emin’s music publicist, Rob Goldstone, who set up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian government attorney and Donald Trump Jr.
You do the math.
The Russian calls his video “a satire on the news of the past 12 months.” It looks to me like the Russians are laughing at the U.S.
In a new interview with The Spectator, Barry Humphries, whose most famous incarnation is as the over-the-top drag persona, “Dame Edna Everage,” surprises by revealing he is anti-transgender people and praises Donald Trump for ‘stirring up politics.’
This from a man who became famous performing in drag.
In London to perform a three-week residency at the Barbican, Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret, Humphries told journalist Lloyd Evans that he feels the issue of transgender rights to be ‘terrible rat-baggery.’
He refers to transgenderism as ‘a fashion’ asking, “How many kinds of lavatory can you have?”
“And it’s pretty evil when it’s preached to children by crazy teachers,” he added.
Humphries also called out the anger he aroused when he referred to gender confirmation surgery as “mutilation.”
In a 2016 interview with The Telegraph, Humphries agreed with derisive comments about “men who believe that they are women and have themselves castrated”.
“They had their genitalia chopped off and tucked in and whatever they had to do,” said the 84-year-old. “And that aroused a lot of indignation — probably among the people who’d spent a lot of money having it done.”
Humphries tried to soften his position by adding, “But I don’t think I’m right to pontificate – I’m really an actor.”
On another topic, Evans asks if Humphries’ favorite onstage character, the sexist diplomat Sir Les Patterson, has been co-opted by Donald Trump.
“Has the President stolen your act?” asks Evans.
“No, I don’t think so,” replies Humphries. “I’m grateful to Trump for stirring up politics. And I won’t be joining any marches against him.”
There’s good news for LGBTQ folks who belong to the Episcopal Church.
At the Episcopal Church’s General Convention last week, a triennial event, the Church’s House of Bishops and House of Deputies approved resolution B012, which will allow gay and lesbian couples to be married in their home parish even if their local bishop has moral objections to gay marriage.
At the Church’s 2015 convention, gender-neutral marriage rites were approved for use in same-sex marriage ceremonies to be performed by clergy who were willing to participate. But, bishops were still allowed to forbid such ceremonies in their diocese if they disapproved.
Under the new resolution, which goes into effect in December, when a same-sex couple wishes to marry in a diocese where the same-sex marriage is not condoned, the priest who has agreed to conduct the ceremony will be allowed to reach out to an Episcopal bishop in another diocese who can step in and provide pastoral support for the couple.
To be clear, though: no priest can be forced to perform any marriage ceremony they do not wish to be a part of.
The majority of convention attendees agreed with the solution.
One priest said, “For 40 years our LGBT brothers and sisters have been at the back of the bus and, every so often, they are invited to move forward one row at a time.”
Another delegate who is a longtime pro-LGBT leader said she supported the resolution “recognizing that this is a hard-won compromise but one which I believe will lead us forward into that work as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement.”
The chairman of the General Convention’s Task Force on the Study of Marriage, “implored deputies to complete convention’s actions on marriage. ‘We are fond of saying around the Episcopal Church that all are welcome, and all means all, y’all,’” according to an Episcopal News Service report.
According to the Episcopal Church website, the 8 bishops who did not condone same-sex marriages were: Albany Bishop William Love, Central Florida Bishop Greg Brewer, Dallas Bishop George Sumner, Florida Bishop John Howard, North Dakota Bishop Michael Smith, Springfield Bishop Dan Martins, Tennessee’s Bauerschmidt and U.S. Virgin Islands Bishop Ambrose Gumbs.
“The newest Schoolhouse Rock! song explains double negatives and how the president doesn’t not use them to lie.”
In an effort to explain the now-popular ‘double negative’ defense by Donald Trump (hey, it can happen to anyone speaking on the world stage on behalf of the most powerful nation in the world), The Late Show harkens back to the 70s ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ to explain what it was that Trump was trying to say.
Double negative, what’s your function? A desperate way to not side with the Russians Double negative, how’s that function? Confusing the people with sentence construction…
A little more than three years ago, Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the Presidency. That image makes a return in Barry Blitt’s latest cover, which remarks on Trump’s performance during and after his summit with Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki.
On January 6, 2017, two weeks before taking an oath to defend the United States of America, Donald Trip was briefed by James Clapper, director of national intelligence; John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.
Trump was informed, in detail, of the vast amount of evidence that showed Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.
Also present at the meeting was the-FBI director James Comey. It was after that briefing that Comey privately shared with Trump the now-infamous Steele Dossier.
In other words, Trump has known since before he entered the White House that Putin ordered the disruption.
And he pushed out every top official at that meeting to protect himself.
One day after being shown all of the damning evidence, Trump went on the offense attempting to obfuscate the issue.
Tony Award-winner Gary Beach, who brought the singing and dancing candlestick “Lumiere” to life for the original Broadway production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and won a Tony Award for his gayer-than-gay, show-stopping performance as director “Roger De Bris” in the mega-hit musical The Producers, has passed away at the age of 70.
Gary Beach
Making his Broadway debut as the understudy for the role of “Edward Rutledge” in the original Broadway run of 1776 in 1969, Beach eventually took over the role and played “Rutledge” until the show closed in 1972.
Many other shows on the Great White Way would follow including, the short-lived Something’s Afoot, Annie, and Doonesbury.
Waiting for him after all those shows, however, was the role of French candlestick “Lumiere,” who led a cast of singing/dancing plates, spoons and saucer imploring Belle to “Be Our Guest” in Beauty and the Beast—the first full-scale Disney musical on Broadway which opened in 1994.
And then, in 2001, Beach was cast as director Roger De Bris in Mel Brooks’ 2001 mega-hit The Producers.
Beach scored mightily as the gay-gay-gay, over-the-top gay director “Roger De Bris,” who finally receives his moment of glory center stage.
His slapstick-to-perfection performance brought him the 2001 Tony Award for ‘Best Featured Actor in a Musical.’ Beach returned to the role for the 2005 film adaptation alongside fellow original Broadway cast members Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
Here’s an extended clip of Beach’s big number in The Producers. He makes his entrance as ‘Hitler’ at the 6:00 mark:
Beach continued to star on Broadway, taking on the role of “Albin” the 2004 revival of Jerry Herman’s La Cage aux Folles (another Tony Award nomination) and as “Thénardier” in the 2006 revival of Les Misérables.
His stellar career is only surpassed by the love and admiration of his fellow theatre artists.
Before becoming a journalist, I had a career on the Broadway stage. Although I never worked with Gary, I met him several times. And he was always the definition of warmth and kindness.
More importantly, though, are the messages flooding my Facebook and social media – my friends who did work with him 8 shows a week for so long.
Reading through Facebook and Twitter, some of the most veteran performers of the Broadway stage shared their love and devotion to the master artist.
If I could impart anything about the memory of this top-tier artist to you, its the incredible, universal affection the theatre world has for Gary.
Gary is survived by his husband, Jeff Barnett.
Dear Gary Beach . So sad to hear this. What a vessel of joy he was & always will be in my mind & heart . Love & condolences to his husband & loved ones. RIP 🙏💫💖 https://t.co/ggQuNV9vQf
I’m so stunned and saddened to hear about the passing of Gary Beach, our wonderful, original Lumiere in the stage production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Gary was such a bright star, a brilliant artist and a truly warm and caring human being. RIP Gary. XOXOX
Words do not express how heartbroken I am of Gary Beach’s passing. An amazing actor and performer as well as being one of kindest human beings I have had the privilege to work with. Your humor and your generous spirit will live on.
Man, was I lucky to get to be on any stage with Gary Beach. Pretty sure a gazillion actors feel the same. Nobody made me laugh harder. Nobody like him. 💔 https://t.co/fCQYvljtkPpic.twitter.com/FrlXz4nhkG
