Broadway

Growing up, I remember the old folks saying, "Whatever it is, child, take it to the Lord in prayer. Prayer changes things." Elisabeth Withers heard the same as a church girl in Joliet, Ill. She knew early on that she wanted to sing, that there was nothing else she'd rather do. So for years she prayed as she formally studied her craft, eventually earning music degrees from Boston's Berklee College of Music and New York University. In just the past two years, Withers has experienced the manifestation of her prayers.

It amuses me to no end that the producers of Grease: You're the One That I Want! are trying to ramp up the drama by suggesting that the musical could fail if the wrong Danny and Sandy are chosen for the Broadway cast. Clearly, they've worked hard to end up with 12 viable options for the public to vote on (starting on tomorrow's show at 8 p.m. on NBC). But all the hand-wringing looks silly now that we know that $1.3 million in tickets were sold for the Broadway production in the first two days they were available this month.

On July 31, 2007; BERNARD BROADWAY. Devoted husband of Virginia Broadway; loving father of Denise, Valerie, Bernard, Jr., and Roderick Broadway (Atlanta, GA); beloved brother of Annette Butler and Marian Thomas (Baltimore, MD); dear nephew of Doris Smith. On Friday friends may call VAUGHN C. GREENE FUNERAL SERVICES (RANDALLSTOWN), 8728 Liberty Rd. from 4:00-8:00 P.M. On Saturday, Mr. Broadway's family will receive friends from 10:00-10:30 A.M. with services to follow. Inquiries to (410)

NEW YORK -- The league representing Broadway's theater owners and producers and the union representing its stagehands reached a settlement last night, bringing to an end a strike that had shut most of Broadway for 18 days, disrupted the plans of thousands of theatergoers and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. The settlement ended the second strike on Broadway in five years but the longest since the 25-day musicians' strike in 1975. A musicians' strike in 2003 lasted four days.

NEW YORK -- Broadway is bracing for its own version of "The Civil War." A group of high-profile stage producers is close to hiring a legal eagle to fight Broadway's leading trade group over its right to remain Tony Award voters.Producers David Brown, George W. George, Stephen Wells and actor-producer Tony LoBianco -- who have been ousted as Tony voters -- are among those who plan to take their fight to court and are mulling slapping the League of American Theatres & Producers with an antitrust lawsuit.

Critics may see him as Mr. Hyde, but in his heart, songwriter Frank Wildhorn is Dr. Jekyll, fighting for a cause he believes in."My ambition is to be a bridge between popular music and the world of theater," says Wildhorn, who is often criticized for the generic Top 40 sound of his Broadway shows. "If we are going to have a healthy theater in the new millennium, we have to cultivate new audiences. We need to speak to them in a musical vocabulary they can understand, not the language of 30 or 40 years ago."

Richard Kiley, 76, a strong-voice baritone who was Broadway's original "Man of La Mancha" and performed dozens of other dramatic and musical roles in movies and television since the 1950s, died yesterday in Warwick, N.Y. Mr. Kiley played Don Quixote in the 1965 musical "Man of La Mancha" and sang its hit, "The Impossible Dream." The show ran more than five years on Broadway and toured the world. He also played the role in 1972 and 1977.Pub Date: 3/06/99

"Jekyll & Hyde" is a musical about extremes -- specifically, the extremes of good and evil. Yet oddly, the show itself is lodged firmly in middle ground.Neither a masterpiece nor a disaster, it is entertaining without being challenging -- a show about risks that takes few itself.Although the Broadway touring production at the Mechanic Theatre improves on the pre-Broadway version that played here in 1996, "Jekyll & Hyde" remains a melodramatic pop opera with a score -- by composer Frank Wildhorn and lyricist Leslie Bricusse, who also wrote the book -- that is so irrepressibly catchy and pliably generic, it's no wonder its best known song, "This is the Moment," has become a staple at everything from sporting events to beauty pageants.

Colgate Salsbury, a professional actor whose career spanned Broadway and Hollywood, died Thursday of cancer at his Stevenson home. He was 63.Mr. Salsbury, a Manhattan native known as "Gate," starred as Daniel Berrigan in the original 1970 Broadway production of "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine." Most recently, he appeared as the rector in John Waters' film "Serial Mom.""He had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard in my life," said Mr. Waters.Standing just over 6 feet tall, he had a commanding voice and a compelling stage presence.

"More and longer" is the keynote of the Mechanic Theatre's 1999-2000 season. For the first time in almost a decade, the season will include seven shows instead of six. And, after two seasons of mostly one-week engagements, more than half the shows in the new series will run two weeks or more."It's been kind of a slow process. It seems like there's a lot more confidence in the shows again. We're getting the sizzle back in our season," said Michael J. Brand, executive director of Jujamcyn Productions, which books and manages the Mechanic.

Nicholas F. Walters saw a white pickup truck weaving between lanes. He tried to follow the erratic vehicle but later told a Baltimore police operator, "I couldn't keep up with it." He noticed a company decal on the back of the Ford F250 and called the number, but a representative denied it was theirs. Walters said he saw the vehicle speeding up Broadway, "blowing through three lights." He said he watched the driver "jump out of truck and urinate right there by Patterson Park." That's all from Walters' Oct. 16 call to police, which he made after he saw the truck on Broadway north of Fells Point.

NEW YORK - For weeks before a new Broadway production of "Ragtime" began previews, Christopher Cox and Sarah Rosenthal kept coming up with creative excuses to sneak a peek inside the Neil Simon Theatre in Manhattan. Even though Chris and Sarah are child actors in the show, they weren't allowed inside the building while the set was being constructed. But quite often, the backstage door was left open, and Chris could catch glimpses of boxes of props and lighting equipment being hauled inside.

GERALD SCHOENFELD, 84 Broadway fixture People didn't actually call him Mr. Broadway. But they could have. Gerald Schoenfeld, the Runyonesque figure who as chairman of the powerful Shubert Organization left an indelible stamp on American culture, bringing dozens of hits shows to Broadway - among them A Chorus Line, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera - and reinvigorating the commercial theater, died Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. The cause was a heart attack, said Sam Rudy, a spokesman for the Shubert Organization.

It all started with a bit of hero worship. Little Johnny Waters was mesmerized by the teenage neighbor with the defiant pompadour. This rebel on a motorcycle inspired a cult classic film starring Johnny Depp. But, it didn't stop there. Now, Cry-Baby is headed for Broadway, after a solid year of adding and subtracting dance numbers and characters and songs, of rhyming and re-rhyming and memorizing dialogue and throwing it out, of ceaseless tweaking and second-guessing. `Cry-Baby' on Broadway Opens Thursday at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, New York.

NEW YORK -- At a recent performance of the all-black Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Ramona Scott, 52, ran into a couple she'd worked for as a baby sitter almost 40 years ago. She saw another couple who had been friends of hers during the 1970s. Cat, which will be at the Broadhurst Theatre through June 15, was where everybody seemed to be. "A lot of my friends and family don't go out to plays," said Scott, a frequent theatergoer herself. "But when they hear of one that has a large black audience, they want to go and see it."

Unexpectedly, on January 26, 2008 Norma Lee Carnell In lieu of flowers, contributions may be directed in her name to Kennedy Kreiger Foundation, 707 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21205.

Sabine Herts, an actress who made her debut on Broadway and appeared on the stage for nearly 70 years, died of pulmonary illness Jan. 2 at the Jewish Convalescent and Nursing Home. The Reisterstown resident was 93. "She was an accomplished actress who was able to create character without artifice," said F. Scott Black, a theatrical director who is also dean of the School of Liberal Arts at the Community College of Baltimore County. "Sabine played quirky characters she rooted in believability.

NEW YORK -- The league representing Broadway's theater owners and producers and the union representing its stagehands reached a settlement last night, bringing to an end a strike that had shut most of Broadway for 18 days, disrupted the plans of thousands of theatergoers and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. The settlement ended the second strike on Broadway in five years but the longest since the 25-day musicians' strike in 1975. A musicians' strike in 2003 lasted four days.

Strike could close Broadway shows NEW YORK -- Broadway's stagehands plan to go on strike today, capping more than three months of unsuccessful negotiations with theater owners and producers, according to two people who have been briefed on the decision. Local 1, the stagehands' union, was told last night by its parent union to walk out, the people said. The strike would be the second work stoppage on Broadway in less than five years. The musicians' strike in 2003, which lasted for four days, was the first time since 1975 that Broadway was shut down by a labor dispute.

When the smash 2006 TV movie High School Musical suddenly burst out of its box on the Disney Channel into the open, lucrative hearts of seemingly every tween girl in America, you'd have thought Disney Theatrical Productions would have been champing at the bit to turn the megahit into a Broadway-style show. But Musical's journey from the small screen to the live stage has been anything but a slam-dunk. To work for Disney is to fall victim to stereotyping. That's at least partly why the people who run Disney Theatricals - the studio's live-entertainment arm - are intensely preoccupied with artistic legitimacy.