Lady Day

The songs are there, but the singer who made them famous isn’t. Billie Holiday is long dead, of course, but I didn’t encounter much of her spirit in Lady Day, starring Tony and multiple Grammy Award winner Dee Dee Bridgewater as the late, legendary jazz artist in the newly revised biographical play at the Little Shubert Theatre.

This isn’t what I expected. Before this New York debut, Lady Day, written and directed by Stephen Stahl, was produced at the Theatre de Boulogne-Billancourt and Theatre du Gymnase Marie Bell in Paris, as well as The Donmar Warehouse and The Piccadilly Theatre in London, where it received critical praise and earned an Olivier nomination for Bridgewater. (She won a Tony in 1975 for her role as Glinda in The Wiz.) But the show wasn’t believable to me or my friend Colleen, in spite of the fact that Bridgewater won the 2011 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album for "Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee." (Eleanora Fagan was Billie’s birth name.)

With that background, Billie’s soul should have ruled the stage. Could it have been an off night for Bridgewater? I had been scheduled to see the the show last week but was reassigned because she was out suffering from exhaustion. From what I saw this week, the play -- or at least the spoken parts -- seemed to be suffering from exhaustion. It had the feel of one of those shows that’s been around for years, through multiple cast replacements, that limps along on its former reputation. The theatre was at least a third empty, adding to that feeling.

The biggest problems are with Stahl’s direction and script. He follows a typical biographical play form in which the character talks about her life, either to other characters or the audience -- in this case both -- to give background, then sings, then talks some more, with flashbacks thrown in. Unfortunately, Lady Day’s flashbacks don’t work. Stahl has Bridgewater reenact them, which is awkward at best, especially in the case of her being raped at 10. Seeing an adult woman trying to portray this horrible episode reminded me of someone trying to give a clue during a game of charades. These scenes, in the first act as Billie is rehearsing in a London theatre in 1954, rob the show of the emotional impact it should have in Act Two when a drunk Billie takes the stage for that night’s concert. I wasn’t involved with Billie as I should have been.

The evening would have been far better had the play been scrapped and Bridgewater allowed to just sing Billie Holiday’s songs, which she does nicely. The show includes more than two dozen of the standards Holiday made famous, including "Don't Explain," "Good Morning Heartache," "A Foggy Day (In London Town)," "Them There Eyes," "Strange Fruit," "My Man," "God Bless the Child" and "Mean to Me."

Bridgewater looks the part in Act Two in a shimmery gown, white mink stole and Holiday's signature gardenias in her hair (costumes by Patricia A. Hibbert). But too often in between numbers she addresses her audience to tell stories of her life; the one about being arrested in Philadelphia rambled on far too long. When she wasn’t singing, I was quite often bored.

A concert rather than a play also would be far better for the musicians -- Jim Cammack on bass, Neil Johnson saxophone, Jerome Jennings drums and Bill Jolly piano (he is also the musical director) who are onstage with speaking roles. As musicians they are fabulous, as actors, not so. But then the script leaves them little to work with. They are “cats” and sound like a 1940s wholesome, flat movie version of band members.

David Ayers plays Robert, Billie's manager, and in the role usually played by Rafael Poueriet, Jorge Cordova was the assistant stage manager the night I was there.

For more information visit ladydaythemusical.com.

The Glass Menagerie

Celia Keenan-Bolger isn’t alone on stage in director John Tiffany’s Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie. The great two-time Tony winner Cherry Jones is also up there with her at the Booth Theatre. But no matter what drama was transpiring in this Tennessee Williams classic, my eyes never strayed far from Keenan-Bolger. Even when she knelt or sat silently in the shadows, her Laura dominated the stage for me.

I’ve never viewed The Glass Menagerie this way before. It was always Amanda’s play, and it would seem that has long been the experience of critics and audiences, since discussions of the play always center on who played Amanda and how was she, starting with the first, Laurette Taylor, and continuing through the years with Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris and Jessica Lange, to name a few. But I don't recall much discussion or commentary about great Lauras.

I mentioned how drawn to Laura I was to my friend Mary when we were leaving the theatre and she said she had the same reaction and that it reminded her of the first time she read the play and Laura had been the center of it for her. When she said that I remembered having the same response when I first read it as a sophomore in high school. It was Laura’s play to me then, but in my viewings since, Amanda always dominated.

Keenan-Bolger allowed me to see the play as I first had fallen in love with it. Her Laura is so fragile I felt she could shatter at any moment. I instinctively kept an eye on her because I wanted to protect her. With a childlike voice, frightened expression and cowering gestures, she seems ready to disintegrate, like some delicate plant that cannot last long in the harshness of the world.

The ghostlike quality that Keenan-Bolger captures so perfectly is the heart of Williams’s “memory play,” and is supported fully by Natasha Katz’s brooding lighting, which is like a fifth character in the play. The entrances and exits choreographed for Laura by Steven Hoggett are pure genius, making her all the more the haunting dream figure she is for her brother, Tom (Zachary Quinto), the play’s narrator. When he delivered his final lines, “Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye,” my eyes filled with tears.

This production, largely thanks to Keenan-Bolger, is just so heart-achingly sad and theatrically beautiful. I was completely transported, so much so that when the theatre doors opened after the matinee performance and the sun shone in, I was startled. I was fully engrossed, even though I know the play so well I can recite line after line in my mind with the actors. This was a new play for me, and I heartily thank Ms. Keenan-Bolger for that.

I imagine Williams would like this interpretation too, since it was his timid sister -- and domineering mother -- who inspired the play.

As for Amanda, Jones avoids making her the intentionally cruel mother sometimes portrayed, for which I am grateful. She captures Amanda’s gallantry, which I liked, yet I didn’t sense Amanda’s vulnerability. A faded southern belle deserted long ago by her husband -- that “telephone man who fell in love with long distances” -- she has plenty to be regretful about and catalogues these complaints readily, but Jones has such a carry-on type force that I didn’t see the weakness and pain underneath. She might have an accent, but her spirit is pure Yankee.

Quinto’s Tom is a nice balance of a young man trapped between his sense of obligation and his overpowering desire to escape. He loves his severely shy and “crippled” sister and his nagging mother too, but he wants to be a writer and have a life of his own. Quinto never allows Tom’s anger to go over the top, though, which is a relief because I’ve seen some explosive Toms before. I’m sure Williams would appreciate this too since Tom is the Williams character in the play.

The three actors connect and fail to connect just as they are supposed to in this sad family. They are people who love each other, just not in the way each needs to be loved.

Last to appear is the would-be savior, the Gentleman Caller Amanda has prodded Tom into bringing home from work to meet Laura, whom Amanda desperately wants to marry off. Brian J. Smith (in photo with Keenan-Bolger) is the most likable of the Gentleman Callers, whose name is Jim, I’ve seen. He and Keenan-Bolger have a natural chemistry that makes their time together seem real as he helps Laura emerge briefly from her shell.

Set designer Bob Crowley (who also did the Depression-era costumes) has taken a counterintuitive approach to creating the claustrophobic St. Louis tenement that is so depressing for Amanda, a trap for Tom and a refuge for Laura where she can escape into the world of her glass animal collection. Rather than show the walls that hem the characters in, he offers an open stage with a few pieces of furniture to indicate the living room and the dining room. The oppressiveness is conveyed by a fire escape rising out of sight that dominates the stage, and by Katz’s lighting and Nico Muhly’s haunting original music.

Haunting is the word that best describes this production in general, all the haunting, painful memories that are what this play is about. One scene in particular will stay with me forever, or at least I hope it will. Laura kneels on the living room floor with the horn from the unicorn figurine, her favorite, that was knocked off of the table while she and Jim were dancing. Jim has gone, having disillusioned Laura and Amanda by declaring he had a fiancé. (He hadn’t known his invitation to dinner was a setup for Laura.) Keenan-Bolger, alone in the living room, holds the horn before her eyes and stares long and intensely at it, as if she can see the future in it. Then in one decisive gesture, she tosses it away and I felt I could see a door shut in her mind, as if she were purposefully closing down to all joy and possibility. It was a quiet moment, one that with a gesture and a look rocked with emotion and power. I felt I was watching someone die. It was one of the most painfully beautiful scenes I’ve experienced in the theatre.

This production of The Glass Menagerie, first produced at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA last winter, has extended its Broadway run until February 23, 2014, having originally been scheduled to end Jan. 5.  For information, visit theglassmenageriebroadway.com.

A Man's World

Frank Ware is a young novelist in the New York of 1909 who is gaining a reputation for writing about the city’s underclass. When word gets out that Frank is a woman, the general assumption is that she must be getting help from a man. Frank laughs off that slight, but the sexism she will face later is much more personal, forcing her to choose between her long-held beliefs and love in A Man’s World, the engaging revival of Rachel Crothers’s 1910 drama directed by Michael Hardart at the Metropolitan Playhouse.

Living in a Greenwich Village walkup with Kiddie (Michael Fader), a 7-year-old boy she has adopted, Frank (Kathleen Dobbs) is independent and upbeat, and quite sure of her place in the world. The equality of women is a given to her.

“I’m a natural woman -- because I’m a free one,” she says, explaining that her father had told her stories and taken her everywhere with him to give her a broad education. “I began to balance men and women very early -- and the more I knew -- the more I tho’t the women had the worst of it.”

An assortment of artistic friends and neighbors make themselves at home in her apartment and she seems content with her life, which besides writing also includes working with disadvantaged women. When Frank is not around, the friends speculate about Kiddie’s parentage, most assuming that he is her child.

The issue is forced when Frank falls in love with Malcolm Gaskell (Kelly Dean Cooper) who loves her too and wants to marry her, provided Kiddie isn’t hers.  A woman with an illegitimate child is completely unacceptable to him.

A miniature portrait of Kiddie that a neighbor, Clara (Kendall Rileigh), has painted exposes the hypocrisy of his stance. As the friends study it, they become convinced they see a resemblance to Malcolm. Frank learns of their suspicions and confronts Malcolm, who is shocked at the idea, but doesn’t see a man with an illegitimate child as any kind of obstacle in a relationship.

“A man wants the mother of his children to be the purest woman in the world,” he says.

Frank understands all too well.

“Yes, and a man expects the purest woman in the world to forgive him anything -- everything,” she says. “It’s wrong. It’s hideously wrong.”

It is wrong, but women still live with inequality, mostly now it terms of income, so the play doesn’t feel dated. The assumptions Frank challenges are still out there and it in many ways it continues to be a man’s world.

Crothers (1878-1958) didn’t live to see this sexual double standard overturned. Interestingly, she wrote A Man’s World early in her career, one of the 23 plays she would pen. I was happy to discover her at the Mint Theater, first with Susan and God in 2006 and then with A Little Journey in 2011. I like her courageous female characters who struggle to live life on their own terms.

Metropolitan Playhouse has done an splendid job of giving this work new life. All parts of the production come together well. I especially liked Dobbs’s portrayal of Frank as strong, intelligent and extremely likable. And artistic director Alex Roe has created sets that are part Victorian, part bohemian and fit just right in the limited space the theatre has for a stage.

The production runs through Oct. 13. For information and tickets, visit metropolitanplayhouse.org.

Bend in the Road

Watching Bend in the Road, a new musical based on Anne of Green Gables, I so much wished that as a child I had read the Lucy Maud Montgomery novel from which it is drawn. I fell in love with this story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who finds a home on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1896.

A selection of the New York Musical Theatre Festival's (NYMF) 2013 Next Link Project, the entire run sold out so quickly that NYMF added a performance. This is obviously a story cherished by many people, and it has been lovingly recreated by a cast of 14 under the direction of Benjamin Endsley Klein, who directed Ann last season on Broadway.

Alison Woods (left in photo), making her New York stage debut, is delightful as the high-spirited red-haired orphan who is adopted by middle-aged siblings Marilla (Anne Kanengeiser) and Matthew Cuthbert (Martin Vidnovic). (It seems plucky, red-haired orphans are good subjects for musicals.)

In the opening number, “A Home for Me,” Anne arrives by train from Nova Scotia to her new town bursting with joy at finally reaching “a place where you’re needed, a home.” She has already become well-known to her fellow passengers with her nonstop talking and soon begins charming -- or annoying -- the town folks with her exuberance. Nick Potenzieri, associate director/musical staging, captures this well as all bustle about before the station.

When Matthew arrives in his horse and buggy, he is surprised to fine a girl. He and his sister had hoped for a boy to help with their farm. But as you will suspect, Anne’s intelligent and vivacious spirit wins over the Cuthberts and everyone else in town, including the nosy town gossip, Mrs. Rachel Lynde (Maureen Silliman).

Right from the start Anne, who has a vivid imagination as well as a temper, knows she’s where she was meant to be.

“It’s the first thing I’ve seen that couldn’t be improved by my imagination,” she declares of Prince Edward Island.

In no time she finds a best friend in Diana Berry (Whitney Winfield, right), a neighbor, and they employ their imaginations to conjure up danger and treasures as they walk through the woods together to school. “We’ll be kindred spirits till the end of time,” they promise.

Anne’s impulsiveness gets her into more than a little trouble, but as she tells Marilla, “I never make the same mistake twice.”

To which Marilla replies: “I don’t know that’s much benefit as you’re always making new ones.” 

Matthew explains to her in “Trouble is Trouble” how to make the best of difficulties. “To get through the darkness, there’s only one route. Face what’s really there, then walk yourself out.”

The songs (lyrics by Benita Scheckel and Michael Upward; music by Upward) offer that kind of welcome simplicity and optimism and serve the storytelling well. (Scheckel also wrote the book.) Andrew Gerle directs the five-piece orchestra.

Set designer Lauren Helpern convincingly creates Anne’s world with just a few props and Andrew Lazarow’s video and projection designs. David Kaley captures the period in his charming costumes. Excellent work also by Joe E. Silver with his lighting.

Since publication, Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into more than 20 languages. The author also produced numerous best-selling sequels. The original book is taught to students around the world.

 Bend in the Road (the title refers to changes one must face in life) received unanimous rave reviews in its 2012 premiere at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse. It recently played for six performances at PTC Performance Space as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the largest annual musical theatre event in the world, which presents 30 productions each summer in the heart of the Theatre District, along with an array of readings, concerts, and other special events. It’s been called the Sundance of Musical Theatre and is a highlight of summer for many of us.

The young woman sitting next to me for Bend was spellbound throughout the first act. When we talked at intermission, she said she had read the book as a girl and seen a PBS mini-series of it. She had forgotten many of the details, but said they were coming back to her as she watched. She thought the musical version was wonderful. And so did I.          

Tony nominee Melissa Errico to deliver annual theatre reflection at Broadway Blessing

Popular Broadway singer/actress Melissa Errico will deliver the annual theatre reflection at this year’s Broadway Blessing, the free interfaith service of song, dance and story that brings the theatre community together every September to ask God’s blessing on the new season. The 16th annual Broadway Blessing will be Sept. 9 at 7 p.m. at The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, commonly known as The Little Church Around the Corner, on 29th between Fifth and Madison.

Errico made her Broadway debut in a musical adaptation of Anna Karenina at Circle in the Square in 1992. The following year she won the coveted role of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. Her other Broadway credits are High Society, Amour, for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical, Dracula, the Musical and White Christmas. In 2004, she starred in the hit production of Finian's Rainbow at the Irish Repertory Theater, where she also appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest, Major Barbara and Candida, earning nominations for each. She was selected by Stephen Sondheim to star in Sunday In The Park With George at The Kennedy Center, and became a favorite at The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles where she starred in "My Fair Lady," "Camelot" and "The Sound of Music."

Most recently, Errico appeared as Clara in the acclaimed CSC revival of Passion until she was sidelined in late March with bronchitis. In June she underwent successful vocal surgery from which she has been recovering.

In the past, theatre reflections have included Lynn Redgrave talking about the importance of theatre in her life, Boyd Gaines reading a speech by Althol Fugard, Marian Seldes and Frances Sternhagen reading from Tennessee Williams and others, and Edward Herrmann doing a dramatic reading of the final scene of Our Town, taking on all the parts.

As previously announced here, other Broadway Blessing performers this year include Tony nominee Christiane Noll who will sing “Ordinary Miracles” and actor Rich Swingle who will perform an excerpt from his one-man play Beyond the Chariots. The Actors’ Temple and St. Clement’s Episcopal Church will be part of this year’s event, as they have been from the beginning, as will the Broadway Blessing Choir, now under the direction of Claudia Dumschat, The Little Church’s music director. Project Dance is expected to return as well.

While this will be Broadway Blessing’s first year in its new home, Transfiguration has been welcoming actors for years, which is how it earned its nickname, The Little Church Around the Corner. The name dates back to 1870 when Joseph Jefferson, famous for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle onstage, had requested a funeral at another church for his fellow actor and friend, George Holland. Upon learning that the deceased had been an actor, the priest refused. At that time many considered actors to be unworthy of Christian burial. After some prodding by Jefferson, the priest commented, “There is a little church around the corner where it might be done.” Jefferson responded, “Then I say to you, sir, ‘God bless the little church around the corner.’”

The church has maintained its close ties to the theater, serving as the national headquarters of the Episcopal Actors' Guild since its founding in 1923. The facility itself was designated a United States Landmark for Church and Theater in 1973.

The mission of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild, one of this year’s sponsors, is to provide emergency aid and support to professional performers of all faiths undergoing financial crisis.  It is also dedicated to helping emerging artists advance their careers through scholarships, awards, and performance opportunities.  

The primary service of the Guild is its Emergency Aid & Relief Program (EARP), giving grants to performing artists in financial crisis regardless of faith, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability or language.  The Guild addresses such crucial issues as eviction, housing court stipulations, utilities shutoffs, emergency medical and dental costs, and sustenance needs (including food and transportation).      

It prides itself on being one of the only agencies able to provide immediate emergency financial assistance, when necessary.  When a qualified applicant contacts the Guild in crisis, they can receive a vendorized check the same day.

Broadway Blessing was founded in 1997 by author and journalist Retta Blaney, who has been producing the event ever since.

Grace Kelly's glamorous, yet regret-filled life portrayed in "Longing for Grace"

Actress Grace Kiley took the stage Sunday and brought to life another actress whose name is similar to hers, Grace Kelly, in her thoroughly engrossing one-woman biographical play, Longing for Grace, an offering of 59E59 Theaters’ annual East to Edinburgh Festival.

Under the direction of Austin Pendleton, Kiley paints such a full and fascinating portrait of the late actress turned princess of Monaco that it’s hard to believe the show, written by Kiley, is only an hour in length. In her Kelly persona, Kiley addresses various family members and friends, transitioning fluidly from reminiscences of her youth through to her death at 52 in 1982, presenting a cautionary tale about a woman with a dream, which she pursued, excelled in, then gave up, only to spend the rest of her life in regret and loneliness.

“My life wasn’t my own anymore, for years, after the icon faded, my friends dispersed, my prince remote, my body changing, my face, my hands, all the things I struggled to make sense of, didn’t make sense . . . lost because I left behind what I loved,” she tells her youngest child, Stephanie. “I loved acting. The passion, something of my own.”

Finding that something of her own was important to the young girl in a family of athletic, trophy-winning children when she was not good at sports. She felt inferior. Later, when she had brought her acting teacher turned lover home for a visit to Philadelphia, he commented on the medals and awards filling the living room. “Everyone in your family has something displayed except you, Gracie, as if you don’t even exist.” She replied that it’s because she hadn’t accomplished anything.

But she felt called to pursue an acting career, much to her father’s horror. She was a debutante from a proper family and he considered actors to be “streetwalkers.” She moved to New York anyway, studied acting and followed that dream into success on stage and screen, winning an Academy Award for “The Country Girl” in 1954.

She says all she wanted was recognition from her father, and she thought she had finally achieved it through her career. Her family was in the front row for her Broadway debut in Strindberg’s The Father, for which she received good reviews. Her father, though, squashed her joy by remarking to one of the critics, “I’ve always thought it would be Grace’s sister Peggy whose name would be in lights. Anything Gracie can do, Peggy can do better.”

But she had found her passion and pursued it so fiercely that director Alfred Hitchcock described her as a "volcano covered with snow."

Yet she gave it all up to marry Prince Ranier III, a man she met once while in the South of France for the Cannes Film Festival and with whom she corresponded for a year before he proposed during a visit to her family home. She had been fourth on a list of blonde actresses put together by the prince’s priest.

The marriage contract alone should have warned her she was not entering a happlily-ever-after princess life. It’s “volumes long and right out of ‘The Napoleonic Code,’” she tells her friends. In the event of a divorce, the prince would get sole custody of the children and she must leave the country. And the prince just happened to want a dowry of two million dollars.

“It seems that the palace is a little cash poor and needs some sprucing up before the wedding,“ she says, trying to make a joke of it.

Then the prince announced, much to Grace’s surprise, at a press conference that she would be giving up acting, and banned the showing of her films in Monaco. Still, she remained in denial.

“I’m sure it’s just for the papers until the wedding,” she tells friends. “He truly loves me, the movie star and as soon as we’re married Monaco will see what a devoted princess I am. And then” (pausing) “I’ll pick up my acting career. Just like that! I’ll never stop acting.”

From the start, her new life was hell. The servants ridiculed her because she was an American and they considered her an impostor. She knew no one in Monaco and was prevented from seeing most of her Hollywood friends and even from going out alone.

The birth of Caroline, “born exactly nine months and one day after our wedding,” brought her joy and a temporary closeness with the Prince, although her father’s comment was, ”Ah shucks, I wanted a boy.”

Even maternal happiness didn’t last., though, as she was not allowed to show affection for her second child, and only son, Albert (“Albie”), because Ranier feared it would soften him and make him unprepared to take over the throne as an adult. Her relationship with Stephanie was troubled; it was in an attempt to try to work things out with her that Kelly dismissed the chauffeur for the afternoon and went out for a drive alone with Stephanie. Kelly lost control of the car and crashed. Both were injured, but Grace sustained the greatest harm. She died the next day, Sept. 14, 1982, having never regained consciousness.

Kiley portrays Kelly’s anguish at how her life turned out so well I could feel that world stifling her. Although petite, unlike Kelly, Kiley possesses the same good looking regal blonde quality that Kelly was known for. (Actually, Kiley looks a great deal like another actress in this category, the late Lee Remick.) Katalin Varga’s costumes, Elle Murphy’s make-up and Giovanni Villari’s lighting complete the transformation.

Brian Tubbs has created an effective set consisting of a stately chair on a red runner that divides the stage into two playing areas -- a guest room with a red velvet chaise, small table with scripts, martini glass and a wooden letterbox on the floor. On the other side are a writing table and chair, telephone and appointment books and an ornate mirror. With this and her powerful script, Kiley creates the international life of a very famous woman.

After the show as I was waiting in the lobby for a friend who was joining me for dinner, the elevator opened and Kiley emerged carrying a large portion of this set, now collapsed and ready to be packed off to Edinburgh for 25 performances. From the glamor of the spotlight to striking the set, such is the life of a fringe festival performer.

I wished her well in Scotland. She opened up for me a life I knew little about, although I remember the day Grace Kelly died quite well. I was the government and politics reporter for the Carroll County Times in Westminster, MD, and Sept. 14, 1982 happened to be a primary election day. I was walking by the AP photo wire machine and was the first to discover the news and announced it to the newsroom. Our editor slammed down his long metal ruler and shouted, “Damn.” Mr. Sensitive was not reacting in sadness to Kelly’s death; he was angry because he had already configured the front page for the next day, something that in those days was done on paper with a pencil to map out the space and placing. He had planned on all election stories and now had to fit in coverage of a famous person’s death.

Later that day we learned a Middle Eastern president had died and, later still, that novelist John Gardner had also passed away, but Mike had decided with Kelly’s death that rather than readjust his layout he would just tease to the inside obit from the area above the banner. The president and writer didn’t even get that courtesy, just small obits inside.  The moral of the story back then was that if you wanted good press coverage, don’t die on a busy news day.  Now, with news a 24-hour venture, one can get plenty of attention.

The East to Edinburgh Festival continues through Sunday, July 28 at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). Tickets to each show range from $10 - $20 and may be purchased by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.59e59.org. Check the web site for the offerings. Unfortunately Longing for Grace played the final of its three performances on Sunday.

I look forward to these shows each summer as 59E59 hosts United States productions en route to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Created as a way to help shows get on their feet before flying off to Scotland, East to Edinburgh simulates the same production constraints that all shows experience at the Festival During this whirlwind three weeks, 16 productions will have been featured, reflecting some of the most adventurous theater from New York and across the country.

Tony Nominee Christiane Noll to Sing at 16th Annual Broadway Blessing

Christiane Noll, a beloved singer on Broadway and concert stages far and wide, will sing at this year’s Broadway Blessing, the free interfaith service of song, dance and story that brings the theatre community together every September to ask God’s blessing on the new season. The 16th annual Broadway Blessing will be Sept. 9 at 7 p.m. at The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, commonly known as The Little Church Around the Corner, on 29th between Fifth and Madison

Currently appearing in “They’re Playing His Songs: The Music of
Marvin Hamlisch,” the world premiere tribute show conceived and directed by David Zippel at the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, Noll appeared on Broadway last season as Hannah Chaplin in Chaplin, earning a Drama Desk nomination for best featured actress in a musical. She was nominated for a best actress in a musical Tony for her performance as Mother in the 2010 revival of Ragtime, and her many other theatre credits include creating the role of Emma in the 1997 Broadway production of Jekyll & Hyde and appearing on Broadway in the 1999 revue It Ain't Nothin' but the Blues. 

Noll frequently performs Broadway favorites in concert and has been a guest soloist as part of Bravo Broadway with the National Symphony and Marvin Hamlisch, The Cincinnati Pops, The Jerusalem Symphony, The Philadelphia Pops and Peter Nero, and has sung with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, The San Francisco Symphony, and the Sinfonica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with Skitch Henderson in his last New York Pops performance, and she has released four solo CD’s.

Also appearing at this year’s Broadway Blessing will be Rich Swingle, an actor beloved around the world for his one-man plays. Swingle will will perform an excerpt from his play Beyond the Chariots, which picks up where the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire” left off. The script is being translated into its seventh language for the Sochi Olympics and shows Eric Liddell leaving Olympic glory behind to serve the people of China for the rest of his life.

As founder and producer, I am lining up additional guest artists for this year’s Blessing, which will be supported by The Little Church and the Episcopal Actors’ Guild, celebrating its 90th anniversary. Among those who have participated in the past are Lynn Redgrave, Marian Seldes, Frances Sternhagen, Boyd Gaines, Edward Herrmann, Billy Porter, KT Sullivan, James Barbour, Three Mo’ Tenors and Broadway Inspirational Voices.

The Actors’ Temple and St. Clement’s Episcopal Church will be part of this year’s event at The Little Church, as will the Broadway Blessing Choir, now under the direction of Claudia Dumschat, The Little Church’s music director. Project Dance is expected to return as well.

While this will be Broadway Blessing’s first year in its new home, Transfiguration has been welcoming actors for years, which is how it earned its nickname, The Little Church Around the Corner. The name dates back to 1870 when Joseph Jefferson, famous for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle onstage, had requested a funeral at another church for his fellow actor and friend, George Holland. Upon learning that the deceased had been an actor, the priest refused. At that time many considered actors to be unworthy of Christian burial. After some prodding by Jefferson, the priest commented, “There is a little church around the corner where it might be done.” Jefferson responded, “Then I say to you, sir, ‘God bless the little church around the corner.’”

The church has maintained its close ties to the theater, serving as the national headquarters of the Episcopal Actors' Guild since its founding in 1923. The facility itself was designated a United States Landmark for Church and Theater in 1973.

The mission of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild is to provide emergency aid and support to professional performers of all faiths undergoing financial crisis.  It is also dedicated to helping emerging artists advance their careers through scholarships, awards, and performance opportunities.

The primary service of the Guild is its Emergency Aid & Relief Program (EARP), giving grants to performing artists in financial crisis regardless of faith, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability or language.  The Guild addresses such crucial issues as eviction, housing court stipulations, utilities shutoffs, emergency medical and dental costs, and sustenance needs (including food and transportation).   It prides itself on being one of the only agencies able to provide immediate emergency financial assistance, when necessary.  When a qualified applicant contacts the Guild in crisis, they can receive a vendorized check the same day.