Helen Mirren, musical ‘Fun Home’ win top Tony Awards

NEW YORK | Helen Mirren won her first Tony on Sunday for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Audience,” and the lesbian-coming of age story “Fun Home” nabbed the top acting prize for Michael Cerveris and best musical at the 69th Tony Awards.

British import “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” about a teenage math wizard with Asperger Syndrome who goes on an incredible journey, won five awards, including best play, director and actor for its star, recent Juilliard School graduate Alex Sharp.

Mirren described her win as “an incredible honor.”

With a Tony, Broadway’s highest honor, an Emmy and an Oscar, she said she would love to win a Grammy, which are for recorded material. “I have to do an audio book,” she joked.

Sharp, in his Broadway debut, surpassed Hollywood star Bradley Cooper and veteran actor Bill Nighy for the best actor accolade.

“Oh my God, oh my God. It’s so crazy,” said a surprised Sharp, who dedicated his award to young people who feel misunderstood or different.

“I feel like I won this award for my character, Christopher, and for people like Christopher,” he said backstage.

Cerveris took home best actor in a musical, his second Tony, for playing the closeted homosexual father in “Fun Home,” which also earned Tonys for best director for Sam Gold, as well as best book and best score.

“I am fortunate to be standing here. You all deserve to be,” he said to his fellow nominees. “Our show is about home and finding who you are.”

SIXTH TIME LUCKY

After six nominations, Kelli O’Hara took home her first Tony for best actress in a musical as the governess in “The King and I.”

“You would think that I would have written down something by now but I haven’t,” a jubilant O’Hara said, thanking her husband and parents.

“I going to do the worm,” she said as she began to dance.

Past winners Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming co-hosted the ceremony, which was broadcast live on CBS television and featured songs from top musicals.

The three-hour show capped a record-breaking season on Broadway in which audience numbers topped 13.1 million and ticket grosses rose to $1.36 billion.

“Skylight” won best revival of a play and “The King and I” took best revival of a musical.

Ruthie Ann Miles, who won the best featured actress in a musical Tony, consulted her cell phone on stage as she accepted the honor.

Mirren’s co-star Richard McCabe picked up the best featured actor prize in a play.

A tearful, flustered Annaleigh Ashford was named best featured actress in a play for her role as the zany ballet-dancing daughter in an eccentric American family in “You Can’t Take it With You.”

Christian Borle won his second Tony for best featured actor in a musical, for “Something Rotten!”

“This feels like an embarrassment of riches,” said Borle about his portrayal of William Shakespeare as a rock star in the bawdy parody of Broadway musicals set in 1590s Tudor England.

The Tony Awards are presented by theater industry association The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, a not-for-profit organization.

source: interaksyon.com

Sting feted at Kennedy Center Honors

WASHINGTON | British rock star Sting was the toast of Washington on Sunday as he was feted with fellow recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

He took time off from his Broadway show “The Last Ship” to join Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, 1970s soul man Al Green, comedienne Lily Tomlin and ballerina Patricia McBride at a gala ceremony in the US capital.

“I feel very happy in my trophy,” Sting told AFP on the red carpet going into the soiree, pointing to the rainbow-colored laurel draped around his neck.

“I’m not sure when I’ll wear it again, but I think I look rather fetching in it,” he quipped.

“It’s still pretty overwhelming. I’m dealing with it quite well.”

Bestowed by the nation’s premier performing arts center, the Kennedy Center Honors are regarded as the highest recognition of cultural achievement in the United States.

Sting is the eighth British rock and pop musician to receive a Kennedy Center Honor.

Others include Elton John, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend from The Who, Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

This year’s honorees were all smiles and laughter as they took their balcony places alongside President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in the Kennedy Center’s vast opera house.

First to be honored was Green, with Earth, Wind and Fire putting the black-tie crowd in a soul-swinging groove, Usher crooning “Let’s Stay Together” and a huge chorus backing Mavis Staples and Sam Moore on “Take Me To The River.”

Earlier, on the red carpet, Green — an ordained pastor in Memphis, Tennessee who branched out into gospel music in the 1980s — said the honor was merely a milestone in a career that is still unfolding.

“They give me all these great accolades and then they tell you, ‘Alright, go out and earn it’,” he said. “So we gotta keep writing and keep making songs.”

“Soul music is alive and well. You’ll never get rid soul music. It’s in here,” added Green, playfully poking the heart of an AFP reporter before breaking into a few lines of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”

TV satirist Stephen Colbert, making his debut as a Kennedy Center Honors emcee, ironically dubbed the event “the only awards ceremony in America that does not feature Taylor Swift.”

The three-hour gala is to be telecast in the United States on the CBS network December 30.

source: interaksyon.com

Award-winning director Mike Nichols dies at 83

Mike Nichols, a nine-time Tony Award winner on Broadway and the Oscar-winning director of films such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” died on Wednesday at age 83, ABC News said.

Nichols was married to Diane Sawyer, former anchorwoman of ABC’s “World News Tonight” broadcast.

No director ever moved between Broadway and Hollywood as easily as Nichols. He also was one of the few people to win Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy awards in a career that first blossomed with a comedy partnership with Elaine May in the late 1950s.

ABC News President James Goldston, in a memo to news staff, said on Thursday that Nichols “passed away suddenly on Wednesday evening.”

“In a triumphant career that spanned over six decades, Mike created some of the most iconic works of American film, television and theater,” Goldston said. “He was a true visionary.”

Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, where his parents had settled after leaving Russia. He came to the United States at age 7 when his family fled the Nazis in 1939.

He grew up in New York feeling like an outsider because of his limited English and odd appearance – a reaction to a whooping-cough vaccine had caused permanent hair loss. As a University of Chicago student, he fought depression but found like-minded friends such as May.

In the late 1950s, Nichols and May formed a stand-up team at the forefront of a comedy movement that included Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters and Woody Allen in satirizing contemporary American life. They won a Grammy in 1961 for best comedy album before splitting, partly because May liked to improvise and Nichols preferred set routines.

Nichols came to be a directing powerhouse on Broadway in the mid-1960s with “Barefoot in the Park,” the first of what would be a successful relationship with playwright Neil Simon. Later he would do Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” “Plaza Suite” and “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and Time magazine called him “the most in-demand director in the American theater.”

“I never worked with anyone in my life – nor will I ever work with anyone – as good as Mike Nichols,” Simon told the New Yorker.

In all, he won best-director Tonys for his four collaborations with Simon, as well as for “Luv” in 1965, “The Real Thing” in 1984, “Spamalot” in 2005 and a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in 2012, and best musical award as a producer of “Annie” in 1977.

TURNING TO HOLLYWOOD

When he was ready to try movies, Nichols made an impact on American cinema with three influential movies in a five-year period.

The first starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a 1966 adaption of the Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” It was nominated for an Oscar in all 13 categories in which it was eligible and won five of them, although Nichols did not take the best director award.

He followed that up a year later with “The Graduate,” starring a little-known Dustin Hoffman as an aimless college graduate seduced by an older woman before falling in love with her daughter. Nichols was rewarded with an Academy Award for his direction and the movie, thanks to several memorable lines and the music of Simon and Garfunkel, became a ’60s cultural touchstone.

In 1971, Nichols put out “Carnal Knowledge,” which created a sensation because of its sexual nature. The manager of a theater in Georgia was arrested for showing the film and had to appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court before being exonerated.

In a Los Angeles Times interview Nichols described directing as “a long, long skid on an icy road. … If you’re still here when you come out of the spin, it’s a relief.”

Sometimes Nichols’ movies did go off the road. “Catch-22,” “Day of the Dolphin” and “The Fortune” were generally considered unsuccessful and he did not make a feature film from 1975 until rebounding with 1983′s “Silkwood,” for which he was nominated for another Oscar.

In the second act of his movie career he also directed “Heartburn,” Simon’s “Biloxi Blues,” “Postcards from the Edge,” “Regarding Henry,” “The Birdcage,” “Primary Colors,” “Charlie Wilson’s War” and “Working Girl,” which earned him another Oscar nomination.

He won an Emmy in 2003 for “Angels in America,” a TV miniseries about the AIDS epidemic.

In the mid-1980s, Nichols suffered a psychotic breakdown, which he said was related to a prescription sedative, that made him so delusional he thought he had lost all his money.

Despite his urbane, intellectual manner, Nichols once had a reputation as an on-the-set screamer. Meryl Streep told the Hollywood Reporter, “He was always the smartest and most brilliant person in the room – and he could be the meanest, too.”

The actress said that changed after Nichols married Sawyer, his fourth wife, whom he met in a Paris airport while awaiting a Concorde flight.

Nichols had three children from his earlier marriages.

source: interaksyon.com

Another Pricey Rental Rises on the Upper West Side

TWO years ago, the opening of the Corner and the Aire proved there was a healthy appetite for spare-few-expenses rentals on the Upper West Side.

Units in these buildings, which have finishes like mahogany floors and amenities like washers and dryers, leased quickly, even though rents were higher than the neighborhood average.

Now a new project is trying to replicate their successes. Developed by Friedland Properties and Rose Associates, a 20-story rental building is going up at Broadway and 77th Street. The building is now known as the Larstrand, though developers say that is just a working title.

What is settled is that the high-rise will have 181 units, from 480-square-foot studios to 1,700-square-foot three-bedrooms, said Robert A. Scaglion, a senior managing director of Rose Associates.

The $135 million project, which kicked off last summer, is not expected to be complete until the end of 2013, but developers have already chosen many finishes. Kitchens will have quartz counters, Bosch appliances and Bertazzoni ovens. Bathrooms will have Italian tile walls and floors, Kohler tubs, and under-floor radiant heat. Bath mirrors will be defoggable with the flick of a switch; a portion of mirror surface will have a television built in.

Rents for the three-bedrooms, which will be on the corners with views of Broadway, are expected to be $90 a square foot, Mr. Scaglion said, and one-bedrooms, which will average 700 square feet, could cost around $80 a square foot. That comes out to around $13,000 and $4,750 per month, respectively. (Twenty percent of the units will be offered below market rents for qualifying tenants.)

The average rent in May for a one-bedroom on the Upper West Side was $3,471 a month, or about $60 a square foot, according to MNS, a real estate brokerage.

To help justify these prices, and to compete with other buildings, the Larstrand developers are putting extra effort into the common areas. The 4,800-square-foot roof deck, for instance, will have an outdoor movie theater, which is something the Corner did not offer, Mr. Scaglion said. The theater could be the scene of movie-night parties, he added.

“The evolution of the high-end luxury building is that residents are now requiring special programming in these kinds of spaces,” said Mr. Scaglion, who also marketed and leased the Aire, at 200 West 67th Street. in addition, Rose handled the marketing for the Corner, at 200 West 72nd Street.

The L-shaped Larstrand site takes up the entire eastern side of Broadway between 77th and 78th Streets (the residential address is 227 West 77th Street). It will have 40,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, as well as two lower levels. Also on the site are two other buildings, which will be preserved and renovated. So far, CVS has leased a 9,800-square-foot store, a company spokesman said. The two-story buildings that used to line the block were home to a diner, a pizza place and a taekwondo school, as well as the popular Asian restaurant Ruby Foo’s, which closed its location there in 2009.

For Friedland, which did not respond to a request for an interview, No. 227 continues a recent push into residential development. The company, led by the brothers Lawrence and Melvin Friedland, owns more than 100 buildings on the East Coast, according to its Web site, including several in the area. But brokers said the firm had not built a major new one until the 22-story Melar went up at 250 West 93rd Street in 2007.

The Melar has 143 units, ranging in size from studios to three-bedrooms, though rents, at an average of $70 a square foot, are below what No. 227 plans to charge, Mr. Scaglion said, because the Melar is north of Broadway’s liveliest shopping district.

One factor working in the Larstrand’s favor is that it will come to market with little in the way of competition, since many development plans were deferred during the recession, said Andrew Barrocas, the chief executive of MNS. With limited inventory and strong demand, vacancy rates have fallen into the low single digits, so rental projects that open in the next two years are in a great position, he said. “I was blown away by what the rents ended up being for the Corner,” Mr. Barrocas said, “and I expect this building to do just as well.”

source: nytimes.com

Alex Pettyfer Is Ready to Strip on Broadway

It sure worked for The Full Monty – taking the story of male strippers from the screen to the Broadway musical stage. So why not the new kid on the runaway, Magic Mike?

Apparently, that's the plan already in the works by Channing Tatum, whose own story loosely forms the basis for the new movie, and his screenwriter and producing partner Reid Carolin.

Furthermore, the movie's Alex Pettyfer, 22, says he would "absolutely" do the Broadway version. "I think we should all do the opening night," he tells USA Today about his fellow manscaped costars costars Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer.

"We are working on it as a Broadway show, which would be a different story," Carolin tells the newspaper. "More of a romp, more of a fun night out at a club with a story."

He adds, "I'm almost more excited about that than the movie because I think it's the perfect thing for women to go see on Broadway, to be participants in the show."

The recipient of positive early reviews, the movie Magic Mike, directed by Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh, opens Friday. Tatum plays Magic Mike Martingano, the tutor for Pettyfer's character of Adam, schooling the young newcomer in the ways of stripping, living and womanizing.

article source: people.com