King Arthur: “Have you heard of this Broadway?”
Sir Robin: “Yes Sire, and we don’t stand a chance there.”
Actually, Spamalot, the musical version of the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a bona-fide smash, first lighting up the 2004-05 Broadway season, and now expertly mounted at the Kennedy Center through May 21st, as a part of their ‘Broadway Center Stage’ programming. Honestly, this production of Spamalot is dizzying,
Teaching the world new ways to dream. But what happens when the shimmering gold of dreams fades to a distant silver of memory. Age comes for us all in the end does it not? The tragically beautiful and strikingly dramatic score of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard is sweeping the stage of the Eisenhower at The Kennedy Center this February as a part of the Broadway Center Stage series. With book & lyrics by Don Black &
The
Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series drastically shifts gears but
continues to strike gold with their current production of Tom Kitt and Brian
Yorkey’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal. They have enjoyed great success for the last three
seasons mining a pleasing blend of golden age musicals like How to Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying and The Music Man and
modern age classics like In the Heights and The Who’s Tommy,
In the
summer of 1984, a little movie with a big soundtrack took the world by storm
and launched a young up-and-coming leading man for whom at the time you’d be
pressed to find movie connections of two degrees into the stratosphere as the
ubiquitous megastar Kevin Bacon. Filling out the cast with veteran actors like
John Lithgow and Dianne Weist along with breakout performances from young
actors like Lori Singer, Chris Penn, and Sarah Jessica Parker,
Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom
What started out as a bold new
idea last year has realized itself as an exciting new staple of the
Baltimore/DC theatrical scene. The Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage
concert series, which features top notch Broadway and Hollywood talent in
quickly-assembled one week runs to add special event variety to their already
busy tour and concert seasons, once again strikes gold (or perhaps more
accurately, brass—an entire marching band’s worth) in their jubilant current
production of Meredith Willson’s Tony winning classic The Music Man.
After their inaugural season struck gold with the latest reworking of Chess, a jubilant celebration of In the Heights, and a megawatt production of Pulitzer Prize winner How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, all of which rivaled or improved upon their latest Broadway incarnations, The Broadway Center Stage concert series at the Kennedy Center has set a high standard with their ambitious and impressive pop-up musicals.