“The Wedding Singer” has found an unexpectedly ardent audience. “The feel-good play, based on the 1998 movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, received a ho-hum from some critics when it opened April 27, but it is a certified smash with the young-and-in-love set who are using the show’s joyful ambience to create their own personal Kodak moments. With the blessing of the show’s managers and promoters, a half-dozen couples have become engaged on stage at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, and women are lining up for the theater’s Bachelorette Box package.”
Tag: 07.25.06
TV + Studying = A Bad Combination
“Multitasking may be necessary in today’s fast-paced world, but new research shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later.”
AM Radio: Evidently Not Dead After All
“A far cry from its midcentury pop culture zenith, when youngsters would defy their parents by listening to transistor radios under the bedsheets, AM is nevertheless a vital, vibrant and profitable force in the universe of audio entertainment even as it battles its image of having too much talk and commercials.”
An On-Time Finish Would Mean An Under-Rehearsed Orchestra
“The Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is slated to open Sept. 15, but builders are racing to finish at least a month earlier — the leeway the hall needs to have a fighting chance of sounding right in its debut. Its resident orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, needs the time to become acclimated to the 2,000-seat venue in Costa Mesa, which is considerably more intimate and acoustically sensitive than its previous home of nearly 20 years.”
Marketing Classical Music – A Crass And Cynnical Ploy?
“Music itself is not a product. A thing of beauty, a universal language, an outpouring essential to life and expression, yes – but not a product. Yet, unfortunately, classical music seems to be slipping down the image-conscious slope that degrades so many other art forms. More and more it attempts to package itself as a consumer item, with all the fatuous and artfully deceptive gloss to match; it sacrifices ideas of integrity and transmitting the benefits of artistic endeavour for the ideologies of market competitiveness and maximised returns.”
US Judge To Miami-Dade Library: Cuban Book Stays
“A federal judge Monday temporarily barred the Miami-Dade County School District from removing a children’s book on Cuba from school libraries. Last month, the Miami-Dade school board voted to remove the book from its elementary schools after a parent complained that its depiction of life in the communist nation was overly rosy.”
No “Civil War Christmas” In D.C. This Year
Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage has pulled the second of two new musicals from its upcoming season. “The company said yesterday it has been forced to postpone ‘A Civil War Christmas,’ an ambitious piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel that was to have been the company’s major holiday offering.” Earlier, it delayed “The Women of Brewster Place,” based on the Gloria Naylor novel.
Standing Up To The MPAA
The Motion Picture Association of America has sued thousands of people for piracy. But a 30-year-old software engineer is challenging the suit brought against him. “Though he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it’s a small price to pay to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. ‘They’re completely abusing the system. I would spend well into the millions on this’.”
Actor Mako, 72
“Mako, a distinguished stage and screen actor who was widely regarded as having blazed the trail for Asian-Americans in films, on television and in the theater, died on Friday at his home in Somis, Calif. He was 72.”
Philly’s City Hall, Minus The Coal Stains
Philadelphia’s hulkingly opulent city hall, an architectural lightning rod since shortly after its completion in 1901, may be about to see its best days yet. “A restoration of the building’s lavish statuary and exteriors, perhaps the nation’s largest-ever art conservation effort, is slowly transforming its dingy main floors into bright granite and marble. Ironwork that was once rusty is now a crisp white. Viewed from the northwest, the renewed facades are a shining panorama its builders could only imagine.”