a southern gal in the north

So really its Ellis who is AD… I really wondered about the HG casting!    (He's in it ….guess who?)

Kirk Browning, American Master of Live Television, Dies
February 11, 2008
By Andrew Salomon

Kirk Browning, the longtime director of Live From Lincoln Center and other telecasts that brought great performances of theatre, opera, and popular music to millions of Americans who might have never seen them otherwise, died Feb. 10 from cardiac arrest in Manhattan, a Lincoln Center spokesperson announced. Browning was 86 and lived in Manhattan.

Over the course of six decades, Browning directed quite a few telecasts of celebrated Broadway shows, many of them live, including José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac (1955); Phil Silvers and Lee Remick in Damn Yankees (1967); Eva Le Gallienne, Rosemary Harris, and Ellis Raab in The Royal Family (1977); Lanford Wilson’s Fifth of July (1982) with Richard Thomas, Cynthia Nixon, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jeff Daniels; Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Tony Award-winning adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath (1991) with Terry Kinney, Gary Sinise, Lois Smith, and Sally Murphy; the Tony-winning revival of Death of a Salesman (2000) with Brian Dennehy and Elizabeth Franz; and Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s musical The Light in the Piazza (2006).

Browning also oversaw performances by master interpreters of the American songbook, including Frank Sinatra and Audra McDonald, and a Madison Square Garden concert by Luciano Pavarotti. He directed elaborate operas starring Beverly Sills and Plácido Domingo as well as an evening of Shakespearean monologues delivered by Ian McKellen alone on stage with no props or costumes.

Much of Browning’s work was performed under the pressure-filled circumstances of live television, but he was fearless, a Lincoln Center spokesperson stated, employing “a probing camera, constantly in motion, that vividly explores character and dramatic conflict.”
As for how he handled the rigors, Browning once said, “You just have to be terribly focused and organized and at the same time remain objective enough so that if disaster strikes, you never lose your cool… . There’s nothing better or more thrilling than capturing the spontaneity of a live performance.”

Kirk Browning, American Master of Live Television, Dies

I have fond memories of Kirk – as I worked with him in my early years in New York (at the Met).  He was the most gracious of men – treating my very young self as if I wasn’t .  Running into him years later at Tanglewood, he was the same – funny, kind and full of life. 

Julia McKenzie: Replaces Geraldine McEwan as the iconic sleuth.
Photograph: ITV

Julia McKenzie, who played the ditzy Hester in the 1980s sitcom Fresh Fields, is ITV’s new Miss Marple.

McKenzie, 66, was most recently seen in the BBC costume drama Cranford as Mrs Forrester and the film Notes on a Scandal. She will replace Geraldine McEwan as Agatha Christie’s elderly sleuth in the ITV1 adaptations.

She starts production of the classic murder mystery A Pocketful of Rye at the end of the month, joining the ranks of actresses, including Joan Hickson and Margaret Rutherford, who have played the role.

“I’m very excited but also slightly daunted by the enormous responsibility that comes with taking on such an iconic role,” McKenzie said.

“Just about everybody in the world knows about Miss Marple and has an opinion of what she should be like, so I’m under no illusions about the size of the task ahead,” she added. “And I suppose I’ll have to remind myself how to knit.”

McKenzie also appeared on TV in Bright Young Things and Blott On The Landscape.

On stage, she most recently starred in The Philadelphia Story at the Old Vic in London.

McKenzie won an Olivier for her performance as Mrs Lovett in the National Theatre production of Sweeney Todd, and in 1977 was nominated for a Tony Award as best actress in a musical for Side by Side by Sondheim.

ITV director of drama Laura Mackie said the Miss Marple brand was one of the “strongest in British television”.

“Julia McKenzie will bring another dimension to a classic character, and I hope the public are as excited as I am to see her bring her own unique interpretation to one of fiction’s most well-loved detectives,” Mackie said.

Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard, chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd said: “I can imagine Julia McKenzie playing Miss Marple with exactly the right balance of sympathy and intelligence, and I confidently predict that she will become a Miss Marple to rank with the very best.”

Phil Clymer, executive producer of Marple, said McKenzie had been the outstanding candidate ever since McEwan decided to step down.

McEwan retired last month after playing the role for three ITV1 series. Miss Marple has been sold to more than 100 territories worldwide.

To quote from his blog:

Amazon pre-orders haven't opened yet, but orders through Interweave Press have.

So I suppose I should finish writing it.

Starting this Sunday, the Jane Austen Series on the Newly Titled Masterpiece CLASSIC! is showing the "definitive" version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

Thank goodness!  After these past few weeks of tomfoolery with the plots and subplots and what have you , it will be a delightful pleasure to luxuriate in the faithful interpretation of this production.

Although I do Love Garson and Olivier in their very flawed production – you can just sense they are straining to make some sense of it – still they are a most well matched pair as of course are our two in the photo above!

This novel is my top favorite of all of Ms. Austen's and I love them all.  I have much in common with the heroine – and more than most readers!  (can you guess?)

Its the one book I read every year and of which I never tire!

Pride and Prejudice in three parts starting Sunday Feb 10th on PBS stations (check your local listings)

Penelope Keith as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre in London

Review from The Telegraph\

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Vaudeville Theatre
(22nd Jan to 26th April 2008)

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the most popular plays ever written. Subtitled ‘A trivial comedy for serious people’, it is bursting with hilarious lines and extraordinary twists of fate and sparkles with the witty dialogue of its genteel protagonists.
Prim-and-proper Jack Worthington is in love with the equally prim-and-proper Gwendolyn Fairfax. His friend, Algernon Moncrieff, is in love with Cecily Cardew. But both Gwendolyn and Cecily are in love with Ernest. Add the magnificently imposing Lady Bracknell, a nanny with a dubious story about a handbag and the result is a delightful entertainment as fresh and funny as when it was first performed in 1895.

Penelope Keith, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, was born to play Lady Bracknell. Her many previous theatre appearances include Time and the Conways, Blithe Spirit, Entertaining Angels and Relatively Speaking. Her numerous television series include the hugely successful The Good Life and To the Manor Born.

Peter Gill is one of our most distinguished and acclaimed directors. At the Royal Court Theatre in the sixties, he was responsible for introducing D H Lawrence’s plays to the theatre.

Cast includes : Penelope Keith, Janet Henfrey, Tim Wylton, William Ellis, Harry Hadden-Paton, Daisy Haggard, Rebecca Night, Maxwell Hutcheon, Roger Swaine

Felicity Kendal in THE VORTEX from 20 Feb at the Apollo Theatre.

Ms Kendal in the TIMES on sex and The Vortex (excerpt below)

Felicity Kendal promises that one day she will write a book about her sex life. This will be terribly exciting news for the millions who have fancied her since she played the green-wellied, pert-jeaned Barbara Good in The Good Life. But if the book is even half as good as White Cargo, her first volume of memoirs published ten years ago, it will be worth reading even if you were among the weird minority who preferred her co-star, Penelope Keith – or Richard Briers, for that matter. We need not, however, hold our breath.

“I’d have to be 90,” she says. “Or 85. Let’s say 80. Then I could spill all the beans. What I wouldn’t want to write is a sort of luvvie diary of good reviews and funny stories that happened at the end of the play I was in. It’s not interesting. But I guess if I got to be – and I would really like to be 90 – then it would be nice to look back and write about sex, 30 years of it. That would be good, but it wouldn’t be good now.” I’m sure it would be good, but it might cause collateral damage to the living. Her first marriage to an actor who suffered from a depressive illness and by whom she had a son ended in the 1970s. She then, according to White Cargo, entered her own version of “the raving 1960s” and for a decade was never without a lover. In 1983, after an affair with the screenwriter Robert Bolt, she married the theatre producer Michael Rudman and had another boy by him. She left Rudman for Tom Stoppard, who, scandalously at the time, deserted his wife, Miriam. For the past decade she has been back with Rudman. We now face an agonising two-decade wait for further particulars: Miss Kendal is still only a spry 61.

THE VORTEX   Apollo Theatre
(2Oth Feb – 7th June ’08)

Author/Playwright: Noel Coward

Director: Sir Peter Hall

Cast: Felicity Kendal , Dan Stevens , Phoebe Nicholls

Synopsis:
TV and stage icon Felicity Kendal leads a star cast as the glamorous socialite Florence Lancaster in Noel Coward’s renowned play about the frivolous nature and narcissism of London’s late 1920’s aristocracy.

Amidst a backdrop of glittering decadence The Vortex centres on the tempestuous relationship of Florence and her hedonistic son Nicky. With the Mother’s desire for younger men driven by her refusal to grow old, and the Son’s obsession with competing for her love, Florence Lancaster’s insatiable needs are fundamentally the crux of the “Vortex of beastliness” that drives Nicky to his demons.

Much loved for her illustrious television and stage career which includes The Good Life and Rosemary and Thyme, as well as her remarkable sell-out success in Fallen Angels in London’s West End, Felicity Kendal returns to the stage in Noel Coward’s highly acclaimed play.

Peter Hall – one of the UK’s most prolific and prestigious stage directors – directs a star cast including Dan Stevens best known for his outstanding performance in the BBC drama The Line of Beauty and for the recent West End production of Hay Fever, Phoebe Nicholls ‘Cordelia Flyte’ from Brideshead Revisited and Annette Badland Cutting It, Dr Who and Bergerac.

February 7, 2008

PBS Will Broadcast Concert From North Korea

By DANIEL J. WAKIN, New York Times

The New York Philharmonic’s concert in North Korea on Feb. 26 will be broadcast that evening on WNET, Channel 13, and distributed two days later on PBS, broadcast officials said Wednesday.

In an unusual arrangement, ABC News will cooperate with WNET, New York’s public television station, to produce the broadcast. Bob Woodruff, a correspondent for ABC News who has reported from the tightly closed North, will provide “behind-the-scenes coverage” of the concert, WNET said.

Because of the time difference, the concert will actually take place before dawn New York time on Feb. 26. A live broadcast will be made available for any takers by EuroArts Music International, which produces and distributes classical music programming and has the rights to the broadcast outside South Korea.

One place where the broadcast is still uncertain is North Korea itself. Government officials there have not said whether the concert will be shown on local television, according to Eric Latzky, the Philharmonic’s spokesman.

Given North Korea’s deep isolation and the government’s tight control over its citizens, the broadcast issue is of crucial interest. Orchestra officials said they had pressed hard to have the concert shown on North Korean television, to ensure that it would be heard by more than just a small audience of dignitaries. The broadcast of any event from North Korea is rare.

The joint WNET-ABC News effort came from a desire to jump on the newsworthy nature of the event, said Neal Shapiro, president and chief executive of WNET’s parent, the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, which also includes WLIW, Channel 21, on Long Island. Mr. Shapiro is a former producer at ABC News and president of NBC News.

“I didn’t want to just show a concert,” he said in a phone interview. “It was a historic place at a historic time.”

Mr. Shapiro, continued, “What makes it so interesting is the very nature of North Korea and what it means to have an organization steeped in everything that the free world implies, the center of culture and capitalism, making an appearance in North Korea.”

So, he said, “I called up my friends at ABC News and said, ‘Why not do something together?’ ”

Mr. Shapiro said that Mr. Woodruff would provide commentary and reporting, ABC News might provide related footage, and the package would be assembled in New York the day of the concert. “It’s what we would call crashing, in the TV business,” he said.

The orchestra leaves Thursday for a long tour of Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong. In December it accepted an invitation by North Korea to visit amid a longstanding effort of diplomatic engagement by the United States, intended mainly to induce North Korea to end its nuclear program. The concert in the capital, Pyongyang, and another in Seoul were added to the tour.

This would be the first major cultural visit by Americans to North Korea. The State Department has backed the trip as a potential opening for the country toward the outside world.

The trip coalesced during an optimistic time in negotiations over the nuclear program. But efforts have sputtered in recent months. The North missed a year-end deadline to disclose all its nuclear programs.

The orchestra will play at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, performing Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), Gershwin’s “American in Paris” and the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.”

The broadcast will also be of some financial interest to the orchestra. Once the cost of production is recouped, it can share in the profits from DVDs and television distribution, said Thomas Baer, an executive producer of EuroArts.

South Korea’s Munwha Broadcasting Company, a producer, will provide the equipment for the telecast, trucking it across the border. ARTE France is also a producer.

Mr. Baer said the production was extraordinarily complicated. “This one involves doing a first-class broadcast and distributing it from a country that has no infrastructure in the area in which we are operating,” he said. “All the equipment, down to generators and cable, has to be brought into the country from South Korea. You can’t go down to the rental place and swap out a lens in Pyongyang.”

Mr. Baer said North Korean government officials had been cooperative. “It’s very hard for the North Korean authorities to deal with this kind of onslaught of people they would never see,” he said.

New York Times

A week ago I decided to clear out my inbox.  I have several email accounts – my first Internet email account (over 10 years) and then yahoo and Gmail. 

So I decided to take all the “newsletters” and merchandise offering type emails and redirect them to one of my Gmail accounts (I have one associated with my website and a personal one).  That way my main older account will be just for personal email and all the other stuff can go to the Gmail account.

Well one week later and I am STILL unsubscribing and resubscribing.  It is amazing how long some of these sites take to upgrade their email lists.

Take Martha Stewart for example.  I changed the profile last Friday and STILL am getting emails at my old address even tho the profile is update with the changed email address. Can’t quite figure that out.

Several others are the same – NEW YORK MAGAZINE, the NEW YORK TIMES also.

So the process continues – but my personal account (which I read in Outlook) is getting considerably tidier!

Onward!