So....you get 1 chance to go back in time to any show of your choosing. What is the show and who is the star?
For me...it would be 'MAME' with Ms. Lansbury.
Well we all can dream can't we!
Gypsy with The Merm
Chorus Member Joined: 11/10/12
I would love to see Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie. There has been so much written about her legendary performance and no tape (that I have seen).
Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, hands down.
Runner up is the OBC of Follies. I didn't discover Sondheim till A Little Night Music 2 years later .
All of the above are good choices (and except Taylor and Merman, I saw them).
I'd pick GYPSY with Merman.
Not technically Broadway, but Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth.
Wait, Gaveston, are you saying you saw Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie?
Randal Keith, as Jean Valjean, in the closing cast of Les Miserables on Broadway in the Spring of 2003.
Understudy Joined: 8/1/12
I'm such an Inge fanatic, so I think I'd probably have to go see the original production of Picnic.
Original Broadway Cast of:
Rent
Wicked
Evita
The Phantom of the Opera
Gypsy
Anything Goes
Funny Girl
Into the Woods
Les Miserables
The Lion King
Thoroughly Modern Millie
West Side Story
42nd Street
Sunset Boulevard
Spring Awakening
The Sound of Music
The Producers
Oklahoma!
Dreamgirls
Past: Elaine Stritch in Company
Hypothetical: Neil Patrick Harris in Barnum
Ann Harada's Weekend Run as Gertrude in Seussical
Andrews and Harrison in My Fair Lady.
Opening Night of Carrie on May, 12th 1988.
Agree with all the above. Never saw Merman in GYPSY but did see Ann Sothern as Rose about five years later. I've seen all the Broadway Roses since and she was still my all time favorite.
I did get to see Lansbury three times in MAME (twice on Broadway and once in stock at Westbury) and to this day her performances were not only consistent and mesmerizing but the best I've ever seen. And she was so glamorous in her day.
Another moment I'd like to relive again was seeing Barbara Harris on stage in THE APPLE TREE. She was another one of a kind performer.
My Mom had a friend in the theatre who did see Laurette Taylor in GLASS MENAGERIE (she just turned 90). She's the only person I've ever spoken to who actually saw her on stage. One thing she said she's never forgotten about her performance that stayed with her all these years was her delivery of the simple line, "Rise and shine" off stage. She said in those few words there was such a pain, sadness and weariness in her speech pattern that told you so much you needed to know about her character in such a short moment.
Shows I'm sorry I missed or would have loved to have seen:
ONE TOUCH OF VENUS
LADY IN THE DARK
CANDIDE (1956)
I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
SHE LOVES ME (1963)
ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER
110 IN THE SHADE (1963)
ANYONE CAN WHISTLE
REDHEAD
NEW GIRL IN TOWN
HOUSE OF FLOWERS
And I'd love to go way back in time and see some of the Gershwin (OH KAY), Porter (LEAVE IT TO ME), Berlin (AS THOUSANDS CHEER), Kern (SALLY) and Rodgers and Hart (BABES IN ARMS) shows from the past.
Godspell- legendary Toronto all-star cast.
Marlon Braando in Streetcar Named Desire.
Merm in Gypsy. Liza when she filled in on Chicago. Babs in both Wholesale and Funny Girl. Yul Brynner in King & I.
The Toronto Godspell cast (great idea, darquegk) and Barbara Cook in Candide and She Loves Me
Madeline Kahn in "On The Twentieth Century", on a good night.
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/20/08
Hard to say. I guess I will go with Marlon Brando in Streetcar.
Non-Broadway, I would say Mark Rylance's Peter Pan at the RSC in '83.
Barbara Harris' performance in The Apple Tree, for sure.
Opening night of PROMISES, PROMISES: December 1, 1968.
It would be to go to 1935 and see Helen Hayes as Queen Victoria in Victoria Regina. I saw Ms. Hayes only once in the 1960s as Mrs. Candor in School for Scandal and I immediately knew what "radiant on stage" meant. The feeling was overwhelming and it remains perhaps as my most outstanding theatre memory.
>>>>>>>>>>
My favorite comment so far? "Madeline Kahn in "On The Twentieth Century", on a good night" with the last part of that sentence being the important part! Good one, Jay Lerner.
God this is hard... Probably Women On The Verge and Bonnie & Clyde
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