Veanne Cox and Company?

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:20pm

Does she not deliver the most perfect GETTING MARRIED TODAY from Company?

Beth Howland is great, and I enjoy how frantic she sounds on the OBCR.

But Veanne is just insane with her speed. The best part is that her diction is absolutely perfect. You can understand every word. Which isn't the case with most Amy's.

She was also nominated for the Featured Actress Tony and Drama Desk for her Amy, she was the only cast member from the 95 revival to receive any nominations.

Anybody else absolutely adore her GETTING MARRIED TODAY?




Updated On: 11/3/06 at 11:20 PM

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:34pm

PS. If anyone's interested you can see a 14 year old Amy perform this number on that YOU site. Just search the song title. It's okay for an High School production. They won a ton of awards in 2004. Beat my school.

[FoscasBohemianDream]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:39pm

I agree, LJay. Veanne Cox was one of the few people in the revival that seemed to know what she was doing. Her "Getting Married Today" stopped the show the night I saw her, I was fifteen and remember being awestruck by her ability to sing at such a fast tempo (it was my first time listening the song too). To me, Boyd Gaines, Jane Krakowski, and Cox made the show somewhat worthy of Broadway.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:41pm

Veanne was wonderful. Jane whats her name is better though. I am so sad she won't open this revival.

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:43pm

I enjoyed Jane, but her diction was far from as perfect as Veanne's diction. Jane's speed and frantic state was great though.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 11:52pm

yeah, Debra Monk, Danny Burnstein, Kate Burton, Charlotte D"Amboise, Jonathon Ducochitz, LaChanze, Dianna Canova, Robert Westenberg etc. had no idea what they were doing!
Too bad Rob Marshall's career went no where after that too.
That was one the more idiotic comments I have heard on here for a long time.
That revival was so underated and only did not make it to Broadway because of the Producers demand that Gaines be replaced and Scott Ellis said no way!
Veanne Cox was Brilliant.
Updated On: 11/3/06 at 11:52 PM

[FoscasBohemianDream]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 12:01am

I'm not going to apologize for my opinion. I just thought the rest of the cast while talented was so poorly directed that they didn't really know what they were doing. Obviously, I'm generalizing--my mistake--but the three people I singled out were the only ones that did it for me. Debra Monk was miscast as Joanne, LaChanze's "Another Hundred People" left a lot to be desired, and D'Amboisse was only adequate during "Tick Tock."

[tagiunagi]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 12:12am

I watched the video on that site, and I can tell that the kids get better training in singing than they do in acting.

Was that a NYC school?

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 12:17am

It's a New Jersey school. They aren't even a performing arts high school.

They miss a lot of the chords on their clip of the title number though. Vocals aren't that great in that number.

They also have FOLLIES clips on there.

[tagiunagi]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 12:20am

I've actually never heard of a hs doing Company before. It's racy and too difficult. I wonder why this hs thought they could.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 1:35am

Next to Stritch
Debra Monk's Acting and singing
were the best Joanne Ever!
and she played the Tuba.
before Doyle.

[GYPSY1527]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 10:05am

I need to head over to the Lincoln Center library to view a clip of Veanne's performance. She seems spectacular!

[mallardo]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 10:17am

Not to threadjack but... I just saw Caroline or Change in London and while most of the English cast members were terrific, I was disappointed in the actress who played Rose - not that she was bad but that she wasn't Veanne Cox! Veanne is one of those unique creatures, luminous in everything she does.

[notabb]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 10:29am

I also loved that production of COMPANY .I thought it was very well cast EXCEPT for Boyd Gaines.You see, I feel an actor actually has to show up to judge him. I saw COMPANY the 1st week of previews , the last week of previews ( which ,orginally would have been after opening night ) and 6 weeks after that. I NEVER saw Boyd Gaines !! Luckily , his understand , James Clow was wonderful , and for me , ranks up there with John Barrowman as my favorite Bobbys. I would have been glad if COMPANY moved to Broadway with James Clow not Boyd Gaines.

[mattnyc2]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 1:59pm

Not to threadjack, but I saw Veanne Cox at the Drowsy Chaperone lottery the day that I won. Wasn't sure until it was her until they called her name. She looked great though.

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:20pm

They had such good names lined up for that Revival, what went wrong?

[wexy]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:41pm

She was very good in 'Company' I got to meet her (and Stephen Spinella) at some NYTW party. Very nice person as well.

I remember that night because I came home and found out that my cousin had almost died and emergency quadruple bypass surgery.

[IssaMe]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 6:00pm

I totally agree - James Clow (and he went on a lot as Bobby in the Roundabout revival since Boyd Gaines was out so much) is one of the best Bobbys ever - right up there with Kert and Barrowman.

He is currently playing the lead in Paper Mill's "A Wonderful Life" - the musical by Sheldon Harnick and Joe Raposo. He also was in Sondheim's Roundabout "Assassins".

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:38am

Well at the time the Producers thought Clow was too young for the role, most of the cast was a lot Older than he was.
Boyd lost his voice during rehearsals, whether it was nerves or a "condition" will never be known and that unfortunately put a damper on the show.
But it was a top notch revival with a cast to die for.
Tony Walton set.
William Ivy Long Costumes.
It was all there, just some Producers problems, Sondheim wrote a letter I think to the Times explaining why it didn't transfer.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 4:34am

Cox, who I think (not sure though) had previously played Amy in the Long Beach production with Patrick Cassidy and Carol Burnett, was very good. I didn't think she quite equaled Howland, but she was very good. (Actually, after seeing the national tour video at TOFT, I think my favorite Amy may be Tandy Cronyn.) Overall, though, the Roundabout production was generally not much more than a solid, professional production. I thought Debra Monk was pretty miscast, but otherwise everyone else was at least OK, but no one was spectacular except Cox and it wasn't enough. The cast was full of good people, but it just wasn't a special production (IMO, of course). I saw James Clow, btw.

The funny thing was at the same time the Roundabout production was playing, I saw a regional production that had good people in it but was really undirected and had virtually no choreography, so much so that it almost seemed like a concert version. People tended to enter, sit, and only move when they absolutely had to. Encores and Musicals in Mufti usually offer more staging.

Still, this production had an Amy, Sarah Knapp, who was just about as good as Veanne Cox and tore the place part with "Getting Married Today" and the scene that follows. (Nothing else in the production got much response.) And the song was done at high speed with every word crystal clear. So that may have dimmed Cox's luster for me a bit. It's a great role and a number of women have done it very well.

Anyway, with the Roundabout production, the Nederlanders had provided financing in order to have the option of moving it. When it wasn't all that well-received, they passed and took their loss. A neophyte producer, John Hart, wanted to move it and even booked the Atkinson, and a marquee went up and tickets went on sale. But he had never quite raised all the money. According to an article in The Sondheim Review, he claimed that he had 1.26 million and that 1.75 million was needed.

But he wanted changes made to the production, most of all he wanted Gaines replaced by Michael Rupert. Ellis and Sondheim wouldn't agree to this and in the end, the move was cancelled. Only $100,000 worth ot tickets had been sold, not a good sign. Sondheim and Hart each issued statements to the press. Sondheim said that Hart kept demanding changes to the production and every time the creative team would agree to them, he would ask for more, leading Sondheim to believe that Hart couldn't raise the money and was looking for excuses to cancel. Hart responded by saying that the casting of Robert was the real issue, that he didn't think Gaines was capable of handling it vocally but that Sondheim and Ellis were adamant about keeping him, and that was the problem.

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:18pm

^ Some interesting facts. This production included TICK TOCK, and I love that they did.

Anyway, Monk might have been a miscast on stage. But I LOVE her LADIES WHO LUNCH on the cast recording. I think it's a very powerful version of the song.