To celebrate Women's History Month he is the first of two episodes recorded during the pandemic about the history of Broadway Costume design with special guest Ann Hould-Ward. Irene Sharraff is the legendary Broadway costume designer whose incredible 56-year career spanned from 1933 to 1989. She designed the costumes for more than 52 Broadway musicals including As Thousands Cheer, Jubilee, On Your Toes, The Boys From Syracuse, Lady In The Dark, The King And I, West Side Story, Flower Drum Song, ...
Mar 21, 2024•31 min
My guest this week is Robert W. Schneider who joins me to talk about his new podcast, Broadway Bound — The Musicals That Never Came To Broadway. Each of the ten episodes in the first season of this wonderfully researched new series focuses on a high-profile musical that was on its way to Broadway but for various reasons never made it. Analyzing and identifying those reasons is part of what makes this series so fascinating. Musicals featured in the first season include Arthur, Minsky’s, Breakfast...
Mar 14, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 136
My guest again this week is author Maya Cantu who returns for the third and final part of our conversation about her fascinating book: Greasepaint Puritan — Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes. In this episode we focus on Ropes’ 1934 novel, Go Into Your Dance, the third in his evocative backstage trilogy which also includes 42nd Street (the source material for both the classic film and the stage musical), and Stage Mother, (a sort of proto version of Gypsy). All...
Mar 07, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 135
My guest again today is author Maya Cantu who returns to discuss her book, Greasepaint Puritan — Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes. In this terrific new book Maya reclaims the life and work of vaudeville, nightclub and Broadway dancer turned novelist and screenwriter Bradford Ropes, with a central focus on his three long-forgotten backstage novels: 42nd Street on which the classic film and stage adaptation were based, Go Into Your Dance, a thinly disguised fic...
Feb 29, 2024•27 min•Season 2Ep. 134
My guest this week is author Maya Cantu who joins me to discuss her new book, Greasepaint Puritan — Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes. In this book Maya reclaims the life and work of Bradford Ropes, the author of the naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty, and very gay novel, 42nd Street, on which both the classic film and stage adaptation are based. That’s just the first of his three long-forgotten novels that include Stage Mother and Go Into Your Dance, all of which ...
Feb 22, 2024•56 min•Season 2Ep. 133
This is a special encore episode of Broadway Nation. 1970s Broadway experienced another blast from the past with the return of the Black Musical. More than a dozen hit black musicals opened during the decade, and three of them won the Tony Award for BEST MUSICAL. About half of these were new, original musical plays – mostly adaptations of popular plays or novels. All of them employed a combination of rhythm & blues, pop, rock, jazz and traditional Broadway style music to help tell their stor...
Feb 15, 2024•27 min
My guest today is the prolific and award-winning book writer and lyricist Stephen Cole who joins me today to talk about his new novel: Mary & Ethel…and Mikey Who? I found it to be a terrific book, both wildly funny and very moving. And as you will hear, at times it feels like Stephen wrote this novel especially for me, and for the fans of this podcast. Stephen Cole is an award-winning musical theatre writer whose shows have been produced from New York City to London to the Middle East and Au...
Feb 08, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 132
My guest today is theatrical animal trainer Bill Berloni. Beginning with the original production of ANNIE in 1977, Bill has provided and trained animals of all species and sizes for 27 Broadway musicals and plays, as well as for countless Off-Broadway shows, National Tours, regional theaters, movies, television shows, commercials and the NYC Ballet – and he found almost all of those animal actors in shelters, humane societies and rescue leagues. His awards include a 2011 Tony Honor for “Excellen...
Feb 01, 2024•49 min
My guest this week is Ted Chapin whose captivating 2003 book Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical “Follies,” has recently been reissued in a revised and updated edition. As you may know, this book is based on Ted’s first-hand experience as the production assistant on the original Broadway production of the Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, & James Goldman landmark musical Follies. Of course, the expression, “I just couldn’t put that book down” is a cliché – but in this case, it has ...
Jan 25, 2024•49 min
This is the second half of my conversation with author Liza Gennaro, whose fascinating book is titled: Making Broadway Dance. If you missed part one you may want to catch up on that episode before listening to this one. Liza is currently the Dean of Musical Theater at the Manhattan School of Music and she also has had a very active and successful career as a dancer and choreographer. Interestingly, she is closely related to this subject matter of her book because her father was the Tony Award wi...
Jan 18, 2024•39 min
This is the first half of my recent conversation with author Liza Gennaro, whose fascinating new book is titled: Making Broadway Dance. Liza is currently the Dean of Musical Theater at the Manhattan School of Music and prior to that she had a very active and successful career as a dancer and choreographer on Broadway and with prominent theater companies across the country. Most notably she choreographed the hit Broadway revival of Frank Loessor’s The Most Happy Fella. As she writes in the introd...
Jan 11, 2024•30 min
Why are the great Musicals so unforgettable? Why do musicals have so much power and impact? How is it that they are able to live in our hearts and memories for a lifetime? Musicals are experiences that get embedded in our psyche. We remember them forever -- vividly and in often in great and specific detail. And they get embedded in our emotional and physical memory as well. Our bodies and nervous systems recall how we felt when we experienced them years, even lifetimes later. In this Season One ...
Jan 04, 2024•31 min
This is the seventh and final episode in my series of conversations with author OLIVER SODEN regarding his recent book: MASQUERADE: THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD This week we explore the final chapters of both Coward's life and this brilliant biography. Remarkably, during the final decade of his life Coward wrote the book, music & lyrics for two Broadway musicals — SAIL AWAY (starring Elaine Stritch) and THE GIRL WHO CAME TO SUPPER (Starring Jose Ferer & Florence Henderson), and directed HIGH...
Dec 21, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 131
This week marks the 124th birthday Noel Coward who was born on December 16, 1899, just in time to become, without a doubt, one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th Century. And yes, his parents named him Noel because his birth came so close to Christmas! So it couldn’t be more appropriate that today’s episode is the sixth in series of discussions with Oliver Soden, the author of the truly remarkable new book, Masquerade — The Lives of Noel Coward. Become a PATRON of Broadway Nation! I want...
Dec 14, 2023•35 min•Season 2Ep. 130
My guest again this week is Oliver Soden whose recent book is titled Masquerade – The Lives of Noel Coward. I am devoting more episodes to this book than I have to any previous books, but I found the writing and research to be so exceptional, and this conversation with Soden to be so captivating that I don’t want you to miss any of it. Today Oliver and I focus on a very difficult period in Noel Coward’s career when his was seen to be seriously out of step with the theatrical world of post-war Br...
Dec 07, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 129
This is the fourth part of my interview with Oliver Soden author of the truly extraordinary new book MASQUERADE — THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD. In this episode we discuss Noel Coward’s life and career during the late 1930s including his amazingly provocative play DESIGN FOR LIVING and the bisexual love triangle at the center of it, as well as dazzling series of nine one act plays and musicals that make up TONIGHT AT 8:30 in which Coward and Gertrude Lawrence played a dazzling array of characters, an...
Nov 30, 2023•43 min•Season 2Ep. 128
This is the third part of my interview with Oliver Soden author of the truly extraordinary new book MASQUERADE — THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD. In this episode we discuss Noel Coward’s life and career during the 1930s including what has become his most produced play Private Lives, his spectacular patriotic anti-war pageant Cavalcade, and his final musical revue, Words And Music (which was titled Set To Music on Broadway.) And most especially his relationship with the great Gertrude Lawrence. If you m...
Nov 23, 2023•56 min•Season 2Ep. 127
Hello Broadway Nation listeners! This week for the first time in more than 126 episodes some unforeseen technical complications have reared their ugly heads and those, on top of the tech rehearsals for the upcoming production of White Christmas that I am co-directing at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, and some important deadlines for my upcoming book, have all come together and kept me from posting a new episode of this podcast as planned. This is especially frustrating to me because we are in the...
Nov 17, 2023•42 min
This is a special encore episode of Broadway Nation. In light of the recent revisal of Rodgers & Hart's musical comedy Pal Joey at New York's City Center I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of my favorite episodes. I’ll be back next week with the third part of my conversation with Oliver Soden regarding his amazing new biography of Noel Coward. In the meantime please enjoy Pal Joey and the Silver Age of Broadway, part 2: During the 1930s Broadway was severely impacted by the eco...
Nov 09, 2023•38 min
My guest again this week is Oliver Soden, author of the amazing new biography: Masquerade — The Lives of Noel Coward. Today in the second part of our conversation Oliver relates how Noel Coward, while still in his early 20s, emerged as one of the signature voices of the 1920s, both in London and on Broadway. If you missed part one of our conversation you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Oliver Sodon is a writer and broadcaster whose previous books include the critical...
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 126
My guest this week is OLIVER SODEN, the author of a truly remarkable new book: Masquerade — The Lives of Noel Coward. As frequent listeners to this podcast may remember, as a teenager growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I developed an unlikely affinity for all things related to Noel Coward, inspired I am sure by that double record cast recording of the 1972 musical revue, Oh, Coward! — an album that I still love listening to. And from then on I was hooked! So this book is right in my wheelhouse! Thi...
Oct 26, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 125
I am thrilled to announce that today’s episode is a Broadway Nation take over! Since I am currently wearing a number of hats including returning to Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre to co-direct Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (which started rehearsals this week), AND working on deadline for my upcoming book (also titled Broadway Nation) but still in the midst of all that firmly committed to keeping new episodes of this podcast rolling out on a regular basis — this week I asked my frequent co-Host an...
Oct 19, 2023•46 min•Season 2Ep. 124
Although nobody knew it at the time, in April of 1968 “The Golden Age of Broadway” came to an abrupt end on the opening night of the “tribal rock musical” HAIR, which took America by storm and created a shocking jump cut into what I call “The Modern Era" of the Broadway Musical. In this episode I share the story of the emergence and rise of the so called “Rock Musical”. To many HAIR, and the "Rock Musical", seemed like a total betrayal of the values, craftsmanship and traditions of Broadway. How...
Oct 12, 2023•32 min
Today’s episode is the second half of my recent discussion with author Grace Barnes whose fascinating new book it titled: National Identity and the British Musical — From Blood Brothers to Cinderella. In this conversation we explore how British national identity has, and often has not, been dramatized in British musical theater, and among the topics that we discuss are the musicals Blood Brothers, Mama Mia, Billy Elliott, The Last Ship, Bend It Like Beckham, and the current smash hit SIX, and, o...
Oct 05, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 123
My guest today is Grace Barnes whose new book it titled: National Identity and the British Musical — From Blood Brothers to Cinderella. This is a fascinating book that explores how British national identity has, and often has not, been dramatized in British musical theater, and she does this by examining the content and context of musicals such as Blood Brothers, Mama Mia, Billy Elliott, The Hired Man and the current smash hit SIX. And, of course, she also considers the tremendous impact that th...
Sep 28, 2023•40 min•Season 2Ep. 122
This is an encore presentation of my conversation with author Liza Gennaro, regarding her fascinating book : Making Broadway Dance. Liza is currently the Dean of Musical Theater at the Manhattan School of Music and prior to that she had a very active and successful career as a dancer and choreographer on Broadway and with prominent theater companies across the country. Most notably she choreographed the hit Broadway revival of Frank Loessor’s The Most Happy Fella. As she writes in the introducti...
Sep 21, 2023•30 min
This is the fourth and final segment of my recent conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his latest book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era This fascinating new book explores the passionate and often rocky relationship between Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen. To accomplish this, Geoffrey Block takes an in-depth look at 12 stage musicals and their film adaptations and on today’s episode we focus on the f...
Sep 14, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 121
This is the third part of my conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his recent book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. This very interesting new book takes an in-depth look at 12 Broadway stage musicals and their Hollywood movie musical adaptations. And today we discuss two of those shows — West Side Story and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s second to last musical, Flower Drum Song. When compared to their Broadway originals, these are two of the mos...
Sep 07, 2023•38 min•Season 2Ep. 117
This is the second part of my conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his recent book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. The romance that Geoffrey is referring to to in his title is the sometimes passionate, but often very rocky love affair between Broadway Musicals and the film studios that adapted them into Movie Musicals. In this episode we discuss the 1940 stage & 1943 film versions of Cabin In The Sky, the first major film musical to be ...
Aug 31, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 119
This is the first part of my recent conversation with Geoffrey Block whose latest book is titled: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. This fascinating new book explores the sometimes successful, but often very rocky relationship between Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen. He does this by taking an in-depth look at 12 musicals and their film adaptations. These include very famous and familiar ones such as Show Boat, Ok...
Aug 24, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 118
