Hello Bette

Every show-tune queen ( and more than a few others) are breaking out the bubbly to celebrate the news that The Divine Miss M will be back on Broadway next year.  And if that is not exciting news enough, she will starring in the first ever brand new staging of Jerry Herman's classic Tony Award winning show "Hello Dolly!". This new production will be directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks with choreography by Tony Award winner Warren Carlyle. 

This evergreen Show was originally written in the 1960's specifically for Ethel Merman who turned it down, as did Mary Martin who was the producers 2nd choice, and the part went to Carol Channing who still seems to be performing ever since. Although the role is closely identified with her (and a certain young Jewish actress about to make her first big movie) over the past six decades it has been played by every big (and small) star who can squeeze into a sequin frock and make a big camp entrance surrounded by pretty chorus boys. Including Miss Merman and Miss Martin who changed their minds when they saw that the Show was a smash hit.

Here are just a few of the divas and gay icons who have been Dolly Levi one way or another up until now.

                                                                                                                 Barbra Striesand

                                                                                                                                  Carol Channing

                                                                                                                                        Pearl Bailey

                                                                                                                                                   Dorothy Lamour 

                                                                                                                              Cuba's Rosita Fornes

                                                                                                  Sally Struthers  (the 50th Anniversary Tour)

                                                    Mexico's  Sylvia Pinal         

                                                                                    Britain's Anita Dobson

                                                         Britain's Danny La Rue 

                                                                                                  Eve Arden        

                                                                                                                     Jazz legend Marilyn Maye

                                                                                 Hong Kong's Mimi Lo

                                                                              Ginger Rogers

PS. How many could you name?

Tony Award winner Brian Bedford dies

The great British classical stage Tony Award winning actor  Brian Bedford who was a star on and off-Broadway for years, has died at the age of 80. He was a protégé of John Gielgud and a theater-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, but because he performed only occasionally in movies and on television he never shared their celebrity.

A regular fixture on the NY stage since the 1960's after making the US his home, he specialized in playing princes, kings, fops and faded aristocrats of Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov. However even with this fine body of work, he will probably most fondly remembered for his last performance on Broadway in 2011 in which he played  Lady Bracknell in drag in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” (which he also directed) and which won him his 7th Tony Best Actor Nomination.  Watch this clip of him superbly filling the shoes of the late Dame Edith Evans as Lady B.

Brian Bedford is survived by his partner of 30 years, the actor Tim MacDonald whom he married in 2013.

                                                                                                   Brian Bedford & Tim MacDonald

Brian Bedford (16 February 1935 – 13 January 2016)