London culture blog Spoonfed is excited about La Bete! They even link to Ken Levine’s ‘Three Valentines’ blog post.
1. Joanna Lumley
Patsy! Er … Joanna sees Prince Conti become Princess in Matthew Warchus’s version, duly whipping her theatre boy to get what she wants. With Lumley and David Hyde Pierce on board for this 17th century comedy, it’s difficult to see how La Bete will disappoint.
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Here’s David at the premiere of off-Broadway play The Temperamentals last night. It got great reviews – can’t wait for David’s TalkOut Monday!
PBS will be filming the David-hosted Sondheim birthday concert for its Great Performances series, to air sometime in the fall.
This is great news as the concerts, due to take place on 15-16 March at the New York Philharmonic, are long sold out!
Besides David on hosting duties, the concert will feature performances from Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Jason Danieley, Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie and Bernadette Peters.
See Playbill.com for more details.
We’ve added some pictures from the glorious The Amazing Screw-On Head to the gallery. Enjoy!
DHP and partner Brian Hargrove will be among the participants in TalkOUT Mondays, a new post-show chat slot for the off-Broadway play The Temperamentals.
The play, which is billed as a cross between Mad Men and Milk, is based on the true story of two guys falling in love as they build the US’s first gay rights organisation.
TalkOUT Mondays kick off on 1 March with playwrights Larry Kramer and Paul Rudnick heading the discussion. A date for David and Brian’s appearance is not yet set, but will probably be some time in April.
See Playbill or BroadwayWorld for more info!
La Bête, starring DHP, Mark Rylance and Joanna Lumley, has been confirmed for London/NYC! The play will be at London’s Comedy Theatre from 26 June to 28 August before transferring to Broadway. Keep an eye on the (currently basic) official website for more deets!
According to the press release, David will be playing Elomire:
American playwright David Hirson’s rollicking 1991 play, La Bête, is a comic tour de force about Elomire (Pierce), a high-minded classical dramatist who loves only the theatre, and Valere (Rylance), a low-brow street clown who loves only himself. When the fickle princess (Lumley) decides she’s grown weary of Elomire’s royal theatre troupe, he and Valere are left fighting for survival as art squares off with ego in a literary showdown for the ages.
Tickets for the London show are on sale HERE.
There’s a very interesting discussion over at Frasier writer Ken Levine’s blog about David’s extended slapstick scene in the season 6 episode ‘Three Valentines.’ Ken posted the clip as a ‘comedy test’ – is this sort of goofiness timeless and universally funny, or only to some people’s tastes? Frasier creator David Lee weighed in on the discussion with some backstory:
Prize goes to the poster who said it reminded him/her of Mr. Bean. I had recently been introduced to his work and loved a lot of it. I told DHP that I would like to do something like that for him on the show. Couldn’t really come up with anything for a while (we didn’t want to crib the “turkey on the head” bit,though that wasn’t a concern of another sit-com on the air at the time. I do remember in the room having trouble breaking a Valentine story and hitting upon the idea of doing three short stories instead. Two of them involved every character except Niles, so the idea of something for him alone came up. Then the Mr. Bean thought, and then the fire idea. I remember distinctly that once we hit upon that, the details of it came together very, very quickly in the room.
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Hold onto your hats, Eurofans – looks like the London rumours were true! Here’s what the Daily Mail is saying …
The comic talents of Joanna Lumley and David Hyde Pierce will be on show in the West End in the spring. The pair will join Mark Rylance (currently giving the performance of his career – and the best to be seen in London – in Jerusalem at the Apollo) in a revival of David Hirson’s comedy drama La Bete. The play will run for a limited season of eight to ten weeks in London before transferring to New York in the autumn.
La Bete, which is set in 17th century France, will mark Ms Lumley’s Broadway debut. She is well known in the US thanks to classic series Absolutely Fabulous, in which she played substance-challenged fashion editor Patsy Stone. Pierce played Niles in the long-running US sitcom Frasier. The actor was at the Sundance Film Festival and was telling friends how thrilled he was to be appearing on the London stage.
La Bete, about clownish conflict within a theatre troupe, played in New York in 1990, but didn’t fare well. However, a later London production, led by Alan Cumming, won an Olivier award. The new production will be directed by Matthew Warchus and will probably go to the Comedy Theatre.
Exciting times! Love that cartoon!
All Over Albany and the Times Union have reported that David will return to his roots in Saratoga Springs on to take part in Home Made Theater’s 25th anniversary gala on 27 March.
Tickets for the event are $65 and are available by sending your mailing address to info@homemadetheater.org. The night will involve food, cocktails, music, and entertainment featuring DHP. Sounds delish!
Home Made Theater are set to stage a production of Curtains this fall.
Next month David will host a fundraising event honouring the legendary John Kander. The event, organised by the Vineyard Theatre, will take place on 8 March in the Hudson Theatre in NYC. Performers will include Chita Rivera and David’s Curtains colleagues Debra Monk and Karen Ziemba.
Tickets for the celebration are now on sale at the Vineyard website and cost $95. (Or if you’re super-rich, you can shell out $500 for a dinner plus a show ticket.)
