Replacements and more

Ok, I forgot a couple of things yesterday in my haste to get back to class work, and got some important (although not necessarily good) news about a few things last night and today.

Most importantly, it appears the producers of Spring Awakening are committed to having a hottie in the role of Melchior. While the gorgeous, Gorgeous, GORGEOUS Kyle Riabko is leaving next month to go on tour, there will not be any lack of eye candy on the stage as the equally gorgeous and slightly more hunky Hunter Parrish of Weeds has been cast as the replacement. As long as he can sing, and the producers are confident that he can, that will be worth seeing. Now if they could just cast Mary Louise Parker as the adult woman. . .

Another replacement that has me somewhat more worried is happening in Xanadu. Jackie Hoffman is going on vacation for 6 weeks and will be replaced by . . . Sasquatch, oops, I mean Whoopi Goldberg. That's very interesting casting as Whoopi looks about 30 years older than Jackie. Still, since the show is so goofy anyways, it just might work. However, bad things happen to Xanadu when Whoopi is around and I'm worried that Jackie may not have a job to come back to after her vacay. Here's hoping for a roller skate malfunction.

Making a tenuous connection from one topic to the next along the lines of movie adaptations, a new producing entity is planning on bringing Rebecca to the Broadway stage, with a target date of Spring, 2010. Here's hoping they have better luck than the producers of Tanze der Vampire. At least the name translates the same and they don't have to worry about random 80's pop songs being interpolated into the score. As fantastic as Vampire was in Berlin, listening to it in German kind of blunts the impact of being immersed in a gorgeous score and then suddenly getting jarred back into reality by the cast singing Total Eclipse of the Heart. I can't imagine that worked well in English at all. However, I do have to ask that they keep "Mrs. DeWinter Bin Ich" in German, there is no topping the campiness of Mrs. Danvers shreiking out "Nein, NEIN!" and then a heartbeat later hearing something shatter and the new Mrs. DeWinter changing keys as she belts out the chorus. Please don't change that song. Also, with a more well known source, hopefully the producers won't be tempted to hire a new script writer to completely alter the script into something unrecognizable and incomprehensible as reportedly happened with Vampire.

And lastly, I keep forgetting to ask, is anyone else having problems playing playbillradio.com on Windows Vista? I can play it on my phone for pete's sake, but when I try it on my new laptop, the player pops up but nothing plays. The track information keeps updating as presumably the tracks change, but there is no sound or anything. I tried it on my older, crappy laptop after I reinstalled the operating system, and it plays fine on XP, although when the player popped up, a separate Windows Media Player popped up as well and the stream seemed to be playing through that rather than the pop up player. On Vista I don't get Windows Media Player popping up. There's no support documentation about this on the site and I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this. Otherwise the new laptop has been running great lately (knock on wood), but I'd like to be able to use it for Playbill Radio, they've got a better selection and more original content than Accuradio, which does play fine. Oh, and my downloads refresh on Thursday so I can finish getting Catered Affair and follow it up wiht Kelli O'Hara's solo CD. They just added Kerry Butler's so I'll start on that with the remaining downloads and then finish it up next month.

Ok, so that reminds me I've got one more topic. Just aboute every diva in New York has released a solo album lately (Idina, Victoria Clark, Andrea Burns, Lauren Kennedy, Kerri, Kelly, Betty Buckley), but how come none of the guys have? This would be a great time for Cheyenne or Matty Mo to put out a CD (with some shirtless liner photos), or even Jonathan Groff, Christian Borle, Gavin Creel, or even Michael Cerveris (as long as it's better than his last alt-rock-lite snoozefest). Even Mandy Patinkin's only done children's songs and Yiddish folk songs lately. What's the deal guys? It's great that you're all into contributing to compilations, but don't be shy, we want to hear more of you. With all the crap in record stores right now, we could use some fresh voices. At least think about it. And with that, it's back to work. I'll let you know my thoughts about Mamma Mia on Monday.