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In a message dated 4/18/2006 7:11:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
http://www.newsday.com Come one come all Mortals who are willing to stick their neck out for a vampire to feed upon. We will be willing to share our Dark Gift to you mortals if you pass our test.
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--- Begin Message ---New PHOTOS from the musical can be seen here: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-lestat-pg,0,1239567.photogallery?coll=ny-entertainment-bigpix- I love the pics with Lestat, Louis and Claudia. And Jim Stanek makes for such a very cute Louis, don't you think? *smiles* The article source: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-etstat4706262apr19,0,2229435.story?track=rss Hoping it will be love at first bite BY ROBERT KAHN Newsday Staff Writer April 19, 2006 Bernie Taupin's defense of "Lestat" is interrupted by a piercing "Aaaiyyeeee!" as a suicidal vampire plunges into a wall of fire and disappears through a trapdoor. Taupin leans forward from his seat in the Palace Theatre to observe the rehearsal more closely. It is ensuing under the supervision of the FDNY, on hand to ensure that actor Joseph Dellger is far enough behind the flames to avoid injury if an unexpected breeze should cross the set. The winds have not blown in favor of the $12-million musical thus far. The Gothic opus inspired by Anne Rice's tormented bloodsuckers was left for dead after a San Francisco tryout that prompted a review headlined "Fetch the garlic!" and jabs at Elton John's "unrelentingly saccharine" score. The show's tagline says, "Die Young. Live Forever." But are all these puncture wounds necessary? "We may have limped onto Broadway as the underdogs, but underdogs bite back occasionally," says lyricist Taupin. "You take the criticism you feel is genuine and then you discard the vindictiveness. It needed some reworking." By Taupin's account, "Lestat" is 65 to 70 percent changed since its winter run on the West Coast. Much of the material has been slashed or rewritten, a major cast member replaced and choreographer Jonathan Buttrell ("The Light in the Piazza") brought in as a creative consultant by Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, which is producing "Lestat" as its virgin effort. The chance to make such alterations is, after all, the reason for out-of-town tryouts. A bloody good showing Despite critical disdain, the public sank its teeth into the show. "Lestat" broke the box-office record as the highest-grossing world premiere musical ever in San Francisco, taking in $4.3 million. Audience reaction to the New York previews has been "solid," according to a show rep, with 90 percent of the house sold for the first week of previews and 80 percent the second week. If "Lestat" survives on Broadway long past its opening at the Palace Tuesday, much of the credit will go to Taupin, who is responsible for some of the most successful pop lyrics of the past 30 years, from "Rocket Man" to "Candle in the Wind." John, his longtime collaborator, has found success on the musical stage with "The Lion King" and "Aida," as well as "Billy Elliot" on London's West End, but Taupin wanted to wait for a stage debut until he could find something "satisfyingly dark." The two, in their first teaming for the theater, have staged "Lestat" with book writer Linda Woolverton ("Beauty and the Beast"), director Robert Jess Roth ("Beauty," again) and - strictly on a consulting basis - "Vampire Chronicles" author Rice. The first act of "Lestat" loosely follows the narrative of "The Vampire Lestat," written in 1985 as the second book in Rice's "Chronicles." The second act is based on Rice's first book, 1976's "Interview With the Vampire." That story, set in 18th century New Orleans, was the basis for the 1994 movie with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst. The reversal allows the plot of "Lestat" to unfold in chronological order. In other simplifications, a few peripheral vampires have been eliminated since the tryout to streamline the narrative. Taupin wants the show to be as accessible as possible for audience members unfamiliar with Rice's books. The plot A brief plot summary, for the uninitiated: Young Lestat de Lioncourt lives in the French countryside with his adored and ailing mother, Gabrielle. After doing battle with a pack of wolves (a heady, self-esteem-building experience) he leaves for Paris to make a new life. There, he is turned into a vampire and he must figure out how to satisfy his thirst for blood despite the all-too-human knowledge that killing is wrong. Lestat and his cohorts make rich characters for the theater: meticulous, conscience-driven predators who really just want to be loved. Immortality gives them a crack at heightened sensuality, but brings with it a terrible separation from life. Longtime Broadway "Phantom" Hugh Panaro heads an ensemble that includes Carolee Carmello, Drew Sarich and Jim Stanek, playing Lestat's feral mother, nemesis and melancholy domestic partner, respectively. Sarich had been the understudy for an actor who departed the production just before its California opening. One of Lestat's first acts as a vampire is to turn his mother into a vampire on her deathbed, because he can't face losing her. As Rice has repeatedly said, when you are confronted with the agony and alienation the vampires endure, it is hard not to wonder, "Would you do it? Would you drink the blood and live forever?'" Indeed, some 75 million readers have found the question an alluring one. "The whole thing is a metaphor for being alive, for consciousness ... the fact that we know we're going to die, which my cat, mercifully, does not," Rice said recently by phone from her home in the California desert. "I think that's always been the appeal." Rice will attend opening night, but her stake in the production is minimal, advising director Roth only when asked. (She volunteered that Lestat's hair "needed to be more beautiful" in the production logo.) Rice has no financial involvement, having long ago sold the story rights to Warner Bros., which also produced the movie. She wonders if the Broadway production will provoke a reaction similar to the one she had in San Francisco, where she attended opening night at the Curran Theatre with her son, Christopher. "Christopher was a baby when I wrote 'The Vampire Chronicles,' and I hadn't been thinking of him when I was doing it," she said. "I never identified with Gabrielle [Lestat's mother], and yet when we were sitting in the Curran and they were talking to each other, Christopher reached over and took my hand, because we both felt it: how much they were us up there on that stage. That, to me, was totally unexpected." A dinner with Rice Taupin's interest in the story dates back to the publication of "Interview." He remembers trying to secure the stage rights, but being "kicked out of the ballpark" by deep-pocketed producers in Hollywood, who had designs of their own. "I was an immediate fan, and I had this misconception that I was the only one privy to the book," Taupin says. In the 1980s, he even met with Rice over dinner to discuss doing "Chronicles" as a musical. Then along came Cruise, and Taupin was pre-empted. The tide turned half a dozen years ago, when director Roth set his mind to tracking down the rights and took the project to his longtime friend John, who in turn approached Taupin. "I said I would do it, providing it was done with a great deal of taste and that it wasn't turned into a campy joke," Taupin recalls, "and so long as there were no dancing vampires." He, Roth and Woolverton confabbed in Las Vegas for three days to hammer out an idea encapsulating Rice's first three vampire books, eventually jettisoning all but a few shreds of the third, "Queen of the Damned," when they realized there was too much story to condense. They left spaces in the script for songs, which they gave fake titles. Then Taupin wrote the lyrics. Finally, John added the music in about 10 days. Taupin, at 55, has spent more than half his life writing "the five-minute fix" with John. He is happiest with the songs "based in depression and sadness, because they're much more interesting to write about." That perspective held when he jumped over to writing for the stage. "The code for Broadway is always that a musical has to be high-stepping and up and happy and ... well, I contradict myself, because then I think of 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Les Miz,' and I guess we could be grouped into that category." His aim was to write songs that would push the narrative forward, he says, pointing to ballads like "The Thirst" and "Beautiful Boy," which Gabrielle sings as her son is preparing to leave home. The five-minute fixes of his pop career are more in Taupin's comfort zone than this project with his celebrated songwriting partner, but he couldn't say no to Lestat, a murderous bon vivant. "I just love the fact that Lestat goes to the theater," Taupin says. "He's a terrific character. When I read the first book, Louis [de Pointe du Lac] is such a doomed character, such a sad sack ... a real candidate for the fire, if he had the courage to kill himself. But everybody's drawn to Lestat. You're always drawn to the villain." As Taupin knows, fans are sometimes drawn to an underdog. He's hoping that "Lestat" lives, if not forever, at least a good while longer than next week. "I no longer feel like the new kid on the block. I know what the rules are now, and what's correct and what's incorrect, and that's the wonderful thing about the theater," Taupin says. Speaking of his partnership with John, he adds: "I've been writing songs for over 35 years, and the music business we knew doesn't really exist anymore. We don't get played on the radio much anymore, and there's a great nostalgic sensibility about us, but I'm always looking ahead, and to me these ventures are very much a wave of the future. "I hope I get to do another show with the same people," he says. "There's a whole new world opening for me. 'Make Me as You Are' Bernie Taupin's lyrics for "Make Me as You Are," as sung by Gabrielle in "Lestat": And from that truth I feel no fear Two kinds of death are present here Mine's the age old act of dying But yours is like the phoenix rising Your mother's frail and feeble husk Will soon be nothing more than dust So let's not dwell on wasted years My time is short my choice is clear Make me as you are Tear the hands off clocks that tick away my final hours I want to rage against the light and leave the sun behind I want to feel the power of everlasting youth inside Take me, give me new life and we'll live beneath the stars Together and forever, I beg you, make me as you are - - - The Vampire ~Lauren [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links
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