Ty Taylor, who made great impression during his run on "Rockstar: INXS," takes on the role Ben Vereen originated in "Pippin" and delivers it with considerable gusto at the Mark Taper Forum. The production is done in conjunction with Deaf West Theater and features a cast of hearing and deaf actors. For the most art it's loads of fun, but the book is definitely flimsy and no amount of razzle-dazzle can make up for that.
Then again, Taylor has been seen onstage in Las Vegas in productions with an even weaker book.
Jeff Calhoun, the director and choreographer, warned us beforehand "this is not your grandmother's Pippin.'" I chatted with him after the first preview at which time he said:
"There’s nothing I wanted that I was not able to have. This is a business of compromise and you have to be smart about what you agree to. I am fortuitous in that Stephen Schwartz turns out to be the most collaborative composer. He immediately grasped why (the production) was a good idea and I went to him with every change for his support. He was mostly amenable and if not he gave a good reason. I think he gave me 50 notes. There was maybe only one at which we were at odds."
Reviews from Daily Variety and Los Angeles Times were on the positive side of mixed.

The Pantages Theater will again become a venue for concerts and touring Broadway productions ("rent," "Grease," "Dirty Dancing") now that "Wicked" has closed and moved to San Francisco. The witch musical opened in February 2007 and has proven more than popular, grossing more than $145 million and registering more than 1.8 million admissions. 
The tuner closed after playing 791 performances and 12 previews.
It set a single week record in L.A. theater with a gross of $2,579,944.50 (nine performances).  During the final week of the run, “Wicked” played at capacity, grossing $2,291,511.50, breaking its own record for a regular eight-performance week.  The average weekly gross during “Wicked’s” run at the Pantages was $1.45 million per week
The  production begins performances on Jan. 27 at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco.

Congratulations to the producers of the '80s rock musical "Rock of Ages" for securing a run on Broadway.
Show will shutter at Off Broadway’s New World Stages Jan. 4, then begin performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on March 20 ahead of an April 7 opening.
Tickets  will range from $46.50 to $99, with a top ticket price of $89 on weeknights and $99 for weekend perfs. (Most musicals on the Great White Way top out at around $120; “Billy Elliot” stretches up to $135.)
The show’s Off Broadway cast includes Constantine Maroulis, Will Swenson and Kelli Barrett. The ensemble is expected to remain largely the same, although Swenson is still deciding between “Rock” and “Hair,” another Off Broadway production getting a Broadway run this spring.
Book of “Rock” is penned by Chris D’Arienzo, who also has been tapped by New Line Cinema to write and direct a movie version of the musical. Plot centers on a young couple on the LA music scene who must overcome the obstacles of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle in order to be together.
Show incorporates familiar tunes from the likes of Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister and Whitesnake.
Two years ago, when the show's original incarnation played a club in Hollywood, they asked me to write an essay for the program. This is what I came up with: 

The rock acts of the 1980s sought out the fantastic side of rock 'n' roll - the energetic stage show, the lyric that could be chanted instead of contemplated and outlandish visual styles that toyed with the extreme. The hair, the get-ups, the obnoxiousness, the desire for fame - all were played to the hilt on the Sunset Strip.
And performing in the clubs of the Strip wasn't a sign of success by itself the way it had been for '60s rockers - it was a means to an end. Gigs at the Forum. Outdoor  shows loaded with pyrotechnics. This was ground zero on the road to superstardom and all that it delivered:  more girls, bigger cars, more drugs, more booze, a mansion and great parties. The bands were having fun,  the audience was having fun.
History hasn't been all that kind to the screaming anthems and the power ballads, but then again history hasn't honored  the honesty with which those musicians performed night after night. The singers weren't wearing their hearts on their sleeves like the musicians who preceded them nor were they the shy wallflower types  whose mutterings were embraced by the grunge generation afterward. This was the first generation of rockers to understand the impact of theater, from hair and makeup to sets and even a storyline. They saw a way to take what had once been labeled as dangerous, reduce its threatening nature  and make it outrageous or even comical. They understood commercial appeal.
These hard rockers rejected everything that had been scaled down during the punk era. The bands used video as an ally and unlike many R&B and new wave acts, developed a concert style as well.  Never groundbreaking,  the best of hard rock acts took elements that had worked for different artists in different eras and made it their own, whether it be guitar sounds and busting up equipment or crossing biker chic with ballet and Dali.
It was a short period. A bizarre confluence of the knowing and the innocent. We'll probably never see another era so awash in boyish antics and unfettered frolicking, where the dreamers and dreammakers intermingled so closely with no idea of whether the dream was all it was pumped up to be. It was a time to shout at the devil.

Three years ago, when Janet Billig and her team were developing "Rock of Ages," their sights were set on Las Vegas. Now that it has run Off Broadway, the '80s rock musical is bound for Hollywood.
New Line has won an auction for screen rights to “Rock of Ages,” the stage musical loaded  with ‘80s rock anthems. Chris D’Arienzo, who wrote the book for the Off Broadway tuner, will write the screenplay and direct the film, Michael Fleming reports.
The show is mostly set at a Sunset Strip rock club called Rock of Ages, where a man and woman fall in love but get torn apart by the rock lifestyle. Featured tunes are by Journey, Twisted Sister, Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Foreigner, Bon Jovi and REO Speedwagon.
New Line is also developing a sequel to “Hairspray.”
I found the musical to be a bit more fun than Variety's reviewer - maybe because I wrote a piece for the program, maybe because he was a little harsh. Our off-Broadway review - "somewhere between the Styx dance break and the Twisted Sister reprise, this jukebox tuner transcends its hoary parts to become a legitimate artistic achievement" - was more in line with my thoughts about the piece.

Richard Thompson is composing a musical play that will be premiere in June at Penn State, according to his newsletter Beesweb, which cites an Ottawa Citizen article.
He has penned 24 songs and instrumental passages for a string quartet. He told the paper, "Some of the songs are short, about 30 seconds, and others regular song length. It's an hour plus of music, which is a lot to write."
The song cycle project was commissioned by the International Society of Bassists and involves Thompson's not-related bassist Danny Thompson.The theme is a talent contest in Hell.
He is also working on a new band album and a new solo album. A  Richard Thompson Songbook series is still a few months away.
Until then he has solo dates in October and December and a "1,000 Years of Popular Music" tour of the U.K. in January.

Another sign has arrived that the "American Idol" luster just isn't what it used to be.
Rather than find another Broadway cast to join, Taylor Hicks is getting on the bus and following the trucks as "Grease" goes on a  national tour. He arrives in L.A. March 10 when "Grease" does a two-week run at the Pantages Theater. Hicks plays Teen Angel and is reportedly also recording another album.

Largo, one of my favorite venues since it opened in 1992 and was booking acts like the Wild Colonials and Love Jones, will shutter its 120-seat Fairfax Avenue location after a final comedy show Monday and open June 2 at the Coronet Theater space on La Cienega. Aimee Mann, who will release an album June 3, will be the first performer.
Move is motivated by wanting to get away from the bar business and having more space.
“You get tired of turning people away,” Largo owner Mark Flanagan said while we toured the new space Wednesday afternoon. The news has been out there for a little while, but the renovations taking place in the two performance spaces make it clear this will quickly become a reality.
Since Flanagan took over as sole owner in 1996, Largo has been known as a haven for singer-songwriters, such as Fiona Apple, Grant Lee Phillips and Nellie McKay, as well as comedians.
The Coronet has been a legit theater since it was built in the mid-1940s and once housed the West Coast offices of Rodgers & Hammerstein. The bar space next door, the former Coronet Pub, is slated for renovation and reopening as well.
New venue boasts two performances spaces — a 280-seat theater and a smaller room that can accommodate up to 70 — as well as a lobby space and a courtyard. The stage from Largo will be placed in the Little Room as it is being called. Unlike the current venue, it will not serve food beyond pastries and gelato and will only have a beer and wine license for the smaller room. Tickets will be sold as they are now, via a phone reservation system, and through a box office that is expected to be open in the afternoons.
“Different is good,” said Jon Brion, the composer-performer whose Friday-night residency, which has lasted 12 years, will continue in the new home dubbed Largo at the Coronet. “Here it is obvious that (the evening) is about the performance. It will be more focused.”
Coincidentally, as the doors on the original Largo are closing, a documentary on the venue will be starting to make the festival rounds. “Largo” has been accepted at the Los Angeles Film Festival — screening June 22 —  and the Times BFI London Film Festival.
The trailer:

The Stephen King-John Mellencamp musical "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" will premiere in the spring of 2009 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the musical is set in 1957 and centers on a  legend about the strange deaths of two brothers and a beautiful young girl 40 years earlier in the fictional town of Lake Belle Reve, Miss.
Alliance artistic director Susan V. Booth calls it "a theatrical piece with music." Peter Askin, who helmed John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" off-Broadway, will direct.

David J of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets has written and will direct a musical based on Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgwick.
"Silver For Gold (The Odyssey Of Edie Sedgwick)," described as part one-woman show/part rock concert, opens March 6 at the Met Theater in Hollywood.
World premiere stars  Monique Jenkinson (aka Fauxnique) as Edie and Steven Price (founder of the Ronin Ensemble) as Norich, the wounded healer. "Silver For Gold" traces her rise and eventual downward spiral. The staging is described as "avant-garde minimalist."
David J, who has a new Bauhaus album coming out March 4, is also in the show's band, which features  Neel Hammond on viola and violin, David Raven on percussion and Michael de Winter on guitar and backing vocals. The demo on the play's MySpace page has a definite Velvet Underground feel.
Production runs through March 16 and will be preparing for an off-Broadway run in the fall.

writes some fascinating music for the theater and his between-scene music in the Geffen Playhouse's production of Wendy Wasserstein's "Third" grows progressively intriguing as the evening wears on. Play takes place during the course of a school year, beginning with breezy autumnal themes that teeter toward new-age stream of conscious composing. Guitar and acoustic bass are the key instruments with  strings adding textures, as the drama develops and winter sets in, Roth's music ushers in moods that not only echo the previous scene but hint at the action about to come. It is music that deserves a future.

Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child and “American Idol 3” finalist LaToya London will appear in L.A. in the Ahmanson Theater presentation of "The Color Purple." Performances begin Dec. 13.

If this tribute band is good enough for Dubai, Malaysia and Turkey, it must be perfect for the Kodak Theater.
“Queen – It’s A Kinda Magic,” a stage show that features 30 Queen tunes but apparently no story, comes to Los Angeles Oct. 5 and Orange County on Oct. 6. Show also stops at towns where Buck Owens tribute bands usually play: Sacramento, Fresno Bakersfield and San Diego
Not to be confused with “We Will Rock You,” the futuristic all-Queen tuner that played London and Las Vegas, this vaguely described show is a “theatrical event (that) creates the 1986 world tour of Freddie Mercury and Queen, taking audiences back in time to experience the passion of Freddie Mercury, the amazing guitar solos of Brian May, the thundering rhythms of Roger Taylor and all those unbelievable Queen harmonies.” (John Deacon apparently gets little love).
The Toronto Sun called QIAKM “flawless.” Show has the approval of Mercury’s former personal assistant, Peter Freestone.
Craig Pesco plays Freddie.

Remember Ty Taylor, the mohawked singer who appeared positioned to win the role of lead singer for INXS when the band decided to do an "American Idol"-like contest to replace Michael Hutchence? Well "Rock Star" is long forgotten, along with Marty and Mig and whoever it was who won the contest. JD somebody, right? Somehow, though, Ty is memorable - and not just because he played a character named Britney Spears in the Las Vegas production of "We Will Rock You." Taylor, now singer and guitarist in Dakota Moon, returns to the musical theater on Sept. 17 at the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Benefit at the Ford Amphitheater in L.A. Taylor will play Freddie in "Chess," the musical penned by Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, authors of legendary hits such as "You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling," "Walking in the Rain" and "On Broadway," have written the music and lyrics for the stage adaptation of the film "Mask," which will premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse on March 14.
"Mask" screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan has written the book.
"Mask," as if anyone needs to be told, was Cher's third well-received film in the early to mid 1980s. She played the biker mother whose son has a disfigured face.
In the coming season, the Pasadena Playhouse will first present "Ray Charles Live! – A New Musical." It opens Nov. 9.