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Showing posts from April, 2010

Contralto Rudinoff plays Hildy strong and sassy

Matt Owen and Sarah Rudinoff in On The Town. Photo: Chris Bennion, courtesy of the 5th Sarah Rudinoff returns to the 5th Avenue Theatre this month in a musical with “Town” in the title. “And then I tell people that Billie [Wildrick] is in it too, and they say ‘wait, didn’t we see you in this?’ I told Billie that we need to do Our Town the Musica l next,” said Rudinoff. To set the record straight, Rudinoff and Wildrick co-starred in the 5th’s fabulous remount of Wonderful Town in 2006. Four years later, the two very funny ladies are back for Bernstein’s On The Town at the same theater. Rudinoff plays Hildy, a rather lonely female cabdriver. Luckily, she gives a lift to an appealing sailor on the town for the day. For Rudinoff, it’s a chance to play another one of the “strong and sassy” ladies created by writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green. With the action of On The Town taking place in New York during World War II, Comden and Green’s wisecracking Hildy be

Chester Gregory stops in Seattle for Dreamgirls (and a little lobster mac)

Backstage at  Dreamgirls , the women make lightning fast changes into fabulous costumes with increasingly bouffant wigs. Chaz Lamar Shepherd (Curtis) and Chester Gregory (James Early Photo Credit: Joan Marcus, courtesy of STG But they are not the only ones who need to quick change in record time. Chester Gregory can testify that he has almost as much interaction with the dressers for his role of James “Thunder” Early, the R&B star who gives the “Dreamettes” their first big break and who undergoes his own rise and fall in the wildly changing music scene and costume styles of the 1960s and early 1970s. “There’s twelve costume changes plus wigs,” he said over the phone. “For one scene, I’m very high energy, then I run off stage, change the costume and the wig, and come back on as though I’ve been sitting around in this new outfit for hours. And I have to do this complete change of mood in ten seconds! It’s fun and challenging at the same time.” When the sho