Broadway's Brill Building Has A Magical Allure!

On one of our recent strolls along Broadway as we were preparing a story for our new blog Dan On Broadway, we once again walked past the legendary Brill Building. Only this time, we stopped and peeked inside.

The Brill Building (built 1931 as the Alan E. Lefcourt Building and designed by Victor Bark Jr.) is an office building located at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the Theater District, just north of Times Square. 

It is famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the most popular American music tunes were written. The building is 11 stories and has approximately 175,000 square feet of rentable area. The "Brill" name comes from a haberdasher who once operated a store at street level and subsequently bought the building. The Brill Building was purchased by 1619 Broadway Realty LLC in June 2013 and is now undergoing a significant renovation. No problem, however. The current management was all to happy to have us take a look around and snap some photos.

The Brill Building's name has been widely adopted as a shorthand term for a broad and influential stream of American mainstream popular song (strongly influenced by Latin music, Traditional black gospel and rhythm and blues) which enjoyed great commercial success in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Many significant American and international publishing companies, music agencies and recording labels were based in New York, and although these ventures were naturally spread across many locations, the Brill Building was regarded as probably the most prestigious address in New York for music business professionals.

By 1962 the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses. A musician could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building. The creative culture of the independent music companies in the Brill Building and the nearby 1650 Broadway came to define the influential "Brill Building Sound" and the style of popular songwriting and recording created by its writers and producers.

Carole King described the atmosphere at the "Brill Building" publishing houses of the period:

Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You'd sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific—because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He'd say: "We need a new smash hit"—and we'd all go back and write a song and the next day we'd each audition for Bobby Vee's producer.
—Quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith.

Among the hundreds of hits written in The Brill Building are "Yakety Yak" (Leiber-Stoller), "Save the Last Dance for Me" (Pomus-Shuman), "The Look of Love" (Bacharach-David), "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (Sedaka-Greenfield), "Devil in Disguise" (Giant-Baum-Kaye), "The Loco-Motion" (Goffin-King), "Supernatural Thing" (Fyre-Guthrie), "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" (Mann-Weil), and "River Deep, Mountain High" (Spector-Greenwich-Barry).

The Brill Building's new owners say that is "is now transforming into a state-of-the-art office complex for today’s media, fashion, tech, music and entertainment companies. A new 49th Street entrance will offer tenants privacy and security, with all the convenience of Times Square." 

The future of this legendary building looks bright, indeed!

Next time you're in the neighborhood, stop by. 

Interior building photos copyright 2015 by Dan Cirucci.

Broadway's Top Ten Grossing Shows

For the week ending 5/24:

1) The Lion King

2) Wicked

3) The Book of Mormon

4) Alladin

5) An American in Paris

6) Fish in the Dark

7) The Audience

8) Beautiful

9) Finding Neverland

10) The Phantom of the Opera

Broadway's Xanadu To Hilton Head 6/17

The Broadway smash hit Xanadu roller-skated its way into the hearts of theater critics and audiences alike.

The show will be presented by the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina in Hilton Head from June 17 through July 26.

A hilariously reinvented send-up of the 80s film, this irreverent musical adventure, about following your dreams, spins along to the addictive original hit film score of chart-topping tunes from Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton John including “Magic,” “All Over the World,” “Suddenly,” “I’m Alive,” “Evil Woman,” “Strange Magic,” “Have You Never Been Mellow,” and “Xanadu,” to name a few.

Xanadu follows the beautiful Greek muse Kira as she visits Venice Beach, CA to coax an uninspired artist, Sonny, to build the first roller disco! When she accidentally falls in love with him, much to her jealous sister-muses' dismay, chaos and fun abound, skate wheels turn and disco balls twirl. This delightful fun-for-the-whole-family show earned an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical and was nominated for Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book.

Subscribers - be sure to call the Box Office and book your seats for this summer smash hit!

Tickets for preview performances June 17-18 are $35 for adults and $25 for children 4-15; Regular tickets June 19-July 26 are $45 for adults and $31 for children.

'Fiddler' Headed Back To B'way 11/17

Producers Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, and Jam Theatricals are thrilled to announce that Fiddler on the Roof will play The Broadway Theatre (1681 Broadway) and will begin performances on Tuesday, November 17, 2015 with an opening night scheduled for Thursday, December 17, 2015.

Rehearsals are set to begin Monday, September 28, 2015.

Five-time Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk & Outer Critics Circle Award winner Danny Burstein (Cabaret, Golden Boy, Follies, South Pacific) will step into the iconic role of Tevye. Burstein will appear under the direction of Tony Award-nominated director Bartlett Sher, who was most recently nominated for a Tony Award for the current Broadway revival, The King and I.

Sher has directed Burstein on Broadway in the revivals of Golden Boy and South Pacific. Further casting and ticket on-sale date will be announced soon.

The design team includes scenic design by Michael Yeargan (Tony Award nominee, The King and I), costume design by Catherine Zuber (Tony Award nominee, The King and I), and lighting design by Donald Holder (Tony Award nominee, The King and I). Fiddler on the Roof will be their 5th Broadway production working with Sher, after South Pacific, Golden Boy, The Bridges of Madison County, and The King and I. Sound design is by Scott Lehrer (A Delicate Balance, South Pacific).

Fiddler on the Roof will also feature choreography by Hofesh Shechter, based on original conceptions and choreography by Jerome Robbins. Music direction and arrangements is by Ted Sperling (The King and I, South Pacific).

Fiddler on the Roof has music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein. The original Broadway production of the show, which opened in 1964 had the first musical theatre run in history to surpass 3,000 performances. The show won the 1965 Tony Award for Best Musical in addition to eight other Tony Awards that year.

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BIOS

DANNY BURSTEIN (Tevye) is a 5-time Tony Award nominee whose 15 Broadway credits include: Cabaret (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations); The Snow Geese; Golden Boy (2013 Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations); Follies (2012 Tony, Astaire & Grammy Award nominations; Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; South Pacific (Tony and Drama Desk nominations, Outer Critics Circle Award); The Drowsy Chaperone (Tony and Ovation Award nominations); Saint Joan; The Seagull; Three Men on a Horse; A Little Hotel On the Side; The Flowering Peach; A Class Act; Titanic and Company. Off-Broadway credits include: Talley's Folly (Lucille Lortel & Drama League nominations); Mrs. Farnsworth; Psych; All in the Timing; Merrily We Roll Along; Weird Romance and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. Film/TV includes: The Family Fang (directed by Jason Bateman); Blackhat (directed by Michael Mann); Lolly Steinman on "Boardwalk Empire" (directed by Martin Scorsese); "Louie"; Transamerica; "Absolutely Fabulous"; "Ed"; all the "Law & Order" series; "Hope & Faith"; Deception; Affluenza; American Milkshake; Nor'easter; Construction; Liv and Trust, Greed, Bullets & Bourbon. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Frosch in the Jeremy Sams/Douglas Carter Beane production of Die Fledermaus.

BARTLETT SHER (Director) is currently represented on Broadway by The King at I (Tony Award nomination). He is the Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater, where he has directed Golden Boy by Clifford Odets (Tony Nomination), Blood and Gifts by J.T. Rogers, the new musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Tony Award nomination), Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific (2008 Tony Award, South Pacific went on to Australia where it was the most successful show in the history of the Sydney Opera House), Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets (Tony Award nomination) and The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel (Tony Award nomination). He has directed operas for the Metropolitan Opera (L’Elisir d’Amore, Le Comte Ory, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Roméo et Juliette for Salzburg Festival in 2008) and Seattle Opera/New York City Opera (Mourning Becomes Electra, 2003-2004). From 2000-2010, Mr. Sher was Artistic Director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, where his credits include the world premieres of Prayer for My Enemy and Singing Forest by Craig Lucas and Nickel and Dimed, Joan Holden’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Barbara Ehrenreich, and plays by Chekhov, Shakespeare, Goldoni and Tony Kushner, among other credits. His New York credits include the Theatre for a New Audience productions of Cymbeline, which premiered in England and was the first American Shakespeare production at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for which he received the 2001 Callaway Award, and the American premiere of Harley Granville-Barker’s Waste, winner of the 2000 Best Play Obie. He is a graduate of Holy Cross College and received his graduate training in a class of international theatre artists at the University of Leeds in England.

HOFESH SHECHTER (Choreography). Israeli-born, UK-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter began his professional dance career with Tel Aviv’s Batsheva Dance Company. While working with Batsheva, he began studying percussion and went on to become a drummer in a rock band. He made his choreographic debut in the UK in 2003 with the duet Fragments, followed by Cult, Uprising, and In your rooms. In 2008 he formed Hofesh Shechter Company, an international cast of outstanding dancers and musicians, to create an extended version of Uprising/In your rooms: The Choreographer’s Cut. In 2010 Shechter presented Political Mother at the Brighton Festival, which brought the company international attention. It has since toured Australia, Asia, Europe, and the US, including at BAM. Shechter has worked as a choreographer at the UK’s Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre and for BBC 4’s popular drama “Skins.” He is the recipient of many prizes, including the 3rd Serge Diaghilev choreography award for Fragments, an Audience Choice Award at the Place Prize 2004 for Cult, Movimentos Most Promising Newcomer in Dance Award in 2009, and the British Theatre Institute’s Award for Excellence in International Dance in 2011. He is an associate artist of Sadler’s Wells. Hofesh Shechter Company is the resident company at Brighton Dome.

JEROME ROBBINS (Original Concepts and Choreography) is world renowned for his work as a choreographer of ballets as well as his work as a director and choreographer in theater, movies and television. His Broadway shows include On the Town, Billion Dollar Baby, High Button Shoes, West Side Story, The King and I, Gypsy, Peter Pan, Miss Liberty, Call Me Madam, and Fiddler on the Roof. His last Broadway production in 1989, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, won six Tony Awards including best musical and best director. Among the more than 60 ballets he created are Fancy Free, Afternoon of a Faun, The Concert,Dances At a Gathering, In the Night, In G Major, Other Dances, Glass Pieces and Ives, Songs, which are in the repertories of New York City Ballet and other major dance companies throughout the world. His last ballets include A Suite of Dances created for Mikhail Baryshnikov (1994), 2 & 3 Part Inventions (1994), West Side Story Suite (1995) and Brandenburg (1996). In addition to two Academy Awards for the film West Side Story, Mr. Robbins has received four Tony Awards, five Donaldson Awards, two Emmy Awards, the Screen Directors' Guild Award, and the NY Drama Critics Circle Award. Mr. Robbins was a 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Recipient and was awarded the French Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur. Mr. Robbins died in 1998.

MICHAEL YEARGAN (Scenic Design). Theatre credits include designs for regional theatres in America, London's West End and Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including The King and I (Tony Award nomination), The Bridges of Madison County, Light In The Piazza, South Pacific (Tony and Drama Desk Awards) Awake and Sing, Cymbeline, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Blood and Gifts and Golden Boy. Opera credits include projects for San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric, Royal Opera House, La Scala, the Vienna Statsoper and 10 productions at The Met. He is a professor and co-chair of the Stage Design Department at the Yale School of Drama.

CATHERINE ZUBER (Costume Design). Broadway: The King and I, Golden Boy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Born Yesterday, Edward Albee’s Seascape, Dinner at Eight, Twelfth Night (Tony nominations), The Royal Family, South Pacific, The Coast of Utopia, The Light in the Piazza, Awake and Sing! (Tony Awards), The Bridges of Madison County, Gigi, The Big Knife, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ivanov, Triumph of Love, Women on the Verge, Macbeth, Doubt, The Sound of Music, The Red Shoes, among others. Off-Broadway: BAM/Old Vic’s The Bridge Project 2009, ‘10, ’11, Opera: Two Boys, L’Elixir of Love, Tales of Hoffman, Barber of Seville, Compte d’Ory (Metropolitan Opera).Recent: The Sound of Music: NBC/Universal. Graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

DONALD HOLDER (Lighting Design) Broadway credits include: The Lion King and South Pacific (Tony awards), The King and I, On the Twentieth Century, Bridges of Madison County, Golden Boy, Ragtime, Les Liasons Dangereuses, A Streetcar Named Desire, Movin’ Out, Gem of the Ocean, Juan Darien (all Tony nominated), You Can’t Take It With You, Bullets Over Broadway, The Spiderman, Big Fish, Bullets Over Broadway, Annie, Cyrano De Bergerac, The Boy From Oz, many others. Off-Broadway: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (TFANA), Blood and Gifts, Happiness (LCT), many others. Opera: Two Boys and The Magic Flute (Metropolitan Opera). Television: “Smash” Seasons 1 and 2.

Performers Announced For June 7 Tony Awards

The first batch of performers for the American Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards® ceremony has been announced—and the list is full of stars including Kristin Chenoweth, Chita Rivera, Christian Borle, Brian d’Arcy James, Kelli O’Hara, Ken Watanabe, andVictoria Clark, to name a few.

The June 7 telecast will also feature performances from many of this season’s nominated musicals, as well as other shows seen on Broadway this season.

You can watch these stars and showstoppers—with many more to come!—at the 69th Annual Tony Awards, hosted by Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming. The show will be broadcast live on CBS from Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 7 from 8:00 – 11:00 p.m. (ET/PT time delay).

The Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.
Shows and Stars

The entertainment-packed 2015 Tony Awards ceremony will feature performances from the 2015 Tony-nominated shows in the Best Musical and Best Revival of a Musical categories, including:

• 2015 Tony Nominee and 69th Annual Tony Awards Co-Host Kristin Chenoweth and the cast of On the Twentieth Century
• 2015 Tony nominees Brian d’Arcy James, Christian Borle, Brad Oscar and the cast of Something Rotten!
• 2015 Tony Nominee Chita Rivera and the cast of The Visit
• 2015 Tony Nominees Kelli O’Hara and Ken Watanabe and the cast of The King and I; and
• The casts of On the Town, Fun Home and An American in Paris.

The Tony Awards upholds a valued tradition of recognizing the excellence of the entire Broadway season each year. This year’s telecast will also feature not-to-be missed performances including:

• Vanessa Hudgens, 2015 Tony Nominee Victoria Clark, and the cast of Gigi
• Past Tony-nominees Matthew Morrison and Kelsey Grammer, and the cast of Finding Neverland; and
• Tyne Daly and the cast of It Shoulda Been You.

Check back soon for more info about the 2015 Tony Awards.

It's Only A Play - Or Is It?

Terrence McNally's It's Only A Play has had a storied history.

It was originally created in 1978 and then produced in 1982 and again in 1985 and 1992.

The original 1978 version of the play was called Broadway, Broadway. It starred Geraldine Page and James Coco and closed during tryouts in Philadelphia.

But the play just wouldn't die. It kept coming back in different, updated versions.

Now, it's finally made it to Broadway where it's completing (on June 7) a run that began last October 9.

In it's glossy new Broadway version, It's Only A Play is a big-time star vehicle once again pairing Broadway's hottest couple (Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane) in a raucous piece with an ensemble that includes Stockard Channing, F. Murray Abraham and Katie Finneran with Jack O'Brien at the helm directing.

This is a play about opening night on Broadway. It's a play about a play.

Here's how it goes: A wealthy first-time Broadway producer, Julia Budder (Finneran), is throwing an opening night party for The Golden Egg at her luxurious Manhattan home. The playwright Peter Austin (Broderick), the director, the actors, along with assorted friends and hangers-on (including a critic) nervously wait for the late-night reviews printed in the newspapers. Meanwhile they gossip and throw out the names of the celebrities who are in attendance. Virginia Noyes (Channing), the star of the show, is taking drugs. James Wicker (Lane), an old friend of the playwright, is now a successful TV actor who turned down the lead in the play, and is relieved and secretly thrilled about the bad reviews that arrive. And, although Ira Drew (Abraham) is a theater critic, he is very critical of the theater because he has no talent to actually participate, despite his secretly writing plays. Not discouraged by the bad reviews for The Golden Egg, the assembled parties eagerly make plans for their next play, which they know will be a hit.

One of the problems with It's Only A Play is that the characters are really all caricatures. They are basically exaggerated cutouts of classic Broadway types: the aging Hollywood star who snorts cocaine; the former Broadway star who sold out to TV; the frustrated critic; the naive young actor/wannabe; the anguished director; the idle-rich producer and the head-in-the-clouds playwright. On top of this, there's virtually no character development here. The play is simply constructed as a showcase for clever lines and over-the-top performances.

So, it's left to the actors to ham it up and make the most of their lines and their overblown personalities. And, there are some real funny lines and lots of inside-Broadway jokes. The humor often hits the bullseye and the audience laughs so much that the whole affair is nothing short of uproarious. Lane can milk a line better than an Iowa farmhand and when Channing deadpans you're witnessing Broadway gold. But Broderick is somewhat off the mark and there's not enough interplay between him and Lane. Plus, the whole setup takes too long, tying up a first act that is way too verbose.

In the second act the pace quickens and the ensemble seems to gel a lot better. Still, the ending might leave you feeling like you've been had. Very little actually happened in the course of the evening (it's all pretty much in real time) and somehow, we're back where we started. Too clever by half?

But, where else can you see an assemblage of talent like this? And how often will you hear this many wisecracks -- many of them triggering real, live belly laughs? The swipes at the Brits are delightfully telling. The jibes at Broadway's new love of mammoth productions loaded with special effects are warranted. And even the Jersey jokes are funny.

Remember the title: It's Only A Play.

And, indeed it is!

Before Or After The Theater: It's The Lambs Club!

The Lambs Club, just off Broadway on West 44th has quickly become a favorite of ours whenever we're headed to see a show on the Great White Way.
Inside The Lambs Club, guests are transported from the hustle and bustle of Broadway to the welcoming oases of the restaurant's many one-of-a-kind spaces.
The distinguished history that connects the landmark building to the Great White Way is prominently displayed in the main dining room, which boasts an enormous 18th century fireplace, a gift from Architect Stanford White to The Lambs, a turn of the century members-only thespian society, from whom the venue takes its name.
Though the Club (actually a fine restaurant) has no connection to the original Lambs group, it retains its distinguished air in a remarkably welcoming and relaxing atmosphere and you can overnight at the lovely Chatwal Hotel which is connected to The Club.
The Lambs Club offers Chef Geoffrey Zakarian's modern approach to American cuisine with distinct ingredients, highly seasonal menus and a signature approach to hospitality.
Executive Chef Eric Haugen, who works closely with Zakarian on menu development, was named Zagat's 30 Under 30 in New York City and noted as one of the "culinary world's major up-and-comers". Chef Haugen marries his passion for food and his classical training to innovate while remaining true to Zakarian's signature style.
The Club is open from 7 AM till late at night. And the menus are varied and always tempting.
At lunch you can select from appetizers, sandwiches or main courses including a Spanish omelet, ricotta and black pepper cavatelli or crispy skin branzino. As you can see, we chose a creamy onion soup (so fresh and fragrant!) and the classic burger. The fresh bread (perfectly warm) comes with the pre-fixe two or three course lunch which offers different features every day. Brunch is offered on weekends from 11 till 3.
Be sure to put The Lambs Club at the top of your list. Highly recommended!

All photos copyright 2015 by Dan Cirucci.