A Young People's Guide To Theatre...and the Galaxy

New York <3 Richmond

2009-10-20T00:54:00.005-04:00

This might be old news for some, but for others it's so cool! Thanks to our friend Lauren Edelstein, who has a hilarious and fashion-filled blog you should check out (sorry Lauren, hilarious and fashion-filled were literally the two best adjectives we could come up with at this point in time), we found this article! It was in Travel section of The New York Times on October 18, and is a "36 Hours in Richmond, Va" feature. They literally say, "Richond is strutting with confidence, moving beyond its Civil War legacy and emerging as a new player on the Southern art and culinary scene."

SO COOL!

They also bring up the new and exciting Richmond CenterStage, Need Supply Company, which we've tried on many-a-dress at (unfortunately, downtown hipsters wear dresses that go up your butt... and we Steingolds are no downtown hipsters), and Legend Brewery (woo!).

Fin. Gosh it's still so hard to end blog posts.

Legally Whaaaaaa??

2009-10-04T22:49:00.003-04:00

Oh, hi! Didn't you see you sneak up on us. Yes, we're still HERE. Good times and bum times, we've seen all and, my dear, we're still here. Hyuk! Anyway, we've missed writing on here. See, we'd have things to write about it, but we're uber-perfectionists and if a post wasn't awesome to our standards, we just wouldn't put it up. But now, we've decided to not always give you the most wonderful, witty, and whimsical posts you deserved. Sometimes they might be W-T-F. It's a roll of Sky Masterson's loaded dice.

To ease us back onto this, here is a video Elyse found on Broadway.com. Legally Blonde is heading to the West End, so they made this music video to promote it. Broadway.com calls the video "fun." We call it HILARIOUS. Those Brits have quite the sense of humor. And quite an interesting view of what makes a musical advertisement enticing. This is literally one of the funniest things we've ever seen, for so many reasons. One of those reasons? The almost R-rated kiss. Another reason? What Elle does when she holds the long note at the end of the song. Watch it.

And some exciting news! We're pretty sure that both Steingold sisters will be in town for the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards! The Arties! Or the Artsies? Not sure. Annie will be home for Fall Break- hit her up, yo! And Elyse will be home for the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards! Oh, and doesn't have rehearsal that night. So look out for us with a microphone in hand and video camera, asking you who you're wearing and what you did to prepare for the day. Perhaps a mani-pedi at Atir?

Check back to hear thoughts about Bye Bye Birdie, After Miss Julie, and Superior Donuts. YES! Two plays! Can you believe it? Aren't you proud?

Center Stage Opening! A Guest Blog by the Parents Steingold

2009-09-13T17:57:00.004-04:00

Since Annie and Elyse could not attend the CenterStage Grand Opening last night, they asked us to write a guest blog to share our thoughts and impressions.

First, let’s talk about the physical structure: having grown up in Richmond and attended many movies at the Lowe’s and subsequent concerts and ballets at the “Carpenter Center,” I (Nikki) can tell you that they did everything RIGHT! Kudos to the person who said, “let’s keep the amazing theatre looking just like it always has, but let’s add about 25 more bathrooms!” The Lowe’s/CarpenterCenter/Carpenter Theater is and has always been one of Richmond’s treasures. How nice to see it shining once again!

Actually, Kenny had to miss a huge football game (Southern Cal vs. Ohio State) which he was counting on to reverse the effects of his breakout performance in the “Summer of ‘42” music video. In fact, our good friend, Glynn Baker, called after viewing the video stating that Kenny needed a heavy dose of beer, red meat, and football. Instead, he got culture … and considering that “Barney on Ice” and an accidental poetry reading at Barnes and Noble while waiting to see “The Hangover” were his other two artsy endeavors, he needed it.

Now, on to the show:

Can we just say that the Richmond Symphony is AMAZING and we loved “Festive Overture.” Listen to it on YouTube, it’s inspiring! Maybe if "Glory Days" had opened with this song, things would have worked out differently. Bravo to Erin Freeman, Associate Conductor, whose talents were evident in every twist of the baton.

Hosts Venus Flytrap and Aunt Viv (Tim and Daphne Maxwell-Reid) added so much to the evening – their comments were both interesting and personable. We’re very fortunate to have them active in the Virginia Arts Community.

The Richmond Jazz Society and African American Repertory Theatre both gave excellent performances, with “Generations of Jazz” and the works of Langston Hughes respectively. Ah, then on to the Virginia Opera’s selections from “La Boheme.” Need we even mention how amazing these voices were? We just can’t understand how they failed their audition for “High School Musical” (that’s some tough casting!). Not only were the voices outstanding, but they brought along an entire set that was so authentic I had to put on my sweater. While the opera was in Italian, they were kind enough to project the translation on a screen. Little did we know those beautiful Italian words translated into, “My enchanted love, please pass the Cheese-Whiz.” We loved the choice of songs, but our only regret was that they left out the scene where Angel dances on the table.

The Barksdale/Theatre IV-Empire Theater/HanoverTavern presented scenes from “High School Musical,” “Boleros for the Disenchanted,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “The Sound of Music.” As usual, the “HSM” cast was highly energetic and we rooted for Troy and Gabriella. But we wonder if Gabriella’s mother knows that the Wildcats apparently traded Troy Bolton for Dennis Rodman (nice tat!)

Loved “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and agreed with the audience’s spontaneous applause following Carolyn Meade’s tap solo!

And what a pleasant surprise to see our friend Ana Ines Barragan King of the Latin Ballet of Virginia performing in the bolero “Besame Mucho.” Ana is a delight to watch and the Latin Ballet of Virginia is a treat that ALL Richmonders should see.

TB/TIV-ET/HT ended with “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from “The Sound of Music” performed by the Mother Superior and her backup singers. We thought it strange when they segued into the “My Guy/I Will Follow Him” medley and were a little freaked when Rolf came out singing “Springtime for Hitler.”

Act Two’s performances by Elegba Folklore Society and Richmond Shakespeare clearly proved the diversity in the Richmond talent and creative pools. Elegba wowed the audience with their dancing, rhythm, and amazing performance by Amadou Kouyate. Richmond Shakespeare showed their versatility in speech, song, and dance.

SPARC was great. The leads, Jason Marks, Chris Adams, Ali Thibodeau, Drew Seigla, Michael Hawke and “Eponine” (so sorry we don’t know your name!) were outstanding. From the “Castle on a Cloud” opening through “One Day More,” SPARC gave an excellent representation of their mission and accomplishments.

The Richmond Ballet’s performance of the final section from “Windows” was the enchanted ending to a magical evening. We loved seeing Phillip Skaggs, Valerie Tellmann, and Lauren Fagone whom we enjoyed throughout so many ballet performances when our good friends Pedro Szalay and Brandon Becker were with the ballet. And what a treat to see Maggie Small, whom we have watched dance since her childhood! But while we mention these names specifically, the entire company was simply outstanding!

The CenterStage Foundation is to be commended for persevering throughout recessions and adversity to reach the crescendo it did last night.

Anyone Want to Send Me a Water Filter?

2009-09-08T00:16:00.008-04:00

It's the start of separate blog posts for the Steingold sisters now that we're in two different states. Tonight it's Elyse. It took me this long to write a new post because every time I came to the blog to write a new one, I ended up just watching that video over and over again and then I would forget my initial intention in signing on to lordhelpthesisters.blogspot.com. Also, I now have a twitter which I completely don't know how to use and I'm a little ashamed that I have one in the first place, but I felt I had to. So if anything the least bit witty comes to mind, I post it on my twitter. So, my twitter page is very "twitty." Ha. And based on that pun you can imagine how terribly uninteresting my twitter page is.

So I go to school in DC just steps from the Kennedy Center, and every night they present performances at the Millennium Stage for free. Some nights are incredible and some nights they bring in Al from off the street with his tin drum made out of a trash can. Tonight happened to be incredible. The Signature Theatre presented a cabaret of songs from The American Musical Voices Project, which included new work from Michael John LaChiusa, Ricky Ian Gordon, Joseph Thalken, Adam Guettel, and a lot more. There were a ton of songs whose sheet music I have to get my hands on for when Annie and I finally pull off our cabaret. Seriously. We want to have a 2-woman show. And our parents might make guest appearances. It will be just like the Broadway's Leading Ladies show except Annie, Mom, and I will be singing the "Weber Love Trio" and Dad will be singing "The Ladies Who Lunch" in his falsetto. On that note (heh) I bid you farewell.

Later, I'll talk about the upcoming Equality March that's happening here in October and the fact that the Hair tribe from Broadway is going to be marching. I'm all about equality, but honestly, mostly I'm walking to try to accidentally brush Will Swenson's butt.

The Blog Post You'll Always Remember

2009-08-28T23:31:00.007-04:00

Questions regarding our family's insanity will be answered in the order in which they are received. Oh, and have we mentioned that our parents are amazing sports? Just count this as our end-of-the-summer treat for you all.

Does our dad remind anyone else of Brick Tamland from Anchorman?

A New Chapter Blogins

2009-08-20T17:19:00.005-04:00

One month, five shows, and another hike to New York later, we're finally back in the blogosphere. Oh, how nice did it feel to carefully remove our blog from the chest in our attic and gently blow the dust off of it. And we're just in time to talk about the nominations for the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards. Obviously a lot of people in the Richmond Theatre Community are either really excited (the nominees), really pissed (the NOTinees), or really hungry (the Steingold sisters).

We want to preface this by saying that no matter what wins, who is wearing what dress, or which Hanover Tavern show didn't get nominated, the main point of these awards is to raise money for the Artists Fund. That's the main point... not who got the most votes out of six local critics or debates over who should or shouldn't have been nominated. It is AWESOME that the money from the event will go to this organization. The committee should be acknowledged positively for that.

We think it's really funny that the press release calls the event a "Black Tie Gala", then goes on to say that "formal attire is encouraged." We were taught many Bar Mitzvahs ago that black tie meant wear a tux. If they didn't expect black tie attire, they should have noted on the invitation something more straightforward like, "Joshua has become a man, join us for a hoedown after the service." Oh, and speaking of tuxes, we personally think Gordon Bass should wear his Daddy Warbucks tux to the show. And that Annie should wear her maid outfit with a poinsettia pinned on.

It goes without saying that we won't discuss plays. Because we prefer when people sing their emotions. WOW, we love musicals. We are honored to say that we saw all nominees for Best Musical. And we know who we think the winner should be. So hopefully they win.

But onto something that doesn't specifically relate to the awards. We understand that the "Artsies" specifically honor "professional theaters" in Richmond, but we feel that there needs to be some sort of recognition from said professional theaters, and the critics, of the other work that is being done in the community. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Dogwood Dell received next to no recognition, and all of the performers were working for free. It's wonderful that the amazing city of Richmond has a venue like the Dell, so people who can't typically afford $40 tickets to shows can be exposed to what we still feel is such an under-appreciated art form.

Clearly we feel a special connection to the show, and we hope we're not overstepping our boundaries in this public forum (ha), but we do think that it's important for the theatre community as a whole to appreciate and commend the work that has been done pro bono. Throw us a frickin' bono.

Pretty Little Picture

2009-07-30T00:43:00.004-04:00

Come see Forum... this weekend at Dogwood Dell. It's at 8:30 PM. And it's FREE!

Delicious! Refreshing! Invigorating! Exhilarating!

Always Coca-Cola!

FYI- We went to the Wikipedia page for Coca-Cola slogans because we all found it funny that the "COKE" is basically the centerpiece of this family portrait. Go here if you want to look at Coke slogans from 1886. The one we used is from 1887.

Wow, don't Charles Wissinger, Terri Moore, and Sean Williams make an adorable family? All three of you win for best awkward family photo face! Congratulations.

Forum's Boots 'n' Bits

2009-07-28T14:15:00.002-04:00

Since we’re not going to be able to review Forum ourselves, we’re instead going to give you some additions to Jason’s 5 reasons to see the show, things you wouldn’t normally notice that we want you to look out for. Let's just think of this as insider tips from two of the stars. And by stars we mean people who appear onstage for less than ten minutes. But oh, what a ten minutes it is! Tragedy tomorrow, bullets tonight:

This show is nothing like the horrible movie. Our mom didn’t believe us when we said that the show was actually funny because all she could think about was the somewhat sci-fi/pornographic Zero Mostel version. This show is a hilarious mix of Mel Brooks, Judd Apatow, Family Guy, and Aristophanes – and we all know what a hoot he was!
Joe Pabst, our director, Blanton Bradley, the musical director, and Amy Farley, our choreographer, are a dream team- smart, hard-working, and so much fun! And we’re slowly but surely convincing them to work together on Dreamgirls. But this time as the lead performers.
"The House of Marcus Lycus” is an awesome number that you’re sure to enjoy, if only for Robert Redford/Blonde Pierce Brosnan, who we’ve brought in to play Marcus Lycus. Just kidding, his name is Kerry Keenan, and we all love him. He’s totally that guy in high school who not only was quarterback of the football team, but could sing, too (Anyone remember Walker Williams?). Plus, all the girls in the number are great performers. We both realized that every courtesan in the number is supposed to be cute, flirty, and sexy. Whereas what do you think our two characters are supposed to be? We're either a) spastic, b) frightening, c) angry, or d) all of the above. The answer is f) all of the above and also sweating.
Who here has rehearsed at the Carillon before? Here are our thoughts about this historical monument, also known as a Super Mario World Ghost House. We think there are special bug species that are only populating the Carillon. And we’re pretty sure a hunchback is manning the bells. However, we also think it’s gorgeous and want to stand on the very top balcony and perform “A New Argentina.”
Charles Wissinger taught Steven Ralph how to authentically draw a sword.

Go here for the dates and times, and maybe we’ll see you on the way to the Dogwood Dellum!

A Lot of Funny Things Happened on the Way to Writing this Blog

2009-07-26T23:15:00.003-04:00

...Which is why it took us so long to post a new blog. Whoops. We've been really busy with Forum rehearsals - which opens this week! We hope to see all of y'all there with cold cuts and deviled eggs. Michael Hawke, don't forget your 2-liter grape Big K. Anyway, the rehearsals have been a ton of fun, if not very entertaining. Elyse has just learned to crack a bull whip without taking off her ear, and Annie is working on perfecting her cat screams... without sounding like a pirate.

Jason Marks made a video of the top five reasons you should see the show. Find it on our Facebook profiles because we have absolutely no idea how to link to it here. It's a great video- bravo, Jason, can you do EVERYTHING?- but we have one qualm. The two of us together are not one of the reasons you should see the show. You know honestly, we're not even in the video, except Elyse standing there diagonally and a shot of Annie's stomach next to her. Jason. Seriously?

Hope you all know that we're kidding and we couldn't be prouder of the amazing team that has come together to put on this show. We literally were saying last night that we feel like proud Jewish grandparents at a Bat Mitzvah who kvell the whole time, not even looking at their granddaughter who is performing, but instead turning around in their pew (is there a word for a Jewish pew?) and smiling at everyone who's there as if to say, "Isn't she a gem?" Well, Forum cast, you are our gem. And by the way, wonderful job on your Haftorah portion.

Tune in later in the day for our favorite moments for the show, and also to hear about the things we've been doing for the past year since the last time we posted. It feels good to be back! We'd be writing more now but Annie has to go practice with the marvelous Sherri Matthews for a concert that you'll be hearing about here when you check back later.

... Everybody ought to have a blog.

We'll Make it a Triple, Not a Curtain Call

2009-07-07T00:04:00.004-04:00

This might be impossible for you readers to believe, but the two of us really aren't all that great at sports. And by not all that great we mean terrible. Our favorite part of playing sports when we were kids was eating the snack that the parents brought every week after the game. So naturally when we heard there was a Richmond theatre softball game we decided to go and make fools of ourselves, with the knowledge that no matter how horrible we do, we can always go to Westhampton Bakery afterwards. And we had really cute July 4th-inspired outfits. That was enough impetus to go.

Unfortunately, we had to be on two different teams. Which was terrifying! We're never split up. But it made it much easier when we were actually playing because for the first half of the game Elyse's teammates were calling her Annie, so there was no confusion over who they were actually talking to. Speaking of which, Matt Hackman (who is apparently a major league baseball player) couldn't stop calling Annie "Ally," which made things a bit difficult when he was trying to get her attention because a ball was flying at her head.

Lisa Kotula's whole family was there which was so much fun and she was ridiculously good at softball! For some reason we feel like every mom who has a fifth grade kid in little league HAS to be good at softball because we have this mental image in our head of our mom in overalls coaching little league and being amazing.

Eddie Tavares, the most athletic person ever, was there and this one guy kept calling him "Big Stick" every time he was up to bat. Okay. We totally didn't know that was a baseball term for a good batter. So... you can imagine our confusion. Every player was so good, we wondered why we were even trying to play on the same field as them. I guess it was for their entertainment. We played for two and a half hours and Annie was at bat for about one of those hours total. We didn't play outs, so in total, Annie swung about 64 times. And made contact about 4 times.

When we got home from the game we were so excited that we decided to stop at Toys 'R' Us and buy mitts and a softball. We got home and were playing catch in the front yard with our new equipment and next thing we knew, Annie missed a pop fly and it landed in the sewer. Hopefully that isn't a sign that we shouldn't go back next week. Because we plan on giving it another shot. We might wear name tags next time...

Together at Last!

2009-07-05T21:14:00.005-04:00

Annie and Elyse are in a show together! This hasn’t happened since the Broadway Kids came into town in 1998 and put on “Kids for Kids” and the locals got to participate. And by participate we mean stand behind all the Broadway Kids while they sang “I Go to Rio.” So now we finally have the opportunity to be in a show together again. We’re playing two of the courtesans in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Dogwood Dell. Good thing it’s at the Dell because with our crazy-proud parents so happy that their two kids are onstage together, there's going to need to be a large house. Only an outdoor ampitheatre would accommodate.

Rehearsals started the other night and we learned our dance, choreographed by the incomparable Amy Farley. Elyse walks around in elevator shoes and a whip. And Annie is thrown around by Jason Marks. They do a crazy animal-inspired swing dance that is incredible. Jason is such a good dancer! He’s doing steps that no one in our family could get down back when all four of us took swing dance together. Seriously. Mom, Dad, and the two of us all took swing dance classes. Why doesn’t our family have a reality show?

It’s really interesting seeing how we act at rehearsals because everyone has a “rehearsal personality”. And generally it’s different from how the personalities are in everyday life. So here’s what we learned about each other. Elyse is surprisingly really loud and makes jokes as often as possible, but every time she says a joke she has to keep eye contact with Annie for security. Like she knows that Annie will always laugh at her joke. Annie is the most attention-grabbing person at rehearsal. The two of us were sitting with our backs to the mirror while some other people were working stuff with Amy. Elyse was sitting there calmly, and Annie promptly turns so she’s facing the mirror, puts her hair in a crazy hairdo and watches herself bop around with her hairdo.

Stick around for more stories about the rehearsal process that will probably include eunuchs stacking on top of each other, a local re-enactor, Robert Redford’s twin brother playing a pimp, and Blanton Bradley standing there with his hands on top of the piano and a note mysteriously being played...

Also stick around for our thoughts on Summer of '42 and our attempts at being athletic.

Mmm, Splotchy.

2009-06-29T14:57:00.020-04:00

It probably comes as no surprise to you that we consider Center Stage to be one of the most important and hilarious movies of all time. With Susan Stroman's classic choreography to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Shakespeare geek in 10 Things I Hate About You "fooling" us as a prima ballerina, and Peter Gallagher's eyebrows playing a bigwig Artistic Director, we've watched this movie too many times to count. So for all the rest of you who are obsessed with this film, join us as we recount our top 10 "what-the-heck" moments of Center Stage.

We love all the Broadway performers who are in this movie, especially Debra Monk who plays snobby Maureen's crazy stage mom. It's such a climactic moment when she's watching the big ballet performance at the end and sees that her daughter isn't onstage dancing the lead role. She's so shocked, in fact, that she leaves in the middle of the performance to find Maureen. However, instead of going out the aisle that's probably directly next to her, she chooses to go out the opposite aisle, therefore giving Debra Monk a big opportunity to awkwardly climb over about twenty people, loudly.
Eva Rodriguez, the tough Spanish girl who only has a Spanish accent about twice in the movie, is the rebel with the heart of gold. Somehow, she is allowed to show up to class at literally the most prestigious ballet school in the country late, with her hair in a mess, and the wrong leotard. And they don't kick her out! Nice. We love that in the movie, they find it necessary to include a 30-second scene showing us how tough Eva is- cut to her smoking a cig outside, dropping it on the ground, and putting it out with her POINTE SHOE. How symbolic is that?
Sadly, Eric O. Jones hurts his leg in rehearsal and is unable to perform in Cooper Nielson's choreographic BA-llet premiere (anyone else notice that real ballerinas always have to put the emphasis on the "BA" part?). So, woohoo, Cooper is going to go on FOR Eric. Does anyone else think it's weird that the part that Eric O. Jones was supposed to play included him having an onstage makeout scene with Jody and riding on a motorcycle and getting in a dance battle with Charlie? Like, we're sure Eric was a great actor, but watching him make out with Jody? Let's just say it's a good thing he sprained his ankle and Cooper had to go on and tidily wrap up/summarize, in a 5-minute ballet piece, what we've previously sat through for about an hour.
It's really cool that famous ballerina Julie Kent dances in the movie- but it's even cooler that she acts! We like the acting technique she employs: talking the whole time with her teeth shut together.
One of our favorite parts in the movie is obviously the jazz dance class with Priscilla Lopez as the instructor. She totally plays the bad-ass, this-isn't-a-ballet-class, dance-the-*$&%-out-of-it dance teacher. So obviously what song does she choose to have her class warm up to? "Candy" by Mandy Moore. Obviously.
Maureen is lucky enough to date Jim, a pre-med student at Columbia University. In one scene she's at the bowling alley with Jim and all of his cool friends, eating pizza and listening to a guy tell a HILARIOUS joke about an elephant and monkeys. We'd like to think that Ivy-leaguers tell jokes that are funnier and wittier than this one. It's so bad, and judging how much everyone's DYING laughing to the point that they're crying, apparently Columbia kids have really bad senses of humor.
The Latin dance club scene is amazing, if only for the two lead singers of the band with the really long hair. Jody and Charlie go out onto the dance floor and do some "Latin dancing." Eva and Eric, the two ethnic dancers, OBVIOUSLY are better Latin dancers, so they go onto the dance floor and criticize Jody and Charlie, telling them "That's not Salsa! You want to see Salsa? THIS is Salsa!" They then proceed to shimmy and do a grapevine.
How many times have we gotten upset during a rehearsal or a dance class and started to cry in the hallway? Hmm, we plead the 5th. How many times have we had this happen to us, then had a cute, straight male dancer reassure us that we're awesome and we shouldn't worry about our faces being splotchy? Um, zero. Jody Sawyer, you're a lucky biotch.
Also with Jody, if she chooses not to be a dancer, she has a long career ahead of her as a hair stylist. Have you noticed how her hairstyle is literally different- and perfect- in every scene?
Finally, we can't forget the best scene in the whole movie- the very end. The big ballet showcase is over, students have been selected for the company, Cooper's made his choreographic debut, and everyone's gathered in the Lincoln Center lobby. And who gets their name called out and roses handed to her by everyone? That's right, Jody Sawyer. Because... she emerged as a star dancer from just the training company? And was brave enough to tell Peter Gallagher to stick it and instead join Cooper's company? Yes, that definitely deserves a loud, "JODY SAWYER" followed by applause and bouquets of flowers.

We know this was a ridiculously long blog post, but oh, it's so worth it to us to spread the love and ridiculousness that is Center Stage. Please, watch it. If you haven't, you can borrow ours... and you're not splotchy.

Where's Waldo

2009-06-29T10:04:00.005-04:00

The other night Elyse couldn't get to sleep, so like any other normal person, she decided to count sheep. And by count sheep we mean she went through all her old Broadway playbills to see how much the actors have changed. It's so funny seeing things like, "Marc Kudisch: Broadway debut!" Oh Marc Kudisch, you and your bow legs have come so far.

Anyway, she was looking through the Annie Get Your Gun playbill from 1999 and saw something really funny. Click on this picture to make it bigger. And no, we're not talking about how different headshots look now than they did back then- can we say hello Chesterfield Town Center Glamour Shots white-washed background? See if you can find what we're talking about:

That's right, folks. Patti D'Beck, the director and choreographer of Millie. Literally two rows under Bernadette Peters. And we thought it was cool to be sitting three rows in front of Adam Lambert. Sheesh. We wonder how long she has had her signature hairdo. And we wonder how we beat Bruce to posting this on his blog.

Farrah Fawcett was Upstaged

2009-06-26T09:53:00.005-04:00

Just Elyse here. Annie has given me permission to write this. It's SO horrible that Michael Jackson died. Annie said that when she was walking down the street in NY, everyone was talking about it. But in the light of tragedy, you have to still be able to laugh about ridiculous yet touching things your sister has to say. Here is our text conversation that we had pretty soon after the news broke:

Annie: I just started sobbing over mj
Elyse: Oh no
Annie: Yeah, "beat it" was on. And mom and dad were like, he wasn't the same guy as that. And all I keep thinking is heaven for him will be a time where he can do "thriller" and "beat it"

We love you Michael Jackson.

One Night in Blogkok.

2009-06-24T01:32:00.006-04:00

Those of you who have gotten sick of the Alanis-Morissette-imitating-and-movie-acting Idina Menzel might not know about the fact that Idina recently starred in the Chess benefit concert, and it's on DVD- oh, and you know she's pregnant, right?! Yeah, old news. The concert was also on PBS, for free, and we realized that fact basically immediately after we ripped open the DVD from Barnes and Noble. Anyway, Adam Pascal, Josh Groban, and Kerry Ellis also headline. Other than the fact that there literally needed to be a letter from Tim Rice in the DVD cover explaining that no one really knows or understands what the storyline of Chess is, we really enjoyed the show! The guys from ABBA teamed up with Tim Rice to write the music, and they do a great job of balancing the two styles. Just when it gets too Evita for your taste, they mix in some Mamma Mia. Our personal favorite song is "The Deal." It's so good.

Idina is just so amazing singing "Nobody's Side," minus the fact that she throws in her signature speech impediment: singing it "Lobody's on lobody's side." Kerry Ellis sings "Someone Else's Story," but she decided to make her mark on the show by creating her own speech impediment: pronouncing her S's "sh." Now WHY they would give the song Someone ElSe'S Story to someone with an S problem, we will never know. Josh Groban is a little lame to tell the truth - acting is definitely not his strongest suit. His voice makes up for it, though, in a very Polar Express kind of way. Adam Pascal is ridiculous. We've watched him sing "One Night in Bangkok" about 64 times already. Finally, watching Kerry Ellis and Idina Menzel sing "I Know Him So Well" together is awesome just because of the fact that you can't help but think- and hope- that they're going to screw Chess and instead just break out into a Who Can Riff the Best at the End of "Defying Gravity" contest.

So if you're bored this summer, curl up in front of the TV and watch Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dancing Queen. Idina's back in town!

P.S. Elyse was at dinner last night with a group of people and one of the girls said, "For my new car I want to get a Peace Frogs sticker. I wish that was still around." Elyse had to tell her the sad truth that there was, in fact, a Peace Frogs store just 5 minutes from her house. We stand corrected about the demand for peaceful amphibian gear.

Tim Burton + Johnny Depp = <3

2009-06-23T11:57:00.003-04:00

... Oh, we meant to say Tim Burton + Helena Bonham Carter, but it's basically the same thing, right? Anyway, because the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland- and the creepy made-for-TV version with Whoopi as the Cheshire Cat (perfect casting, by the way) and Martin Short- wasn't freaky enough, Tim Burton's decided to have a go at it, making the movie even FREAKIER.

Here are the pictures they've just released to give us a sneak peek at how ca-razy this movie is going to be.

Peace Blogs

2009-06-22T17:06:00.006-04:00

Sorry we haven't updated in a while and you've been forced to watch our video over and over again. It was actually pretty funny how it was made: we got home from our Forum audition with a surprising amount of energy and Elyse said, "Hey, can we learn every move Liza does in the Tony opening and then tape it and put it on the blog?" To which Annie replied, "Sure, and I'll be Anne Hathaway in the audience being obnoxious." Next thing we know, Annie's hair is in a French twist, Mom is styling a wig, and Elyse is getting changed into as many black sequins as possible. Welcome to the Steingold household.

We have so much to talk about so we're going to try to pace ourselves. First things first: has anyone been to Short Pump Town Center lately? This doesn't have anything to do with theatre, but why on earth is there a need for a Peace Frogs store? The economy is bad, however we'll revive it by buying t-shirts whose popularity peaked in 1997 - when Elyse was frequenting the Peace Frogs kiosk and Annie was wearing a ridiculous amount of denim Bugs Bunny shirts from the Warner Bros. Store, both at Regency Mall (speaking of popularity peaking in 1997...).

And speaking of frogs who promote peace, Mom recently stumbled upon the cutest song on the Sirius Broadway channel. It's from The Little Mermaid on Broadway and is definitely worth 99 cents. It's called "She's in Love" and is sung by Flounder (who we now have a crush on and who we think sounds a ridiculous amount like Eric Pastore) and Ariel's sisters. Try to spot the Sutton wannabe. We just know we really want to get a group of girls - um, and Eric - to sing this with us. Harmonies - love them!

Summer shows, summer shows! There are so many going on. We saw the Millie IDR and are excited to talk about it. And we're randomly hearing about shows that we want to see! For example, today at Baker's Crust our waitress looked vaguely familiar. Finally Elyse said, "Did Robyn O'Neill take her headshot?" And that's how we recognized her, from Robyn's site! So Annie asked her if she was an actor and if Robyn had in fact taken her headshot and she said yes- and also looked at Annie like she was a bit of a stalker. Her name is Alison Haracznak and she's going to be in Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, a Night Live Collective production. We just looked at their blog and hopefully we'll be able to check it out. She brought out our roasted chicken grinders with only mayo, chicken, and bread perfectly, so just for that we want to go out there and support her! Mayo, chicken, and bread- we choose to only eat the healthy parts of the sandwich. We were too embarrassed to tell her to hold the chicken.

Stay tuned for our two-cents on Millie, Busch Gardens, Wintergreen, and Chess.

Elyse with an S

2009-06-14T23:28:00.007-04:00

You know how much we love Liza, and her performance in the opening number of the Tony Awards really was something. We made a video to pay homage to this legendary performer and her legendary performance. Watch the original first - she comes in at 2:03 of this video. Seriously, watch this first. It's worth it.

Now watch this. It's even more worth it. Elyse is playing Liza. Annie's playing Anne Hathaway.

Allison Janney Down the Octave

2009-06-12T14:04:00.005-04:00

Last weekend we were lucky enough to see Dolly Parton's 9 to 5. And we mean lucky enough. It was so great and fun! After crying through the last two shows we saw- Hair and Next to Normal- this was a nice change. We were really sad our mom couldn't see it with us, though, because it involves everything she loves: Dolly Parton, country music, Allison Janney, and feminism. If the show had somehow involved gourmet mints then she would have been a producer.

Megan Hilty, Stephanie J. Block, and Allison Janney made the most perfect trio. Megan Hilty literally looked, sounded, and acted exactly like Dolly Parton which was incredible. And made us really jealous. Stephanie J. Block had the most awesome strong, single woman song that blew us away. And Allison Janney is just too much. She's hilarious and so real onstage and she really knows how to hold her alto harmony. After the show Elyse said, "We can be like the three of them!" And our friend Chris said, "Yeah! Elyse, you would be Megan Hilty because she's the one with the big boobs, I would be Allison Janney because she's the gay one, and Annie would be Stephanie J. Block because she's the Jewish one." ...Okay. Is that not an amazing quote?

There were only three things we didn't like about the show. First, we didn't like that they had the same video screen backdrop thing as Guys and Dolls did during their Tony performance. Second, we didn't really like the choreography. It was done by the same guy who did In the Heights. Okay. His choreography is PERFECT for those of us from Washington Heights. However, there's only but so much popping and locking that needs to be done to country music in a suburban workplace in the 1970s. Just sayin'. Third, Marc Kudisch is really really bowlegged and it weirded Elyse out. Annie and Chris didn't even notice it. BUT she was right! Conrad Birdie himself knows he's bowlegged. And now Elyse feels kind of bad for being so freaked.

All in all we absolutely loved the show and are most definitely seeing it again with our mom in tow. So if you're in New York and want to see something which doesn't make you cry and boasts three amazing girls, opt for this. And speaking of Marc Kudisch, have y'all watched the Broadway.com interview with Gavin Creel, Sutton Foster, and Marc Kudisch at Ruby Foo's? It's a 30 minute interview that is totally worth it to watch just to see what they're like in real life. Our verdict? Eh, we'll pass.

We are Speechless.

2009-06-11T15:49:00.003-04:00

...ok not speechless enough to not write a few sentences. Kid you not, just two days ago a commercial came on for Zack Morris's new show, and we were talking about how he's aged. And how adorable Zack Morris was and what a pop icon he is. And literally, there he is. Looking and sounding exactly the same! Eeeeeeee!

Video Recaps Full Episodes Webisodes

Minky and Co.

2009-06-10T15:06:00.009-04:00

We have no shame when it comes to talking about how much we love our pets. Why would we? We know we're destined to become crazy cat ladies. Have you seen Annie's cat Minky's headshot album on Facebook? If not, it's definitely worth checking out. You know what else is worth checking out? The Daily Puppy. Seriously, it will put you in such a good mood when you're at work. Not only are there adorable pictures of puppies, but also incredibly bizarre comments that people write about the puppies: "Scootchin inna grass like only a Boxer can do. Thank you for keeping their ears natural."

Anyway, because Annie is in NY with Minky, Elyse and mom get about 20 texts a day with pictures of Minky posing. Dad would get them, too, but he still doesn't know how to send a text, much less open a picture. Last night, Annie sent this picture of Minky laying down on a binder of Annie's sheet music:

This was the text sent with the picture (from Minky): "What should I sing for my audition? Eh, I'll sleep on it."

Anyone else think we have a potential career on our hands in theatre greeting cards? Anyone? No one. Thanks for indulging us when we put up cute pictures of our pets. You've seen Buddy and Minky but you have yet to see Blinkin' and Maeby. Oh, you will. In due time... in due time.

Wow, SPARC news is pretty big-time isn't it? Maybe we'll hear more about it soon. Both of us did SPARC- for about a day- but we know how nice Jennie is and we wish them all the best.

News Feed

2009-06-08T19:28:00.007-04:00

Ah, the Tony Awards. We all love 'em, and we all love to talk about 'em. And what better way to share your thoughts and feelings than by changing your Facebook status during every single commercial break... and every time an award is given to a play. You theatre people out there had a lot to say. Here are some noteworthy statuses- stati?- and the comments we never left on your wall.

Michael Hawke what's with the touring shows on the TONY'S???
- Elyse and Annie: Oh, Michael Hawke. Thank you for your 50 status changes throughout the night. Aren't you glad you're getting a shout-out on our blog? Anyway, we totally agree with this comment, and we also appreciate the three question marks. But seriously, what WAS with them? And more importantly, what was with their costume choices? The three Mamma Mia women were backed up by H&M's entire island collection, circa 1998.

Emma Orelove WATCHING the Tony's hoping I'll be on that stage someday.

- Elyse and Annie: Oh, aren't we all. Even our cat Minky. And every kid who did All-County Chorus in 5th grade. We feel like for the two of us, it would be a miracle if we were lucky enough to be the guy who ran Titus Burgess's microphone onstage. Unfortunately, knowing us, we'd run into the fly that was being dropped on our way offstage.

Keith Chadwick Bret Michaels almost got decapitated on the Tonys. How did NONE of us catch this tonight? (For the record getting hit by a set piece coming in from the fly is my biggest theatre fear).
- Elyse and Annie: THAT'S your biggest theatre fear, Mr. Chadwick? Listen to this. We were in a show once and knew this stagehand who was always trying to scare us, telling us something about our hands and our eyes. He was kind of an ass. Anyway, one time we were getting ready to go onstage when all of a sudden the backdrop lifted and the stagehand's CORPSE was hanging from the rafters. THAT. Keith. Is what you should be afraid of.

Beth Sinnenberg > Amy Farley Your "Rockin the Boat" rocked...Broadway...not so good...go Amy

- Elyse and Annie: We couldn't agree with you more Beth! Once again, we contend that Amy Farley is a directorial and choreographical (not a word, thank you squiggly red line) genius. Rolling church benches that turn into makeshift boats? Amazing.

Joshua Burns Did anyone see the woman in the red dress with the heaving breasts on stage at the Tonys...um, not pretty, cover those up yo!

- Elyse and Annie: Oh my gosh! Yes! It was Gregory Jbara's wife who he pulled onstage for his acceptance speech in a sweet, romantic, husbandly gesture. But man. They were heaving. All of the bored husbands whose wives made them watch the Tony Awards at that moment became interested in musical theatre.

Jason Marks wants to know why Alice Ripley just yelled at me, and all of America.
- Elyse and Annie: That's HILARIOUS. She apparently wanted to make sure people could hear her speech because she could barely hear any of them all night. Frankly, Alice Ripley could have yelled her speech in Pig Latin and we still would have been so freaking excited for her. In fact, hearing Alice Ripley give a loud speech in Pig Latin probably would be pretty awesome. Ut bay why idn't day "Ext Nay o tay Ormal Nay" in way the Ony Tay Award or fay Est Bay Usical May? WHEW. That was hard.

Really, we loved reading everyone's statuses once the Tony's were over. Please let us know if we are breaking any copyright laws by posting and commenting on other people's thoughts. Our people will talk to your people if there's an issue.

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bret Michaels

2009-06-08T18:29:00.015-04:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, last night was the night of all nights. The gay man's Super Bowl. The Tony Awards. Man oh man how excited were we to watch the one awards show a year that we can actually sit through. We were even more excited to turn on NY1 here in the city and see "Live on the Red Carpet". And our excitement faded after one minute when we realized how horrible it was. Tony Awards fashion is definitely not as exciting as Academy Awards fashion. But the night isn't about fashion - it's about incredibly talented artists who can't dress to save their lives (see: Carrie Fisher). And the nominees for Best Featured Bullets in a Blog are...

Let's get the bad over with. The two bad things about the show were the ridiculous choices of musical numbers and horrible sound engineering. Sure, Shrek isn't the most amazing musical on the block, but they could have picked a much better number. And Billy Elliot should have picked a different song, as well. We haven't seen the show yet, but judging from that one performance, we would say that Next to Normal kind of got robbed. And all the sound mixing was way off. Thank you alto 2 part... and Jennifer Cody.
The first go round we completely missed Bret Michaels getting clotheslined during the big opening number. Then we watched the video over and over. We don't necessarily think him falling is funny, but we think the fact that Stockard Channing completely has no idea what's going on is pretty funny.
Of course we had a lot of fun watching the Rock of Ages performance. How cool was it that people in the audience had lights? And we will never stop loving Amy Spanger. But what we loved the most about this performance was the ridiculous camera angle at the end of the song. Did anyone else notice?? Hello crotch shot.
How about that Guys and Dolls backdrop, eh? It reminded us of the national tour of Starlight Express. And that should never be an association made with a Broadway show.
The opening number was amazing. That was the first time we cried last night. Other times included Karen Olivo's speech, Next to Normal's performance, the "In Memoriam" presentation, and when we ran out of bean dip.
We're so glad the Tony Awards weren't hosted by Hugh Jackman. And of course we loved Neil Patrick Harris's final song that was written by the hilarious South Park guys, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Does anyone else think Neil Patrick Harris and Gavin Creel would make a cute couple? They would have gorgeous kids. Dad? Help?

Even though a lot of sound engineers were fired last night, we think the 2009 Tony Awards was very entertaining! Next time let's leave out the touring shows. And get ready for a blog starring YOU guys! That's right, let's see what you all thought of the Tony's!

This blog is dedicated to the valiant man who ran Titus Burgess's microphone onstage when he was in dire need of salvation.

It's the Day of the Show, Y'all

2009-06-07T17:41:00.003-04:00

Update time! Keep your eyes open for posts about Toxic Avenger and 9 to 5 which we just saw! They're coming we promise. Right NOW, though, we're too busy getting excited about Chef Chris Collins's famous 7-layer dip.

OH. And the Tony's. We cannot wait. We're expecting to feel literally every emotion known to man. Get ready for a crazy Tony's blog!

Bloggin' and Boppin'

2009-06-03T14:01:00.014-04:00

Everyone, it's summertime. Meaning lunch is eaten at Melito's everyday, Gelati Celesti is eaten for breakfast and dinner everyday, and there's generally no thought of getting in a swimsuit because of the fact that Melito's and Gelati Celesti is all we eat. But for those of you who CAN chill by the pool and not get second-degree burns after being outside for three minutes, working out to fit in your itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikini or speedo (?) is a must. In workout magazines, celebs often give their ultimate workout playlist for their iPod. Since we're celebs, and since we work out (again, insert question mark in parentheses...?) we've decided to give you the ultimate playlist for your iPod- BROADWAY STYLE!

1. "So Much Better" from Legally Blonde- The rhythm is perfect, and all you need to do is picture all the tiny sorority girls in this show and you'll be sure to crank that treadmill up to 6. Or 5.2.... for a minute and then stay on 4.0 for about 30 minutes.

2. Literally any song from Altar Boyz- did you see those Swift Creek boy banders? Talk about a workout! And with songs like these (we especially love "God Put the Rhythm in Me") you'll be sweating almost as much as Chris Stewart and Annie did after "NYC" in Annie.

3. "Mamma Mia" from Les Miserables- Har har. But again, perfect rhythm, great tune. Just try not to picture Meryl Streep when you're pumping.

4. "Go, Go, Go Joseph" from Joseph- Stop laughing. Or rolling your eyes. The only problem is fast-forwarding through the blah of the Baker and the Butler or whoever.

5. "It Won't Be Long Now" from In the Heights- Karen Olivo is SO awesome on this song. And Lin-Manuel Miranda, well, you know how we feel about him. Just pretend that you're running toward him...

6. "Comfort and Joy" from Bat Boy- This song is GOOD. We'll always have memories of Scott Wichmann doing such an awesome job at this role at the Firehouse. Just pretend that you're running toward him...

7. "It's Your Wedding Day" from The Wedding Singer- Who doesn't like working out to 80s music? Or in this case music that sounds like it was written in the 80s and comes with choreography that literally throws in every stereotypical 80s move in a time-span of about 90 seconds?

8. Literally any song from Fosse or Movin' Out- We particularly like "Crunchy Granola Suite" or "Angry Young Man." Just think of Elizabeth Parkinson's ridiculous abs and you'll push yourself like crazy. Or hop off the Elliptical and down a milk shake because really, how will you ever get your body to look like hers? Seriously.

So let's start sweating to showtunes so we can stroot our stoof. If you have any other musical theatre workout songs, let us know!

Next to Perfect... a.k.a. The Post with the Cheesy Title

2009-06-01T19:12:00.008-04:00

Friday night while Elyse was still in NYC, the sisters went to see the Broadway production of Next to Normal. We've heard so many awesome things about it, so we were excited to see it for ourselves. We were even more excited when Mario Cantone sat down two rows in front of us. Celebrity spotting week! And we will choose to ignore you if you are one of those people who's like, "Please. Celebrities go to the bathroom just like the rest of us." Umm. First of all, never use the word "bathroom" to prove a point. And second of all, no matter what, it's always fun to see how much you tower over them in real life. Anyway, let's talk about the show!

It was incredible. Seriously we're not yanking your chain or saying we loved it just because there are songs we can belt in our car or because Aaron Tveit (a.k.a. Nate Archibald's cousin on Gossip Girl) is perfect-looking and can sing perfectly and has a perfectly-flexible back arch that sort of comes out of nowhere. This is a show where you are literally hypnotized the whole time. Word to the wise, do not read the synopsis beforehand. Annie didn't and it was so amazing for her to be able to gasp and choke and sputter and cry while Elyse pretty much knew what was going to happen.

Every single one of the characters was believable with voices that blew us away. J. Robert Spencer (who looks a ridiculous amount like Ricky Martin) had us in tears in a good way every time he sang. Jennifer Damiano is a teen prodigy. Alice Ripley is just TOO GOOD. With her slightly Irish twang and her somewhat crazy eyes, she delivered a performance that was so heartfelt, you sometimes can't believe someone can actually be packed with that much talent.

Usually woe-is-me, woe-is-our-family stories tend to annoy us, because a lot of the times they're not done genuinely. The teenager is usually a stereotype, pissed off at the world but only because a 50-year-old writer wrote her that way. This show presents a family whom you connect to, who you root for, and who you pity. We know we're coming off a little bit serious here, but to us, this show proved a point. Although the lite-brite set with its sliding panels were awesome, they could have done away with that and just presented us with a group of musicians and actors- and the show still would have been incredible. This was a rock musical, with belting and a lot of riffing on the electric guitar. Yet there was no unnecessary stomping. There was no yelling to get a note. There was no forced emotion. It was incredible.

Hopefully this show will last really long, even if it doesn't win the Tony. Which it totally should. And we say that having not seen Rock of Ages or Billy Elliot. We feel like since that show won every award possible in London, it shouldn't be allowed to win that many again. Although we do love Elton. Speaking of Elton, do you remember when he sang with Eminem on that awards show? And speaking of Eminem what are you guys' thoughts on him walking out of the Movie Awards? Was that fake?

Good, We Weren't Hallucinating...

2009-05-28T18:49:00.001-04:00

Do you agree? Scary looking.

Where Did We Go?

2009-05-27T16:28:00.005-04:00

Ahhh! We're so bad at sticking to things! And by things we mean this blog. And diets. But we're feeling creative now and we felt like writing blogs that anyone who likes theatre will enjoy. Or not get it but read anyway because they're related to us.

Right now the two of us are in New York because Annie is temping at BAM for a few weeks and Elyse doesn't have anything else to do. We're trying to see as many nominated shows as possible before the Tony's because we want to have an educated opinion on who wins as opposed to in the old days when we really wanted A Class Act to win because we apparently LOVED the song they performed on the Tony's? He looks like a combination of every boy in Sunday School with us. And what's the deal with pre-Lady-of-the-Lake Sara Ramirez? Anyway, last night our mom took us to see Hair so we have some thoughts about it! Let the bulletshine in.

Okay so first off, our seats were in the third row so we could kind of see backstage and 5 minutes before the show started, Elyse looks in the wings and goes, "Is that Adam Lambert? That's Adam Lambert. That's totally Adam Lambert. Look, it's Adam Lambert." And lo and behold, a couple seconds later Adam Lambert strolls into the theatre from the side door and sits a couple rows behind us! He looks scary in person. It was cool because every cast member of Hair pumped up their performance so much for the idol in the audience.
Everyone knows that Hair is the show where they get naked. Well, they got naked all right. But it was so unnecessary! They chose the most unassuming song in which to get naked. And Will Swenson (Berger), who was INCREDIBLE in the show apparently had an inferiority complex during the naked scene... he was hiding. And so was his -
Mom had some hilarious one-liners. When they all got naked, she leaned over and whispered, "Hmm. The whole time I thought one of the actors was a girl. He's not." And then when Gavin Creel was trying to find ways to get out of getting drafted, she said, "Once the officers see that he's slightly cross-eyed he'll get out of duty."
Sasha Allen played Dionne. As in the "How Shall I See You Through My Tears" girl from Camp (once again, if you haven't seen this movie yet, you HAVE to). Apparently she's the one to go to if you need to open a show with a girl staring at you wearing a lot of lip gloss. Seriously, when she was standing at the point of the triangle before "Aquarius", we thought it would pan out to her wearing a tie-dyed tube top and a prepubescent Robin DeJesus would walk up to her with his shirt off.

The show was awesome and we're totally rooting for it for Best Revival. But we kind of think West Side Story is going to get it because of the whole bilingual thing. We'll see. When it gets closer to the big day we'll have our picks for the winners and maybe we'll do a contest to see who can get the most amount of guesses correct. Or something. Or we could have a Guess How Early Elyse Will Start Crying During The Tony's contest.

Glad you're here reading this, you loyal friend, you! We promise we're not gone. Sorry you kept coming to the page to see "LUGUBRIOUS."

"LUGUBRIOUS."

2009-05-05T18:21:00.009-04:00

We sisters are together at last! Together forever! We're tying a knot that can only be severed when one sister promises to call the other one back because the other has big news and then the other sister "forgets" to because she has "light strike." Anyway, sorry these blog posts are so sporadic (again, thank you Cher Horowitz... and again, thank you makers of Clueless for making her last name so obviously Jewish). But we plan on making them much more frequent because there seems to be a lot we want to talk about. For now, let's rock out with our bullets out!

Did you think we'd go without talking about the Tony nominations? Well here they are, in case you haven't seen them yet. We're a little ashamed because we haven't seen a lot of the musicals that have been nominated for a lot (like Billy Elliott, which we had the opportunity to go to but opted out because we weren't in the mood to cry all of the liquid out of our body). Um, Rock of Ages for Best Musical? Seriously? Even though we haven't seen it, that title makes us throw up in our mouths a little bit.
We're so excited that Stockard Channing got nominated for Pal Joey. For some reason, she feels like the long-lost alcoholic aunt we never had. We're also excited that Hunter Bell got nominated for Best Book of a Musical for [Title of Show]- too bad it didn't get more nominations. Other than that, we don't have much to say other than obviously we can't wait to watch the awards and eat and drink "Angel HAIR Pasta," "Pal Cups o' Joe-y," "Next to Noodles," and "Guys and Dills..." Hm, apparently the rain stunts our puns. And apparently we will be having a lot of pasta on Tony night.
This doesn't have to do with musicals or theatre but there's a website we found out about called Awkward Family Photos and it's so funny. There are only archives from April and May so it hasn't been around long but it's bound to get more and more hilarious. Go to it and read the captions. We want to send one of our family photos in and hopefully make it on the site. Here's our top contender so far. We're bound to find some that are even more awkward. Probably the best part of this photo is the cow holding yarn?
As Mr. T. pointed out, theaters in Richmond are starting to announce their season. It's funny that there's talk about who will play who because it reminds us of high school. Obviously we wonder as well! What's on our minds right now is Spelling Bee at the Barksdale, because auditions for that are going on at the moment and it's just such a freakin' awesome and hilarious show. When we saw the show in New York we loved it and hoped that our friend Mike would get asked to be one of the spellers but he wasn't :( Oh well, Mike, maybe in Richmond.
Anyway, who knows who will play who. It could go a lot of different ways. But out of the people we know, we know we're rooting for Drake the Butler to play William Barfee with an accent aigu. Seriously, we'd pay so much money (wow, maybe even $38!) to see him spell words out with his magic foot and have an allergic reaction to peanuts. It'd just be so great.

The one year anniversary of our blog is coming up kind of soon! ...........punch and pie.

Annie, You're Okay

2009-04-28T10:40:00.009-04:00

Last Friday I, Elyse, had the pleasure of seeing Annie at the "Historic Empire Theater." I'm kind of jealous that whenever anyone mentions the Empire Theater they have to put the word Historic in front of it. I wish whenever people said my name they had to put a really awesome capitalized adjective in front of it. I'll let you guys come up with some suggestions for said adjective because right now all that's coming to mind is "Unsinkable." Anyway, onto the show!

The set was great in a slanty kind of way. I was a little nauseated at first but then I got used to it and actually thought it was incredibly cool. And then this Saturday when I was staying in New York for a couple of nights I actually realized that all of New York is actually on a slant. Who knew?
The second the show started I started crying and I didn't stop until 13 minutes into intermission when I decided that if I didn't pull it together for Act 2 then Annie would get mad at me that I looked disheveled for the barbecue reception afterwards. Annie the orphan, not Annie my sister. The show is just too good and the music for some reason makes my heart break into 12565 pieces.
Gordon Bass was incredibly impressive as Daddy Warbucks, Sarah Day was adorable and incredibly talented as Annie, Joy Williams was absolutely hilarious as Miss Hannigan, Rachel Abrams was heart-warming as Grace, Rooster and Lily were an outstanding duo, Robin Harris-Jones nailed her star-to-be solo, and Annie Steingold was an incredible Boylan sister/Hoorvervillian/maid - your eye was drawn to her perhaps because she is ridiculously talented or perhaps because her wigs on her were ridiculous.
Cody, Cody, Cody. I don't even know what to say. He was too much. Let's just say that during the reception afterwards I walked away from Bruce Miller mid-sentence when I saw that Cody was in the lobby. Priorities.

I could write 12 blog posts about how great I thought the show was. It makes you laugh, it makes me cry, it's a spectacular show that Robin Arthur has done a fantastic job on. Everyone should go see this! A Steingold is on the Richmond Theatre Stage!! Who knew this would ever happen? I sure didn't. Especially not after my audition for Big. Ha. But it looks like after 13 years, Annie has broken the Steingold curse (similar to Princess Fiona's but minus the ogre part. Or maybe not...?).

I went and saw Rooms: A Rock Romance this past Sunday off-Broadway and it was incredible so some kind of something will be on the blog about that soon. And as a sign off, I (and by I I mean my mom) made up a song to the tune of "It's a Hard Knock Life" when I was in elementary school to help me learn how many feet and yards were in a mile for a test. So here goes...

fifty-two eighty feet go

in a mile don't you know

if you walk five-two-eight-oh

your feet'll get there don't you know

fifty-two eighty

(and then this next part goes with the don't you feel like the wind is always howlin' part)

seventeen-sixty yards are in a mile
seventeen-sixty yards are very far
seventeen-sixty yards'll make me smile
when I get a hundred on my test tomorr-

This verse tells a lot about me as a third grader. Number 1: I don't start studying for things until the night before. And Number 2: I half-assed rhymes.

We Will Never Be Hip

2009-04-16T02:56:00.010-04:00

Nothing too interesting has happened in the Steingold Sisters' lives since that gem of an iMovie was released of the Annie cast. So we're going to have to pass the time with some bullets. They always brighten our day.

Elyse recently bought the Next to Normal CD, which she LOVES. But she was really curious as to what the plot was so she Googled the synopsis. What came up? "An Asian-American rock star looks back on his family history." Seriously. So I guess Alice Ripley really IS that good of an actress. From Siamese twin to Asian-American rock star? What's next, Juan in Altar Boyz?
Has anyone on earth besides us seen Teen Witch? It was this crazy 80's movie about this nerdy girl who turns out to have magical powers and she makes herself popular. And it's a musical. And it's AMAZING. Here's a number from the movie just to prove how awesome it is. We wish our best friend had the powers to make us brave enough to get involved in a rap battle with the guy we have a crush on. We just wonder whether or not Michael Hawke would be up for the challenge...
Elyse used to be OBSESSED with The Swan Princess which was one of those not-quite-Disney-movies where the songs were just as good and there were just as many jokes for adult audiences, but all of the characters' eyes were slightly crossed. Anyway, our favorite song from the movie is "This is My Idea of Fun" and we watched it the other day and never realized how ridiculous the lyrics get at 3:15. If you're too lazy to watch this whole song (which would really be a shame because you're missing out on some amazingness), the whole thing is about how these two kids from two different royal families knew they were going to get married eventually and they keep playing tricks on one another and not wanting to get married and it shows them through the years growing up and still being annoyed with one another. THEN, right in the middle it cuts to all of the townspeople and these are literally the lyrics:

We need a royal wedding

I'd love to be invited

At least we'd get a holiday to rest our plows and axes

Someday these two will marry

Two lands will be united

And with some luck their marriage will result in lower taxes!

Seriously. Those are the lyrics. We wonder what parents thought when they watched this movie with their kids? Honestly, what was the first draft?

We need a royal wedding

I'd love to be invited

But if I'm not invited then they better make abortion legal!

Daddy Warbucks Dances Hip Hop

2009-04-13T00:09:00.004-04:00

Come see Annie. With a cast this cool, you're sure to have a good time.

Altar Boyz Rulez... and so does Shari Lewis

2009-04-12T21:26:00.007-04:00

Friday night, Annie, the non-redhead, and her family, minus the redhead, drove out to Colonial Heights, passed the Beary Crafts Store, and went to see Altar Boyz at Swift Creek Mill Theatre. Now, let's preface this "review" with a few things. First, as soon as we left the theatre, our dad said, "Now we don't go to 'the Mill' that often, but every time we do, I love what we see." And that's so true! We've only seen six shows there- the first one being 1776 starring Duke Laffoon as Thomas Jefferson (nice), but literally every time we have a ball. If it wasn't an hour away we'd definitely make it out there more often.

Second, this review might be a little biased because Annie and Elyse are, in actuality, huge fans of boy bands. Funny story: Annie and her friend Erin were, in cough *the beginning of high school* cough kind of obsessed with *NSync. So much so that they decided to learn all the choreography to "Dirty Pop," record themselves dancing to it, and send it into TRL- when the show was still popular and Carson Daly was the host. And guess what? On the season premiere, their video was played on the closing credits! Very cool. So bragging about that claim-to-fame aside, no matter what, Annie will like a show with boy bands.

And OH. MY. GOSH. What an AMAZING SHOW! Even someone who doesn't know who *NSync is would love the show. If only you could have seen the 80-year-old man clapping to the beat in the second row. Incredible lighting. Really great and fitting choreography. And really talented guys who danced so hard and strong, the floor literally shook. Kid you not. Annie looked over at one point and her parents were bouncing a little bit.

"Everybody Fits" was our favorite number in the show, and it also was when we saw the show in NYC. However, in Swift Creek's production, they added a hilarious touch that we didn't see in New York. All the guys were just too cute. Brandon Becker as the lead is an amazing dancer, and we've actually always thought that he looked like JC Chasez of *NSync, so that's a nice touch. Sean Williams as Abraham had a really great voice, Eric Stallings as Luke was hilarious and able to hold himself up in the air for a really long time, and David Janeski was so cute and sweet as Mark. Finally, even if Brett Ambler was playing Aida, as long as he opened his mouth to sing, we would have loved him. Awesome voice, and funny. Nice :).... remember that? ;)

In short, just go see this show. We're not kidding, it's worth it. It appeals to just about everyone and will put you in a great mood. We only wish we had been able to see the other Richmond production of it. Anyone have it so we can watch it? Good. So grab some bear arts and crafts, attempt the buffet or just skip that part, and see a really fun, high-energy, and impressive show at Swift Creek Mill Theatre!

Buddy's Rebuttal. Rebuddal?

2009-04-01T16:06:00.004-04:00

All right, so after that last post that raved about Cody (the talented actor who is playing "Sandy" in Annie), our dog Buddy got seriously upset. If you blog readers thought Annie and Elyse were the only performers in the Steingold family (besides our mom at Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, but that's another story for another long-winded blog...), you were wrong. Buddy had a lead role in Godwin High School's production of Steel Magnolias. Seriously. Elyse didn't make the show but her dog was in it. He played M'Lynn. Sally Field, watch out. Below is the picture that was showcased on stage. You happy, Buddy?

We Think You're Gonna Like It Here

2009-04-01T12:45:00.008-04:00

Just Annie here! Alright, so Dave T. recently called us out and questioned how it was that we have nothing to talk about. He suggested we talk about Annie rehearsals then used a big word. So, I don't want to get annoying and ALWAYS talk about this show, but here's the first update. Number one, please check out this incredibly adorable picture of Sarah Day, who's playing Annie, and Cody, who's playing Daddy Warbucks.

Not sure how anyone could avoid seeing the show after having looked at this picture. Well, okay you're excused if you're allergic to dogs and gingers. But again, this is probably one of the cutest pictures we've ever seen.

The cast of this show is pretty awesome, and Robin Arthur, the director/choreographer, is pretty kick-ass. Obviously Annie is biased, but we're thinking that this show is going to be REALLY good. Gordon Bass as Warbucks is so endearing, I wish he would adopt me. And he's so funny, too. Love a man with comic timing. Rachel Abrams as Grace is just so talented and such a loving character. Unfortunately I haven't seen any of Hannigan's scenes, but if the other scenes are any indication, Hannigan's are sure to be just as good.

Also, I can't leave out Jason Marks, especially since he told me how hilarious he thinks our blog is and admitted to being a Muppet fan. NICE. Wait until you see me doing fancy dancing with him Upstage Left. We're kind of the best. Jason as Drake honestly is so funny that everytime he says a line I laugh. Oh, and Jason? 1,236. That is all.

So go ahead and buy your ticket to see this amazing show and to support a really great cast and an awesome director.

What Do We Think?

2009-03-30T17:19:00.003-04:00

We're not kidding when we said there's really not much to talk about. We're excited to see Altar Boyz at Swift Creek and we're really upset we missed the other production. Especially because Eddie Tavares would make a perfect Juan.

In the meantime, let's talk about the Where the Wild Things Are trailer, which Elyse has now proceeded to watch about 50 times. Part of the time we were crying, part of the time we were elated, and part of the time we were glad they found a use for the Gorgs' costumes on Fraggle Rock. Besides the fact that the trailer alone is pretty amazing, this movie has so much potential. Let's ignore the fact that the voice of the Wild Thing at the very beginning of the trailer seems a little unfitting.

Like We Didn't Love Them Enough Already...

2009-03-23T21:23:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Steingold Mekai

2009-03-18T23:04:00.006-04:00

Tonight, the Steingold sisters ventured out to Hanover Tavern for the first time ever. And we mean ventured. We've never passed so many haunted houses in our lives. We were very excited when we got there and realized Hanover Tavern is gorgeous. The area around the building is very quaint, old-fashioned, and charming. All the history fits right in... unlike the Civil War Trail we've been to in Charlottesville that cuts directly through a Waffle House and a Sell-It-On-Ebay Store.

It was nice finally getting to see Mona's Arrangements in person, considering we've seen about 300 pictures and videos talking about it online. Time to bring the bullets back!

First off, pretty cool that this is a world premiere- and of a MUSICAL! It's always nice to hear new songs. Props to Bo Wilson and Steve Liebman for literally writing a show. We love smart people.
We personally think the show should be retitled Mona's High-Heeled Flip Flops, because Jan sported them in every color of the rainbow, including gold. Anyone else notice that?
Speaking of Jan Guarino, she's just too cute! We want her to be our aunt, but we don't want her stealing men from us who are our age. We have a hard enough time with guys as it is. Jan totally has a lot of heart, and audiences can't help but eat up her every line. We're pretty sure that after this show, Haynes will increase their sale of Clik Claks (yes, we went to the Haynes website. And yes, we now want to buy a Clik Clak).
Audra Honaker embodied the part of the rambunctious match-making niece. We also were impressed with the random note progression that she tackled at the end of one of her songs. The note progression sounded a little like the Torah portion at our Bat Mitzvahs. She handled it very well the second time she sang it, during the unnecessary reprise where Jan changes into another cute dress with matching high-heeled flip flops.
Scott Wichmann as the young love interest was entertaining as always. We loved his first big number! When he literally jumped over the baseball bat, we realized that this number was a conglomeration of the "Special Skills" section on a resume. "Tap dance, impressions, can jump over baseball bat, valid Driver's License." He's also SO funny and genuine to watch. We want to be real friends with him. But honestly, Facebook would work, too. We'll be awaiting your request.

So as you work your way down the Civil War Trail, make sure you stop along the way to see Mona's Arrangements. Oh, and something funny to leave you with. As we were leaving the theatre, we overheard the conversation of two very elderly women. We've reenacted it for you. The third character was added so as to include our mom. Blooper reel also available.

Arabian Nights

2009-03-16T20:38:00.008-04:00

Things are totally fun because Elyse is home right now for her spring break- and what wonderful spring break weather she’s been getting, huh? 50 degrees and slightly snowing. Anyway, her being home means we spend a lot of time watching movies and talking about musical theatre. Really it’s no different than her being at school, except we’re not on video chat. Which means Annie can’t spend the whole time looking at herself. She’s actually forced to look at Elyse.

Anyway, we came to two realizations recently that we would like to share with you. One is a positive one, and it’s that Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin are geniuses. We were talking about Annie and the Star-To-Be solo. By the way, wait until you hear Robin Harris-Jones belt it out at Theatre IV. You’ll LOVE it. So yeah one of the lines in that little solo bothered us. The music is all upbeat, happy and fast, and she sings, “NYC, Tomorrow a penthouse, that’s WAYYYY up high…”- and then the music really slows down and it sounds sad. She then sings, “Tonight, the Y…. why not? It’s NYC.”

What perplexed us is, how come she’s talking about living in a penthouse and then sounds depressed that she’s going to the Y? Why are the 2 related? Did the Star-To-Be get to NY and realize that everyone in NY is a lot skinnier than she thought, so she’s kind of bummed that she needs to go to the Y to take a Zumba class? Our mom then told us that people stay overnight at the YMCA. Okay, where have we been? We literally had no idea that people stayed at the Y. But now that makes perfect sense. And we love it! Thank you Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin. And seriously, wait until you hear R-Har-Jones (hard making a nickname out of her name).

But ladies and gents, we then realized something really depressing, too. We were watching the salesman’s opening monologue in Aladdin because we’re starting a new theatre business where we reenact, to a T, iconic scenes and videos that don’t get enough credit. Elyse is handling the Salesman/Narrator part in Aladdin while Annie plays the camel. Annie gets to play Ace Ventura doing the dolphin monologue. Elyse is playing the kidnapped dolphin, Snowflake. And wait until you see our amazing reenactment of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” video. Anyway, in watching the monologue in Aladdin, we realized, to our HORROR, that the salesman is literally just telling the story of Aladdin. As in, Aladdin and Jasmine, etc. don’t exist. It’s just a story. That’s incredibly depressing. We realized that’s what it must be like for kids when they realize Santa doesn’t exist.

So yes, we’ve made a lot of discoveries recently. A positive and a negative. Which apparently equals us making zero discoveries. Oh well. Looking forward to seeing Mona Lisa Smile at Hanover Tavern on Wednesday.

You're Welcome Readers

2009-03-13T16:11:00.005-04:00

Most of you probably know this already, but one of our favorite comedians, Will Ferrell, is starring as George Bush on Broadway in the limited-run of You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush. Now, we haven't seen this on Broadway despite the fact that we love Will Ferrell. See, when we go to a Broadway show, we'd rather spend our money on more intellectually-stimulating pieces of art, like Shrek the Musical.

But, what's exciting is that Ferrell's show is going to be on HBO tomorrow night, Saturday the 14th, at 9PM, so we can all watch it for free! Here's the information. Personally, we love when Broadway shows are on TV, because not only can you make loud comments during it, but you can also rewind-play as many times as you want. Remember when Fosse was on PBS many years ago? Yeah, can't tell you how many times we watched that over and over again to A. Try to learn all the choreography, and B. Swoon over Ken Alan, the guy who's about five feet tall in person and an incredible dancer.

So pop your 100-calorie kettle corn, sit back, and watch a Broadway show in the comfort of your own living room. It's sure to be hilarious. And Mike, we know what resnark you're going to make, so we might as well address it now.

Mike: Why would I choose to spend my time watching an actor who I find to be incredibly annoying play a politician who I find to be incredibly annoying?
Us: You don't have HBO. No worries.

And finally, we leave you with this video of The Rock- we're sorry, ahem, Dwayne Johnson- SINGING and DANCING on SNL. His arms are pretty ridiculous. So yeah, watch this video, it's hilarious, and it's pretty cool/bizarre/we're never going to watch his movies the same way again.

So Close!!

2009-03-12T01:33:00.002-04:00

All right, so tonight the two of us were so excited to get back on the horse with this blog, so we recorded a VIDEO of us expressing our excitement and it was really funny (?). BUT when we went to upload it to the blog, we couldn't find where it was saved on our computer. So as of now it's lost in Elyse's hard drive along with the 12 times she tried to download Chip's Challenge (if you've never played Chip's Challenge, PLEASE find it and play it). So she's gonna keep looking, but for now, we're going to leave you with the promise that we are BACK.

Family Ketchup

2009-03-02T16:18:00.003-05:00

P.S. Were we the only people who hated it whenever "ketchup" was spelled "catsup"?

Chocolate Cake: Me Love It

2009-02-24T16:52:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, the Steingold Sisters were reunited! It felt so good. Elyse met Annie in New York and we saw Hedda Gabler at the Roundabout with Mary-Louise Parker. We thought it was pretty awesome, yet it was dubbed "one of the worst revivals ever seen." Yikes, yeah it got horrible reviews. We still think, though, that MLP is in a league of her own. Anyone here watch Weeds? It's awesome. The other characters in Hedda did not seem to fit into the style that the rest of the play had chosen to take on. Maybe this was a directorial (ohh, snazzy word) choice, but it had us out of sorts. Again, might have been a directorial (one more time!) choice. We personally prefer Michael Cerveris in musicals, but then again we feel like we prefer most everyone in musicals. Come on James Earl Jones! Let's see you tap!

After the show we went to the Halal stand near Rockefeller Center...it's around 53rd and 6th. It always has a ridiculously long line and we assumed they either sold the best food ever or secretly were selling the best pot ever. Either way, we tried the food- Annie mistakenly thought the lamb was beef and proceeded to flip out when she found out she was wrong- and turns out it was just really freakin' good food. If y'all haven't had it already, we highly recommend it!

Then we went to Richmond, and while there, we saw Childrens Letters to God at Stage 1 so that we could support our adopted brother, R. Cooper Timberline (whom we still haven't been asked to babysit). The show was really cute- and really short, which is usually nice- and it was a fun and easy show to watch. All of the kids were so enthusiastic and they tackled some pretty complicated harmony that neither of us would have been able to do when we were eight (or, for Elyse, now that she is 18, see: "Forget About the Boy"... Ugh.). Some of it was a little silly, like why they were all friends and going to each other's birthday parties when their age ranges were between 5 and 16. Lame. We don't like singling kids out because we believe all children are the heart, soul, and bedrock of this civilization, so why do that? So we're not going to. But we do have to say that our adopted brother had us laughing everytime he said, "Dear God." Except it sounded more like, "Dear Gwod." Or was it more "Dear Ga-wud"? Either way, adorable.

All of the technical elements were great, from the lights to the costumes to the set. How did they get the ball to fall from the ceiling? So cool. Oh, and by the way...does anyone else see the resemblance between Britney Spears's "Anticipating" in her HBO concert? I mean makes sense, her concert and CLTG are in fact very similar.

Again, congratulations to the cast, crew, and patient parents who schlepped their kids back and forth to the theatre every night. YOU, parents, are the ones who deserve the Artie (Arty?) for Best Performance by a Supportive Parent in a Musical.

Yeah, this post is a little long-winded, cut us some slack. We're winding back up. Girls are back in town, girls are back in town, girls are back in tow-ow-ow-ow-own.

WOLVERINE.

2009-02-23T00:19:00.007-05:00

Holy. Kamoley.

Hello all, it is us, the Steingold sisters. Didja miss us? Quite frankly, we've been very busy with various things and haven't really had time or energy to type on here. Well, okay we had both time and energy, yet we didn't really feel inspired to write about anything. We've seen a few shows here and there that we now want to talk about.

Why the change? THE OSCARS.

Did anyone think the Academy Awards this year were kind of amazing/ridiculous/WOW SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT.

"I Don't Know How to Love Him" mixed with "You Can't Stop the Beat." Hugh Jackman. Seth Rogen and James Franco. Whoopi Goldberg's amazing joke about being a nun. Hugh Jackman. Dustin Lance Black's amazing speech. Christopher Walken's new hairdo. Hugh Jackman. Honestly, we feel like that huge, crazy musical number with Beyonce (umm...), Amanda Seyfried, and the HSM couple deserve its own post. "THE MUSICAL IS BACK." We feel like young blondes in pink "Popular" T-shirts, somewhat nerdy brace-faces in "Defy Gravity" T-shirts, and anyone who's ever worn a maroon and blue striped sweater, scarf, and glasses on Halloween were jumping up and down giddily, tears in their eyes, when Hugh shouted this out.

We don't own those T-shirts nor have ever dressed as a character from Rent for Halloween. Other than that... yeah, we may or may not have fit the description noted above.

We can't wait to talk about this, and we can't wait to talk about the shows we've seen recently.

Backstreet's back, ALRIGHT!

Whoops!

2009-01-26T12:39:00.006-05:00

Here's the conversation Annie had with her mom this morning at the kitchen table:

Mom: What is Children of a Lesser God about?

Annie: Deaf people, a speech teacher I think.

Mom: Is that a musical?

Annie: [Pause] Do you mean Children's Letters to God?

Mom: [Blank stare for about 10 seconds] Is that the one Chase is doing?

Annie: Yes.

Mom: Oh.

Wow, so Bruce Miller was right in his "Today's Puzzler" post. We wish we had entered the Barksdale's "2 Shows that Sound Alike" contest, although we didn't really have creative answers. Speaking of "creative" answers, did you hear about the Avenue Q contest that happened a month ago? Well, you know the song in the show, "For Now", where they talk about all the bad things out there that are only for now? The line that brought the house down and never seemed to fail, even if people had already heard it 10 times was, "GEORGE BUSH, is only for now." Since he's not there anymore, the contest was to come up with something that's only for now and send it in. Annie came up with a "HILARIOUS" answer- Paris Hilton- and sent it in. When she told Elyse, she was so proud - well, the kind of proud you get when you want to gauge the person's reaction so you pretend you're not proud. The reaction she gauged was a blank stare. And maybe a resnark along the lines of, "That's not even two syllables."

Here's a link to the article about the contest. Apparently they've narrowed it down to four options, which they're going to try out in front of an audience. BOO. Where is Paris Hilton? Just kidding, but we feel like 2 out of 4 of the possibilities are not all that great. Just sayin'.

Ibloguration

2009-01-20T14:06:00.013-05:00

We know that this is not a political blog, nor a funny blog- thanks Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous! But we figured that since Elyse is in school in D.C., witnessing things from a drama[tic] student's point of view, people might be interested in reading. Take it away, Elyse!

So, the inauguration was this morning, and I literally got off the train just in time to witness history. Well, just in time to buy a button that said, "I Witnessed History." It was such a great experience being here today, so I wanted to share some interesting tidbits.

For as many Obama supporters as there are out there, there are about twice as many louder dissenters, who also happen to have megaphones/sound systems, and really giant posters of things you don't want to see posters of. I'll let you imagine what you want to imagine. But I had to deal with seeing them on every street corner while I was trying to scarf down a hot dog. I mean, you all could have probably guessed that I had no trouble eating the hot dog, but still. Gross.
The barricades didn't do anything to keep the traffic under control. The only thing they did successfully was make about 1/3 of the people think they were really agile and brave for scaling the 3-foot tall plastic gate. Seriously, you should have seen the speed and concentration these people had while they were getting their running start to climb over the curb.
I should not have worn a backpack. I came straight from the train station, so I went to all the inauguration proceedings knowing in the back of my mind that if I wanted to change into my Thoroughly Modern Millie audition outfit and tap shoes, I totally could. The backpack became a problem after the speech, when there was a mass exodus to leave the Mall. Everyone who was behind me thought I was wearing the backpack just so that they could hold on to it as I steered them through the crowd. They were wrong. And I let them know this by taking a giant step backwards.
The pedestrian traffic was really ridiculous, as you can imagine, and most of the time was spent virtually standing in place, waiting for the giant horde to move forward a foot. I was getting bored, so I looked down and watched people's feet and it was hilarious! It was seriously like Kabuki Inauguration. Everyone was taking the tiniest steps, even if there was no place to go.
I discovered that I am actually the shortest person in Washington, DC. Seriously, standing in the crowd, I felt like Tai in Clueless when she's standing at the party between the two really tall guys. Except she was cute and tiny and wearing short overalls, and I was still 5'6" and disheveled and wearing sweatpants and 12 jackets. And the backpack.

It was quite a day! Stay tuned for stories about me babysitting Sasha and Malia!

Okay. Amazing.

2009-01-14T18:54:00.007-05:00

We've been watching Saturday Night Live since when it was actually funny. Now, they have redeemed any missteps (Goat Boy, anyone?) with this goldmine. Honestly, we were laughing the whole entire time. Thank you, SNL.

Imagine Being THAT Girl

2009-01-13T23:42:00.013-05:00

All right, so it was brought to our attention that all of the people we aspire to be are, in fact, men... Freud, can you help us out here? Anyway, there have been some females about whom we have thought, "Can you imagine being that girl?" Granted, they aren't AS positive, and they certainly don't carry the same weight as say, a man symbolizing a whole nationwide network or a man symbolizing the sexual ambiguity at Dear Old Shiz. But, here is our tentative list of these women...

The "Other Arm" of Trekkie Monster in Avenue Q - We love this woman and her short 'do. It's one thing to have to "ignore" the fact that, say, John Tartaglia is completely visible onstage, speaking as his puppet while operating it... eventually the belief is suspended. However, it's pretty hard to "ignore" the completely visible woman who's basically playing three-legged race with the man providing Trekkie Monster's other arm and voice. BUT, it's more stage time than we've ever had on Broadway! Or with puppets! Actually, that's not true... we have hours and hours of footage of us doing puppet theatre. Perhaps that will be a new blog feature...
The "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" Girl in Evita - Okay, this part is pretty awesome. You're basically known as the "other girl" in Evita. Downside is, you have to have The Patti Lupone get really pissed off at you 8 shows a week. Yowza. Not fun. But, as we understand it, anyone in a show with Patti Lupone suffers that consequence anyway. Worth it? Yes.
The "Put on a Happy Face" Girl in the 1995 MOVIE - We pulled out the 1995 Bye Bye Birdie the other night and watched it. We discovered a lot of things including the fact that all of the songs cut out of the original movie are amazing, the opening credits end with "And Introducing Marc Kudisch" which we thought was pretty hilarious for some reason, and we have a crush on Jason Alexander (We know, we know, but watch the movie. And while you're feeling loving, watch Grease 2 and we promise you'll get a crush on Adrian Zmed.) The movie version of "Put on a Happy Face" is so cute and the girl is awesome and gets to dance with Jason (Yes, that's right, first-name basis).
The one "Ugly Girl" in The Producers - You know which one we're talking about, right? During the song "I Want to be a Producer" all of the beautiful chorus girls file on stage, and at the end of the line is one "ugly" one and the whole audience bursts into laughter. Seriously. That would totally be one of us. Like, "You can be in the ensemble as long as you are prepared for the audience to think it's either a mistake or a joke!" We would take the role. No questions asked. Actually, it would finally be a chance to not feel guilty eating our usual Wendy's #6 with just mayonnaise. Seriously, the people at Wendy's know us. And our car. That's right, we don't even get out of the car to get our food: we drive through, eat it sitting down, and then drive into our house, up the stairs, and into our bed for the night.
The Girl in the Yellow Dress in Contact - Considering a prerequisite for this is to be incredibly tall with long legs, thin, and an amazing dancer, we imagine being this girl would be pretty nice (See: bullet point 4.). This is Stro at one of her finest with the classic left-hand-on-stomach, right-hand out, feet swivel. We're sure Stro's blocking notations were more eloquent.
Allison Janney- No description needed.

All right, since this is a running list, we're going to stop it here because our posts tend to be rather long-winded...ha. Who would YOU want to be? Let's get a lively debate going a la what is professional here in Richmond. Man, that's getting heated, eh? I feel like a debate about who would you rather be- Jane Krakowski or Megan Mullally- might cause some Anonymous commenters to post some resnarks.

Better Theatre Games than FREEZE- SHOULDA SAID.

2009-01-12T01:28:00.010-05:00

It's time for A Farewell to Arms... and by arms we mean Elyse. Unfortunately, after four weeks of good times, Elyse had to return to college. We had to make our last night worthwhile, and we would say we did pretty well. First, we made cookies and realized we didn't have milk. Cookies + No Milk = Null. So we asked our mom to take us to the store. Before we left, though, Elyse requested that we quickly change the lyrics to "Singin' in the Rain" so it pertained to buying milk, get our mom to "act" (she was supposed to refuse taking us at first, then give in and join us), choreograph it so that in the final line of the song, the three of us walk in a line, grab our purse/jackets/keys, hit the final note, and hold it until we slammed the door shut behind us on the stinger. We kid you not, we literally did this. Sure, no one really knew the lyrics, but by the final line, we had it down pat. It went something like this:

"Just singin' and dancin' to get some MILK" (sung in three-part "harmony [it somewhat resembled our "Sit Down, John" chord]) -2-3-4-5-6- and door SHUT.

We strongly advise that if you are leaving the house with a group of people, you should play this Musical Theatre Exit Game. It works for all songs and for all ventures that require leaving your house. Going on a late night Taco Bell run? We advise trying, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow, we're GOING, to get, SOME, tacoooooossss" (and slowly shut the door).

Next, we made up a game called the Jellicle Cats Key Change Game. If any of you haven't watched the number "Jellicle Cats" performed before, please watch this. It's pretty hilarious, in all honesty. It's funny that the whole song is basically the specifications of what constitutes a jellicle cat, like bouncing on tires, diving through the air, and being the Pied Piper's assistant. It's a little suspicious they don't mention being able to do triple pirouettes, actually looking good doing the stag jump, being able to sing ridiculous bass notes while doing a round-off back handspring, and having no hips, thighs, gut so as not to look like a jellicle fat(ty) in that horrible costume. We're sorry if any of you are die-hard Cats fans, but we find, at least this number, tragically amusing.

First off, it's really easy to change keys in this song, so Elyse was sitting on the couch, singing the same line over and over again (wrong lyrics, probably), but changing the key at the end of every chorus. This was repeated about 20 times (by the end of the game we think she was singing the final note in "Prima Donna"). While this was happening, Annie was performing the choreography, but, once she ran out (because the song was now an extended version), she just started making up choreography that is appropros for a jellicle cat. It was the funniest thing on earth. Somehow Annie suddenly became a choreographer who could perfectly balance ridiculous 80's movements with feline traits.

Of course, it wasn't until this game was over that we realized how ridiculous it was, or how long we had been doing it. Once you get swept up into the game it's next to impossible to get out of it. That's the pitfall.

It's really sad that the sisters will be parted, yet again, but at least everyone can rest better knowing that our last night together was spent being the biggest theatre dorks ever. And we will be reuniting Monday night around 7 PM for a musical theatre venture. It is sure to result in a hilarious blog.

Chickity China, the Chinese Chicken

2009-01-05T13:06:00.010-05:00

Note: Title has nothing to do with actual blog.

So as we all know it's the New Year- Happy New Year!!-, and we're all taking an introspective inventory, trying to find ways to better ourselves in 2009. Need help starting a healthier lifestyle? Commiserate with Bruce Miller who is taking real action in his weight loss. Unlike us, who plan on buying a Wii Fit and doing it sitting down. Learning how to cook? There are about twelve Richmond Theatre Cooking Blogs out there to help you!

But most of us just want to be better people. And not in the way you would think. Literally, we want to BE these better people. We have compiled a list of random people we would love to be...a new section of the blog we entitle "Imagine Being THAT Guy."

The Verizon Guy - Can you imagine being this guy? One look at his face and you literally feel comforted and protected. Plus, he totally has a dorky/cool vibe going for him.
The announcer on Saturday Night Live - Imagine being this guy, or at least his niece. You're instantly popular because your uncle is the one who, for years, has been saying "It's Saturday Night Live." Plus, you could get him to say "With your host, [insert your name here]."
The male ensemble member(s) in Wicked who gets to wear the skirt - Seriously, there is at least one guy in the ensemble of Wicked who wears a skirt. And he always has tousled shoulder-length hair and a chiseled jaw. And even if he isn't actually, he seems like the best dancer in the ensemble by far. It's all 'cause of the skirt.
God in Children of Eden - Imagine typing up your resume and literally typing Children of Eden............God.
Sancho to Brian Stokes Mitchell's Don Quixote - Imagine being that guy! You'd get to sing "I Really Like Him," and not have to act at all. In fact, the more appropriate lyrics would be, "I Am Seriously In Love With Him." But by the finale, we'd be so heart-broken.
The chorus member in Phantom who gets to "be" the Phantom in the "Masquerade" scene - Literally this guy is just lip-synching in Phantom's Red Death costume, but how cool would it be to have everyone in the audience thinking you're the title character in freakin'Phantom of the Opera for five minutes? Plus, you get to tell people you're the Phantom *cough* for five minutes *cough*.
One of the two Asian henchmen in Thoroughly Modern Millie - You're kind of sitting there in this role thinking, "Man, I'm being so stereotyped, it's not even funny (literally), but at least I'm in a Broadway show. And at least I was just in Rush Hour."
Michael Berresse in Kiss Me, Kate - This has nothing to do with the part or being in that show, although it is a cute male part. What's amazing is that Michael Berresse literally can SCALE A WALL. Remember that scene? Imagine walking down the streets of New York, seeing a building that somewhat resembles the outside of a dressing room, and knowing that you are able to climb to the top.

It's 2009, ladies and gentlemen, let's take our resolutions seriously. We, for two, are trying to become one of these people. So far, we're off to a great start. For example, we've learned how to climb our stairs. And sing at the same time!

We hope your New Years was amazing, and stay tuned! For what? We don't know yet.

A Very Merry Zohan Christmas!

2008-12-27T14:31:00.007-05:00

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Belated Christmas! Hope your day was full of family, good cheer, and lots of random presents. Hopefully the Hanukkah-ites are keeping up with the lighting of the candles. We're not... the fact that we fess up to opening up presents on Christmas (no, we don't have a tree), pretty much explains the fact that we forget to light the candles.

Anyway, here's a Christmas BULLETin to fill you in our holidays.

It very much was a very merry "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" Christmas in the Steingold household. We literally, in all, ended up with 2 DVDs of the classic and 2 Blu-Rays, as well as the soundtrack which hasn't even come out yet but Elyse downloaded all the songs for our mom because she was obsessed with all the Israeli songs in the movie. We love Adam Sandler and have a crush on him, which is why we're a little peeved at Chase Kniffen who told us he thinks our dad talks like Adam Sandler. We will not have a crush on our dad. Freud be damned.
Of course there was a pretty large amount of musical theatre CDs received including the Jason Alexander Bye Bye Birdie, which we recently became obsessed with when we found the video cassette in our "random video cassetes" case. Elyse got her wisdom teeth out yesterday (ick) and was very, very doped up. So doped up in fact that as our dad held her hand to go to the bathroom, Elyse proceeded to do the "Put on a Happy Face" choreography.
We know you're thinking, "Oh, how we wish we could have seen Elyse in this altered state." Well, do you believe in Christmas miracles? Because we have one. We videotaped Elyse on a doped-up rant and, in our opinion, it's pretty hilarious. Unfortunately, we didn't get footage of her walking around the house with a big foam hat, putting it on various people and "sorting" them into Gryffindor (Annie), Hufflepuff (Mom), and Slytherin (Chris Collins). However, we did get footage of her as a Tiki Post at Kings Dominion. Merry Christmas. Oh, and we apologize ahead of time for her lack of makeup and bird's nest hairdon't.

Annie and Elyse's Wild Christmas Blog

2008-12-22T23:03:00.007-05:00

Big news: for the first time ever, both Steingold Sisters are in shows at the same time! Yay! It's really good because it eliminates any potential "acting notes" that turn into one of us in tears. Just kidding. We're really good at getting along... except when it comes to where to eat dinner. So everyone needs to look out for Annie in the ironically titled Annie, at Theatre IV. Elyse is in Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang at GW (road trip anyone?) which led us to going to see Mrs. Bob Cratchit's... Ridiculously Long Title. Firehouse was doing a staged reading, and since it's by Durang also, we figured it would be a good learning experience for Elyse. As well as entertaining.

The show is hilarious, and the audience was crazy! Seriously, as opposed to laughing, they just screamed at the stage. Looks like everyone has the Hanukkah Cheer! The standout of the show was a Mr. Cooper Timberline, who is probably one of the most adorable kids ever (not counting either of the Farley boys). Funny that our favorite actor in the staged reading was a boy who is too young to read. We think his mom, the eloquent Holly Timberline, drew pictograms or something over his lines. Actually, we're not sure how old he is or if he's literate or not (we're thinking yes), but we do know he never flubbed any of the lines that were right in front of his face. Just sayin'.

Robert Albertia as Ebenezer Scrooge was perfect, Jacqueline O'Connor played mean really well (she had some awesome one-liners), Scott Wichmann had people laughing simply in anticipation of his lines (no kidding), Richard Koch now has a secret admirer (Elyse), Jackie Jones was funny as always, and Katherine Louis just saying the word "Fezziwig" had us die laughing. BTW, how convenient is it for the Muppets that when they made A Muppet Christmas Carol, they literally already had a character named Fozzie?

Congratulations to Billy Christopher Maupin and his really funny/witty "Director's Notes"- the audience was packed and the show was very well-received- huzzah! Oh, and by the way, we got to talk to Dave T. of the famed Richmond Theatre Blog at intermission. We kid you not, Elyse uttered about three words. We think they were, in no particular order, "dog", "Canada", and "dreidel". She would like to apologize publicly to Mr. T. for her star-struckness. Star-struckedness? Strickidy-stardness? Yeah, that's it.

Happy 2nd Night of Hanukkah! We forgot to light the candles already. Oy vey.

Elf Yourself- Steingold Style!

2008-12-22T17:36:00.004-05:00

Hmm. So Elyse is taking forever to write her White Christmas blog, so here is something to hold you over until she posts this literary masterpiece.

Have you ever been to ElfYourself.com? It's hilarious. Annie saw it last year but never took the time to find a picture cute enough of herself to put on it, so Mother Hen handled it for us this year. Elyse had literally never seen this site until our mom emailed it to us a few weeks ago. When we watched it, we literally had tears rolling down our face. Hope you get a kick out of it! Oh, and Happy Hanukkah, by the way!

It's Not Easy Being Green?

2008-12-17T17:19:00.005-05:00

Last Wednesday night, Annie and Elyse actually split up and saw two different shows: Shrek the Musical and White Christmas. This is not the first time we've split up... one time Annie and Dad saw the classic Broadway musical Swing! while Elyse and Mom saw Jesus Christ Superstar. We don't know why Annie was so intent on seeing Swing!, but nevertheless, she dragged Dad to see the masterpiece itself. Anyway, it's time for Shrek the Musical to try to defend itself in the quest to find out if it's a white world or green world.

New musicals are fun because it's a whole bunch of songs you've never heard before and proceed to obsessively watch on YouTube because the soundtrack isn't out yet. Plus 5. But Minus about 4.5 because only 3 of the songs were catchy; the rest was just filler music. Most of the songs are very, very funny (lots of Broadway culture references), so that's cool. Plus 20.
In one of the songs, which was entertaining but not all that melodic, Shrek and Fiona duke it out to find out who has had it worse, and also to find out who is the grosser being. They take turns burping and passing gas. Having the sense of humor of a 2-year old, I, of course, found this number funny. It was basically "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" but with flatulence. I'm really making you all want to see this show, aren't I? Umm, for Annie, about Plus 30. For everyone else, Minus 10.
Christopher Seiber on his knees doing intricate, hilarious choreography will most likely get him nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Lord Farquaad. Seriously, he's hilarious. If only his songs had been a bit more catchy. Plus 6.
Obviously with big ol' Dreamworks Theatricals backing up this show, you're in for a big spectacle. The costumes, sets, lighting- it's basically just watching bags of money up on the stage. Some of the technical elements were amazing, like the transformation of Fiona into an Ogre, but some parts fall a little flat, like when Shrek and Donkey are crossing the bridge over the lava. I think some kinks still need to get worked out. For example, at one point Shrek amazingly does a back handspring. Who knew Brian Duh-Arcy James was capable of that? Just kidding, I knew it was a Shrek double. However, I did not know that seconds later, I'd see both Shreks onstage at the same time, not on purpose obviously. So, Plus 10, Minus 8... Plus 2.
Tickets to Shrek the Musical: free, thanks to your friend Caroline. Hot chocolate from Europa before the show: about 30 bucks. Getting to see Sutton Foster as a green ogre? PRICELESS. And kind of amazing. Never again will you get the opportunity to say, "Thank goodness... FINALLY Sutton Foster has gained weight!" Plus 1,000.

I don't feel like doing the math, but I think that Shrek is definitely going to win this battle. Proving that maybe it IS easy being green?

Sweetest Holiday Commercial

2008-12-14T18:22:00.007-05:00

Not counting the Coca Cola white polar bears holiday commercials (because those almost have a negative effect on our holiday cheer because of the fact that they are SO sad and make us cry), this is one of the most adorable Coke (/Wal-Mart) holiday commercials out there. Annie saw it in the movie theater before Twilight, and proceeded to obsessively check the Internet to find it.

And the day has come! It has been found! What is it these days with commercials with dorky-yet-because-they-can-sing-they're-attractive guys? First the Free-Credit-Report-Dot-Com-Guy, now this guy. Hope you enjoy it, though we know you won't enjoy it as much as Annie does.

On a different note, we're in the process of writing about some NYC shows, including Shrek, White Christmas, and Pal Joey, which we think should be retitled Pal Stockard Channing is Amazing.

Because You're Obviously Bored...

2008-12-12T12:33:00.005-05:00

Hello friends! We have to start off by saying that after having written the title for this post, we literally sat staring at the computer screen for about seven minutes- the time it took us to finish the bag of chips we initially bought for our mom on the train. BTW, Eric Schaeffer's on the train with us, sleeping like a baby. We were going to take a picture of him asleep and realized everyone around him was not asleep.

Second, sorry it’s been a while! We're on the train because we were in NYC. C, Elyse had a whole week between her classes ending and exams, time which her school allotted for studying. So we went to New York with our mom so Elyse could get her headshots done.

The same guy did Annie’s a year ago.

No but seriously, we both got them done by Matthew Cippaghila, who is wonderful, and we totally recommend him if you ever want to venture to NY to get your headshots done!

Anyway, we have some NYC shows to talk about! But for now, here are some online places to check out instead of doing work. First, this is kind of old news now, but check out "Prop 8- The Musical". It’s hilarious and boasts an awesome cast. We can’t tell you how many people have sent this to us to put on the blog. Very apPROPri8 for it! Thanks for sending the video to us- if you have anything else you want to see up here, we are now selling ad space.

Here’s another very random website to check out. It’s called Stardoll.com, and it’s a totally awesome way to waste your time. Basically you get to pick a celebrity (and they have a ton) and dress them up, like a paper doll- and each celebrity has a different wardrobe. For those of you men who aren’t into this, the dolls are half-naked! And for those of you musical theatre fans, one of the celebrities is, kid you not, IDINA MENZEL. Here's the link for her doll. Way to go Idina! Clearly Enchanted was way more popular than we thought. Too bad the clothes in her online wardrobe kind of suck. A blue and gray leopard print leotard? Okay.

Life is Good

2008-12-06T02:38:00.008-05:00

Today while Annie was at the gym, Varsity Fanclub's single "Future Love" played on the gym's radio. That would be enough motivation for me to run a marathon*. There's just something about Jayk's Purdy voice. Ha! Those of you hardcore Varsity Fanclub fans got that awesome pun. So... Annie... got that awesome pun.

*Actually, marathon is pushing it. Maybe just run a mile**.

**You know what? The mile never really worked out well for me. So we're gonna go with just some light aerobic activity. Maybe a nice, easy Dance Your Way Fit workout tape***.

***Yeah, let's just go with "That would be enough motivation for me to drive to Wendy's and get a #6 with only mayonnaise."

The Richmond Playas

2008-11-30T19:52:00.001-05:00

Since the time is almost here for the Richmond Battle of the Altar Boyz (by the way, we will be seeing both shows considering we love boy bands... a little too much...), we figured it would be a good opportunity for us to announce the newest product in the boy band market- The Richmond Playas! And the members are....

1. Scott Wichmann: Scott provides the personality of the group. He is the one who does most of the talking and joking in between the songs. He's sort of the goofball of the group if you will, yet totally rocks out on the second verse of the ballad and girls swoon over his ability to be funsitive (funny and sensitive at the same time).
2. Brett Ambler: Brett is the lead singer of the group, sort of the "Geek in the Pink" if you will. He acts like he's a huge dork yet knows he's cool... and so do the ladies. Careful girls, he's engaged!
3. Chase Kniffen: Think of Chase as the Lance Bass of the group. He has the boy band looks and can dance, but we're not sure if he's actually singing or just lip-synching. Always the best-dressed member.
4. Landon Nagel: First of all, we know nothing about Landon Nagel other than the fact that he was the Heath Ledger look-alike in Guys and Dolls, and we kind of want to date him. So in this way, Landon is sort of like AJ from Backstreet Boys. All of the girls want to know more about this mystery man. And the girls also want him to grow out his hair long and curly and speak with an Australian accent.
5. Dave Timberline: This was too easy considering the very obvious Timberline/Timberlake comparison. And we're pretty sure their names aren't the only thing that's similar about them. Have you ever heard Dave T's rendition of "Sexyback?" We thought not.

So if any of you five guys, burgers and fries are reading this, please join us at our house for press pictures and crudites.

Bye bye bye.

Nice :)

2008-11-30T18:54:00.005-05:00

Just last week, Annie called Elyse and said, "I just got the craziest email from Swift Creek Mill Theatre. We literally have to write a blog about it." But unfortunately, this was no bloggable matter. By the way, Blogspot.com is telling us that "bloggable" is not a real word. Seriously? WTF. And it's telling us that BLOGSPOT isn't a real word, either.

Anyway, Jennifer Procise, Director of Development and Marketing at Swift Creek, sent out an email saying that their email system was compromised. That really sucks! Like, who knew that kind of thing still happened? But, we try to find humor in everything. So we'd like to leave you with our favorite snippet of the Swift Creek Mill's compromised email. For even more laughs, read it out loud. You won't regret it:

Step 4: waiting verify by administrator , after 1day you can have 200% money , ex : you fund 10$ , after 24hour you have 20$. That gif for you for place order with shop. Nice :).

We Love a Parade

2008-11-30T18:03:00.011-05:00

Oh my goodness, have we been away for a while! No worries, though, we're here now. But we've changed. And, no, it's not just that Elyse's hair is shorter and Annie's is red. We no longer are immature school children, pulling each other's pigtails in the yard. We have discovered the meaning of true love. And the world is now seen through two pairs of rose-colored glasses. What has caused this change? Two words. Possibly three, or maybe a hyphenated two: Varsity Fanclub. Go here to watch their performance in the MTD Parade. Focus on the guy in the trucker hat- Jayk Purdy of Las Vegas, Nevada, 22-years-old, his mom was a Vegas performer. But honestly like, we know nothing about these guys. Insert winky-face here.

So! Did we all enjoy the rest of the parade? We, of course, have our thoughts. And no, we will not be commenting on the marching bands, Chris Collins. We don't care to watch the JMU Marching Whatevers. Wonder Twin bullets, activate!

As we watched In the Heights perform, we realized that one guy in the chorus is incredibly out of place. He is wearing an orange polo. Watch it just so you can see this guy, fresh out of Godwin High School's Varsity football team dropped into a Broadway show. It's funny because it's literally In the HEIGHTS. Like, Washington Heights. Not Downtown Short Pump Heights.
Just for kicks, watch the ITH performance for another reason: Tell yourself that Abuela is not actually in the show, but instead a random lady who happened to wander into the televised area. And somehow, by coincidence, she randomly breaks out into song. Trust us, it's hilarious. And listen to how Matt Lauer pronounces Usnavi (Znavee).
South Pacific's performance... way to go, Jerold Solomon! He was legitimately on TV for the majority of the song, with a solo and everything! Yeah, and did anyone else think that the lead guy in that number, Danny Burstein, looked like Gilbert Gottfried? Finally, a few of the sailors weren't fooling anybody. It was along the lines of Harvey Fierstein singing "A Girl Worth Fighting For" from Mulan.
A few thoughts about The Little Mermaid- um, why does a mermaid need a scarf? And why did the scarf not look mermaid-like? Ariel literally stole the scarf from the White Christmas cast. In speaking of the performance itself, in the eloquent words of our cousin, "This would be a lot more impressive if it were an actual crab singing and not Seal's brother." But seriously, though, we know he was lip-synching, but MAN! What a voice! Words can't even express how crazy-good his voice is.
There really wasn't anything else noteworthy to talk about. Truthfully, once we saw Varsity Fanclub, that was about it for us. We already know all the choreography. OH, and if any of you are ONLY interested in theatre and care not for boy bands, some of these boys in the "band" were once Broadway kids (see: Thomas Fiss). Speaking of boy bands, get ready to see who's in the Richmond theatre one!
We thought about writing a post about Rosie Live. But we sort of thought it was boring and awkward. We love Jane Krakowski and no one in the audience got the Urinetown bit. Oh well. We understood it.

Fin.

Stay Tuned...

2008-11-29T15:05:00.006-05:00

Swift Creek Mill's email system COMPROMISED.

Two different groups of Altar Boyz, ONE Richmond theatre boy band- who are the members?

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade serves us Broadway performances, Santa, and a new obsession for the Steingold sisters entitled: VARSITY FANCLUB.

And much more.

STAY TUNED. Oh, yeah, and don't be surprised if we change the subject matter of this blog from theatre to Varsity Fanclub. We're not kidding. Who are these guys? They're amazing and we are determined to meet them.

See you soon!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year... Kind Of

2008-11-14T13:20:00.007-05:00

THE MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER! This is seriously one of our favorite events of the year - others include Christmas, when the Starbuck's cups turn red, Passover (for the food), and anytime we wake up before 10:30 and are able to get fast food breakfast. All of the performers were announced, and we're pretty darn excited. Elyse is kind of peeing her pants about White Christmas, Annie's peeing her pants about In the Heights, Mom's peeing her pants about South Pacific, and Dad is peeing her -er, his- pants about James Taylor. Just kidding, he's peeing his pants about The Little Mermaid.

Thanksgiving morning, we always wake up to the smell of pancakes, and when we get downstairs and realize it's noon, we go through this horrible 1-minute period of panic that we missed the Parade. Then, we realize we taped it and proceed to fast-forward through every band, balloon, and helicopter tour (except when it was given by Bob Saget- remember? He was hilarious!), and we watch the Broadway performances obsessively. Have you realized by this point that we have obsessive personalities? We thought so.

All we can say is we're very glad How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang AREN'T performing this year. Seriously, both of those performances kind of freaked us out. Unfortunately, Mary Poppins actually is performing again this year, which is annoying- their performance last year freaked us out.

Finally, look out for the dueling Wicked women, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, each performing solos on different incredibly random floats- Idina on the "M&M's on Broadway float" and Kristin on the "Care Bears Winter Funderland" (seriously) float. Don't you like imagining the disputes they had over who got to perform on which float?

Can't wait to see what everyone thought of the performances this year! And again, how have we not gotten better at ending our posts?

Watch More Television!

2008-11-13T22:23:00.009-05:00

The world of theatre has crept its way into a new frontier - TV! You have to look out for two particular shows, because no one gets a kick out of theatre jokes as much as theatre people!

There is a new show on television called Summer Heights High that everyone has to watch. It comes on HBO, Sundays at 10:30 PM, but we're pretty sure every episode is on YouTube. It basically is a mockumentary about an Australian public high school, focusing on three characters: an exchange student, a bully, and a drama teacher. The catch? All three of them are played by the same guy, Australian comedian Chris Lilley. It is absolutely hi-larious. The show is basically Waiting for Guffman, if Christopher Guest had an Australian accent and also played Parker Posey and Eugene Levy's roles. Below we have a clip of Mr. G, the drama teacher.

We know South Park can be lewd and sometimes a little weird (and sometimes REALLY weird), but this past Wednesday, their episode called "Elementary School Musical" almost had us rolling on the ground laughing. Annie called Elyse at the first commercial break during the episode and literally said, "Isn't this killing you?!" You can watch the episode here; you just click "Full Episodes." You're going to love it and most likely agree with everything they're talking about.

Watch them- we promise they're worth it.

Where are You Taking Me?

2008-11-12T20:05:00.004-05:00

So, this past Monday, Annie and Chase K. came up to DC so we could all go see "Where Are You Taking Me" at Georgetown University. Basically, it was this collaboration between Georgetown and Arena Stage, and they performed songs from work-in-progress musicals from around the country. The show was really cool, and we'll talk about that later, but the whole night was an experience that needs talking about.

Once we got past the incoherent parking attendant, we arrived on the Georgetown campus starving, so we stopped in the nearest snack shop called "Hoya Snaxa," which we found hilarious. After that point we had to add "-xa" to the end of anything we bought, which was really amusing to us, mainly because when you're walking around in the cold you giggle at everything. Apparently Elyse's Diet Coxa was refreshing. HA!

At this point we had about an hour to spare, so we decided to find coffee. We figured since we were on a college campus there had to be at least 10 coffee shops near us. Wrong. So we had to ask someone. Well, by that time we were all attempting to talk in British accents and thought it would be funny to ask a student where the coffee was in said accent. So Annie stops a guy and asks him where the nearest coffee shop was. Kid you not, the guy was British. He literally was wearing a track jacket with the England flag on it. When he spoke, Elyse and Chase absolutely lost it. Elyse literally guffawed out loud, and left Annie alone, trying to keep herself together. We found coffee about 45 minutes later.

When we got to the theater, we went to the bathroom and Annie dropped her ticket in the toilet. When does that happen? The show itself was really good - Elyse liked every song pretty much - with songs from shows like Vanities (you know, the new one with Lauren Kennedy and the girl from That's So Raven?), Rooms, Giant, and Emma. But it sounded like some of the performers were sight-reading the songs as they went along... not cool. And some of the songs were just not all that catchy. But, it was neat seeing the producers and composers of the shows. We all now want to be friends with Michael Friedman, composer of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. On a more serious note, it really is interesting to think about the direction musicals are heading, and it's always interesting to look at the subjects discussed in the musical- Andrew Jackson? Really?

After the show, we went to M Street for some Italian cuisine. Before we decided where to go, we were standing outside of a restaurant reading the menu when this crazy woman got out of a cab acting crazy; she was screaming at cabs and collapsing onto the hoods of cars, so we tried to stray away, taking a lap around the block. When we came back, we were looking at a different restaurant when she literally comes barreling towards Chase, missing him by about an inch. Once she was passed we practically ran into this Italian place that Chase highly recommended. The dinner was delicious, but the atmosphere sort of random. The decorations were ridiculous - it looked like a much, much tackier version of the reception of Tony and Tina's Wedding. While we were signing the check, Chase kind of jumped and told us he had just seen a mouse scurry across the floor. Again- really??

Suffice it to say, it was a very interesting evening. Tickets in toilets, mice, real British accents, and snaxas.... eureka! I think we just came up with the premise of a new musical! Georgetown and Arena, sign us up!

Kitty Minky.

2008-11-11T16:55:00.005-05:00

Yet another random story pertaining to a Day in the Life of a Steingold. As some of you might know, today Annie officially got all of her rubber bands taken out! These past weeks she was wearing temporary bands, but now, there are none at all! Hip hip....! .... ....

Hooray? Anybody? Nobody.

And another thing that some of you might know is that Annie has a cat named Kitty Minky. Minky is an adorable cat who slightly resembles Ivanka Trump (in the eyes), but sometimes, she can be a bit of a pain in the neck. She's very opinionated (Minky, not Ivanka; but come to think of it, Ivanka is also opinionated).

So, today being the first day that Annie could sing, she decided to let loose, alone in the comforts of her house. Now remember, she had not sung in about seven weeks. So she picked up Kitty Minky, cradling her, and started singing.

Kid you not, as soon as Annie started singing, Minky literally meowed so loudly that it might actually have been a shriek, scratched Annie on the shoulder, spastically jumped out of her arms, and glared up at her from the floor.

Thank you, Minky, for making Annie feel worthless. She will no longer sing while in your presence... not for another 6 weeks, at least.

Free Twinkies!

2008-11-09T23:48:00.010-05:00

First of all, we have to say that right now we are really, really pissed off at Annie's cat Kitty Minky. She literally stepped on our computer and somehow managed to CTRL-A, then delete everything we had written. And thanks to stupid "Auto Save", when we refreshed our blog, all we had was a backslash. We are literally having to rewrite this post. So basically Annie and her cat are no longer on speaking terms.

Friday night, we got the chance to see tick, tick... BOOM!, Stage 1 Theatre Company's Inaugural Production- so exciting! Chase Kniffen, in his Letter from the Director, stated that starting a theatre company during these economic times is perhaps "the craziest thing anyone has done... ever!" You're so right, Chase. What you did is SO ZANY and OUTRAGEOUS! No one in the history of the world has ever done anything that crazy.... ever! Except maybe when people bike to school when they could just drive? That's pretty insane.

Let's talk about the show, in our scattered, random, incoherent (quick, think of more synonyms for "scattered"!) way! Bullets, ignite.

First of all, please don't forget to bring your Twinkie net to the show. Free Twinkies are literally thrown at the audience. We, personally, can't think of a better reason to see the show.
We realized, in a scientific discovery not unlike Einstein's Theory of Relativity, that tick, tick... BOOM! = Rent, minus lesbians and plus a gay Taye Diggs. Seriously. As a little experiment, Elyse sang the song "Rent" (from Rent) and Annie sang "No More" (from TTB) simultaneously. What we had was sheer Sondheim brilliance, a song very much like "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/ Love Will See Us Through" from Follies! If you got this joke, you're awesome.
Brett Ambler as Johnny-Who-Can't-Decide has a really amazing voice and true charm. He told us himself that he is only offstage for about 12 seconds, enough time to put on an apron. The fact that he is able to hold our attention through an entire show is impressive. His cathartic number, "Why" was our favorite. This song is not to be confused with Annie Lennox's 80s power-ballad of the same name.
Audra Honaker as Susan + Others is so much fun to watch on a stage- talk about someone with great comic timing! She's really awesome when it comes to taking on different personalities. As the businesswoman, her performance truly shined... almost as much as her wig.
Durron Seymour Tyre (pronounced "tire" by Annie; apparently this is incorrect) as Michael + Others has such an awesome voice. We love watching people onstage whose pitch doesn't worry us. He's especially funny as the cashier in "Sugar", spontaneously breaking out into song. If we had a nickel for every 7-11 cashier we've had who's started randomly singing, we'd have 0 cents. If we had a nickel for every customer at 7-11 who's spontaneously broken out into song, well, that's another story.
All the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show can't be ignored. With an intelligent set, a rocking band, and rolling lights, the show really was an intelligent rock and roll spectacular. But seriously, we applaud all the thought, time, and energy put into this show- it showed. Show. Show show show.

Congratulations, Chase, on your first production in your new theatre! We loved, as you said, "sitting in your dream". We couldn't have asked for a better, more entertaining night, and we wouldn't be surprised if we went to see this show again... because we're that cool. Maybe "cool" isn't the right adjective?

Go see tick, tick... BOOM! For a really inexpensive ticket price, you're basically seeing two shows in one! Rent is the other show, in case you didn't get it before.

Kenny's Lament: A Father's Response to His Daughters' Accusations

2008-11-09T16:10:00.009-05:00

As the father of the Steingold sisters, I have made a special request to be a guest blogger on this esteemed website. I asked Annie and Pugsley to allow me to post for a couple of reasons. First, I believe that I have been portrayed unfavorably in a few of their witty anecdotes and wish to rebut. Secondly, I am trying to learn how to type, and I figured with their limited readership I could get away with many typos as I practice, and no one would really notice as I try to search for the semi-colon: actually, it is probably unfair to ridicule their readership numbers since a recent Internet research group reported that they have had 6003 hits to their website. Congratulations! In a weird coincidence, 6000 have come from one household on Horncastle Place, and... (thanks, Rachel, Erica, Mike). Anyway, in response to some of their quips:

First, the girls mentioned that I referenced the musical "Urinetown" when I really was forced to pay to use the facilities in Amsterdam. To set the record straight, I was at Swift Creek Mill Playhouse, but it was only for the dining experience. Seeing the musical was only an afterthought. The show actually was great, but as a 55 year old male with prostate problems, I became increasingly uncomfortable during the show; it was only by divine coincidence that I happened to have a self catheterization kit on me and saved myself serious embarrassment.

Second, they mentioned that one Hannukah/Christmas they gave me a Springsteen CD and a Dave Matthews CD, obviously thinking I was a lot cooler than I really am; they made fun of me, stating that I promptly returned them for two Broadway musical CDs. Not true-they were returned for the latest Megadeath and Black Sabbath CDs; or was it David Bowie and Marilyn Manson; no, it was the latest boxsets of Culture Club and Wham. Touche!

Finally, you ridiculed me when we were flipping channels and the movie "Titanic" was on. The ship was in port and I asked if this was the end of the movie. How was I supposed to know-I never saw that movie. However, I recently heard a rumor that Leo is in negotiations to star on Broadway in David Rabe's incendiary play, "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel." Looking forward to it.

So fearless reader, thanks for your indulgence, and I hope I haven't wasted too much of your time; although if you read the kids' blog you have ample amount of wastable time. So, I'm off to the gym (golf), to pump some iron (water aerobics class), while listening to AC/DC on my nano-pod (soundtrack from "Millie" on my Walkman), while watching Ultimate Fighting (season one, "Murder She Wrote").

Thanks,

Kenny Steingold

A Tale of Two Sisters

2008-11-05T14:05:00.010-05:00

So remember when we wrote about winning the silent auction for tickets to A Tale of Two Cities and a backstage tour? Welp, turns out it's closing November 9th. So...two days from now. So...yeah. Looks like we won't be going. And we know that you all wanted to hear a report on it so badly. Instead we'll give you a report on tick, tick...Boom! soon.

In the meantime, here are some Magazine Muzings. Yet another new feature of the blog that will probably only happen once.

Teen Vogue had a blurb about kids on Broadway, for example, Billy Elliot and 13. It also talked about Equus and it basically talked about how it got so much hype because Daniel Radcliffe bares everything, "Hogwarts and all." So this is apparently really clever because "warts and all" is an expression. Which neither of us knew. Therefore we thought this was an incredibly nasty pun alluding to the fact that Daniel has an STD. Which would have been a shame.

So you know SkyMall catalogue on airplanes? Well, there was a note from the president of the catalogue on the first page telling the reader to enjoy all the many products. Kid you not, "Christina Aguilera" is said president. Which we find hilarious and incredibly random.

Third, we found out in Star magazine (such an honest source) that Ivanka Trump, Annie's hero, is converting to Judaism! We know this has nothing to do with theatre, musical theatre, Richmond, arts, or anything of the sort, but Annie would love to have Shabbas dinner with Ivanka. She would also love to know how to spell Shabbas.

We're not really sure how us talking about not seeing A Tale of Two Cities turned into us talking about Ivanka Trump. Check back for our thoughts about TTB. But for now, a "Daily" Download:

"Comfort and Joy" from Bat Boy

Daily Download

2008-11-03T19:24:00.004-05:00

Today's Daily Download is: "Promise Me" from I Sing!

Daily Download!

2008-11-02T21:19:00.003-05:00

Hello folks! So we are starting a new aspect of the blog called the "Daily Download." It's basically like the "Daily Double" on Jeopardy except without a question, money, podiums, or a mustache. Basically everyday we're going to give you a song that we totally think you should download. Or you can listen to it on Rhapsody or something. Or you can just listen to the 30 second preview on iTunes and assume the rest of the song is just as good.

So our first Daily Download is: "Next Time/I Wouldn't Go Back" from Closer Than Ever

Enjoy, and if you have any suggestions for us, feel free to share!

A Day in the Life

2008-10-30T01:02:00.003-04:00

Here is the transcript of our latest phone conversation:

Elyse: Have you ever heard of Virginia Beach Musical Theatre? It's pretty cool.

Annie: Yeah, I have. They're doing Aida. Or they already did Aida. I wanted to audition.

Elyse: Aw, man, they did Aida?! Okay, Aida is totally a role I'd love to play.

Annie: Really? I don't really like her songs that much. Amneris's are so much better.

Elyse: Eh, that's kind of true, but I could NEVER play Amneris.

...Whereas you DEFINITELY are eligible to play Aida, Elyse. You just need to get a little older. Maturity is key for that role.

Oprah's Book Club...Kind of.

2008-10-28T23:31:00.006-04:00

Now that the temperature is dropping, we all have ample time to sit in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa and a good book, right? Right. But of course you don't want to let your mind stray from the theatre world, right? Right. So we have a list of some awesome books that all encompass our favorite topic! And, no, they aren't all books about nachos. Commence the use of bullets...

The Q Guide to Broadway by Seth Rudetsky - I think we've mentioned enough that we love Seth Rudetsky, but anyone who has any interest in Broadway should pick up this book (or borrow ours)! So, we think (actually, know) that the "Q" in the title stands for "queer," but, come on, just look at this blog for three seconds. We're pretty queer. But not in a Seth Rudetsky way, more like a The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe way. But not in like a metaphor for Jesus way, more in like a fancy British words way. You understand. Some of the info in this book is a little Drama 101, but you'll still really enjoy it.

Broadway Nights by Seth Rudetsky - Sensing a trend? This is our last book by him. It's a great story about a guy who is basically him. Read it for his hilarious writing and juicy insider secrets. They also just made an audio version of it featuring Broadway greats like Kristen Chenoweth, Andrea Burns, Jonathan Groff, etc. Watch a behind-the-scenes look on his website, sethrudetsky.com

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater and the sequel, The Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito - These books are ridiculous and far-fetched, but they are awesomely entertaining for those of us who can appreciate the drama. The musical theatre puns are absolutely amazing by the way. Truly, truly recommend this book!

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss: Okay, yeah, this book has nothing to do with theatre, but it's an amazing book that Annie wanted to include on the list. Literally one of the most beautifully written. She says that if she were a movie producer, she'd produce it. Thank you, Annie.

So grab that hot chocolate with whipped cream on top (no marshmallows, gross... yeah, we know we're weird, but seriously, they're gross), get the fire going, and read! And as a disclaimer, we really wish we had been able to do this post as a video a la the kids in Reading Rainbow who talk about their favorite books. Remember that? Annie always wanted to be one of those kids, but Elyse says she couldn't because she never was good at summarizing.

2 Sisters' Favorite Thing

2008-10-28T23:01:00.004-04:00

[title of show] is amazing. This video is the impact of theatre right in front of our eyes. Or, in Elyse's case, right in front of her left eye, but about 10 degrees east of her slightly lazy right eye. Watch it and try to see how many familiar faces you can recognize. The creators are still chugging to keep their name and dream alive, so visit their blog to see what you can do to carry on their greatness! Both of us might have cried when we watched this... Annie when she saw Kenneth from 30 Rock (best show) and Elyse when she saw Seth holding a keyboard.... but we probably didn't. Youw pwobabwy wight (Homestar? Anyone?).

Sit Down, Annie and Elyse

2008-10-24T17:44:00.014-04:00

All right, maybe all of y'all have already discovered this website, but for those of you who haven't, this is amazing! Bluegobo.com literally has video clips of so many lost Broadway treasures! When YouTube first got popular, we kept trying to look up videos of 1776 because we're obsessed with it (like we can sing every lyric to every song and recite every rant Mr. Feeney - er, John Adams - goes on), but literally couldn't find anything. But this site has stuff! So check it out for yourself! And we like this site because it caters specifically to musicals.

Thought we'd share a funny story with you while we're here, talking about 1776. This previous summer we had a big family reunion- dubbed "The Grand Slam" by our aunt- in Boca. We rented out one of the rooms in the Yacht and Racquet Club for a dinner and a sing-along. Yes, a sing-along. Our grandparents love that kind of thing. One of their grandkids, our cousin Marissa, is a professional singer who lives in LA (funny sidenote, in the movie Raise Your Voice starring Hilary Duff, Marissa was Hilary's SINGING double... way to go Hil, with your singing career). So Marissa was fine with indulging our grandparents, playing and singing a wide range of things. We weren't. Correction: Elyse wasn't. But long-story-short, there was a lot of fuss, so Annie, Elyse, and their mom ended up standing in front of everybody, and what song did we choose to sing? "Sit Down, John" from 1776. A Cappella. With three-part harmony. Classic.

You'll What What Now?

2008-10-22T00:14:00.007-04:00

In honor of Thoroughly Modern Millie this summer, we have a link to a hilarious compressed script from BroadwayAbridged.com. If you haven't been to the site, GO! Annie discovered it last year and it hasn't ceased to crack us up. Anyone want to join us in actually staging this? Could be funny? Eh? Eh? No? Okay.

Once you read it, you kind of have to agree with it. Don't get us wrong, we LOVED Millie when we saw it, we know literally every word to the soundtrack, and I'm pretty sure we learned the "Forget About the Boy" choreography from the Tony's. Minus the desks with taps on the bottom. How cool is that number? And when we used to take dance classes, Amy Farley, our teacher, taught us the. Coolest. Dance to the "Nuttycracker Suite." Long story short, we're fans. But you can't disagree with the script.

While you're there, read some of the other abridged scripts - they're hi-larious! The Legally Blonde one is pretty amazing. We especially love when Richard Blake goes, "Why have I become the go-to ASSHOLE of the Broadway Musical? "

So true, BroadwayAbridged.com. So true.

Pu Pu Platter... Or, My Life

2008-10-21T23:14:00.008-04:00

Hi, just Elyse here. All right, so one of Annie's Last Suppers before only blenderized cuisine was at Yen Ching. We used to go there all the time as a family, especially on Christmas Eve. You literally see everyone in the Jewish community at Christmas Eve Chinese dinner. It's basically like a Yom Kippur service, except no one is scared, hungry, or blowing a ram's horn... usually.

The people at Yen Ching basically know us because we used to spend so much time there, but then we stopped going when I decided I didn't like Chinese food except during Christmastime. So when Annie, Mom, and Dad went to Yen Ching, the owner came over to the table and excitedly greeted them. Here is basically the conversation (as it was relayed to me):

Yen Ching Man: Hello! Welcome back! We haven't seen you in a while!

Dad: Yeah, I know we haven't been here lately!

Yen Ching Man: Hey, aren't you missing someone, a son?

Great. Story of my life.

Jesus's Tattoo

2008-10-21T19:18:00.006-04:00

On a very overdue note, Annie and her parents went to see the Equality Virginia Benefit last week. We definitely wanted to mention it here, because it was quite an entertaining evening. One quick disclaimer: there were no programs, so we might inadvertently leave out the names of the some of the performers or misspell one. Sorry!

Highlights of the night included a wonderful monologue from Search for Signs... performed by Julie Fulcher (love!), a very moving dance piece, "Crushed," performed by Melanie Cash, as well as great musical numbers performed by the likes of Katrinah Lewis, Debra Wagoner, BC Maupin, Chris Hester (who performed about 10 songs), and more.... three acclaimed Richmond theatre men dressed as penguins performed "Heart." Don't know what else to say about that particular performance. There were also skits and standup comedy sketches, and the host of the evening, Kim Jones Clark, was really adorable. Don't know her at all, but she seems like a very nice woman!

One of Annie's personal favorites of the night was "Repent," performed by Jackie Jones. Oh my gosh, what an entertaining performer! She really does a wonderful job of connecting with the audience- they ate her up! So yes, it was a really fun, enjoyable evening, and we're happy we went. Plus, talk about giving money to a worthwhile organization!

On a side note, Annie kept thinking that Chris Hester looked familiar. Yes, she had seen him in the reading of Dead Man's Cell Phone, but she knew he had been in something else in Richmond (Weird, right? Seeing the same person in more than one show here?). Then she saw his tattoo! And realized she was watching Jesus! Yes, the Jesus Christ... from Reefer Madness at the Firehouse Theatre. Who would think that we'd ever utter the words, "Once we saw his shoulder-blade tattoo, we KNEW it was Jesus!" Such are the joys of theatre.

More to come. MUCH more to come..... muwaahahahahahhh, muwaahahahahaAHHH, MUWAHHAHAHAHAHHH!!!!

Come on, it's close to Halloween. Indulge us...

Although...we're so awkward at ending posts that we would use the evil laugh closer in the middle of April if need be.

Bloggers Can't be Choosers

2008-10-20T00:46:00.008-04:00

So, we know we just wrote a post about the ridiculousness of the new Broadway musical A Tale of Two Cities. BUT, this past weekend was Parents (and Annie) Weekend at GDub, and there was a silent auction that had all the typical silent auction stuff, like homemade jewelry, vacation packages, hand-knit scarves, and books autographed by Joe Lieberman? But, who knew there would also be two tickets to A Tale of Two Cities on Broadway with backstage passes?!?! We didn't. But when we saw that it was, in fact, there, we laughed for a while. And then proceeded to furiously scribble our name down and hope that no one bid higher than us- which they didn't!

So... yeah... apparently sometime soon we shall be seeing ATOTC (Atottsee). Speaking of abbrevs, have you gotten a chance to see the winners of the Ritcocks yet? Very exciting. We'd like to give a personal shout-out congrats to Mr. Brandon Becker, one of the nicest, funniest guys we know, as well as a congrats to Bat Boy. Of course, congratulations to everyone else, too! Treasure your cock. Your Ritcock.

Welcome Our First Bloguest, Rachel B.

2008-10-14T18:17:00.005-04:00

Hey, so I wanted a chance to be a guest blogger, and I did, after all, make Annie and Elyse recording artists, so they better give me a post on their blog! (See iTunes> The Receipt movie soundtrack> "In Any Way I Can" or www.thereceiptmovie.com)

Unfortunately, I am a rogue Richmond theatre fan who is now located in Boston, MA. That's about 240 miles north of NYC, folks. And a little background: since early July I've been working at the American Repertory Theatre, but I will be frank with you here, I'm just a telemarketer that sells season tickets (pathetic, I know, but someone has to do it!).

The first show of the season was Let Me Down Easy, written by and starring Anna Deavere Smith. Yes, Anna Deavere Smith. Anna Deavere Smith. She is best known in the theatre world for her one-woman shows, and that is precisely what Let Me Down Easy is- her latest solo show. Now, I will be the first to admit that I always have and always will shy away from one-person shows. Even with my extreme attention-span problems, when one person switches between people at the drop of a hat (sometimes literally at the drop of a hat because that's changing characters...), I get confused and want to throw a hissy fit.

But Anna Deavere Smith... now it really helped that each time she shifted between characters, they projected the name of the person and their info onto a screen over the stage (i.e. Reverend James Cone: Theologian and then a title for the monologue like "Amazing Grace"). Maybe that last parenthesis seemed a little stereotypical, I apologize, but that's actually how it was; the whole piece was about grace in the world today. And really it wasn't so much the words or the visuals or the ill-fitting pants suit she had to wear so she could look like 5 different characters by switching between ties and hats and shoes, but it was the sheer performance of the material she captured in interviews. It really changed my life. She brought people from Rwanda to the stage and doctors and rabbis and ministers and jockeys, and it was really remarkable that she could remember all of it. I mean, you know you're watching a brilliant actor when you can't tell whether they're messing up and not remembering their lines or actually acting out the way people talk and how they often mess up words and repeat things over again. I mean, to remember 28 different people's accents and the number of times they said "like" or "you know" or skipped around in their thought pattern- wow.

And let me tell you, after two disastrous shows this summer- seeing Noel Coward's Hay Fever, with poor British accents in a random park; or the high school student production of Beauty and the Beast at the Boston Center for the Arts in which Belle's hair got caught in the Beast's icky fake fur paw during the last scene and was therefore lying on top of him during the final song, seeing Let Me Down Easy was a breath of fresh theatre air.

Broadway Talk

2008-10-11T23:12:00.004-04:00

There's some pretty interesting happenings in the Broadway world that are worth talking about, so here goes... and by the way, apparently we love the newly-discovered bullet feature on blogspot.com.

Zac Efron is considering the role of Alan Strang in Equus on Broadway! So. Exciting. I guess he's doing it because he wants to catch up to his girlfriend's naked-views count. Although it's going to be much harder coming up with cute nicknames for his magic wand. We get to see Troy's Sharpay? Yeah, that works.
The cast of Family Guy is going to perform Family Guy Sings! at Carnegie Hall. Amazing. That literally combines our family's two favorite things: musicals and Family Guy.
We all know that Wicked is coming to the big screen, but now there are rumors that Spring Awakening and In the Heights could be making their way there, too. Apparently J.Lo really wants to help ITH become a movie. A chance to rewind and replay every move Lin-Manuel makes? We'll take it.
Bailey Hanks is going to play Sharpay in Paper Mill's production of HSM. There's really nothing to say here that's witty. That actually sounds pretty perfect.
Telsey + Co. is casting the new Addams Family musical or whatever. That is so weird. But Bebe Neuwirth is going to play Morticia! We have watched her and Karen Ziemba's performance on Broadway's Leading Ladies about 4,000 times. We love her. And the Addams family is kind of close to our hearts...there was a phase in there where Dad called Elyse "Pugsley." His reasoning was literally because he thought she was acting like Wednesday. Why didn't he just call her Wednesday? We will never know. Probably because he killed two birds with one stone by calling her Pugsley.

Wheeeeee!

2008-10-11T15:03:00.011-04:00

Hi guys! Sorry it's been a while since we've been on here. And we're especially sorry that "Muppdate" is what you had to see when you refreshed our page. Anyway, we've been pretty busy. Elyse has been stage managing a college production, and Annie has been in a state of mild depression. Ha, just kidding. Elyse is just the assistant stage manager.

Because there aren't enough blogs out there about Ragtime, we're going to talk about it here! Elyse didn't get to see it, but Annie did. Phew. Since neither of us are coherent enough to write a full post, here are some musings...

"What a Game" is totally the "Master of the House" of Ragtime. Everything is so depressing and intense and emotional and FINALLY there is some levity and the whole audience is always like HAHAHAHAHAHA THANK YOU FOR LETTING US LAUGH.
We don't really think there was enough emphasis in all the blogs about how unbelievable Jerold Solomon was. He. Was. Incredible. Or in Annie's eloquent words, "He just stood there and it was like, wow." Can't argue with that.
Our aunt thought Brett Ambler was Chase but with a different accent. Hilarious.
Annie loved when the performers would close their binder. When Coalhouse got shot and he shut the binder and walked offstage, Annie peed a little. And drooled. But the drooling didn't have anything to do with the show...she just has no feeling below her nose. And when Debra Wagoner closed her binder in "Back to Before"... very powerful. Isn't it cool how just closing a binder can do that?
One of the bloggers expressed how proud they were to see Chase on that stage, giving his introduction speech. They remember Chase when he was 11, painting their fingernails backstage at a show they were both in. Ha! Yeah, Chase, you may be Mr. Artistic Director now, but you used to love yourself some Sally Hansen Amazing Amethyst.
Sherri Matthews did an amazing job (of course)! She has the Midas Touch when it comes to musical direction so there was no question the show would sound great.

Overall, it was a very successful and exciting night for Stage 1, and we want to give a big congratulations to everyone involved! Dan, Annie wishes she could have eaten your desserts, and Elyse wishes she could have been there to eat your desserts. And a big congratulations to Chase and Peggy! Peggy, please don't use that shock pen on us again. And Chase, please don't steal our blackjack money.

Can't wait for tick, tick... Boom! Great show, great music... see you there!

Funny.

2008-10-11T01:32:00.007-04:00

Again, this has nothing to do with theatre, but it is totally worth it.

My family visited me last weekend because Annie needed to get out of the house, and we were all sitting around in my dorm room not really doing anything. So I turned on the TV and was clicking through the channels, and Titanic was playing on one of them. It was the really pretty scene when the ship is in the port and it pans across and you see the ship and all the people on the harbor, etc. you know? And then Dad proceeds to ask, "Oh, Titanic - is this the beginning of the movie or the end?"

Hilarious.

...Too soon?

Muppet Update... Muppdate!

2008-10-07T17:19:00.004-04:00

We have a confession to make. We are obsessed with the Muppets. As in, are in love with them, literally. On our way to preschool, our mom would talk in various cartoon and puppet voices (her claim-to-fame was her Elmo impression), and on special days, she would talk like Gonzo to Annie. And Annie literally would get nervous, her cheeks would turn red, and she, in her three year-old voice, would respond, "Oh, Gonzo!" So yeah, we're obsessed.

So, are we allowed to talk about the Muppets on a theatre/Richmond theatre/musical theatre/what is-this-blog-exactly blog? Um, YES. And if you want to fight us on this one, bring. It. On.

There's really only one point we can make to defend the fact that a Muppdate deserves to be on this blog. Four words: A Muppet Christmas Carol. This holiday gem- or year-round, if you're us- seriously has one of the best scores ever. Okay, well maybe not ever, but it seriously has a great soundtrack. "One More Sleep 'Til Christmas," "It Feels Like Christmas", and "Thankful Heart" get us every time. And who could forget the time the Steingolds printed out the lyrics to the song, "Bless Us All", and had every family member take turns reading the lyrics at the Thanksgiving table? In short, if you haven't seen this movie, please do, just for the music.

The main reason we're writing this blog is to show a really awesome and interesting article that was in the New York Times a few weeks ago. Basically, the Muppets are BACK! One point we found really interesting is that there will be a feature film coming out somewhat soon (the first since 1999!) and it will be written by Jason Segel, who was the star and writer of the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Cool, huh? We're so excited.

Yet another random post, but it's definitely an article worth reading. And on a completely different note, we'd like to bring up a question that's asked of us a lot, which is whether or not we see plays. And the answer is yes! In fact, just last night Annie and her mom went to see the reading of Dead Man's Cell Phone in the B-dale's lobby. Thoughts on that later. But we do admit that we need to see plays more often and not constantly resort to singing and dancing. Musical theatre will always be our first love, but we will definitely make an effort to see plays (by the way, don't you totally turn into snob mode when people call "musicals" "plays"?). Annie is still waiting for her mouth to be un-shut, so until then, she's doing a lot of things that involve not talking- a.k.a. watching shows. So if there's any play in particular that you think she should see, let us know. She's up for anything.

Read the Muppet article. Oh, and who can forget "Rainbow Connection", perhaps one of the best songs ever written? "Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me."

Great, now we're crying.

Bedtime Story

2008-10-03T00:31:00.003-04:00

This is just a funny story that explains how two sisters came to love theatre.

Once upon a time, there were two sisters who needed to get their father a Christmas present. Sure, they were Jewish, but they preferred opening their presents on Christmas morning because it was exciting. So, they searched and searched and finally settled upon 2 wonderful gifts: a Dave Matthew's Band CD and a Bruce Springsteen CD. So Christmas morning came and the sisters excitedly watched him open his presents. He looked at them and exuberantly thanked them for the gift. He then added to the end of his thank-you speech, "You two wouldn't mind if I traded these for a couple others would you?" "Of course not, Daddy," they replied. The next day, their father came home with the Original Broadway Cast Recordings of Hair and Phantom of the Opera. And they all lived happily, and theatrically, ever after...

...To be continued. Just kidding. We aren't the narrator in Into the Woods.

You're welcome.

Exciting New Banner!

2008-10-03T00:28:00.006-04:00

Annie and Elyse are excited to announce that tomorrow will be the debut of their completely new banner! We mean business, folks. Now that we're gettin' an official/professional/adorable new look, you won't be gettin' rid of us for quite some time! Although you will be gettin' rid of most of the g's at the ends of words. Just sayin'.

Sporadic Obsession

2008-10-03T00:10:00.003-04:00

Hey guys, so I know the blog's been a little weird. Our situations aren't optimal for writing compelling posts about Richmond theatre. One of us isn't in Richmond at all and the other one has her mouth wired shut. Which leads me to today's Sporadic Obsession: Camp.

I know we've mentioned it before in the blog, but seriously, everyone MUST see this movie if they haven't already. Even if you didn't go the a performing arts camp (I totally thought I was sweet when I first saw the movie and I was obnoxiously like "Hey, hey guys. Hey, hey listen to me, you know what's funny? Is this is EXACTLY how it is! Like, you know totally that's how it is at performing arts camps! Like. I know that. Because I just got back from French Woods. So like I understand every joke and have lived it."), it's still hi-larious and totally relevant for anyone who loves theatre.

"Turkey Lurkey Time" is totally our favorite part of the movie. And, yes, Annie and I have learned the choreography and would be happy to perform it for you upon request.

So one of the character's mouths is wired shut and at one point someone asks her what she was drinking and she says "chicken broth" but it comes out sounding like "chicken brush." And tonight when I asked Annie what she was eating she totally said "chicken brush." It was hilarious for me. I just hope that when her mouth is finally un-wired she will soulfully belt out "Here's Where I Stand" with my mom in tears nodding at her encouragingly with a closed-mouth smile. And I'll be the way-too-into-it piano player.

Bernie Telsey STILL Wearing Big Glasses

2008-10-02T23:53:00.005-04:00

Yes, folks, there are more "Legally Brown" episodes. Thank goodness. And can we just talk for one second about how much I freaking love Allison Janney? Remember that Tom Hanks speech I talked about composing while I was recovering from my surgery? Well, next time I go under the knife, guess who I'm writing about? If you don't know what I'm talking about, read all the comments and see if you can find it. And while you're at it, go ahead and leave a comment yourself, as well! No one answered Annie's question about (ironically) the name Annie. I could only think of two.

R.I.P. Broadway Greats

2008-10-02T20:18:00.003-04:00

It's been a sad couple of weeks on Broadway. It's ridiculous how many shows have announced their closing dates. Xanadu just closed (Shocker? Not really, but still sad because we heart Kerry Butler and Cheyenne Jackson), Legally Blonde will close October 19th, [title of show] will close October 12th, and Hairspray is closing in January. So. Sad.

But everyone should go see the Legally Blonde tour at the Kennedy Center on December 16th because that's when the Steingold's are seeing it! And you know that ought to be fun. Loads of it. Loads of fun.

Annie Alert

2008-09-30T20:48:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I made a mistake in the last post. While sitting at the kitchen table being fed Gerber sweet potatoes through a syringe, I had my parents try to guess the four "Annie" characters in musicals- and guess what? They thought of a fifth Annie! Cool, huh, that my parents are that "in tune" (HA!) with musical theatre? Cool and kind of... well, come up with your own adjective.

Anyway, there are now FIVE musicals which have a character named Annie in them. Figure it out and win a ticket to Ragtime! Complements of Chase, although he doesn't know it, so don't hold me to it.

Thoughts from a Closed Mouth

2008-09-30T15:56:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone! It's just me, Annie. I thought I'd give a little report on how I'm doing, and also to report on some thoughts I've had as I've laid around for about a week. Finally I am back to walking around and going out in public. Yes, I scare everyone around me due to the fact that the bottom half of my face looks like a pumpkin, but I figure, hey! It's almost Halloween time, it fits, right?

Anyway. Here are some Amusing Musings that I've had while recovering. First of all, I've come to realize that Jane Lynch is one of my favorite actresses ever. She's hilarious and another person whose best friend I want to become. Speaking of... I'm still not best friends with Robyn and Angie... hmm, I need to work some more on that. Hopefully they won't be scared of my pumpkin face.

Has anyone been watching the new season of Dancing with the Stars? I'm not going to say who I want to win the whole thing- it's too early to tell- but I have to say, I am loving me some Cloris Leachman. She is just too much. If you haven't been watching the show, watch it just for Cloris Leachman.

My mom got me a 750-piece puzzle to do, and guess what it's of? TIMES SQUARE! It's so totally cool, and has pictures from tons of Broadway shows, ranging from Tommy to Steel Pier, to Millie to Joseph, as well as Contact, Seussical, Rocky Horror, and many more! How often when playing puzzles do you get to say, "Hand me The Full Monty piece!" I'm having way too much fun with this.

There's a Facebook video up of Stage One's Ragtime rehearsal that you should check out.... insert something funny here? Hopefully I'll be able to check it out, I'm sure it's going to be awesome. That music, AH. Oh, and Chase if you're reading this, can you please put up a video of the rehearsal for "Journey On"? That is my favorite song in the entire show, and my boyfriend (or was it Elyse's boyfriend?) Michael Hawke is in it- YES!

Finally, in honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (which is today- Happy New Year!), here is an absolutely incredible sermon which my mom sent me that you have to read. Cheesy, I know. But seriously, it's really good and it involves A MUSICAL! WICKED! How awesome is that? I've never been to temple and heard a sermon that involves a musical. Seriously, you should read this, even if you're not Jewish. Yes, it's kind of funny picturing the Rabbi standing up on the pulpit, seriously quoting lyrics that Idina belted out, but it's still worth reading.

These musings were not so amusing, but we'll be coming back full force soon enough. And here's a little trivia question that I thought of while playing Play-Doh a few days ago: There are FOUR musicals (maybe more than that!) which have characters with the name ANNIE in them! Can you think of the four musicals? The winner gets the Times Square puzzle.... HA, yeah right, in your dreams. But seriously, see if you can figure it out.

"Bare" With Me

2008-09-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

Hello folks! Sorry things are so slow around here ... we're down to just one person again. And that one person happens to be 2 weeks away from mid-terms. Yikes. And, naturally, Annie is out of commission for at least another week or so until she visits me here, when I'll be lucky enough to give up my bed and prepare a list of the best soup/milkshake/smoothie/blender stores Foggy Bottom has to offer!

So Daily Obsession time! Maybe we should just go ahead and change the title to "Sporadic Obsession." And raise your hand if you only know that word because of Clueless. That's what I thought. Let's not kid ourselves. Anyway, student theatre is really huge here, and one of the shows they're doing this semester is bare: a pop opera. I don't know how many of you have heard it or even heard of it, but I would highly recommend it! They have the whole show on Youtube, and the antagonist from Sabrina the Teenage Witch is in it. So...if any of you were...wonderin' what happened to her...there ya go. But even if you don't choose to watch the whole entire show on your computer instead of read your archaeology book, you can always listen to the soundtrack which is amazing. They're even doing a production in Buenos Aires! So stand back, Buenos Aires! Because you wanna know whatcha gonna get in me just a little touch of, just a little touch of, just a little touch of star qualityyyyyyy...

I'm never good at ending my posts.

Bernie. Telsey. Wearing. Big. Glasses.

2008-09-24T01:17:00.000-04:00

This video is wonderful for so many reasons. It literally integrates EVERYTHING we love about Broadway right now. Test yourself and see if you can find them all!! But don't circle them, kid in the waiting room of the doctor's office who thinks the Highlights magazine only belongs to him and decides to use his mother's PEN to circle the hidden pictures which then leaves the rest of us with no activity to do while we're waiting for our college immunizations.

Dispute

2008-09-20T00:49:00.000-04:00

Ok, we know this is completely unrelated to musical theatre but we have a dispute that needs to be cleared up. As some of you may know, Annie is getting jaw surgery Monday, and her mouth will have to be wired shut for 6 weeks. Therefore, all of her food will have to be liquidized. She was given a cookbook with a bunch of recipes. One of them is for a PB&J. Here's what it says:

PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY "SANDWICH"

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1-2 tablespoons jelly

2 slices wonderbread

9 oz. glass of milk

Put in Blender and blend

And then off to the side it says in handwriting: "try without bread"

All right, so what is funnier? The fact that "sandwich" is in quotes, or the fact that in the margin it says "try without bread"?

Speak Parseltongue?

2008-09-15T17:16:00.000-04:00

If you're above the age of 18, you can check out Harry's Potter! His Magic Wand! His Chamber of Secrets! His Sorceror's Stones! I mean, we haven't looked at the pictures, but they're here. And they look a little funny and slightly blurry. But seriously, though, we haven't looked at them...more than 12 times.

...And in the Mornin', I'm Makin' Bloggles!

2008-09-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

Okay, that is the most pathetic title ever, but props to you if you actually know what we spoofed. This is our first official Shrek: The Musical post. Our friend sent us this link to a slideshow with some really interesting pictures of what will soon be coming to Broadway. We have some thoughts on this. First of all, Shrek (the movie) is a freaking amazing movie. It makes us laugh so hard we cry, and it makes us cry so hard we laugh...at each other crying over Dragon missing Donkey.

Our first request for the show: Please tell us the overture to the Broadway production is simply Smash Mouth's "All Star." Shrek really cannot start without this song. We wish you knew how much we actually think this. Some more requests...

Please let the Ginger Bread's voice be as amazing as the one in the movie. "Don't tell him anything!" could quite possibly be the funniest line in the movie simply because his voice is hilarious.

The pictures make this show seem really dark, don't you think? Let's brighten it up a bit. Also, what's up with Christopher Sieber's costume? Cool idea, but...it's very clear that Lord Farquaad is merely leaning back on some man in a black cloak, right? And what happens when he walks? Do his legs move, or do they just bend under and get caught in the black cloak? This is just so perplexing.

Take a look at the pictures, seriously. Make your own judgments. And please note that we are most definitely seeing this show - these are just our curiosities. Come on, one of our daily obsessions is Grease 2.

Most Hilarious TV Show

2008-09-13T00:57:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the funniest show on television: Hole in the Wall. We don't want to explain the premise of this game show to you. Just watch this clip from the Australian version of the show and be sure to tune in to Fox Thursdays at either 8 or 8:30 PM. We don't really know for sure. And don't feel like looking it up.

What the Freak Do We Know About Reviewing?

2008-09-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

So, the sisters have united once again! And the blog is back in full swing! No more of Annie on her own. Pretending he's beside her. It's time to keep talkin' about things, and what better to talk about than a freak show. And no, we don't mean a day in the Steingold household. We mean Side Show, you silly readers you. Reader.

Let's get talking! This time with a "g" on the end! Sadly, Elyse didn't get to see the show, but Annie and Mother Hen did. So Elyse is going to interview Annie about the show.

E: So, Annie, I'm so jealous you got to see the show. Overall, how was it?

A: I tell ya, Elyse, this was a Richmond theatre show I'm really sad you missed.

E: Thanks, Annie. Thanks. How were the twins?

A: Absolutely wonderful! I literally had tears in my eyes during "Who Will Love Me as I Am?" Robyn O'Neill and Angie Shipley were really great to watch, and I want to be their new best friend.

E: I'm sure they feel the same way about you.

A: Brett Ambler was adorable, as always. What a voice. And Michael Hawke really surprised me with his high belt.

E: How was his singing voice?

A: Not as high as his belt (Ha!). No, but seriously, he sounded awesome. I have a crush on him, and I'm sure you would, too. Just call me Daisy. And you'll be Violet. And get Brett.

E: Okay!

A: Back to the show. Brandon Becker did an awesome job choreographing. Can't be easy choreographing for 1.8 person. "We Share Everything" was a ton of fun to watch, and I really think he did a great job.

E: Any last words?

A: Great work, Tom Width, great work!

E: Anything else?

A: This was the least legit theatre review ever?

E: Indeed.

So, to sum it up, everyone should go see Side Show at Swift Creek Mill Playhouse. You "won't won't" to miss a moment...

It's FREAK-ing Late!

2008-09-09T17:48:00.000-04:00

I, Annie, had the pleasure of seeing Side Show at "the Mill" this past Saturday night. Join Elyse and me (and by that I mean, come back and read our post) as we discuss this production... via instant messaging.

See you soon, and sorry we are late with this!

Daily Obsession: Capital Style

2008-09-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

Greetings from the computer lab! My laptop hasn't returned from Pentagon City yet, and I must say it isn't great. I'm not kidding when I say it is roughly 98 degrees in here, and I'm sitting next to a 50-year old man, who apparently is enrolled here, who is trying to get into as many Women's Studies classes as possible. Creepy. Almost as creepy as the fact that I am sooo not discreetly looking at his computer screen.

In case any of you were wondering, my Murphy's Law curse has continued...yesterday I dropped my phone in the toilet. No, apparently that kind of stuff doesn't just happen in Ben-Stiller-yeah-it's-kinda-funny-but-after-a-while-it-just-gets-old-and-painful-to-watch-like-Meet-the-Parents-type movies. And my life movie doesn't have Owen Wilson in it. Bummer.

So my daily obsession is a soundtrack. I'm trying to get back at my next door neighbor for leaving his alarm clock buzzing while he was at his 8 AM class by playing my music really loudly. And flicking off his door everytime I walk by it. Both work. Anyway, I'm sure my next door neighbor would agree with me on my obsession with the I Love You, Because soundtrack. It's a new-ish, now closed, Off-Broadway show. Yeah, a lot of the songs sound the same, but it's cute and entertaining and not Spring Awakening.

Or, if you're not into that show, you could buy the I Sing! soundtrack. It's a new-ish, now closed, Off-Broadway show. Yeah, a lot of the songs sound the same, but it's cute and entertaining and not Spring Awakening.

So start collecting your Coke caps, rack up some iTunes bank, and broaden your soundtrack horizons!

Yikes. I'm almost positive I'm the less funny sister.

Broadway at West Beverly

2008-09-03T00:36:00.000-04:00

Why hello! We told you that the Daily Obsession thing wouldn't quite pan out the way we had hoped. Right now, things are a tad crazy. First of all, only one of us is writing this right now- the less funny sister. Now, did your mind immediately snap to, "Aw man, just Annie's writing"? Because if so, you are correct, my friend. And also, how dare you call me the less funny sister!

Anyway, Elyse has moved to college and is now in D.C. Being without her is killing me softly. However, we plan on keeping the blog going- I mean come on, we've only been around for two months, you can't get rid of us that fast! Plus, it's cool because Elyse will be able to talk about shows in D.C. So yeah, we totally had plans to email back and forth, video chat on iChat, etc., and come up with more "funny" posts for the blog. However, Elyse's computer broke her second day as a college student . Her bag of Cheetos also got stuck in the vending machine her second day as a college student. So basically, her second day as a college student sucked. I think the Cheetos fiasco threw her over the edge. Anyway, until she gets her computer back from the "geniuses" at the Apple store on Thursday, there shall be no theatre musings.

However... while I'm here... did anyone watch 90210 on the CW tonight? NO no, don't click the close button on your screen! I promise I'm going somewhere with this. I have a few comments first, though. Oh, how I missed this gem. I had a huge crush on Dylan McKay- and I was like, 6 years old. Now, this show is a spin-off of Beverly Hills, 90210, but come on, it's basically the same thing. Twins move to the big city from out of town, the Peach Pit's the cool place to be, and the writing is still as good as ever. My favorite lines of the night? "You're breaking up with me?".... "I'm breaking up with us." LOVE it. Two main reasons you should watch the show. 1, Aunt Becky has a pretty big role. And 2, Shannen Doherty's BACK! YES!! And boy oh boy, is she milking this part for all it's worth. We're talkin' wayyyy over the top.

So where am I going with this, you ask? Well, in tonight's episode, we see that West Beverly High is putting on a musical. And that musical is... SPRING AWAKENING. I literally spat out my drink when they said that. Actually, I didn't spit out my drink, but I wish I had. It looks so fun when people in the movies do that- and do you notice how their drink always lands right on the nerd's face? But yeah, their musical is Spring Awakening. They literally rehearsed "Mama Who Bore Me," microphones, stomping feet and all. I mean, I knew Beverly Hills was rich, but I wondered how even THEY could afford the rights! Insert laugh here.

Okay, that's it for now. We will BOTH be back by the end of this week, I promise. And Elyse, sorry if you found this post not funny at all.