Portal:Theatre

Pipe Dream is the seventh musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Premiering on Broadway on November 30, 1955, it was a flop and a financial disaster. It is based on John Steinbeck's short novel Sweet Thursday, which he wrote in the hope of having it adapted into a musical. Set in Monterey, California, the musical tells the story of the romance between Doc, a marine biologist, and Suzy, who in the novel is a prostitute; her profession is only alluded to in the stage work. Rodgers and Hammerstein signed operatic diva Helen Traubel to play Fauna, the house madam. They had concerns about featuring a prostitute as female lead and setting part of the musical in a bordello and as the show progressed through tryouts, Hammerstein repeatedly revised it, obscuring Suzy's profession and the nature of Fauna's house. Pipe Dream met with poor reviews, and rapidly closed once it exhausted its advance sale. It had no national tour or London production, and has rarely been presented since. There was no film at the time; the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization once hoped for a film version featuring the Muppets with Fauna played by Miss Piggy.

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• 8 September 1955 – Birth of Osonye Tess Onwueme, an important Nigerian playwright whose works focus on social justice
• 10 September 1892 – Opening of London's Duke of York's Theatre, built for actor-managers Frank Wyatt and Violet Melnotte
• 11 September 1911 – Opening of the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre (later the Empire Theatre) with a production of Bayard Veiller's Within the Law
• 12 September 1866 – Premiere of The Black Crook, often considered to be the first work of modern musical theatre
• 16 September 1935 – Broadway premier of Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th, a courtroom drama with two alternative endings decided by a jury of audience members at each performance
• 19 September 1936 – Death of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, who brought about a renaissance in classical Indian music
• 24 September 1910 – Birth of Cao Yu, often regarded as the most important Chinese playwright of the 20th century
• 27 September 1917 – Opening of the Broadhurst Theatre with a production of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance

Laurence Olivier (1907–1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also played more than fifty roles in a long film career. In 1930 he had a West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. From 1963 to 1973 he was the founding director of Britain's National Theatre, running a resident company that fostered many future stars. His own parts there included the title role in Othello (1965) and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1970). Among Olivier's films are Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940), and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor-director: Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955). His later films included The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978).

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• ... that actress Klara Höfels, known for her roles in television crime series, also produced, directed, and starred in world premieres of theatre projects in Berlin?
• ... that Kully Thiarai made a theatre in Doncaster a "living room" for the town?
• ... that a 1974 recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte with Ryland Davies as Ferrando was used in a 1995 film by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre?
• ... that Esther Merle Jackson, as a specialist in theatre and dance education at the United States Office of Education, intended to expand theater's role in the Great Society?
• ... that the projector at the Walter Reade Theater had to be modified to screen Nathaniel Dorsky's short film Triste?
• ... that the Richard Rodgers Theatre has hosted 11 Tony Award-winning plays and musicals, more than any other Broadway theater?

Acting is standing up naked and turning around slowly. — Rosalind Russell

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