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NEW YORK » It came down to the wire. For a while, it looked like I’d not be able to catch local girl Bette Midler’s one-woman Broadway show, "I’ll Eat You Last," because it was sold out for the time frame I had. Success seemed elusive.
But I deliberately kept one night open — last Tuesday — and managed to secure other shows like "Matilda," "Motown: The Musical," "The Nance," "Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella" and the Shakesperean "Macbeth" (reduced to a lone actor, Alan Cumming, playing all of the major roles).
A friend tried to help me secure house seats for Midler channeling Hollywood agent Sue Mengers. But the outlook was bleak. I love the Divine Miss M, but $300 for "premium" seats was out of my league. Not one to give up, I marched to the Booth Theatre box office on Tuesday morning, hoping to land a couple of seats. "None available," the friendly chap in the box office said. "One standing room left."Well, there were two of us, and one of us (me) had a bad back and sciatica pain streaming down the right leg and no, the prospect of standing 90 minutes for Midler’s show was not appealing.
Mr. Box Office advised me to show up around 5:30 p.m. (for the 7 p.m. curtain) to join the cancellation line — and hope. Well, I did. At 5:25. And waited. By 6, folks were lining up to pick up their tickets, and here I was, the guy from Hawaii, still without proper passage. I called my wife to join me in the line so that when (and if) tickets became available, we’d be ready to traipse into the aisle to applaud Midler, even though she’d been snubbed for a Tony Award nomination for best actress in a play.
Well, at precisely 6:45 p.m., I was summoned to the window: a score!
As we walked to our seats ($132 apiece) in the back orchestra, we noticed the signage on the fire curtain: "WARNING: This play contains profanity, smoking, alcohol consumption, drug use, and gossip."Oh, yeah — The Book of Midler, and lotsa fun. She was equal parts raunchy and rambunctious tita and conniving and resourceful agent Mengers, with blonde ‘do parted down the middle. …
HAWAII NO KA OI: Hawaii women are in full bloom this spring on Broadway. Besides Midler, Ann Harada is riotous as the stepsister Charlotte in "Cinderella" at the Broadway Theatre. And Ruthie Ann Miles as Imelda Marcos in "Here Lies Love" at the Public Theater in the East Village, which I didn’t catch, is a hit. …
Further,a trio of vaudevillians (not from the islands) in "The Nance" at the Lyceum Theatre do a hokey hula, and one even strums an ukulele in a segment in the Nathan Lane comedy.
EDDIE WOULD GLOW: Veteran entertainer Eddie Kamae will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Hawaii in commencement festivities Saturday at the Stan Sheriff Center.Considering he earned a belated graduation certificate from Farrington High School in 2010, this Ph.D. laurel is lofty and swift — and well-deserved, acknowledging Kamae’s contributions over the decades to Hawaiian music and film. …
FINALLY:Erika Kauffman, founder of E-PR, is now a cover publicist for CBS’ "Hawaii Five-0" (meaning on call, no longer full time). She’s just back from Toronto, New York and D.C. doing press for new clients outside the "H50" ohana. "Going global" is how she describes her adjusted m.o. now. …
AND that’s "Show Biz." …
Wayne Harada is a veteran entertainment columnist; reach him at 266-0926 or wayneharada@gmail.com; read his Show and Tell Hawaii blog at www.staradvertiser.com.
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