ScheckOnCulture

The invaluable Applause Theatre and Cinema Books has just released two new indispensable releases for theater lovers.

The Playbill Broadway Yearbook, now in its sixth edition, provides a comprehensive summary of the 2009-2010 Broadway season. Edited by Robert Viagas, the handsomely bound tome provides extensive documentation of the nearly 75 shows that opened or continued to run from June 2009 to May 2010, augmenting its voluminous production details and copious photographs with engaging backstage “scrapbooks” detailing everything from “most memorable ad-lib” to “busiest day at the box-office. Included are sections devoted to special events and awards and a memoriam to theater notables who passed away, as well as the amusing, high school yearbook-style faculty photo spreads devoted to important theatrical groups.

Also receiving updated and expanded treatment is Louis Botto and Robert Viagas’ gorgeously illustrated “At This Theatre,” previously issued in 1984 and 2002. Detailing the histories of Broadway’s 40 current operating theaters—from the New Amsterdam, built in 1903, to the newest, now known as the Foxwoods, opened in 1998--and featuring a wealth of backstage anecdotes and archival photos, it’s a fascinating expansion of the popular feature of the same name that you’ll find in your Broadway Playbill. This edition also features a new forward written by actor/singer Cheyenne Jackson.  

The Broadway Playbill Yearbook (Applause Theater and Cinema Books, $35.00)

At This Theatre (Applause Theater and Cinema Books, $38.99)

For all of you unlucky souls who couldn’t be there, Image Entertainment has released SONDHEIM! The Birthday Concert, a DVD and Blu-ray of the concert held this March at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in honor of the famed theater composer’s 80th birthday.  

Featuring longtime Sondheim collaborator Paul Gemignani conducting the New York Philharmonic, the droll comic hosting of actor David Hyde Pierce and a gallery of theater stars, including many veterans of Sondheim productions, this is a rapturous event, providing the opportunity to hear the composer’s music performed by a lush, full orchestra. 

Among the many highlights are Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters movingly reuniting for “Move On” from Sunday in the Park With George; John McMartin reprising his decades-ago rendition of “The Road You Didn’t Take” from Follies, and the duet between two generations of Sweeney Todds, Michael Cerveris and George Hearn, on “Pretty Women.”

There are also rarities for the true Sondheim obsessives. Victoria Clark sings “Don’t Laugh” from the little known Judy Holliday musical Hot Spot; Laura Benanti performs “So Many People” from the rarely seen Saturday Night; and Audra McDonald does a version of “The Glamorous Life” that was originally written for the film version of A Little Night Music.

You’ll share the live audience’s excitement as Pierce warbles “Beautiful Girls” while a procession of Broadway divas—LuPone, McDonald, Peters, Marin Mazzie, Donna Murphy and Elaine Stritch—sashay onto the stage wearing stunning red dresses (well, Stritch is in a pantsuit). The solo numbers that follow include LuPone’s “The Ladies Who Lunch” and Stritch’s triumphant “I’m Still Here.”

The finale, featuring an army of Broadway gypsies marching into the auditorium and delivering a soaring choral rendition of “Sunday,” is likely to move you to tears. 

Image Entertainment. $24.98 (DVD), $29.98 (Blu-ray). www.image-entertainment.com.

Jewish Museum, NYC

Through Mar. 27.

One of the most compelling museum exhibitions in town is the one at the Jewish Museum devoted to the life and career of Ehrich Weiss.

You might ask, Erich who? Well, you’re probably more familiar with his stage name: Harry Houdini.

The famed magician was actually the son of Hungarian Jews who settled in Wisconsin in the late 1870s. Neither his father, who was a rabbi, nor his mother spoke English.

Despite his humble immigrant beginnings, Houdini, as he later dubbed himself (after his early idol, the French magician Robert-Houdin) became an international megastar, one of the first of the twentieth century. His celebrated escapes from restraints and obstacles of all kindd clearly had a metaphorical resonance for ordinary citizens themselves struggling under the extraordinarily difficult conditions of the era.

“Houdini: Art and Magic” explores his legacy through a mixture of memorabilia and artifacts, video clips and multi-media artworks inspired by the subject.

The latter are the least interesting aspects of the exhibition, with only a few pieces, such as Ikuo Nakamura’s milk can featuring a hologram of a pair of manacled hands emerging (echoing one of Houdini’s most famous escapes), having much impact. Particularly trivial is a lavish abstract installation, “The Ehrich Weiss Suite,” by artist/filmmaker Matthew Barney, whose “Cremaster 2” film featured Houdini, played by Norman Mailer, no less, as a character. It features, among other things, a glass coffin littered with the droppings of several live pigeons.

But Houdini aficionados will relish the rare opportunity to examine such classic items integral to his act as a milk can from which he made his escapes; the steamer trunk used in the classic “Metamorphosis” illusion; handcuffs, one of his straitjackets, and letters and journal entries.

Sadly, the most striking prop on display, the large box with the glass front used for his famous “Chinese Water Torture Cell” escape, is a recreation. The original was ravaged in a 1995 fire that destroyed the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls, Canada.

Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave. 212-423-3200. www.thejewishmsuem.org.