I might as well see Bebe!! I just got tickets to the latest Bebe play this May/June/July in New York!! Yay!! :dance: Further Cheers connection: the play is written and directed by Roger Rees. If anyone else wants to see it, it's called "Here Lies Jenny."

Cool Ria.


Was it expensive??

I go to New York almost every summer -- maybe Ill find my way to this.

Not terrible--$35-60. You can get them on telecharge.com.:wave:

Originally posted by Ria
Not terrible--$35-60. You can get them on telecharge.com.:wave:


sounds reasonable.
thanks for the heads up.


hope you have fun

I've never heard of that one. Is it new?

Well, an article I read said that it's "experimental," so I'm taking that as a yes; I at least know that it's an original by Rees

aha! I'm going to see it too! I'm actually studying in London this summer, but I'm making a special stop in NY just to see "Here Lies Jenny"!
(I know I'm new here, I've kind of been lurking in the corners and reading people's posts here for a while, but this is my first post...)
anyway, I can't wait! It looks great...for multiple reasons, and I won't deny that one of the major drawing points (ok...I admit it, the only reason I'm schlepping over to NYC...not that I don't adore that town... ) is because Bebe Neuwirth is in it. I mean, it's bound to be good!
Shalom to all!
-Marcy

:welcome: periacta

Originally posted by periacta
aha! I'm going to see it too! I'm actually studying in London this summer, but I'm making a special stop in NY just to see "Here Lies Jenny"!
(I know I'm new here, I've kind of been lurking in the corners and reading people's posts here for a while, but this is my first post...)
anyway, I can't wait! It looks great...for multiple reasons, and I won't deny that one of the major drawing points (ok...I admit it, the only reason I'm schlepping over to NYC...not that I don't adore that town... ) is because Bebe Neuwirth is in it. I mean, it's bound to be good!
Shalom to all!
-Marcy

Marcy--a Bebe fan, and a Tori fan? You must be a kindred spirit! :)

oh my yes. i'm a huge tori fan. and bebe fan too, naturellement.
Nice to know that there are others like me out there! Speaking of which (well, it is connected in my head, and um, i'll give a...um...i dunno, a something to whoever can figure out the connection), does anyone else here have the recording of Snow, Glass, Apples??

What day are you seeing HLJ, Ria?

Shalom (and Happy Easter, too, if that's your thing),
Marcy

where in new york is it?

never mind. i found it but i cant go to see the play cause its at 11:00pm and i live pretty far away. then i thought maybe we could stay and sleep at my camp which is in pennsylvania on real close the borderline of ny but thats still 5 hours away. nothing ever works out how i want it to.:(

hey I'm way down in southern pennsylvania so I can't get up to see it, which makes me very upset :( But you all MUST tell me how it was and how great Bebe was! :)

Originally posted by periacta
What day are you seeing HLJ, Ria?

Shalom (and Happy Easter, too, if that's your thing),
Marcy

The 26th. And it's nice to see all the Frith fans posting--sometimes I feel a little lonely amongst all these Sam/Diane people :)

we've been hibernating!
or at least, I've been hibernating. And I still would be, if I wasn't so obsessed with my grades that I had to wake myself up at 2am to work on an assignment for Anthropology that's not even due till Friday. Fortunately, I got distracted, so here I am!
Oh, speaking of school. Here's something kind of sad. In a funny way. Last semester when I was registering for this semester's classes, I was flipping through the Psych section of the catalogue (being that I am a Psych major, after all...) and I noticed the class 'Abnormal Psychology.' And I thought "man, that was a great episode..." so I took it. Well, it's not the only reason I took it, but that was my initial reaction and truthfully, my main reason.

I'm going to Here Lies Jenny on the 24th of June. And I fly to London the day after. For even more classes! Nothing like a vacation spent in lecture halls!
Woohoo!

Shalom,
Marcella

I have actually been posting here for about a year, just not as often as some, solely because of school :( I am very glad to see more Frith's popping up- it evens things out between us and the Sam/Diane fans.

I think Im the only guy Frith.

Originally posted by barwars88
I think Im the only guy Frith.

. . . which makes you even more special! :D

exactly! And I noticed the Sternin/Crane link in your signature. Is this a hint about your wonderful fic?;)

*Smiles* So, "guy Friths" actually do exist..

oh yay a new frith friend! Welcome to the boards!

never mind it's my kaitlyn ;)

Originally posted by BebeLilithFan154
never mind it's my kaitlyn ;)

who?
Did she have a different name??

Whoo! :wave:

Yup, I had a different name, but used it once..and forgot it. Oh well. I think I like this one better.

and we know each other off the boards too

Originally posted by BebeLilithFan154
and we know each other off the boards too

woah, Cheers fans CAN know eachother in the real world....
theres hope.

terribly sorry i've been away. been très occupé with finals and such (ew). I think this post needs to be resurrected because, because...otherwise it will be buried.
My tickets for "HLJ" came in the mail the other day! very very excited about that...
front row...right in the centre!!!
excuse me while i squeal with girlish glee.

Ria, am I correct to assume that you will be going the 26th of June (thats the only 26th I can think that it's playing).
We'll just barely miss each other!

Is anybody else going? hm??

Sorry for the superfluous posting...I'm lonely and bored and its 5am. What can one expect?

Shalom and Kol Tuv,
Marcy!

oh. ps. speaking of bebe neuwirth, i just bought a cd of"Upstairs at O'Neals," the musical comedy revue thing she was in pre-cheers. very funny. the whole cast is great. highly reccommend you all get it!

i got this from the Zipper Theatre website...

Originally posted by periacta
Is anybody else going? hm??


I'm going to the same showtime as Ria.

there was an article about HLJ in my new york times yesterday

im copying it here

The Late Show With Bebe Neuwirth
By MELENA Z. RYZIK

Published: May 16, 2004

AT 11 p.m. in a former zipper factory on the West Side of Manhattan, the crowd is filtering through the shadowy bar on the way to their theater seats. Many of them have arrived after seeing (or being in) other shows. Soon they will be watching the story of a dejected singer and dancer who has been drawn into a rundown saloon in a depressed wartime Anytown — it could be Berlin, it could be Chicago — by the melancholy sound of a Kurt Weill song.

What exactly is this?

A week ago, the creators of the show, "Here Lies Jenny," the new late-night entertainment at the Zipper Theater designed around the music of Weill, decided to describe what it isn't.

Bebe Neuwirth, the show's star, who conceived it two years ago with Leslie Stifelman, its musical director, said: "It's not a revue. It's not a one-woman show. It's not 'Bebe and Her Boys.' It's not a lesson on Kurt Weill."

Ann Reinking, the choreorapher, agreed. "It's not meant to be literal," she said. "It is a cycle of songs and they connect, but you don't know why they do. It's an experience."

Ms. Stifelman calls it "a tone poem."

In the opinion of the director, Roger Rees: "It's like looking at a woman through a bathroom window. You know, that funny glass, and you see all these different facets. It's like that — a prism."

When the character Jenny (Ms. Neuwirth) begins to sing in the bar, she is accompanied by the Piano Player (Ms. Stifelman), who sits in a dusty corner with her back to the audience. Throughout much of the performance, two knockabout men (played by Gregory Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh) dance and sing with Jenny, as does the barkeep (Ed Dixon), with whom, it turns out, she once lived (they perform a caustic duet, "Pimp's Ballad," from "The Threepenny Opera").

"Here Lies Jenny" is foremost, perhaps, a collaboration among friends with similar artistic backgrounds who have worked together before and want to pay tribute to Weill. The show includes a cross-section of his songs, presented out of chronological order — among them "The Saga of Jenny," "Surabaya Johnny" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myself." "Bilbao Song" opens and closes the show.

"All the songs are about women," Mr. Rees said. "He loved women."

Which may not be apparent from the staging. Ms. Neuwirth, the kind of woman who seems naked without red lipstick, enters looking haggard in a shapeless dress, and is tormented and teased by Mr. Butler and Mr. Emamjomeh. The two men are also in the Broadway revival of "Chicago," in which Ms. Neuwirth and Ms. Reinking starred when it opened in 1996, and arrive at the Zipper after their curtain calls. (Ms. Stifelman is the music director of "Chicago").

But if this Jenny is an amalgam of Weill's Jennies, Ms. Neuwirth gets the chance to transform her, thanks to a bit of that lipstick, a little black dress and a classic tango.

"The tango is where I spring from," Ms. Reinking said, adding that the choreography "had to be stripped of show business technique" to emphasize the raw interaction of the characters with the music. "If the audience wasn't there," she explained, "Jenny would still dance like that."

And if she did, she might do so late at night at a dilapidated theater like the Zipper. Staging the show where it is and at the late hour, Ms. Neuwirth said, continues the gesture. ("Here Lies Jenny" is scheduled to run Thursdays through Saturdays at 11 p.m. until July 24.)

"Some people may say, 'I would like it more strung together than this,' " Mr. Rees said. "But they go to bed at 10:30."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/16/arts/ryzi.184.1.jpg
(Picture by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Bebe Neuwirth, with Shawn Emamjomeh, left, and Gregory Butler, rehearsing "Here Lies Jenny."

Great article--thanks for posting it! :)

reviews this time
from various sources

'Jenny's' vulnerability
Thursday, May 27, 2004
BY MICHAEL SOMMERS
Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- Take 20 or so smoky songs composed by the great Kurt Weill, put Bebe Neuwirth into a skimpy black dress to sing and dance them out with a couple of big, hard-faced brutes in a seedy waterfront dive, and that's more or less "Here Lies Jenny."

An arty nightclub act that's not as much fun as it should be, "Here Lies Jenny" opened yesterday at the Zipper Theatre, where the 75-minute attraction plays three 11 p.m. showings every week through mid-July.
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Conceived and directed by Neuwirth's former "Cheers" associate, Roger Rees, the wordless scenario is that vintage routine best described as a "woman with a suitcase" show.

Looking lost and bedraggled, Neuwirth descends a metal staircase into the saloon clutching a bag with Jenny's meager belongings.

The tough guys give Jenny a rough time for a while, but she eventually slaps on some lipstick, sticks a flower in her hair and seduces them into submission through her songs.

A serviceable concept, the event doesn't quite match Neuwirth's gifts. Expert in sardonic comedy and an extremely sharp Broadway dancer, Neuwirth usually projects a tough-cookie attitude. Vulnerability has never been Neuwirth's strong suit.

Yet from the way the dramatic arc of the songs progresses, Jenny's emotions must journey from fragile and wounded to sassy and bold and then down-throttle to softly nostalgic and wistful for her vanished glory days.

The middle part of the show, when Neuwirth is confidently flashing through the intricacies of a barroom tango with Gregory Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh, provides the best entertainment. The opening and closing sections are hardly so convincing because, frankly, Neuwirth looks about as helpless as a destroyer.

Sung in (mostly) English, German and French, the more bitter numbers like "Bilbao Song" go down well, but those tender emotions needed for the melancholy likes of "Surabaya Johnny" elude Neuwirth, whose dry, buzzing vocal qualities at times get raspy.

Actually, the most lyrical singing comes from Ed Dixon as a seen-it-all bartender who bonds sympathetically with Jenny. Steely fingering an upright piano, musical director Leslie Stifelman capably accompanies the performers. Ann Reinking's choreography seems a bit constricted by a small stage and the men's muscle-heavy bulk.

Designer Neil Patel delivers the requisite 1930s atmospherics with scarred walls, a clouded mirror, a speakeasy door and a bar that's less about beer and more of a bier. Frances Aronson's dramatic lighting shades the joint in a red and purple haze.

Regardless of the show's artistic merits, it's likely to be one very hot ticket anyway. Neuwirth's popularity with the metro crowd is a big asset. Another plus is the late-night allure of the 240-seat Zipper, where the first several rows are comfortably furnished with the back seats taken from old cars and there's a dimly lit, well-stocked bar out in the lobby.

Yes, drinks can be taken into the theater. They will probably help to provide the glow that often seems missing in "Here Lies Jenny."

and from playbill

Based on the description of the world of the new late-night musical, Here Lies Jenny, starring Bebe Neuwirth, you can almost smell the cigarettes, taste the stale hooch and hear the dissonant notes of Kurt Weill.

The experience itself, opening May 27 at Off-Broadway's Zipper Theatre after previews from May 7, is inscrutable and sensual and challenging: A makeup-free, drably costumed woman (Neuwirth) enters a vaguely European bar where two muscle-bound men (Greg Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh, of Chicago) are boozing, a lady pianist (Leslie Stifelman, in pants) tickles the ivories and a barkeep (Ed Dixon) is both paternal and menacing.

Tiny tensions and conflicts and events — including the shedding of Neuwirth's workaday clothes — are played out with a soundtrack (all live, of course) of songs by Kurt Weill and lyricists he worked with in the first half of the 20th century.

In previews, Neuwirth entered the joint singing "Bilbao Song," a song known by Weill fans but not necessarily a rousing "this-is-who-I-am" show tune. Audiences pricked up their ears, listened to the number and realized they were in for something different — an exploration, an experiment. The show has been selling out in previews.

*

The new theatrical musical event aims to exploit the sort of grit, longing and passions associated with the old songs of composer Weill, who penned German cabaret songs and theatre music for Broadway.

According to the announcement, "In Here Lies Jenny, a one-time saloon singer at the end of the line arrives at a bar that, like her, has seen better days. Clutching what's left of her life in a small canvas bag, Jenny is drawn inside the joint, at once foreign and painfully familiar. She finds herself singing along to the music playing – the soundtrack, strangely enough, of her life. Searching for something, someone, she seduces and rejects the bar denizens in her way. Through the music, Jenny relives the highs and lows of her checkered existence and finally finds a strength she didn't know she had – the strength to face another day."

Audiences in previews have been embracing the intermissionless show as a sort of conceptual revue rather than a conventional character-driven musical.

Several Jennys are featured in Weill musicals, including The Threepenny Opera and Lady in the Dark, though the new effort seems to want to expose a timeless persona, a mythic Everywoman.

The new, original, constructed piece plays 36 performances and features choreography by Neuwirth's Chicago collaborator, Ann Reinking, and is conceived and directed by Roger Rees, Neuwirth's fellow actor from her days on "Cheers."

Leslie Stifelman handles music direction and music supervision for this new entertainment, which uses songs from Weill's German cabaret and theatre days, as well as tunes from when he was a Broadway composer (when he preferred his name to be pronounced "while" not "vile").

Rees (Nicholas Nickleby), Reinking (Chicago, Fosse) and Neuwirth (Sweet Charity, Damn Yankees, Chicago) are all Tony Award winners, now experimenting with this new work in relative obscurity below 42nd Street — and late at night.

Just as some of Weill's famous German songs explored low dives, whiskey bars and untested places, the collaborators find refuge — at 11 PM Thursdays-Saturdays — in the funky Off-Broadway performance space called The Zipper, at 336 W. 37th Street, onetime home to BETTY Rules.

Here Lies Jenny is presented by Maria DiDia, Kathryn Frawley, Hugh Hayes, Martin Platt & The Zipper Theatre with Green Moon Gang. Performances continue to July 24.

Here Lies Jenny features the music of Kurt Weill (1900-1950) and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, Roger Fernay, Ira Gershwin, Jehuda Halevi, Langston Hughes, Alan Jay Lerner, Maurice Margre, Ogden Nash, Franz Werfel and Kurt Weill.

Designers are Neil Patel (scenic), Kaye Voyce (costume), Frances Aronson (lighting) and Tony Meola (sound).

Arrangements and incidental music are by Jeff Saver, additional arrangement are by Chris Fenwick & Joe Thalken.

Listed in alphabetical order in the Playbill, the songs used in the show are "A Boy Like You," "Army Song," "Barbara's Song," "Belin im Licht-Song," "Bilbao Song," "Children's Game," "Don't Be Afraid," "In meinem Garten," "In Our Childhood's Bright Endeavor," "Je ne t'aime pas," "Marterl," "Oh Heavenly Salvation," "Pimps Ballad," "Saga of Jenny," "Song of Ruth," "Song of the Big Shot," "Stranger Here Myself," "Surabaya Johnny," "Susan's Dream," "The Tale of the Soldier's Wife," "Youkali: Tango Habanera."

Tickets range $35-$60. For tickets, calling Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200 or visit the Zipper Theatre box office.

theres more...i think, but there's only one phone line up here, so i have to share, dammit.

pikatures...
from playbill

http://www.playbill.com/images/photos/jenny2.jpg

and

http://www.playbill.com/images/photos/jennylead_1085601579.jpg

oh lord the reviews are piling up
im not gonna clog this up with all of them.


ill just put new york times one cause...well...it's the new york times, and i love those guys...

The Music of Bitter Memories in a Raunchy Bar Full of Both
By BEN BRANTLEY

Published: May 28, 2004

Bebe Neuwirth, who became famous as the denizen of a happy little bar called Cheers on television, is now hanging out at a different watering hole. This is no friendly place where everybody knows your name. Identities are blurry, conversation is harsh and memories are bitter. And if you're a woman alone, the odds are you'll be roughed up and robbed before the night is over.

This is probably as it should be in a dive where the lingua franca is the darker music of Kurt Weill. The composer who gave sinister voice to an underworld of pimps, prostitutes and murderers in "The Threepenny Opera" and set Freudian anxiety to song in "Lady in the Dark" is the inspiration for "Here Lies Jenny," the hourlong nightcap of a musical diversion, which opened yesterday and can be seen from Thursdays through Saturdays at 11 p.m. at the Zipper Theater.

Directed by Roger Rees, with musical direction by Leslie Stifelman and choreography by Ann Reinking, this cigarillo-slender show weaves assorted songs by Weill — and lyricists ranging improbably from Bertolt Brecht to Ogden Nash — into a vague narrative cycle about the life and times of one weary woman. Her name is Jenny, and it seems fitting that she should be portrayed by Ms. Neuwirth, who won Tony Awards playing hard-bitten gals from the shady side of the street in "Sweet Charity" and "Chicago."

But while Neil Patel's barroom set has a low-life desolateness that Mack the Knife might have appreciated, don't expect much in the way of lurid thrills. True, as the life-mauled Jenny, who stumbles into what appears to be a rathskeller on the edge of time, Ms. Neuwirth does perform a modest striptease, engage in an erotic pas de trois with two strapping male dancers and sing about the irresistibility of mean men.

Yet the overall mood is more pensive than it is prurient. Ms. Neuwirth's character has little of the wicked, show-off brassiness she brought to the revival of "Chicago," in which she triumphantly co-starred with Ms. Reinking. Instead, she is here a soft, battered creature, like a rag doll who has been played with too hard and for too long. Jenny may be down in the ashes, but embers of sentimentality still glow visibly within.

Such a gentle sensibility means that despite its late curtain time, "Here Lies Jenny" is not the sort of show to kick you into gear for a wild endless night on the town.

As conceived and staged by Mr. Rees (who as a first-rate actor appeared in "Nicholas Nickelby," "Indiscretions" and with Ms. Neuwirth on "Cheers"), this production is instead like a whispery, reassuring lullaby, which progresses from brooding nostalgia to hope for the morning to come.

A plot of sorts can be extrapolated from the arrangement of the songs. Jenny, clutching an army green sack, arrives in a bar run by George (the excellent Ed Dixon), a portly fellow with a fine baritone. With a lone piano player (Ms. Stifelman) acting as Hoagy Carmichael to Ms. Neuwirth's Lauren Bacall, Jenny wanders through numbers torchy, sour and sweet, sometimes with the assistance of George and those two hunky dancers (Greg Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh).

You infer that Jenny has probably worked as a prostitute, had an adored son lost to war and been treated badly by many men. Finally, while she was close to suicide when she arrived, she has embraced life again by the show's conclusion.

Since Ms. Neuwirth is going for thoughtful and poignant in her singing here, there is little of the electric comic wryness you usually expect from her, and she refrains from the jagged stridency associated with classic Weill interpreters from Lotte Lenya to Marianne Faithfull. This more subdued style doesn't always show off Ms. Neuwirth or Weill to their best advantage. "Saga of Jenny," for example, goes limp when stripped of its sauciness.

But Ms. Neuwirth brings a vibrant, low-voiced plaintiveness to the little-known "Susan's Dream" (written with Alan Jay Lerner) and that nightclub standard "Surabaya Johnny." She and Mr. Dixon give "Pimp's Ballad" (from "The Threepenny Opera") its full nasty strength in a brusque duet. And Ms. Reinking has come up with some nifty dirty-dancing moves for Ms. Neuwirth, Mr. Butler and Mr. Emamjomeh, though more of the same would be welcome.

Ms. Neuwirth, by the way, sings "Bilbao Song," a reminiscence of exhilaratingly dangerous times from "Happy End," at both the show's beginning and its conclusion. The first time, Ms. Neuwirth performs the number with a tired, jaded voice and a lost, empty gaze.

For the reprise, she inflects the song with the bounciness of a plucky survivor. Though the ballad may have originated in the Weimar years, its use here as a pull-yourself-up device feels purely American. Who would have thought that Weill's music could become a self-help guide?

28 days till i see it!

Awesome pictures of Bebe!!!:) Thanks for sharing!


Feen

no problem, Feen!

I loves me some New York Times!

4 days till I see it!

(the play, not the New York Times)

*hums from kurt weill's "Bilbao Song": it was fantastic...it was fantastic... *
oh. you guys. it was simply wonderful. oh my god. Zipper theatre (if you've never been there) is in this sort of dilapidated part of manhattan...and it's very much a character in the play. there was a dim bar by the stage (a real bar, for...you know...alcohol) and there were all these BEAUTIFUL pictures of Bebe hanging on the walls of the bar, that must have been taken specifically for the show. They had nothing do do with the show, but they were absolutely beautiful. I would have taken one, but they weren't exactly thing that you could subtly take! :lol:
The play was great. the music was great. Bebe was brilliant and gorgeous and singing and dancing wonderfully. She looked so sad and worn out and old and...used at the beginning, and seriously, i don't know how they did it, but she looked (and i quote the NY Times) "haggard." I felt so bad for her. But she went through a complete change (including a change of clothes... right on stage...that may be one of the reasons why its shown so late ;) ) The guys were HUGE. i mean, buffer than buff. lots of hoisting bebe in the air. We had front row, center seats. really, i mean like, so close that we got spit on a couple times from when the actors were singing um...over-exuberantly.
My one qualm had not so much to do with the show, but with the company in which i saw it. I saw it with my sister's mother-in-law, who was so kind as to let me stay in her apartment here in manhattan for tonight. She's a wonderful lady, but I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable when...hm...how do i put this politely...well, lets just say that Bebe's dress was very short, and when the guys picked her up...um *blush*...
well...we saw how far up those legs really go.
now, had i been by myself, I probably wouldn't have batted an eye...but I dunno...it just felt weird with my sister's mother-in-law.

But maybe I'm just...old fashioned. Or unaccustomed to seeing that much of someone that i idolize. you know?

but we both enjoyed it SOOOOOO much, and my arms still hurt from applauding so much. Oy vey. My favorite numbers were...*whips out program because she has no idea what the songs were called*
Stranger Here Myself (just great with the choreography between Bebe and the two men. there was a line in that song that really got to me...something like "and there was no time to say 'no.'" I love Ogden Nash)
Pimp's Ballad (yay duets. totally awesome. i loved it)
Surabaya Johnny ("take that pipe out of your mouth, you rat!")
Susan's Dream (damn depressing...just makes me hate life.)
A Boy Like You (i think that's it...about her son.)
and the tango. Yay ann reinking, because that was fabulously choreographed!

well, i've had about 4 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours...because of my red-eye flight, and i've got another redeye to london tomorrow, so, im gonna catch me some :sleep2:
but, it...was...SO...good.
:clap:

Great review! I wish I had seen it!

Thanks for the awesome review!!! http://img11.photobucket.com/albums/v34/TroyandLindseyFan/yay.gif

Bebe Rocks! http://img11.photobucket.com/albums/v34/TroyandLindseyFan/bow.gif



Feen

More good news guys!!!

Here Lies Jenny is extending its run to September 26!

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/87281.html

i think I'm going back!
Seriously...I've just gotta see it again!

I'm sooooo happy about the extension!

I know! ohmygod! i can't wait to get back to new york! seriously, i only feel alive when i'm there! I think I'm gonna have to pay for this trip myself, but I'm bringing a friend, its going to be so. great!
sorry, can you tell that I'm really hyped up about it?
i've been giddy with excitement since my friend and I decided in a late night conversation the other day that, since Here Lies Jenny was extending its run, well, we might as well skip a few days of classes, fly across the country, and catch a showing of it!
Have you seen it, bebesternin?
has anyone else here seen it but me?
if so, yay...
if not...its so great...go see it! Ok, i'll um stop now. But seriously, when I was in London, other than the time I took a day trip to Sussex and Virginia Woolf's house, all I could think was "man, I wish I was seeing Here Lies Jenny right now"
Seriously, I remember standing on the wall surrounding the Tower of London, looking out on the Thames, and thinking..."It would be SO cool if I were in New York right now...watching Here Lies Jenny"
there must be something wrong with my head.
I said I'd stop, like, a paragraph ago, didn't I?

No, I haven't seen it, but I want to so bad it's not even funny.

And I'm so mad I missed seeing her in Chicago..by like five years. I didn't even know who she was until it was too late, and now I can't get to New York. :rolleyes:

I'm seriously going to try though. I have a chance now. :)

return of the 'Here Lies Jenny' Thread!
yeah. She's back from the dead.
Yes, the thread has a gender. I decided. Even though I didn't start it.
Anyway, this was in the Toronto Star.

Out of the mouth of Bebe
TV made her a bigger Broadway star

Weill show is the real me, Neuwirth says

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN
THEATRE CRITIC

The Fourth of July may have passed, but Bebe Neuwirth would still like to make her Declaration of Independence ... from Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane.

"Let's finally get something straight: I'm really not like her at all." She's talking about the icy virago who married and then divorced Dr. Frasier Crane that she played on Cheers and Frasier, winning two Emmy Awards in the process.

"Don't get me wrong, I got a kick out of her. I liked her. Hell, I can't play somebody that I don't like. But she isn't me.

"What I'm doing now, this is the real me."

The 45-year-old Neuwirth is referring to the Kurt Weill cabaret that she's currently performing to great acclaim and sellout crowds in a converted zipper factory deep in Manhattan's garment district.

"It's called Here Lies Jenny," she quips, "but it's really The Me Nobody Knows."

The piece is an impressionistic portrait of a woman, putting together pieces of her life, rather than just a collection of songs. That suits Neuwirth perfectly.

"I can't just get onstage and sing. That doesn't make sense to me. There has to be an emotional reason for things to happen ... I expect the people I work with to come up with answers, because, baby, I've always got a lot of questions."

It's a muggy Saturday afternoon and Neuwirth is sitting at a Greenwich Village café, sipping cautiously at an herbal tea.

She's right: In person, she's nothing like Lilith. Her hair cascades to her shoulders in soft curls; her brown eyes send out complicated signals. Yes, I'm sensitive, they seem to be saying, but don't screw me around.

In addition to her dual Emmys, Neuwirth has a matching pair of Tony Awards for her work in Sweet Charity and Chicago. She's also made her fair share of films (Le Divorce and Tadpole among the most memorable) and she's always in demand for one project or another.

It doesn't mean, however, that the spiky word "difficult" isn't often attached to her name. She's been known to quit shows if she doesn't like the way they're working out.

"I don't suffer fools gladly." A vampirish baring of the teeth. "In fact, I don't suffer them at all.

"The problem, I think, is that I was working with some of the best people in the history of the business very early on in my career. Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, Gwen Verdon ...

"That's the good news and the bad news. The good news is, I learned so much from them. The bad news is, I'm spoiled."

And it's true that Neuwirth had more than her share of A-list experiences put on her plate before she was even 25.

Born in Newark, N.J. on Dec. 31, 1958, she was raised in Princeton by her mathematician father and artist mother — a heritage you can see in the combination of the analytical and the spontaneous that defines her work.

She started dancing at the age of 5 and wound up studying dance at N.Y.'s Juilliard school, But Broadway called and she went into the company of what was then the hottest show around — A Chorus Line.

"The only trouble was that I was still a kid, but I was playing parts created by women in their 30s. I hadn't gotten rid of my baby fat yet and the first time (director) Michael Bennett saw me in the costume he yelled out `Put a belt on her. She doesn't have a waist.'"

Neuwirth went on to tour with the show to Toronto and London. From our city, she remembers "that wonderful Royal Alex Theatre and the great man who ran it, Ed Mirvish, who had all those crazy restaurants."

Diving into the deep end of the pool like that was only possible because of the belief Bennett had in her.

"He would weave webs of words," she remembers, "he was a fascinator. Sometimes you couldn't be sure of exactly what he was saying to you, but he made you feel you could do anything."

Her next stop was with the other reigning genius of the musical theatre, Bob Fosse, whose Dancin' she stepped into a few years later.

"Fosse was the opposite of Bennett in so many ways. His direction was so easy to follow. Not complicated, very simple, but still, very creative."

An image of the man drifts into her memory and she catches her breath, "If you just saw Bob Fosse walk across the room, you'd have everything you needed to know about his style —not just the physicality, but the mood, the whole world that was Fosse."

Their professional relationship would deepen when she played one of the leading roles in the 1986 revival of Sweet Charity that would result in her first Tony Award.

"He was a creature of contradictions: a very sweet man who created these very dark pieces, but these two things existed together at the same time."

Fosse was there with good advice when she was asked to leave Sweet Charity to create the role of Lilith in Cheers.

"I said no at first," she laughs, "why would I do that? I'm a Broadway dancer."

But then something occurred to her. "Even back then, they were doing stunt casting on Broadway, bringing in people from TV and the movies. I thought it would be smart for me to go out to L.A., get a name for myself and then come back and say, `Now I can satisfy all your needs. You need someone who's recognizable from TV? That's me. You need someone who can also really do this stuff onstage? That's me, too."

Still, she hesitated, until Fosse said, "It's not going to ruin you. Go out there and do it."

And so she did, making an instant hit as the deadpan diva who seemed to have had all blood drained from her veins.

"It was an excellent show," she says fondly, "and I loved everyone on it. But I was worried about being typecast because the part was so bizarre."

So worried, in fact, that she did something strange. Instead of demanding a contract that guaranteed her more time on screen, she opted for one that strictly limited her appearances. "I wanted to be careful not to get trapped in that niche."

She left the show and, covered with glory, came back to Broadway in 1996 as the co-star of Chicago opposite Ann Reinking.

"It was great, but it made me realize how hard I was going to have to work to pull away from my TV image. One night, a woman stopped me at the stage door and shrieked `I never knew Lilith could dance.'"

Neuwirth shakes her head. "I didn't know how to answer her and still be polite, but finally I looked her in the eye and said, `That wasn't Lilith, lady, that was Bebe Neuwirth.'"

Here Lies Jenny has been extended indefinitely into the fall but Neuwirth wonders where to take it when that run finally ends.

"You have a garment district in Toronto, don't you?" she asks with a gleam in her eye. "Maybe I could play it in a loft up there for a while."

So look out, Spadina, here she comes. Just don't call her Lilith.

Ok so...who's "Spadina"?

I think I'm going back to see it the 10th or so of September. And I'm bringing a chum. You guys should come! Cause, man, it is
so
f*cking
awesome.

I totally fell in love with Jenny.
Anyway, I didn't want this thread to languish at the bottom of the page anymore.

Nope.

Bebe is Lilith.
Lilith is Bebe.

Originally posted by barwars
Nope.

Bebe is Lilith.
Lilith is Bebe.

Well, you get to be the one to tell her that.

Originally posted by periacta
Well, you get to be the one to tell her that.

haha

Karen: Ohh stop, comon, use your real voice.
Bebe: I will if you do!!




I could never do that, seeing that I'll probably never meet her -- she'll always be Lilith to me.
But if I were to meet her -- I would respect her enough to understand the difference.

return of the jenny reviews!
With a new picture!

http://www.newyorkblade.com/2004/8-20/arts/theater/HERE-LIES-JENNY.jpg

From the New York Blade.

By Gene Robinson and SWeinstein@nyblade.com
Friday, August 20, 2004

Bebe Neuwirth long ago shed the curse of the TV-star-turned (or returned) stage actress with her career-defining stint in “Chicago.” Neuwirth is that all-too rare bird these days, the megastar who takes chances.

She first appears in “Here Lies Jenny,” an all-sung tribute to the Weimar-era music of Kurt Weill, as a bedraggled wayfarer, clutching her threadbare bag as though it were a baby. (I immediately flashed back to Marlene Dietrich in “Blonde Venus,” as she spends most of the film fleeing husband Herbert Marshall.)

There is no plot per se. Instead, we get a bartender, piano player and two layabouts. They variously throw Neuwirth around like Apache dancers, fight with each other, drink — but oddly, considering the time depicted, no smoking. The men apparently vary with the performance; at the one I saw, the two men were gypsies from “Chicago,” more Eighth Avenue than Unter den Linden (but that’s OK).

Neuwirth has a good voice for Weill’s minor-key classics, her whiskey-and-cigarettes hoarseness perfectly suited to the sad, nostalgia-filled lyrics made so famous in Lotte Lenya’s interpretations. Her real forte, however, is her dancing. She may have the best gams in New York, although we see too few of them in Anne Reinking’s spare choreography.

If you’re not familiar with Weill’s music, be forewarned: It’s not typical Broadway fare. In Weill’s world, it’s always 3 o’clock in the morning, the dark night of the soul. The setting makes the cabaret of “Cabaret” look like Disney World.

Even a seemingly innocent ballad like “A Boy Like You” turns words of endearment into a mother’s lament for her child’s apparent disregard.

I’m thankful as hell that “O Moon of Alabama” and “Mack the Knife” are not included here. But a whole evening of nothing but Weill can get pretty damned depressing.

This show is only playing through the next month. If you’re sick of happy-happy schlock, run to the tiny Zipper Theatre. But hide the razor blades before you get back home.