{"id":2562,"date":"2010-10-10T22:52:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T02:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=2562"},"modified":"2010-10-10T23:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T03:39:00","slug":"showstopper-mame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=2562","title":{"rendered":"Showstopper: “Mame”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen other video of Angela Lansbury in the short-lived revival of <\/a>Mame<\/a>, <\/em>but nothing with such clarity<\/em>. It’s stunning to see this so clearly and with close-ups on the legend as she reacts through the number. Onna White supplied the choreography. This was apparently filmed on July 24, 1983, the revival’s opening night. I was 17 days old, happily oblivious to the joy happening onstage at the Gershwin Theatre! The title song is a thrilling moment. Mame has just won over the stubborn old South family of her beloved Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside by an unexpected display of horsemanship and being the first to ever bring a live fox back from a fox hunt. What follows is one of the great showstoppers in all musical theatre: the show’s title song. It starts out low-key with a striking banjo accompaniment as the company sings her praises. At first, Lansbury has her back to the audience – breaking one of the cardinal rules of stage acting – with thrilling results. As the number builds and builds, she becomes incorporated into the song as the ensemble pays her a spirited tribute. The leading lady does not sing one word of the song, but it is a celebration of her and everything that she represents to the characters onstage and the people in the audience. It’s simple, euphoric and it never failed to rouse the audience. Enjoy:<\/p>\n

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I’ve seen other video of Angela Lansbury in the short-lived revival of Mame, but nothing with such clarity. It’s stunning to see this so clearly and with close-ups on the legend as she reacts through the number. Onna White supplied the choreography. This was apparently filmed on July 24, 1983, the revival’s opening night. I … Continue reading Showstopper: “Mame”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1598,1864,1887],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-angela-lansbury","tag-jerry-herman","tag-mame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2564,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}