{"id":50,"date":"2008-02-17T03:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-17T07:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clients.chrisvanpatten.com\/theatreaficionado.com\/2008\/02\/happy-birthday-patricia-routledge.html"},"modified":"2010-10-25T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2010-10-25T21:33:12","slug":"happy-birthday-patricia-routledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=50","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Patricia Routledge!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This site&#8217;s favorite musical theatre diva turns 79 today. With word from Variety that Trevor Nunn may be directing a revival of <em>A Little Night Music <\/em>for the Menier Chocolate Factory, wouldn&#8217;t she make a marvelous addition to the cast as Madame Armfeldt? I&#8217;d certainly cross the pond for that.<\/p>\n<p>I listened to four different renditions of my much-loved &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/2010\/01\/duet-for-one-the-first-lady-of-the-land-1600-pennsylvania-avenue.html\">Duet for One<\/a>&#8221; this afternoon (it even warranted a playlist on itunes) delivered by three noted sopranos. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Patricia_Routledge\">Patricia Routledge<\/a> (at the world premiere performance in Philadelphia and several months later at the final performance in NY; with different versions of the song, the former of which has been reinstated as the official), <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/June_Anderson\">June Anderson<\/a> who recorded the First Lady for the CD premiere of Bernstein&#8217;s score <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.arkivmusic.com\/classical\/album.jsp?album_id=3634\">A White House Cantata<\/a>, <\/em>and finally <a href=\"http:\/\/judykaye.com\/\">Judy Kaye<\/a> who recorded the piece for the John McGlinn <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arkivsong.com\/classical\/Song?album_id=167220\"><em>Broadway Showstoppers<\/em><\/a> compilation CD. Anderson&#8217;s is pretty tepid; she has plenty of voice, but little humor and practically no personality. She barely even tried to delineate between the two first ladies. She&#8217;s also the only one out of the three who doesn&#8217;t cap off the end of the song on a high D above C (kudos to Pat and Jude for such prowess). For a famed coloratura soprano who has sung the roles of Cunegonde, The Queen of the Night and Lucia, among others, you&#8217;d think she&#8217;d be able to pop out a little old D. Hey June, I bet Renee would do it better. So there.<\/p>\n<p>If I knew how to upload songs on here, I would.<\/p>\n<p>Also, a special birthday shout out to Broadway and film legend (and first-time Oscar nominee) <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hal_Holbrook\">Hal Holbrook<\/a> who is 83 today. I wish him luck at the Oscars. Though I love Bardem&#8217;s performance in <em>No Country for Old Men <\/em>and is a lock for the award, there is a small sentimental part of me rooting for Holbrook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This site&#8217;s favorite musical theatre diva turns 79 today. With word from Variety that Trevor Nunn may be directing a revival of A Little Night Music for the Menier Chocolate Factory, wouldn&#8217;t she make a marvelous addition to the cast as Madame Armfeldt? I&#8217;d certainly cross the pond for that. I listened to four different &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=50\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy Birthday, Patricia Routledge!<\/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":[1614,1653,1662,1663,1661,1619],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1600-pennsylvania-avenue","tag-a-white-house-cantata","tag-hal-holbrook","tag-judy-kaye","tag-june-anderson","tag-patricia-routledge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","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=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2756,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/2756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}