Kate Mckinnon sings “Hallelujah” on Saturday Night Live.
Waitress now playing at the American Repertory Theatre
oh hot damn, this is my jam | she used to be mine → waitress (sara bareilles/ jessie mueller)
So you know when you put off doing something because you’re not quite sure how it will be but are hoping for it to be great and don’t want it not to be? I had avoided watching Film!Waitress for so long because there was so much hype, and by extension was the same with anything to do with the musical. Well, night before last I finally gave in and watched the film and let me tell you, it hit me way harder than I ever thought it would (cut to me inconsolably crying for hours). Something, the essence of the film, spoke to me at this exact moment in my life when I needed it to, and I’ll just be forever grateful. This prompted me to listen to everything that has been released from Musical!Waitress - suffice it to say (already loving Jessie and Sara), I fell further in love. This is very rough as I did it quickly while in my distraught/ecstatic state before the emotions eased, so expect that, but I love the song so much and am happy to say I think I’ve found another dream role. I ♥ Jenna Hunterson.
Stephen Sondheim & the Original Cast of Into the Woods Reunite in Costa Mesa
‘Iowa.’ When Kelli O’Hara sings that word, a plain place name becomes a prism of rippling ambivalence.
Portraying an Italian war bride transplanted to the middle of America, Ms. O’Hara finds a breathtaking sweep of feelings within the iteration of those three small syllables. “Iowa,” she sings, in the number that begins the new musical “The Bridges of Madison County,” and you hear both the heady hope of liberation and the hopeless acceptance of captivity.
And suddenly, Madison County starts to seem like a far more exciting place to visit than you might have imagined.
I am happy to say that Ms. O’Hara more than keeps the promises made by her interpretation of that first song, one of many sumptuous pieces that feel as if they had been written specifically for her by the show’s composer, Jason Robert Brown. She also confirms her position as one of the most exquisitely expressive stars in musical theater. Her Francesca, a questioning farmer’s wife who briefly discovers a love with all the answers, brings a rich and varied topography to what might have been strictly flat corn country.
…When you have a central performance as sensitive, probing and operatically rich and lustrous as Ms. O’Hara’s, you won’t find me kvetching too loudly
…Now, Ms. O’Hara is giving us another reason to be grateful for the existence of a critically reviled novel.
…But Mr. Brown also brings layered textures of yearning to his songs for Francesca that make us experience the world through her startled, newly awakened senses. Or at least that’s how we feel when Ms. O’Hara sings, in a voice that courses from flutelike fragility to thundering affirmation and back again.
…But passion, as writers from Sappho to Tolstoy have reminded us, is always as much about its own fiery existence as its object. And when Ms. O’Hara sings, we believe unconditionally in the fire, and why it both exalts and troubles her.
…But then Ms. O’Hara would sing. And the field of corn that is this production’s backdrop would seem to turn into a labyrinthine, richly hued forest where a woman, and an audience, can get lost in ecstasy.
”- The New York Times review of Kelli O’Hara in The Bridges of Madison County (x)
#teamkelli
(via victoriafication)
