Broadway Tonight with Menken and Friends

No, I haven't gone off on some theatrical tangent. The Premier Performing Arts Theatre Company is the love child of the childhood friend written about a while back.

I am so happy that the fundraiser went off without a hitch and garnered this review at Broadway World. (Click the image to embiggen.)

Premier Performing Arts, a non-profit professional theatre company producing in Westchester County, presented its inaugural fundraiser, Broadway Tonight with Alan Menken and Friends, at the Tarrytown Music Hall to an enthusiastic crowd.
Broadway's history books were opened as the audience was treated to an array of performances by a long list of notable talents from the Great White Way. The fundraiser was to benefit PPA's yet to be announced spring musical-the first of many offerings expected to grace the Music Hall stage.

The evening opened with a welcome speech by Producing Artistic Director Dennis Edenfield, Managing Director David Guerdette and Music Director Chloe Sasson. The speech was interrupted by an "unexpected" speaker phone call to Edenfield's cell phone by PPA Advisory Board Member Bebe Neuwirth, who was not able to attend the event, but was calling to wish them well. Edenfield then turned over the mike to media personality Valerie Smaldone, who hosted the evening.

Broadway favorite Lee Roy Reams opened the evening with a short rendition of Menken's "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast, and then tickled the audience's funny bone with a medley from Sweet Charity. Next, John Treacy Egan reincarnated Chef Louis' "Les Poissons" from The Little Mermaid, then offered a medley of "Shall We Dance/I'd Rather Eat Than Cha-Cha."

Up and comers Will and Anthony Nunziata sang "Lullaby of Broadway" in preparation of their Feinstein's debut later this month.

Victoria Mallory and Kurt Peterson, who both sang beautifully as soloists, treated the audience to the most nostalgic moment of the evening when they sang "Tonight, Tonight" from West Side Story which they performed together at Lincoln Center in 1968. Mallory and Peterson were joined by Harvey Evans and Penny Worth to sing "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs" from Sondheim's Follies.

Read the rest of the piece complete with pictures - HERE.

I wish I could have been with him for this important milestone for the theatre company.

And so it goes.
*