Kitt Toni

All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.

With his controversial The Wild Party, prolific composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa continues to stretch the possibilities for contemporary musical theater. His racy musical is based on a 1928 poem about one night of escalating decadence, through which LaChiusa stages a brilliant, savage, polystylistic unmasking of the lies we live by. The original cast recording captures the manic energy of the top-rate cast, including Mandy Patinkin, Toni Collette, and Eartha Kitt all working together in electrifying ensemble. --Thomas May

Ever since he emerged in the 1990s as one of Broadway's brightest hopes, the young and prolific composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa has been charged with the undeniably Sisyphean task of revitalizing the moribund musical. Along with such Tony-nominated efforts as 1999's Marie Christine--his Americanized retelling of the Medea tragedy--LaChiusa has managed to galvanize the genre with The Wild Party. Curiously enough, Joseph Moncure March's once-banned narrative poem of Prohibition-era decadence is the basis for two vastly different musicals produced within the same season (the other being Andrew Lippa's off-Broadway show at Manhattan Theatre Club). LaChiusa's work, which was produced by the Public Theatre's visionary director George C. Wolfe (who also collaborated on the book), kick-starts the new century with a manic, many-leveled, viciously satirical portrait--both brilliantly period and postmodern--of jazz-era alienation, sketching its "sexually ambitious" and "ambi-sextrous" promenade of characters with bold, flinty strokes. In addition to the 1928 poem, it seems equally inspired by The Threepenny Opera, Stephen Sondheim's dark humors, even Ann Douglas's cultural history, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. LaChiusa depicts the party-turned-nightmare trajectory of the story through complex, polystylistic counterpoint, as well as such searingly straightforward numbers as "After Midnight Dies"; even the orchestrations (by Bruce Coughlin) are fantastically detailed and allusive. Mandy Patinkin is made to draw on his full repertory of shticks and gives a wildly over-the-top characterization of the vaudeville clown Burrs, while Toni Collette (an Oscar nominee for The Sixth Sense), playing his unhappy lover Queenie who throws this mother of all parties, plays against him with toxic, combustible energy. For all the star turns here (including some economical but superbly effective cameos by Eartha Kitt), it's the unflappable ensemble that keeps this party going till the bitter end. --Thomas May

A conversation with Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, considered to be one of the world's best living foreign correspondents, about a life in journalism and his role as an eye-witness to history--with a particular emphasis on dictators and the Third World. Later, a discussion of The Wild Party, a new musical based on poet Joseph Moncure March's 1928 tribute to the jazz age of Manhattan, which tells the down-and-dirty story of one wild night thrown by two Vaudeville performers, with director and co-writer George C. Wolfe and actresses Toni Collette and Eartha Kitt. Finally, New York Daily News sports cartoonist Bill Gallo on his first book, Drawing a Crowd, which collects some of his most famous images, of figures like George Steinbrenner, Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio and many more.This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Cover picture and story features Toni Braxton, "Back On Top After Bankruptcy." Regular features include: Black History, Books, Celebrities, Education, Entertainment, Jet Beauty of the Month, Jet Top 20 Singles, Labor, Lifestyles, Medicine, National Report, Newsmakers, People, Religion, Society World, Sports, Television, This Week's Best Photos, and Ticker Tape. Magazine is 5x7.5 and features nice color photos.