Issue #150: May 1, 2005

• After only 94 performances, the producers of Good Vibrations threw in the towel on the Beach Boys musical on April 24.  When it opened on February 2, after six weeks of previews, the musical received negative reviews across the board.

• Canadian actor Colm Feore is collecting an impressive number of rave reviews for his performance in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Belasco Theater until June 12.  Not a small feat since the production's marquee lead is none other than Academy Award winner Denzel Washington.

• A producing team in Toronto is planning to replicate New York's City Center's successful Encores! series this summer by bringing to Massey Hall a revival of Annie Get Your Gun.  In the lead is Louise Pitre, last seen on Broadway and on the road in the Abba mega musical Mamma Mia!  Toronto audiences will welcome back Miss Pitre where she has graced its stages as Fantine in Les Miserables, Piaf and in Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.  In Annie Get Your Gun the role of Frank Butler is Canadian country music star Paul Brandt.  The production will be much like the aforementioned series with costumes and lighting but no scenery.  Have no fear with the heavenly acoustics of Massey Hall; no one will miss the sets when the 25-piece orchestra breaks into "There's No Business Like Show Business."  Opening is early August.

• Another of the British stage aristocracy has passed.  Sir John Mills' career spanned 70 years playing memorable characters on the stage, film and television.  Although he originally started out in the 1920s as a song and dance man, his first major hit was on the London stage in the 1939 production Of Mice and Men.  He made appearances on the U.S. and Canadian stage including two in Toronto. In the mid 1970s he played Pip's guardian, Joe Gargery, in Dickens' Great Expectations, which made its last stop after a successful tour at Toronto's O'Keefe Centre.  Also, he was the lead in the 1984 pre-Broadway run of Little Lies at the Royal Alex.  In 1971 he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in the classic Ryan's Daughter.  Mr. Mills was the patriarch of a family of actors.  Daughter Juliet Mills is best known to North American television audiences from the 1970s series The Nanny and the Professor although she first appeared on screen only a few weeks old with her father in In Which We Serve.  Sister Hayley was a mainstay in Disney films of the 1960s including The Parent Trap.  Her film debut was with her father in Tiger Bay. Son Jonathan is a scriptwriter.  With a 70-year plus career his roles are too numerous to mention; however, his starring role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips catapulted him to international recognition.   When he died at the age of 96 on April 23, Mills left us with a body of work that many could only wish to achieve a fraction of in their careers.