rt
Entertainment
Making A Point
Musical comedy addresses racist issues.
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
R
Sean Mosely as Purlie
and Samara Littleton as
Lutiebelle in the Mosaic
Youtly-Vheatre produc-
-
z
tion.4ait
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Roasting Bill
William Shatner, 75, rolls along.
The veteran actor, who plays Denny
Crane in Boston Legal, is up for a
2006 Emmy as Best Supporting
Actor in a Drama Series. A science
documentary he narrated, How
William Shatner Changed the World,
also is up for
an Emmy, for
Best Nonfiction
Special. The
Emmys air 8 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 27,
on NBC.
In May, Shatner
visited
Israel
William Shatner
to announce
the establishment of the William
Shatner-Jewish National Fund
Therapeutic Riding Consortium
Endowment for Israel. Shatner plans
to help raise $10 million to provide
horse-riding programs for disabled
children of every religious back-
ground.
This is all nice — but not as much
fun as the upcoming Comedy Central
54
August 17 - 2006
ick Sperling, who
founded Mosaic Youth
Theatre of Detroit
but rarely is seen on stage, gets
a chance to perform with the
troupe in his favorite musical,
Purlie.
Portraying 01' Cap'n in
Mosaic's debut summer produc-
tion, Sperling can be seen Aug.
18-20 and 25-27 at the Detroit
Film Theatre in the Detroit
Institute of Arts.
This project, which includes
Mosaic alumni and adult mem-
Roast of William Shatner promises to
be; it airs 10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 20,
on Comedy Central.
While comics have lampooned
Shatner before, he remains a rich,
goldmine of comedic delights — from
his easily imitated speaking style
to his larger-than-life roles to his
obvious egotistical delight in being
Bill Shatner, the guy who has faced
down Klingons and ageist Hollywood
executives.
Maybe the best thing about
Shatner is that he actually seems to
enjoy mocking himself. He knows he's
one of a kind and just goes with it.
The Princess Sings
Broadway composer Adam Guettel,
41, says he is working on a musical-
stage version of The Princess Bride
and that Jewish novelist and screen-
writer William Goldman, 75, is writ-
ing the book for the musical.
Few modern children's books
have had the enduring success of
The Princess Bride (1973). Goldman
crafted an exciting and funny adven-
ture novel for kids and adults. In
1987, Goldman wrote a snappy ver-
sion of Bride for the screen, and the
bers of the community working
alongside young artists, tells the
story of an aspiring preacher,
Purlie Victorious, who sets out
to acquire a church by conning
a Georgia plantation owner, 01'
Cap'n.
"Purlie became my father's
favorite musical after he saw it
on Broadway, and I used to hear
him playing the cast recording all
the time," says Sperling, whose
current administrative goal is to
raise $500,000 for Mosaic by Feb.
1 to get matching funds from the
Kresge Foundation.
"I don't know of any musical
that has such infectious songs,
film version became an enormous
hit over time. (Goldman has written
many famous movies — Marathon
Man and Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid,
among them
— and has won
two screenwrit-
ing Oscars.)
Guettel recent-
ly told a reporter
he had to "climb
a
mountain"
Adam Guettel
to meet the
expectations others impose on him
because of his ancestry and the
expectations he imposes on himself.
Guettel's grandfather was the leg-
endary composer Richard Rodgers.
Adam's mother, Mary Rodgers
Guettel, is the author of the classic
teen novel Freaky Friday. She also
wrote Once Upon a Mattress, the hit
musical.
Long labeled a "promising" com-
poser, Guettel finally got the word
"promising" removed as a descrip-
tive when his musical The Light in
the Piazza ran for more than a year
on Broadway, and he won the Tony
Award for Best Musical in 2005,
Mosaic Youth Theatre founder
Rick Sperling portrays 01' Cap'n
in Purlie.
Leder Leads
Vanished, a new TV series on FOX,
premieres 9 p.m. Monday, Aug. 21.
The show combines elements of CSI,
24 and The West Wing.
PR materials reveal a plotline that
unfolds as the wife of a prominent
senator disappears. The subsequent
search for her "uncovers evidence
that potentially can shake the foun-
dations of American society."
Vanished is produced and directed
by Mimi Leder,
53. She is one of
the few women
to make it as a
top TV director
(ER) and to have
success helm-
ing action films
(Deep Impact).
Mimi Leder
Mimi's father,
Paul Leder, served as an American
Army medic during World War II and
helped liberate Buchenwald. After
the war, he became a "B" movie
director, and Mimi grew up on film
sets. Mimi's mother, Etyl, a Belgian
Jew and a concert pianist, was the
only member of her immediate fam-
ily to survive Auschwitz.