London Still

Don't threaten my love of Murder, She Wrote. I will cut you.

I recently received a letter from a new friend. He is in "the biz" but I did not know that, and our paths had never crossed in real life until Christmas Eve, when they crossed at the holiday party of a mutual friend. And, to be specific, by "real life" I mean the very strange thing that happens when you are an actor, where conversations go like this:Him: Hi, I'm M, nice to meet you.Al: Hi I'm Al.Him: Hi.[four minutes of totally "Muggle" type conversation occurs--about LA, the holidays, and 90s television {including a reference to Lady Aberline from Mister Rodgers}, followed by--]Him [cont]: Oh yes, I saw you.Al: "Saw" me?Him: On SVU. Yes. Al: How?Him: ...I...watch... television.Al: Right.Him: You were great.Al: Thank you.Him: I mean I've seen you in other theatre things... like Hello Again [the hostess of this holiday party was also in Hello Again]...and you know, Master Class.Al: Right. [it dawns on me, taking me by surprise, once again, as it always does, that a lot of people see an actor--a lot more people than an actor will ever see...think on THAT...]Him: Anyway!And then we proceeded to dissect the ENTIRE CANON OF 80s and 90s pop culture for the next two hours. Recently I received the following email from him:Al Silbs.  Happy 2012.  I have to tell you – and I don’t want you to be overwhelmed… I don’t want things to get awkward or anything… but… in the near-month since our meeting, I have definitely found myself watching Murder, She Wrote and…  I mean.  Al.  I just don’t know.  It really doesn’t live up to my childhood memories.  Like, in my mind it was just MacGyver except with Cora Hoover Hooper.  But.  It’s REALLY not.  And they’re all in Maine!  I’m just a little conflicted.  I mean, I was able to watch all 7 seasons of Family Ties recently – and it totally lived up to my warm sense-memories.  But, Murder, She Wrote?  I’m not as sure.   Maybe I just caught some clunker episodes?  But …I feel like you might dispute the notion that there are clunker episodes to begin with.  So, I’m not sure.I think you might be alarmed by my festival of underlining in the previous paragraphs.  It’s a work-habit, but then I started thinking – this is a chick who pays attention to syntax and details, I have to keep it consistent.  So now it looks like I’m e-mailing you a term paper. How are you?  How’s Astoria?M[**crickets**]

JB reflects my *exact* emotions to this email

"How are you?""How's Astoria?"Is this man OUT OF HIS MIND? How can he flippantly ask HOW I AM when he has attacked my love of Jessica Fletcher so profoundly? [mouth sputters!] Pah pah pah! Does he think I will forgive him?! Does he think he can flatter me so simply because it is evident that he follows me on "The Twitter" closely enough to know that I am choking my blog readers with English lessons as well as unnaturally re-interested in Murder She Wrote enough to record it every day onto my DVR and watch it obsessively because Jessica Fletcher is a friend who never lets you down?! [waves her arms and stomps around in Lucy Van Pelt-style fury.]I needed a moment.So I took it. I did breathing exercises and I got a grip.Then I responded. Thus:Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoooa. (I hope you could hear that the last "whoa" section was sung to the first few lines of "She Loves Me"....)I don't know what to say. I mean. What do I address first?The fact you opened with Al Silbs?Your consistency with the underlining? Or...The "term paper" you wrote? And SPEAKING OF "WROTE"....Who. Do. You. THINK. You. Are? Look. MSW is not good. And it is not just "Family Ties and Next Gen are not good but really just dated but heartwarming nonetheless" WAY.It is actually pretty bad.

...M? Jessica is SO disappointed in you...

I will throw 80-90s TV a bone: there was totally a "style" of prime-time drama that was akin to the comparison of "people once, in recent memory, dressed up to travel on an airplane and now they wear their pajamas." (Thank you Reading Rainbow, thank you Marina Serkis and Gates MacFadden, thank you the entire cast of Diagnosis Murder for reminding us that this is ACTING...and by the way please send this memo to David Caruso because he clearly did *not* get that memo....)But I firmly (!!!) believe MSW falls under the category of "so bad it's good" in a car crash way, as well as "entertaining purely because of nostalgia" way. It is entertainment that falls in the Venn Diagram of CSI: Miami with Magnum PI. Yay-- someone was eaten by an alligator in the Everglades but the short shorts and mustache makes it all palatable. Plus the frozen face of Angela Lansbury at the end as the credits roll fills me with Pavlovian glee. There is a word for this kind of entertainment in England-- camp. It is CAMP. It is light, fluffy, virtuously clunky, terrible television that goes down as smooth as doughnuts for dinner-- delicious, too sweet, and you are hungry five minutes later. The End. [Angela Lansbury freeze frame]* Basically, this is the message I want to send: do not threaten my love of Murder She Wrote. I will, and I truly mean it, I will cut you.

Words for Interlochen Center for the Arts

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the grey, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless an pale. And then – the glory – so that cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished."And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer-blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken."And this I believe: that the free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. That is what I am and what I am about. I can understand what a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed we are lost."- John Steinbeck, Chapter 13, East of Eden

There's nothing quite like a *real* book...

Glove Love

Sometimes it is called “The Land that is Shaped Like a Hand.” That would be because it is. Some people call it “The Mitten.” Some “The Glove.”All of these are equally valid and as far as I am concerned, inter-changeable. But one thing remains constant: whatever the identifier, my love of the state of Michigan is forever, steadfast and true. The real deal. Real like Ross loving Rachel. As a real a thing as Henry James’ The Real Thing. Or Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing (Or Vanessa Williams’ or Kurt Andersen’s or ...) Like the French loving cheese… like teen-vampire love… Michiganders legitimately, and with a full sincerity free from all whimsey or irony, declare where they are from in Michigan by referring to the area on an actual real-life hand.Examples,    “I am from Bad Axe,” this fictional Michigander will say to you in a flat-vowel-ed Michigan accent (so flat, in fact, that you will swear they just said “BEE-ad EE-ax”). And you, after deciphering what they just said, and being a Normal-Non-Michigan-Muggle-type will reply,     “...Where in Christ is that?”And they, smiling as broadly as their vowels in a manner in which only Michiganders can, will reply,    “Why, it’s in the thumb!” And then, this person will without question get out their hand and SHOW you exactly where they live on their portable hand-map as if you didn't know where a thumb was located, but perhaps you don't and these people are so friendly they really don't mind the demo.  Um… isn’t that the most charming thing you have ever heard?                                               ...Like, in the whole of your life?*Okay, now, all that said, here is how you do the Michigan Hand shake…that I may-or-may-not-have, made up. The entire act is what I like to call…[*drum-roll please*] GLOVE LOVE. [: ::confetti:: :]To mirror, of course, the Glove Love in my heart that shall never die. (Not even if I give birth to a werewolf baby...)STEP 1 - PRESENT THE “GLOVE”Hold up your right hand in front of you (recommended distance is approximately 10 inches from your face, perpendicular, as if touching a window before you)STEP 2 - DECLARE YOUR “GLOVE LOVE”Say aloud, “Glove Love” to the handshakes’ recipient, followed by a sincere, generally appetizing look that evokes anything from flirtation to unwavering brotherhood, or everything in between at once. STEP 3 - INVITE THE “GLOVE LOVE” Instruct your recipient to match your upheld hand as one might do in a “mirroring” exercise, and feel the “love” as your hands touch. STEP 4 - TAKE IT “U.P” A NOTCHIf you are really feeling the Glove Love, then you need to take it up a notch, and by UP, I mean the “U.P” and by the “U.P,” I mean the Upper Peninsula. Invite the recipient to “Upper Peninsula me!” by extending your left hand sideways and crossing it over and above your already presented hand (thus, vaguely resembling the Northwest geography of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) and having them match that in the same, intoxicatingly adorable manner. (Have you taught James Earl Jones my now not-so-secret handshake...? Um... because I have. So you can stop making fun of me and buzz off! Because a certain Michigan-native named James Earl Jones loved it. He hand flirted with me by interlacing his fingers post “Upper Peninsula” and laughed that signature “HA HA HA!” laugh he did at the beginning of Coming to America. He loved it. HE GLOVE LOVED IT...)STEP 5 - BASK. Do. Do bask. Go on…Bask in the love…     …The Glove Love.

A Telegram

Shura returned that night to find him slumped in his chair, his head buried in one hand, a telegram in the other.      "Mikhail," she said, “whatever is the matter?”But it was clear to her—only one thing could cause her husband to bury his head so. Mikhail remained motionless, unable to rise to her question and so, allowed her to take the telegram from his hands herself, read it and know for certain: Gershom, wrote Rabbi Syme, was dead. His estate and entire amassed and untouched fortune, left solely to his nephew Mikhail, awaiting him, where his name still hung above the door. Shura folded the telegram and placed it on the desk.      "Mikhail," she said, kneeling before him and placing her hands upon his lap in consolation, "what would you say to one another now? After everything?”      "My uncle would only ask whether I made money or not,” Mikhail replied, eyes fixed on the telegram now laying upon the desk, “That is all he'd want to know."      "Come now, I'm serious."Mikhail sighed and closed his eyes, not wanting to snap at her, but unable to utter everything swelling within him in a single explanation; the wicked, pulsing shadows of all that had occurred between him and his uncle Gershom.      "When I first met you," he answered, "what I had done—far more than attempting to teach or proselytize or even simply survive—what I was truly doing was nothing greater than running away from home..." He blinked heavily, "...like a common, petulant child. I disappeared into the night on a steam train that carried cargo freight never to be heard from again.”She beheld her husband and her heart roared. She scarcely recognized him— so contorted was his person with the recollections of a shattered youth. Not even labor and cold and exile burdened him more greatly than the memory of his uncle and all that had, and perhaps more crucially, had not, passed between them.     “According to that” he indicated to the folded telegram “Gershom looked for me for months. But I am certain that is all he would want to know if I ever returned." He stood and moved toward the desk, his shoulders encumbered with pondering, and he absently piled and covered papers (as he often did to protect Shura from the knowledge of his work), returning again and again to the telegram itself detesting every rush of feeling surging through him.      “Money conjured up a fog around my uncle. It can do that to men. Some men. My uncle applied himself so—” his voice caught here, his words either being deliberately selected or stuck within his throat, “So passionately, I suppose, to the acquisition of money, that he quite forgot me.” Mikhail snatched his eyes from the telegram, and looked upward and out the window. “If the thought of me ever burst through that fog, then another thought crept with it: that I, his nephew, was merely an imposition.” Mikhail shrugged his shoulders, which silently told her things were better this way. “—And now I plot the extinction of private property and Gershom leaves me his entire fortune. Funny, isn't it? That. Neither one of us out of spite.”She sensed her limitations and her insides wrenched. Goodness, Shura thought, acceptance is so broad a thing. She believed his peace.Still, she noted how quietly he wore and wore a groove into the desk with his thumb.

The Adventures of Sophie and Sharon: Part 9, A Sophie and Sharon Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!!

In My Life: Victoria

 Victoria HindeLondon, England2009

In My Life: Bronner's Christmas Wonderland

Bronner's Christmas Wonderland Frankenmuth, Michigan (part of Road Trip 2011 with Lance Horne)July, 2010

Funeral! [a “How To” Guide]

Funerals are a social mystery-- a formulaic social mystery, but mysterious nonetheless for the sporadic nature of funerals mixed with a general avoidance of discussion on the subject in Western culture, makes it difficult to acquaint oneself with what’s expected in terms of proper behavior. You just muddle through each funeral, hoping you’re doing the right thing, and then muddle through it again the next time. So, if you have been to one, you have a decent idea of the basics, but should any other funerals crop up, assume you are as royally screwed as you were the first time around. Regardless, here are a few basics to keep in mind. First Things FirstFor Starters.1. Make certain you are at a funeral. How you ask? There will be signs—not literal signs, mind you. Not neon signs in child-like scrawl one finds stapled to the side of trees and lamp-posts as if the funeral were some kind of morbid yard sale, but rather, indicators.      A. Someone will be deceased. Make certain someone is, else, you are not at a funeral, you are at a very dark house party. Someone being dead is often the point of the funeral, differentiating it from any other kind of social function.      B. There will be a somber mood. (Unless you are cynical, or Irish, or you are at the funeral of a particularly evil dictator… or a Wicked Witch.)2. Make certain that you are at least Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon away from the deceased. You might not know the deceased personally, but make certain that you are more than merely there for the free deli spread. That would make you a “Funeral Crasher.” Which brings me to…3. Do not (consciously or un—) crash a funeral. The very worst kind of crasher on evil par with the evilest of evil villains Sauron, Hitler, both The Alien and The Predator, and debt-collecting terrorist telemarketers everywhere. Crash a funeral and you can crown yourself an archetypal evil overlord complete with      A. a massive army of The Major M’s (monsters or monkeys or machines),      B. possibly a flaming eyeball,      C. green skin, and      D. a head-piece made of brain-wave-protecting metal and/or spiky nails. Second Things SecondObserving acceptable funeral etiquette. Funeral etiquette is tricky. As previously mentioned, it is an unpleasant subject to dwell upon, and, unless you are in Public Service or are Lord Voldemort, your experience with funerals may tend to be few and far between. 1. FoodDuring the days immediately following a death the family of the deceased is usually too overwhelmed to carry on the normal every day living chores, such as cooking and cleaning. So food would be more than welcome.      A. Unless it is shitty food, or      B. You bring steak sliders to a vegan household, or      C. Unless everyone brings the exact same dish, or      D. Unless the family’s fridge gets packed with so many containers of soup and pasta and goulash that the refrigerator and freezer threaten to explode.     E. Make certain you mark your Tupperware and list any cooking instructions.      F. Once in attendance of the funeral, make certain you eat both a giant and a finger sandwich. Science says the smaller or larger you make a sandwich, the more effing badass it becomes. 2. You will likely see people you have not seen in years.For better or for worse.      A. This is not the time to confront the man who slept with your ex-husband.      B. A certain degree of acceptable flirting with hot strangers depends on how close you are to the deceased or their family. Just make sure that hot stranger isn't a long-lost cousin. 3. AttireSubdued colors are most appropriate for funerals.     A. Do not wear a costume     B. Or a veil. Please. This isn’t a Bronte novel. 4. Expressing Sympathy     A. Simple, brief expressions of sympathy are usually best. Remember, above all, you are attending the funeral to show support of the person who has recently passed away, and your role is to support the survivors. This is not your platform for venting past disagreements, collecting on debts or hitting on the widow. Also, avoid at all costs making grieving a “contest.” People who think grief is a contest are instant losers of said contest. Don’t back a horse in that race.      B. Cause of death can be a difficult subject. Avoid statements such as “I am so sorry to hear of the loss of Nathan’s head— I am certain once they trawl the landfill for it, they can return it to the funeral home and you can finally have your peace. Gah! Not piece— of course I didn’t mean for the terrible pun to be made I was just… trying to…Dude, I’m sorry for your loss.” Don't be that guy.      C. Sending flowers is a traditional way to express your condolences. Be aware however, that if the grieving family is particularly poetic, flowers that will eventually die in about a week only serve as a reminder that everything dies. Just like their dead family member. 5. Sometimes things do not go as planned     A. If, throughout the course of the funeral process, you discover that the funeral home has, say, accidentally kept the body in a Chuck E' Cheese style ball pit, or, cremated the incorrect corpse, or anything else classified as a “disaster,” by all means keep that Intel to yourself. It is safe to say that today is already pretty shit for the family of the deceased. Thus, that info can wait.      B. Trust that in time it will all just seem like most Roper-centric episodes of Three's Company-- hysterically macabre.Final WordsPun intendedKeep these points in mind and you should be fine. If you screw up, you’ve blown it—absolutely feel free to bludgeon yourself with a sock full of toxic batteries. But before you do, just make certain no one screws up as royally at your funeral.

A 'Quick 5' with The Maryland Theatre Guide

A great, thought-provoking Q & A with The Maryland Theatre Guide. See you Friday!*Alexandra Silber will be back performing at The Kennedy Center on Dec 2, 2011, at 7:30 PM as part of The Barbara Cook Spotlight Series. She was last seen there in Master Class starring Tyne Daly. Alexandra’s London theatre credits include Carousel, Fiddler on The Roof and The Woman in White. She recently made her NYC debut in Hello Again at The Transport Group.You will be performing at The Kennedy Center on Dec 2nd in the Barbara Cook Spotlight Series. Can you give us a hint of what you will be singing at your concert?

©dan wooller

It feels odd to call my cabaret act London Still a concert because it feels like more of a theatre-piece. Probably because it tells a linear story; the tale of why I left America as a teenager, and why I returned. It is a classic tale of ‘there and back again’’- from Odysseus to Bilbo Baggins to Dorothy – we all return to the place where we began and are changed. It is a universal human experience.That said, I pepper it with my own details, from the serious to the utterly self-deprecating (one of my very favorite things to do). You’ll hear a great deal of Kander and Ebb, Kurt Weill, and of course Rodgers and Hammerstein, but it is also peppered with some jazz, pop and even some opera.What are your earliest memories of performing?I remember my very first Ballet recital when I was 5 – my class ran across the stage flapping our arms. My mom made everyone’s wings. I had bangs. There was cuteness. I also cut my teeth in the third grade in a production of Annie at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills. No, not what you are thinking, I circumvented ever playing the title character and in fact played Miss Hannigan. Thaaaat’s right. I was fierce and mean and convinced myself for years that she behaved so badly because of her drinking. I took it really seriously.A couple of weeks ago I went to the opening of the Kennedy Center’s beautiful production of Follies on Broadway. I was pleased to casually drop the following piece of trivia:“I really don’t know this musical at all. I know the premise and some of the songs, but mostly I’m a Follies virgin. Though, I would be totally lying if I said that I didn’t close the 5th grade talent show with “Broadway Baby.”Well, I did.I want to say I closed the 5th grade talent show with “Losing My Mind,” but it would be a lie.A great, funny lie, but a lie nonetheless.Anyhow I had a full-on period suitcase and concept costume.You have won critical acclaim in London for your performances in Carousel and Fiddler on the Roof. Why do you think British audiences love American musicals and are British audiences similar or different than American audiences?Why do they love American musicals? For the same reasons we revere Shakespeare – because we invented the genre! There is nothing like seeing American musicals performed by Americans, but what I love about the British relationship to American musicals is that they do not have the same cultural references to the pieces that Americans do, as well as a completely different sociological relationship to class structures and emotional expression – all of that is very real.An interesting example: when we began initially working on Fiddler on the Roof we were met with a perplexing issue about accents that went on for weeks. Fiddler is, to us, an American musical, possibly one of the best every written and a classic. Everyone played Lazar Wolf in High School. Everyone has been to at least one wedding where “Sunrise Sunset” made everyone melt.But in Britain, they do not have that relationship with the piece, the characters, the story. As an officially Christian country they are less generally familiar with Judaism as a widespread cultural attribute.To them, it is a European story… because it technically is. But most fascinating of all? Why in the world would these people speak in American accents in Europe? As American theatre-goers we do not hear American accents as “accents,” for us it is the neutral sound. It makes perfect sense that everyone is stomping around the shtetl sounding like they are from various parts of Jewish America because to Americans that is a relevant parallel.Not for the British.So. We started with the concept of “neutral accents” – all the Jews in Anatevka had the accent we all hear on BBC News called “Received Pronunciation” (or “RP”). That didn’t work because of RP’s projection of higher-class and education – all of a sudden Tevye’s daughters sounded like they were from private schools rather than ready to milk cows in the dead of winter. Weeks of trial and error later we decided upon a European Yiddish accent (ie, Eastern Europeans that learned to speak English in England), the Russians, in contrast, used RP. It worked. A completely unique issue to the British approach to the American musical and here is my ultimate point: Americans write wonderful musicals. The British re-interpret them, wonderfully. As a British actress (up until a couple of years ago) I am proud to have cut my professional teeth there.AND: Let’s not forget how much Americans love popular British musical theatre in return – thank you The Phantom of the Opera and Mamma Mia!. Just saying.I have to say, I truly believe that people love great theatre no matter what the geography.You were in Master Class here at the Kennedy Center with Tyne Daly. What were some of your fondest memories of that experience?For the 2009–10 theater season, the Kennedy Center presented Terrence McNally’s Nights at the Opera including The Lisbon Traviata, Master Class, and Golden Age, a special collection of three McNally plays on one of his favorite subjects – the opera. Without any exaggeration, being a part of that triptych of McNally plays was one of the most fulfilling artistic experiences of my life.So often as an actor, one can feel as though their contributions are limited – of course ideally theatre is collaborative, but we often have to take the visions of the director, the playwright, the designers into account, and though we hopefully are able to reach deep within ourselves and give, the greater principles as to why or what we are giving to can get muddled. It is rare that we get a chance to reach to offer something beyond “a great night at the theatre” and contribute to a Greater and Universal veneration of Art Itself.But sometimes experiences come along that make you feel as though you are making a contribution not only to the piece you are involved in, to your playwright, fellow actors, or the immediate audience members who will be in attendance, but to a greater cause – sometimes you get the opportunity to be a part of a contribution to art itself. That is what the Terrence McNally Triptych was: a celebratory contribution to the world of interpretive art itself, and I felt as though I was allowed and able to weave myself deeply into that experience on every level. I made lifelong friends across all three productions, and became reacquainted with myself and my life as an American (in my nation’s Capital nonetheless!)It was not just a “gig” (I mean, of course not, I was sharing a stage with Tyne Daly in one of the most important venues in the world). The point is: I was a part of something I believed mattered on a cosmic scale.My time in D.C. that spring also was a period of real transition and personal healing, not to mention the fact that Sophie DePalma went on to be the role in which I made my Broadway debut. But it all began here at the Kennedy Center.May every national artistic institution be so inspired.I remember spending time in the Green Room we all shared – every one of us playing cards and laughing in an array of different period costumes. I remember sneaking backstage to the Family Theater from the Eisenhower to watch the second act of Golden Age from the wings (because I was only in the first act of Master Class!).And best of all? I remember singing at Terrence and (his now husband) Tom’s wedding just outside the stage door along the banks of the Potomac on the most perfect spring day in the history of the world.Are there any roles on Broadway now that you would like to play?  I have always strived to do great work with gifted people regardless of the location, but some dreams/itchings include Nora in A Doll’s House, Rosalind in As You Like It, Anna in The King and I, Irene Malloy in (either!) The Matchmaker or Hello Dolly!, and an absolute dream would be to play Amalia Balash in She Loves Me (which, of course, Barbara Cook, the curator of the Spotlight Series in which I am appearing, originated herself).But truly, there would be no greater dream than getting to revisit Julie Jordan (of Carousel) at home on Broadway. I have been so fortunate to portray her in the West End, in my birthplace of Los Angeles, California, and bringing it to New York would be a dream._ Watch Alexandra Silber as Julie Jordan in Carousel at Reprise Theater Company in LA, singing “If Loved You” & “What’s the Use of Wonderin’" Go behind the scenes with Alexandra Silber, as she prepares at the half hour call to play Julie Jordan in the West End production of Carousel.Alexandra Silber’s website.