Who’s Dancing Off With a New "Fiddler" Book?

As I suspected, Fiddler on the Roof, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, remains a beloved show and so everyone who wrote in for the chance to win a free copy of my friend Barbara Isenberg’s new book “Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World's Most Beloved Musical,” got the right answer to my question about the name of the village in which the show's beleaguered milkman Tevye lives: Anatevka.

But there can only be one winner and the lucky guy is Gerardo González Fernandez, who wrote in from Mexico, where, he says, he's currently in rehearsals to play Uncle Fester in a production of The Addams Family. Congratulations to him, best wishes to his show and thanks to all of who you who participated in this giveaway.

And here's a consolation prize for Fiddler fans in L.A.: Barbara's giving a talk about the book tonight at the Skirball Cultural Center.  You can find out more about that by clicking here.

There's no additional post today but if you feel in the need for some theater-related stuff to read, I hope you'll check out "Broadway & Me: The Magazine," a collection of articles, photos and videos I update regularly. You can find it by clicking here and I hope you'll enjoy it enough to subscribe to it too.  

Who's Flying Off with the New Spider-Man Book?

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Now this is more like it.  Unlike last week when I got  crickets in response to my giveaway quiz, a whole bunch of you wrote in for the chance to win the new book “Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History,” which just came out this week.

And all the folks who responded answered correctly that Alan Cumming was originally supposed to play the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. So once again, I put all their names in a hat and my husband K (who’s been getting a kick out of doing this) plucked one out. The lucky guy who's getting to fly off with the book (plus the tickets to the new musical Disaster!) is Kevin Smith. Congratulations to him and thanks to all the rest of you who participated.  

 

I’ve got nothing else to giveaway (at least not for a while) and so will be returning to my regular news and reviews in future posts. But before I do, I thought those of you who didn’t win the book might find some consolation in reading about it in the following articles:

Click here for AP theater reporter Mark Kennedy’s interview with the book’s author Glen Berger. 

 

Click here for an insightful analysis of backstage tell-all books by my friend Howard Sherman.

 

And click here for a terrific review of the book that my friend Mark Harris did for the New York Times.

Yeah, Another Giveaway…But A Really Big One

First things first:  it looks like I owe you guys an apology. Because either you all really don’t want to see Disaster! (which I don’t believe) or I made the giveaway question too cumbersome (which is probably the case.) Whatever the reason, no one wrote in for the last giveaway so I’ve got no winner to announce. 
 

But I’m betting that it will be different with this week’s giveaway because up for grabs is a copy of the eagerly anticipated new book “Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History” by Glen Berger.  

As most theater lovers know, Berger was Julie Taymor’s co-writer on Spider-Man: Turn off The Dark, which, as his book title suggests, may be the most notorious musical of all time. Luckily, he kept notes during the show’s long and troubled gestation and now his 384-page tell-all is touted to reveal all the behind-the-scenes dirt about the battles between Taymor and her erstwhile collaborators the big rock musicians—but total musicals novices—Bono and the Edge.

The book is due out Nov. 5 but the New York Post columnist Michael Riedel has already had a sneak peek and you can see some of the advanced dish he been sharing by clicking here. 

Even better, you can get a chance to have your own free copy of the book (plus a bonus prize of the tickets to Disaster!) by emailing me the name of the actor who was originally supposed to play the show’s villainous Green Goblin at jan@broadwayandme.com by midnight this Sunday, Nov. 3.

And speaking of green, let me join the chorus of congratulations to Wicked, the Wizard of Oz prequel that tells the story of the defiantly green witch Elphaba, cause it celebrates its 10th year on Broadway today.