Theater News

Spring Fever!

There was much hilarity, heart, merriment, and music at this year’s BC/EFA Easter Bonnet Competition.

New York City

The 19th annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet Competition was held for two performances on Monday and Tuesday, April 18 and 19, at the glorious New Amsterdam Theatre. The event marked the culmination of six weeks of fundraising by the companies of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and touring productions; this year, a total of nearly $2,850,000 was raised to benefit BC/EFA. Here, in the show’s opener, are a bevy of long-legged “girls” with a little something extra.

The opening number carried on an Easter Bonnet tradition by featuring former Ziegfeld girl Doris Eaton Travis, who’s still going strong at age 101. Here, Travis interacts with La Cage aux Folles‘ Michael Benjamin Washington in the guise of his alter-ego “Mahagony.”

Among the hosts of this year’s event were David Hyde Pierce (Spamalot) and Barrett Foa with his Avenue Q pal Rod, who obviously took a liking to Pierce.

As always, the competition featured lots of wonderful skits, songs, and dance numbers to go along with the presentation of the bonnets. Here’s the company of Beauty and the Beast parodying the “Big Spender” number from Sweet Charity.

The cast of the soon-to-close Good Vibrations offered a number titled “Some Chick in a Bikini and Her Busted Beach Kids.”

Members of the company of Hairspray performed a dance to the Cirque du Soleil song “Let Me Fall.”

Here’s “Diss-Order in the Court,” courtesy of the cast of Twelve Angry Men.

In a running joke that had the audience in stitches, Little Women star Sutton Foster showed us the wild, untamed, slutty side of Jo March.

Another hilarious moment came when the cast of Mamma Mia! took literally a review that claimed Good Vibrations made their show look like Sunday in the Park With George.

Here’s Elizabeth Parkinson with her new baby in “Voices of Wings,” performed by the company of Movin’ Out.

The Altar Boyz joyously proclaimed that “God Is Everywhere.”

Officer Lockstock (Don Richard) and Little Sally (Jennifer Cody) from the late, lamented Urinetown were once again on hand to smash other shows to smithereens with their barbs.

Here are two Steel Magnolias: Frances Sternhagen (with bonnet) and Delta Burke.

Maureen McGovern, Sutton Foster’s co-star in Little Women, led into the finale with her stirring rendition of the David Friedman anthem “Help Is on the Way.”

At the end of the show, Jeff Goldblum (The Pillowman), Jessica Lange (The Glass Menagerie), and Harvey Fierstein (Fiddler on the Roof) took the stage to announce the winners of the competition. (Lange was a little confused by the winners’ categories, as you can tell by Fierstein’s expression.) Movin’ Out won the prize for best bonnet presentation and The Phantom of the Opera was the fundraising champ with $209,615.