Theater Hall of Fame inductee, actor and singer Betty Buckley gives a nod to women in musicals in her one-person show The Vixens of Broadway. Along with songs from Evita, Chicago, Company, Into the Woods and Oklahoma, Buckley sings selections from Dear World, which she starred in during its London premiere in 2013.
Buckley has had an illustrious and varied career. She debuted on Broadway as Martha Jefferson in the musical 1776 (she reportedly landed the role on her first day in New York City). She later appeared as Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, singing “Memory,” which has since become her signature tune, and took home a Tony Award for her effort. She performed as Norma Desmond in the 1994 London and 1995 New York productions of Sunset Boulevard, snagging an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in England. Just last year, she played a drunk, surly widow in Horton Foote’s play The Old Friends off-Broadway. The New York Times called her performance “a precise and clear-eyed study in the arrogance of the entitled rich.” (She told Broadway.com that her performance was “based on an amalgam of four or five different Texas ladies I observed growing up…as well as ladies that I know currently.”)
Her film work includes roles in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies, Woody Allen’s Another Woman and Roman Polanski’s Frantic. With 15 albums to her credit, Buckley was rightly named“The Voice of Broadway” by New York Magazine.
7:30 p.m. Wortham Theater Center, 500 Texas. For information call 832-487-7041 or visit brilliantlectures.org. $72.50 to $125.
Fri., Jan. 10, 7:30 p.m., 2014
This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2014.