Stage to PageTHEIR FAVORITE THINGS: Emmy-Winning Producer Dori Berinstein Shares Her Theatregoing ExperiencesPlaybill.com's feature series Their Favorite Things asks members of the theatre community to share the Broadway performances that most affected them as part of the audience.
This week we spotlight the choices of Broadway producer Dori Berinstein, who won a 2014 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Best Documentary Series for "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love" (American Masters).
By
Andrew Gans
August 20, 2014
Dori Berinstein
(Clicking on a name bolded in blue will take readers to that actor or show's entry in the Playbill Vault.)
Hello, Dolly!
"I was five-years-old when I saw
Carol Channing in
Hello, Dolly! (on tour). I remember every second. She embraced the entire audience with her luminescent
smile, her mammoth talent and her gargantuan personality. I was captured as a theatre lover for life."
"Like so many,
A Chorus Line changed my life. But when Mike sang 'I Can Do That'….I realized I couldn’t. I break windows. So I focused intensely on the unseen Zach and what happens behind-the-curtain. I knew that day, that I would have to figure out how to make theatre the center-focus of my professional life."
"Watching audiences loose themselves in hilarity, spontaneity and awe night after night at
Fool Moon made me ridiculously happy. I had never seen people laugh so hard. The dazzling physicality and creative genius of
Bill Irwin and
David Shiner was electrifying. As
John Guare observed backstage one night, these two consummate artists work without a net."
"When
Sutton Foster stepped into Millie Dillmount’s shoes, all of us behind-the-curtain knew Broadway would never be the same. I still have goose-bumps from the first time I heard Sutton sing 'Gimme Gimme'."
"Last fall I had the most thrilling, transformative theatrical ‘experience’ ever:
Jeanine Tesori’s brilliant
Violet, presented by Stanford University – on a bus. I was completely transported, literally and emotionally, in this stunningly innovative production, beautifully presented by a tremendously talented undergraduate cast. Bravo to visionary director Sammi Cannold! (Disclaimer, Sammi is my daughter, which is why I was there – but I swear on a stack of bibles from
The Book of Mormon, and
Fiddler on The Roof that I would have felt exactly the same way if she wasn’t involved)."
"What a gift. A transcendent night of theatre I’ll never forget. Virtuoso
Mark Rylance and the extraordinary
Twelfth Night cast were simply astonishing. I left the theatre knowing I had a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience.”
"
James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson was electrifying. He embodied the role so completely. I was in the front row, center seat, completely transported. My heart clung to every line. The power of theatre that day was resplendent."
"Zoe Caldwell and Tyne Daly both captured me completely with their very different, but equally astonishing, tour-de-force performances as Maria Callas. While both offered operatic master classes to their onstage students, the theatre audiences had the privilege to witness consummate ‘master classes’ in acting by two theatrical giants."
"What a landmark performance by the
Steppenwolf Theatre Company. I was glued to my seat and riveted to every darkly delicious, fire-breathing, dysfunctional moment. Three hours and twenty minutes long and I was devastated the show was over!"
"
Bob Martin’s ingenious and gleefully endearing performance as The Man In Chair was pure joy for me. A celebration of musical theatre and a wonderful reminder about how ‘alive’ theatre can be."
After nine months of patiently waiting for a moment that could have never come, this standby is now enjoying his first week of performances as Bobby Darin.
