Tag Archives: Hollywood

April 23, 2014 · 6:13 pm

Eva & David Perform this Friday at the House of Blues!

My sweet-singing daughter Eva Barrosse and guitarist extraordinaire David Miller are playing The House of Blues again this Friday, April 25 at 8:00 in the Voodoo Lounge. Their first appearance at the House of Blues was a big hit – and this show will be better than ever.

More info on the gig can be found by clicking here.

Eva and David will be playing a 45 minute set – and here’s a taste of what you’ll enjoy if you head down to 8430 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and plunk down your $10 for a ticket.

2 Comments

Filed under Art, Beauty, Music

Tagged as blues, David MIller, Eva Barrosse, Gershwin, Hollywood, House of Blues, jazz, Voodoo Lounge

August 8, 2012 · 12:45 pm

Here we go…

CLICK ON GRAPHIC FOR TICKETS.

2 Comments

Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation, Music

Tagged as cabaret, Hollywood, improvisational comedy, iO West Theatre, The Practical Theatre, The Vic & Paul Show

August 3, 2012 · 2:40 pm

Last Call for “Vic & Paul”…

After more than two decades away from the stage, my wife Victoria and I, along with our great friend and musical director Steve Rashid, launched our comedy comeback with “The Vic & Paul Show” in June 2010 at Push Lounge in Woodland Hills.

We’ve had lots of fun getting back onstage, doing sketches and musical numbers in a two-person revue format reminiscent of the great Nichols & May — and sharing (mostly) intelligent laughs with our audience. Plus working with Steve Rashid again has been a constant source of joy, musical merriment, and tons of Wisconsin jokes.

Now, after two years of performances in six venues and three cities, Victoria, Steve and I are celebrating the final run of this inaugural edition of “The Vic & Paul Show” with four shows at The iO West Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, August 9-12.

So, blow off NBC’s London Olympics coverage for a night (it’s on tape delay anyway, and they’ll show it all again at 1:00 AM) — and come out to enjoy a summer drink and lots of laughs with us.

For tickets to “The Vic & Paul Show” click here.

Or call the box office at 323-962-7560.

And we hope to see you again with our brand new show sometime in 2013!

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Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation, Music

Tagged as cabaret, Hollywood, Hollywood Boulevard, improvisational comedy, iO West Theatre, Paul Barrosse, Push Lounge, Steve Rashid, The Vic & Paul Show, Victoria Zielinski

May 14, 2012 · 7:45 pm

“Vic & Paul” Go Hollywood!

“The Vic & Paul Show” is coming to Hollywood.

Yes, that Hollywood.

Tinseltown.

The Entertainment Capital of the World

For one weekend only this summer, August 9-12, 2012, we’ll be performing “The Vic & Paul Show” at The iO West Theatre at 6366 Hollywood Boulevard — not far from those famous handprints and footprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and all the stars underfoot along the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

My very funny wife Victoria Zielinski and I will be joined, as ever, by our musical director Steve Rashid for what we call an “Evening of Comedy, Music, Marriage and Martinis” – a show The Chicago Tribune proclaimed “Old school sketch comedy done right.”

When we brought our show to Chicago last year, WGN Radio personality and veteran Chicago newspaperman Rick Kogan said, “One of the theatrical events of the year is the return of Paul Barrosse and Victoria Zielinski to the Chicago stage with ‘The Vic & Paul Show’…the new Nichols & May… It’s a not-to-be-missed engagement.” So, listen to Rick, and don’t miss our engagement at iO West.

Our four performances in Hollywood this August will give our friends and comedy lovers in Southern California their first chance to see the show since it opened in June 2010 at Push Lounge in Woodland Hills.

The iO West Theatre is a perfect venue for “The Vic & Paul Show” – an intimate cabaret space devoted to improvisational comedy. (Sort of like The Practical Theatre Company’s fabled John Lennon Auditorium with a full bar and more than twice the seating.) Formerly known as the “ImprovOlympic West”, iO West has been operating at its Hollywood location since October 2001.

The i.O. was founded by the legendary Second City veteran and eccentric improvisational comedy genius Del Close and Charna Halpern. Fittingly, there’s a Practical Theatre connection here: a connection that began, as so much did, in Chicago in the early 1980s. That’s when we first met Del and Charna.

Through our long association with Second City director Sheldon Patinkin (our comedy guru since 1981) and our brief partnership with Second City owner Bernie Sahlins in the Piper’s Alley Theatre, we Practical Theatre folk got to know the talented denizens of Chicago’s comedy institution at North & Wells, including the infamous Del Close.

Del’s portrait adorns a wall of the iO West main stage, where we’ll be performing.

By the time we met Del Close in the early 80s, he had already performed and directed for Second City, then moved to San Francisco where he directed another classic improv comedy group, The Committee, and toured with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Del spent the early 80s in New York, as “House Metaphysician” at Saturday Night Live, coaching the cast and further burnishing his reputation as a major influence on modern American comedy.

I got to know Del better when we were both cast in a 1984 Goodman Theatre production of A Christmas Carol. I was the Ghost of Christmas Past and Del was the Ghost of Christmas Present. Around this time, I tried to develop a Practical Theatre show with Del – a project we called The Secret Show: a revolutionary new revue to be written and performed by Rush Pearson and me as humorous henchmen in the service of a mad comic scientist to be played by Del.

The Secret Show never happened, but Del was enshrined as an honorary member of The Practical Theatre ensemble in 1985 at a ritual in which Del dipped his feet in red paint and stomped his iconic footprints into the sidewalk in front of The John Lennon Auditorium at 703 Howard Street in Evanston.

At the time we were contemplating The Secret Show, Del was busy teaching improv and collaborating with Charna Halpern. Close was working with Charna at the ImprovOlympic Theater, which she’d founded and briefly run with David Shepherd, one of the founders of the Compass Players (the forerunner to The Second City). We got to know Charna when we were both doing shows at the late, lamented, counter-cultural nightclub, CrossCurrents on Belmont in Chicago.

More than a quarter of a century later, Victoria and I reconnected with Charna when we both made presentations at The Chicago Theatre Symposium in the spring of last year – and again when she came to Rogers Park during the holidays see “The Vic & Paul Show” at Mayne Stage.

The rest is much more recent history.

So, join us at the iO West Theatre August 9-12th.

You can check out those famous hand and footprints at Grauman’s before the show.

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Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation

Tagged as cabaret, Charna Halpern, Del Close, Hollywood, Hollywood Boulevard, improvisational comedy, ImprovOlympic, iO West, Paul Barrosse, Steve Rashid, The Second City, The Vic & Paul Show, Victoria Zielinski

September 6, 2010 · 10:34 pm

“Now, Voyager” Revised

My wife is a huge Bette Davis fan and years ago she introduced me to one of Bette’s best films: Now, Voyager.

Based on the popular romantic novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager was released in 1942. Mega-star Bette Davis was Oscar-nominated for her performance in the film, which was selected in 2007 by the Library of Congress for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry. Like all the great movies accorded that honor, Now, Voyager was deemed to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Now Voyager may be a timeless classic – but there’s one central aspect of the film that has not aged very well: all that smoking.

Of course, until the last 20 years or so, everybody smoked in the movies – and in the 40’s and 50’s, cigarette smoke filled nearly every romantic drama, gangster movie, western and film noir frame. But Now, Voyager made smoking a central character.

In the film’s signature moment, Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes in his mouth at the same time and hands one to Bette. Henreid’s ultra-romantic two-cigarette move was first used ten years earlier in the film, The Rich Are Always With Us – but when Paul Henreid did it in Now, Voyager — it caused a sensation. For years afterward, Henreid couldn’t go anywhere without women begging him to pop two cigarettes in his mouth and fire them up.

Back then — unlike Bette and Paul’s relatively chaste and unrequited lovers — Hollywood and the cigarette companies were in bed together. Check out this fine article for some eye-opening details on this unhealthy alliance, including Bette’s contract with Lucky Strikes – and Paul Henreid’s own radio promotion, using his role in Now, Voyager to flog cigarettes.

68 years later, Now, Voyager’s smoky and sensual signature bit of dramatic business just wouldn’t fly in today’s more health conscious, socially and politically correct Hollywood.

So, while we were working on “The Vic & Paul Show” early this year, we asked ourselves, “What would happen if Now Voyager was re-made in 2010?”

Here’s our answer to that question, performed puff by puff at the Push Lounge in Woodland Hills in June 2010.

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Filed under Art, History

Tagged as Bette Davis, cabaret, cigarettes, comedy, film, Hollywood, improvisational comedy, movies, Now Voyager, Oscars, Paul Barrosse, Paul Henreid, Push Lounge, smoke, smoking, Steve Rashid, The Vic & Paul Show, Victoria Zielinski

April 22, 2010 · 8:48 am

Julia Gets Her Star!

Julia Louis-Dreyfus — our friend and fellow Northwestern, Mee-Ow Show, and Practical Theatre Company alum – is getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, May 4, 2010.

Now that Julia is a certified Hollywood legend, let us recall a couple of comic steps that Julia took along her path to greater comedy glory.

There was the 1980 Mee-Ow Show, Ten Against the Empire, which is where I met Julia and first worked with her.

Then, there was the Practical Theatre Company’s 1981 improvisational comedy revue, Scubba Hey! On this show, Julia met her future husband, my good buddy and partner in the PTC, Brad Hall.

The cast of "Scubba Hey": The author, Brad Hall, Julia, Rush Pearson (1981)

And then there was The Practical Theatre Company’s Golden 50^th Anniversary Jubilee, a collection of the PTC’s greatest hits, which played at the Piper’s Alley Theatre in Chicago, attracted the attention of Saturday Night Live – and the rest is, of course, history.

"The Golden 50th Jubilee" cast: Brad, Gary Kroeger, Julia, the author (1982)

And now, after her classic, long-running sitcoms Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine — and more Emmys and awards than you can shake a stick at – Julia’s getting her star on the Walk of Fame alongside such show biz legends as John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball and Rin Tin Tin.