"Busker Alley" on the High Main

Nov. 30, 2007 - Jim Dale could make the phone book catchy. That said, he does a pretty good job of making "Busker Alley," a new musical fresh from its success in London slated for the 2008-2009 Broadway season, sound pretty good, too.

Last Friday, the new cast (Anne Rogers replacing Glenn Close) announced the show's Broadway intentions at the first ever cast record launch on board an ocean liner - Cunard's Queen Mary 2.

Hayley Mills, Juliet Mills, Maxwell Caulfield, Melissa Caulfield, Joan Copeland, Marilyn Sokol, and many others showed up to toast the cast's performance with champagne, followed by lunch in the ship's Britannia Room. Dick Sherman, Jim Dale, and Tony-, Emmy-, and Academy Award-winning director Tony Walton raised their glasses to the new show.

And I am, as ever, a fan of wine at lunch. Hours later, I was still humming my own version of one of the songs in an Irish pub in midtown.