I’m certain the reason Stephen Colbert attended Northwestern University was because it’s in Evanston, Illinois, where I was born. That’s what I told Colbert when I saw him in New York in 2007, and he agreed with me.
Colbert gave this year’s commencement speech at Northwestern. Here are edited highlights…
Alumnus Stephen Colbert Addresses the Class of 2011 from Northwestern News on Vimeo.
… and this is the whole thing.
Thursday night we were in an audience of 10-12, who saw a “special event” at the movies — Stephen Sondheim’s Company, featuring Stephen Colbert, Neil Patrick Harris, and Christina Hendricks. I would hope the showings at theaters closer to cities have been better attended.
Company is 40 years old, and although the show’s themes may be timeless I think its age shows, and I could tell it was written by members of my parents’ generation. Considering that Sondheim was probably working on Company while Woodstock was happening, it’s an interesting contrast to the musicals of the day that have a more obvious hippie influence, such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell.
Although I may not be taken with the show itself, the cast obviously had a great time and their enthusiastic performances are what make Company worth seeing. Harris seems to have taken over from Nathan Lane as Broadway’s standard bearer, and he carries his lead role with ease, but Colbert and Hendricks are also excellent. Chryssie Whitehead, who is adorable as Kathy and dynamic in a stand-out dance number, merits special recognition.
Colbert was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross this week to talk about Company, among other things. It’s always fun to hear Stephen conversing when he’s out of character.
A tip o’ the Dog Rat toupee to tastewar for tipping me off to Stephen Colbert’s appearance in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company that’s showing in movie theaters starting today. I’ll see it tomorrow night at 7:30.
The cast includes the ubiquitous Neil Patrick Harris and Christina Hendricks from Mad Men. Harris was in Joss Whedon’s Internet mini-musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and Hendricks had a recurring role in Whedon’s sci-fi TV series Firefly.
Ace and Gary go live action, in a big and wide way! Rated PG.
I would love to embed a couple of Stephen Colbert videos here, but Comedy Central’s embed tags are screwed up. In the past I’ve manually edited them to get the widescreen mode working or fix an incorrect ID number, where the wrong video was coming up, but now I’m getting nothing. Please fix this, Comedy Central.
Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz is ten years older than Paul Krugman, over whom Stiglitz had some influence. They’re like-minded, but as one would expect they don’t always agree on the details. In this month’s Vanity Fair, Stiglitz weighs in on the top 1% wealthiest among us Americans. Stephen Colbert had Stiglitz on his show shortly after the economic meltdown of 2008, when Krugman won his own Nobel.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Joseph Stiglitz | ||||
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