My family and I are planning to take our summer vacation in the NY/NJ area. We're planning to take my very artistic, 6-year old daughter Penny to the Broadway production of The Lion King as one of our activities.
This sparked me to go back and listen to some of my original Broadway cast recordings of many of the shows I saw years ago. I then started thinking about some of the performances I saw (Lea Salonga as Eponine in Les Miserables, for example) and how fortunate I had been to see them live.
Well, one wonderful voice I remember from those shows was that of Laurie Beechman, the original Narrator in the NY production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (which I saw both on and off-Broadway), and who I also saw performing Grizabella in Cats (also an ALW show).
After doing some "what are they up to now" searching via Google, I was saddened to learn that Laurie Beechman lost her life after a protracted battle with ovarian cancer on March 8, 1998 - just over 10 years ago. She was about one month short of her 45th birthday.
The only recording I have of Laurie's music is my Joseph original cast recording, but I'm going to be getting some of her solo recordings.
There's a tribute site to the life and music of Laurie Beechman here. Please visit.
"[I]f we fail, then the whole world,…all that we have known and cared for…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that…men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”
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