An Evening with Christine Ebersole & James Naughton
Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Music Center at Strathmore

JAMES NAUGHTON

From Broadway and regional theater to television and films, James Naughton has won critical acclaim in dramas, comedies and musicals. He is the winner of two Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical, for his portrayal of media-savvy lawyer Billy Flynn in the Broadway hit “Chicago” (1997) and for his role as a film-noir era detective in “City of Angels” (1990), which also earned him a Drama Desk Award. He met equal success with his solo concert/cabaret acts, “James Naughton Live”, at the Manhattan Theater Club, “Street of Dreams”, and his most recent “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”.

A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, Naughton made his New York debut as Edmund in Arvin Brown’s production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, winning immediate recognition with Theatre World, New York Drama Critics and Vernon Rice awards for his performance. His other Broadway credits include “Four Baboons Adoring the Sun”, “I Love My Wife” and “Whose Life Is It Anyway”. Off-Broadway he has appeared in E.L. Doctorow’s “Drinks Before Dinner” and “Losing Time”. Both a prolific performer and director at the Williamstown Theater Festival, he directed a critically acclaimed production of “The Price” which moved to Broadway in the winter of 1999 and received a Tony nomination. He most recently directed a production of “Our Town” on Broadway starring Paul Newman, which appeared on Showtime as well as “The Good German” for the Westport Country Playhouse.

Naughton’s film credits include “The Good Mother” opposite Diane Keaton; “The Glass Menagerie” with Joanne Woodward; “The Paper Chase”, “First Kid”, “Cat’s Eye”, “A Stranger Is Watching”, “Second Wind” and more recently “Labor Pains”. He has appeared in such television movies as “Travelin’ Man”, “Necessity”, “Last of the Great Survivors”, “The Bunker” and “Look Homeward Angel”. More recently, Naughton starred in “The Birds II” for Showtime and the return of “Cagney and Lacey”. He has also starred in a number of network television series, including “Who’s the Boss?”, “Making the Grade”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Farady and Co.”, “Brooklyn Bridge”,“The Cosby Mysteries”, “Ally McBeal” as Ally Macbeal’s father, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, and was most recently seen opposite Meryl Streep in the hit film “The Devil Wears Prada”.

CHRISTINE EBERSOLE

Christine grew up with her parents, two brothers and a sister in Winnetka, Illinois, where she discovered her passion for action and singing at New Trier High School. Christine attended MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, before moving to New York to study acting at the famed American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Starting on the Stage

In 1976, Christine made her Broadway debut in ANGEL STREET. She went on to star in such Broadway hits as I Love My Wife with Joanna Gleason and James Naughton and Hal Prince’s On the Twentieth Century with Kevin Klein and comic legend Imogene Coca. She put her indelible imprint on the role of Ado Annie, the girl who “Cain’t Say No,” in Agnes de Mille’s revival of Oklahoma. She starred in Camelot opposite Richard Burton and in Stephen Sondheim’s non-musical mystery Getting Away with Murder. Off-Broadway, she starred in a critically-acclaimed production of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters with Dianne Wiest and Sam Waterson. She returned to Broadway at a time when a single critic’s bad review could close a show, which was exactly what befell the ill-fated Harrigan N’ Hart. It closed after three days and propelled Christine to Hollywood to pursue her burgeoning film and television career full-time.

Moving to the Movies

Christine’s feature film credits include the Academy Award winning Best Picture of 1984, Amadeus, Tootsie, Thief of Hears, Bill Cosby’s Ghost Dad, Dead Again with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, Folks! with Tom Selleck and Dom Ameche, My Girl 2, Richie Rich with Macauley Culkin, Black Sheep with Chris Farley and David Spade, the romantic comedy ‘Til There Was You with Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dylan McDermott and Disney’s My Favorite Martian opposite Jeff Daniels and Christopher Lloyd.

Her Time on Television

Christine was a cast member of the 1981-82 season of NBC’s Saturday Night Live with fellow Not Ready For Prime Time Players Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and Mary Gross. She received an Emmy Award nomination during her one year stint as Maxie McDermott on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live and her television credits also include starring roles in the CBS series The Cavanaughs, Rachel Gunn, RN and Valerie. She co-starred on the CBS comedy, Inc opposite Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, playing terminally chic “One the Town” columnist, Belinda Carhardt. Most recently Christine could be seen as the mother on the WB series Related. She had made guest-starring appearances in such series as Crossing Jordan, Will and Grace, Just Shoot Me, Ally McBeal and Murphy Brown.

Her television movie credits include CBS’ remake of the musical Gypsy with Bette Midler (playing irrepressible “Gotta Have a Gimmick” strpper Tessie Tura) and Dying to Love You also for CBS. She co-starred with Jane Fonda in the critically-acclaimed The Dollmaker and opposite Stockard Channing in the USA Network’s An Unexpected Family and it’s sequel. Other television films have included Mary and Rhoda and Double Platinum with Diana Ross and Brandy Norwood.

She appeared on the television special, Ira Gershwin at 100: A Celebration at Carnegie Call, part of the PBS Great Performances series (earning a performer’s ultimate kudo – “Show-stopping” – from USA TODAY). She earned more plaudits in PBS’ broadcast of the Rodgers & Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty, performing “The Lady is a Tramp” from the 1937 musical Babes in Arms.

In 1997, Christine triumphed in her first appearance on the cabaret stage in 17 years. Her two standing-room-only engagements at The Hollywood Roosevelt’s Cinegrill in Los Angeles led to the recording of her first solo CD, Christine Ebersole, Live at the Cinegrill. The CD tell of Christine’s personal journey as a performer, wife and mother, employing an eclectic array of musical styles, including ballads, jazz, pop, opera, torch, swing, and even country. Her unique repertoire covers songs originally recoded by a diverse group of covalists, ranging from Judy Garland to Joni Mitchell and Jeannette MacDonald. In 2004, Christing released a new CD, In Your Dreams: Christine Ebersole with Billy Strictch. Hal Prince raved, “I can’t think of a more potent combination of sophisticated and talented musicians, than Christine Ebersole and Billy Stritch. Their choices of material would be my choice, and their take on this variety of classy music and lyrics is pluperfect.”

Homeward Bound

After 14 years in Los Angeles, Christine returned to the East Coast in 1999 – having never quite abandoned the siren’s call of the Broadway stage – and she hasn’t stopped working since. While continuing her film and television career, she was invited to play the title role in The Paper Mill Playhouse’s production of Mame after producer’s saw her onstage in the Encores! Series production of Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. She performed in a musical tribute to Arthus Schwartz in the American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center and segued into David Marshall Grant’s Current Events and Gore Vidal’s all-star The Best Man (with Charlest Durning, Chris Noth, Spalding Gray, Michael Learned and Elizabeth Ashley) before bringing the house down with her rendition of “to Keep My Love Alive” in the Encores! Series concert presentation of the music A Connecticut Yankee.

IN 2001, Broadway welcomed Christine back to Broadway where she has revived outstanding reviews and the 2007 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a musical for her performance in the dual roles of Edith Bouvier Beale and “little” Edie Beale in Grey Gardens. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called it, “Possibly the greatest performance I’ve ever seen in a musical.” New York’s Jeremy McCarter exclaimed, “Yes! – Her performance really is as good as you’ve heard. A performance as close to perfect as anybody has a right to expect.” The New York Sun’s Eric Grode called it “The Performance of a Lifetime.” Time Out’s Adam Feldman declared, “The phenomenal Christine Ebersole officially joins the musical theater pantheon” and David Rooney of Variety proclaimed it “The kind of performance that comes around once in a decade and will be talked about for decades more. A staggering dual performance sure to become a new benchmark for musical theater excellence. This miraculous turn deserves every superlative thrown its way!”

Off Broadway Christine gathered praise for her performance in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads for which she received the 2003 Obie and Outer Critics Circle Awards. While Grey Gardens was in its Off Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons Christine won the Outer Critics Circle Award, The Obie Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Musical and was given a special citation from the New York Drama Critics and the Drama League for Performance of the Year.

Christine currently resides in New Jersey with her husband, Bill, their three children, fourteen