{"id":2342,"date":"2016-11-07T05:33:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=2342"},"modified":"2016-11-07T05:33:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:33:53","slug":"darren-criss-becomes-a-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2016\/11\/07\/darren-criss-becomes-a-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Darren Criss Becomes a Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was with Darren Criss <\/strong>the night he became a man.\u00a0 Let’s start at the beginning.\u00a0 I attended the LA opening night of the national tour of Hedwig and the Angry Inch<\/em><\/strong> with some trepidation.\u00a0 When I first saw Hedwig<\/em> in 1999, it was at the Henry Fonda Theatre <\/em>– a venue half the size of (and across the street from) the cavernous Pantages<\/em>, where it is currently playing.\u00a0 I also wasn’t sure about Darren’s ability to lead this production.\u00a0 Yes, he played the role towards the end of the Broadway <\/em>run, and yes, he’s cute as a button.\u00a0 But I didn’t know if his winning qualities would be enough to pull off this character.\u00a0 Also, the e-mails offering $29 tickets made me think that perhaps he’s not quite enough of a draw to have his name above the title.<\/p>\n

Most of my fears were somewhat allayed.\u00a0 Since it was opening night, the house was packed and the energy high.\u00a0 The conceit behind the spiffy production values works, but the show still loses much of its magic in such a huge venue.\u00a0 As to Criss, his strong vocals let me know he could more than handle the material.\u00a0 But what surprised me was his ability to morph into various characters with very specific speech patterns and inflections.\u00a0 His delivery of surely well-rehearsed ad libs <\/em>was matched by his fearlessness in embracing silent moments and letting them play out.\u00a0 As I told him at the after-party, he started out as a cute, talented boy, but in the course of the evening, he became a man.\u00a0 His performance impressed me so much, I almost didn’t notice his abs during the nearly-naked finale – which you can find on BillyMasters.com<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 I highly recommend it (and him).<\/p>\n

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Days before the opening, West Hollywood honored Darren by crowning him the King of the Halloween Carnaval<\/em>.\u00a0 I’m sure his presence in the bedlam that is WeHo on Halloween was a good promotion for the show.\u00a0 The opening night of Hedwig<\/em> certainly brought out celebrities, but not the usual crowd.\u00a0 There was nary a Ruta Lee <\/strong>or Jo Anne Worley <\/strong>to be had!\u00a0 Instead we got people like John Stamos<\/strong>, Margaret Cho<\/strong>, Taylor Lautner<\/strong>, Ross Mathews<\/strong>, and even Courtney Love<\/strong>.\u00a0 But what stuck with me was the vision of a very haggard and deranged-looking Demi Moore<\/strong>.\u00a0 Consider this – how spooky must she have looked for me to say that after seeing Courtney Love???<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was with Darren Criss the night he became a man.\u00a0 Let’s start at the beginning.\u00a0 I attended the LA opening night of the national tour of Hedwig and the Angry Inch with some trepidation.\u00a0 When I first saw Hedwig in 1999, it was at the Henry Fonda Theatre – a venue half the size<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2343,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions\/2343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}