{"id":4975,"date":"2019-05-06T00:42:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T07:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=4975"},"modified":"2019-05-06T00:42:36","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T07:42:36","slug":"la-valley-of-the-dolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2019\/05\/06\/la-valley-of-the-dolls\/","title":{"rendered":"LA Valley of the Dolls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently went to a special live benefit reading of&nbsp;<strong><em>Valley of the Dolls<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;which starred&nbsp;<strong>Sheryl Lee Ralph&nbsp;<\/strong>as Helen Lawson and&nbsp;<strong>Wilson Cruz&nbsp;<\/strong>as Neely O\u2019Hara.&nbsp; To see Wilson pull off Deena Jones\u2019 wig was heaven.&nbsp; However, it was&nbsp;<strong>Alec Mapa&nbsp;<\/strong>who stole the show.&nbsp; As Anne, he mimicked&nbsp;<strong>Barbara Parkins<\/strong>\u2019 stilted line delivery to a T.&nbsp; Rounding out the glamorous trio was&nbsp;<strong>Bruce Vilanch&nbsp;<\/strong>as Jennifer, who pined over \u201cTony\u201d with all the music of a buxom&nbsp;<strong>Sharon Tate<\/strong>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong>Marissa Jaret Winokur&nbsp;<\/strong>was great as Miss Steinberg, but it was her giggling at everything onstage which made me laugh out loud.&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong>Gordon Thomson&nbsp;<\/strong>(from the original&nbsp;<em>Dynasty<\/em>) played Lyon with suave assurance.&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong>Joan Van Ark&nbsp;<\/strong>was Miriam and told me, \u201cWhat I really want to play is Helen Lawson \u2013 wasn\u2019t Sheryl Lee incredible?\u201d&nbsp; A lithe&nbsp;<strong>Greg Louganis&nbsp;<\/strong>played Tony Polar,&nbsp;<strong>Tom Lenk&nbsp;<\/strong>was Mel, Mo Gaffney took on Mr. Bellamy, and&nbsp;<strong>Joely Fisher&nbsp;<\/strong>was the narrator.&nbsp; The event benefited the&nbsp;<em>LA LGBT Center&nbsp;<\/em>and the&nbsp;<em>Alcott Center for Mental Health Services<\/em>.&nbsp; And, naturally, I will run photos from the event on my website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently went to a special live benefit reading of&nbsp;Valley of the Dolls&nbsp;which starred&nbsp;Sheryl Lee Ralph&nbsp;as Helen Lawson and&nbsp;Wilson Cruz&nbsp;as Neely O\u2019Hara.&nbsp; To see Wilson pull off Deena Jones\u2019 wig was heaven.&nbsp; However, it was&nbsp;Alec Mapa&nbsp;who stole the show.&nbsp; As Anne, he mimicked&nbsp;Barbara Parkins\u2019 stilted line delivery to a T.&nbsp; Rounding out the glamorous trio<\/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-4975","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\/4975","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=4975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4976,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions\/4976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}