and now a round of That's Sad, That's Whoa Awesome

[spatch]

Anna Russell, musical comedienne I remember most for her Ring Cycle and Gilbert & Sullivan parodies, has died at the age of 94. I confess I didn't know she'd lived through to the 2000s, as she exists solely in that musical niche of my memory along with Victor Borge and Flanders & Swann, warbling funny tunes with piano accompaniment through pips and pops of vinyl recordings.

That's sad.

On a completely unrelated note, Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock is being developed into a feature-length movie. And who will be executive producer? Ahmet Zappa, of all people.

That's ... whoa. Awesome.

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

Oh Anna! She was wonderful, funny and talented. I got to see her on her First Farewell Tour in Calgary back in the '80s; she was in her 70's then, and gave a side-splitting three hour performance. The audience was exhausted from laughing, I don't know how she managed to do it. She didn't play the bagpipe, explaining that she no longer had the wind for it, so she had a bagpipe player march out on stage for the demonstration.

Thank you for sharing this. I'll have to play some of her at the cast party.

[spatch]

Oh, that sounds like it was a wonderful experience. I would've loved to have seen her perform live.

And even if it's just in my head, I still always cry "Dance!" after the last sung note of any G&S finale because of her.