This and That, Radio and TV edition

1. For all the early risers reading late: tomorrow (Monday 12/1) at 6:45 am EST on the Son Rise Morning Show, Darwin will be talking to Anna Mitchell Egan about the events that led to the start of World War One. This is blatant nepotism, as Anna is my sister-in-law, but it's also an interesting topic on which Darwin can speak knowledgeably and eloquently, so tune in to hear his radio voice. You can listen live at the link, and I'm told that it will re-run at some point on Tuesday morning as well.

2. Darwin can talk about WWI because it is what he knows. I am not ready to go on the radio and tell people about the causes of WWI. I am uniquely qualified to talk about only one thing: live theater, and how it can be made better.

Oh, look.

Last year NBC presented The Sound of Music, which broke all kinds of viewing records. As did my live Facebooking of the event. This year I'm going one better, and live-blogging Peter Pan. I'm setting up in the living room with Darwin's laptop and the unreliable TV antenna, and I'm going to take one for the team and watch Allison Williams, star of the hit show "Girls", daughter of NBC news anchor Brian Williams, play Peter Pan. Also, Christopher Walken as Captain Hook -- which is a big enough name draw that one wonders why the producers didn't have the cojones to cast an actress already known for her singing and stage work (gee, where in New York City could they find one of those?) to play the lead? However, Kelli O'Hara (South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza, among other credits) is Mrs. Darling, and Christian Borle, who stole last year's The Sound of Music as Max Detwiler, is doubling as Mr. Darling/Mr. Smee (Mr. Darling usually doubles as Captain Hook, but come on, do you see Christopher Walken as the Edwardian Father Figure?), so there's some undeniable talent gonna be lighting up the screen.

What it seems to me, from the preview video here, is that Allison Williams is not so effective on her power notes and they're going to pad them out with the horn section. I do wonder if she has the manic energy necessary to play Pan. And I'm hearing that Christopher Walken is improvising a lot of his lines, so if he pulls a pocket watch out and dangles it on his hook as he tells Peter how his father entrusted it to Hook while they were POWs together, I'm going to clear the kids out of the living room real quick.

And Taylor Louderman, who plays Wendy, is going to have to do some work to compete with my own sister Anna's performance of Wendy in her high school production.

Thursday night, 8pm Eastern. It's going down here at DarwinCatholic.