WLBOTT is proud to announce the production of the big budget, technicolor musical extravaganza – Her Eggcelency! It is the story of greed and lust for power, as a monomaniacal evil Queen Regina Ovata attempts to take control of the world’s egg supply.
Casting
All the big stars vied for the coveted title role of Her Eggcelency.
But Rosalind Russel really nailed it.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of Rosalind preparing for the RISK-Meets-Egg scene as The Sovereign: Queen Regina Ovata.
Joan Crawford was also considered, but she was a bit of a prima donna.
The Ensembles: The “Yolk-Maidens”
A jittery Greek chorus of chorus girls clad in meringue lace and cracked-eggshell caloches, constantly on the verge of either fainting or tap-dancing for their lives:
The Queen’s Prime Minister
Rose Marie was cast as Queen Regina Ovata‘s Prime Minister, to help in her evil schemes.
Rose Marie Guy (August 15, 1923 – December 28, 2017), known professionally as Rose Marie, was an American actress, singer, comedienne, and vaudeville performer with a career spanning nine decades, which included film, radio, records, theater, night clubs, and television. As a child performer from the late 1920s onward, she had a successful singing career under the stage name Baby Rose Marie.
Rose Marie was widely known for her role on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) as television comedy writer Sally Rogers, “who went toe-to-toe in a man’s world”.
Rose Marie died at her home in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles on December 28, 2017, at the age of 94. Nell Scovell memorialized her as “the patron saint of female comedy writers”.
Rose Marie’s long-time friend and agent, Harlan Boll, says that the legendary actress’s death had to do with “age problems”. Boll was with Marie shortly before she died. He explained to reporters that Marie had lain down to rest on Thursday afternoon, and by the time her caregiver checked in on her, to see if she wanted something to eat, she discovered she had stopped breathing.
The producers debated on the these of the posters: glitzy musical .vs. a metaphor for the Cold War. What do you think?
Off-Broadway: The Brooding
This idea from Her Eggcelency actually started as an off-broadway WLBOTT production called “The Brooding”. It was a dark, minimalist, moody, and completely unattended play, with King Lear vibes.
In this still, you can see our Queen, crushed with guilt and unresolved cholesterol issues. Her servants are actually concerned for her, but a bit afraid of her growing madness.
The Mad Queen plans her takeover:
In the War Room with her generals:
… but she ends a broken woman…
Act III: The Yolk-Maidens speak in hushed fragments while the Queen wanders the darkness, tormented by the terrible things she did in Act II:
QUEEN: Was itwewho broke the shell? FIRST YOLK-MAIDEN: Majesty, the shell was already cracked. QUEEN: All shells are already cracked. (Silence. Approximately four minutes.) SECOND YOLK-MAIDEN: Your breakfast is getting cold. QUEEN: So is the kingdom.
The excitement was palpable on opening night.
And the performance helped launch the career of Elise Marlow. Not her acting career, or course, but her new career as a data analyst for a kelp farming conglomerate.
