Be Our Guest with Stephen Cole (Mary, Ethel and Mikey Who?)

Stephen Cole is an award-winning musical theatre writer whose shows have been recorded, published, and produced from New York City to London to the Middle East and Australia and Edinburgh, Scotland. His shows include: After the Fair, Night of the Hunter, Saturday Night at Grossinger's, Aspire, Time After Time, Merman's Apprentice and The Road To Qatar! to name just a few. As a producer, Stephen presented Liza Minnelli, Barbara Cook, David Hyde Pierce, and many others in an 80th Birthday Tribute to John Kander. Stephen has also released a series of CD's entitled MERMANIA on Harbinger Records. These include never before released selections sung by his favorite star and friend, Ethel Merman. Besides writing the CD booklets for these and his original cast CDs, Stephen has written the DVD booklets for the box set of THAT GIRL: SEASON ONE and ANYTHING GOES. Mary, Ethel and Mikey Who? takes Stephen's real-life friendships with Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, the two undisputed queens of Broadway, tossed them into a blender and come up with a fantasy about a nerdy super-fan in the early 1980s who, while visiting his dying idol Ethel Merman, stumbles into a time portal in her closet and exits on the other side in Sophie Tucker's star dressing room at the Imperial Theatre in 1939. Mikey Marvin Minkus gets to know his idols in their prime as he time travels through the decades with them, influencing their lives and careers, while helping to foster their legendary rivalry. Only visiting times when Merman and Martin's fates crossed, Mikey becomes a vital part of their lives, all the while interacting with such celebrated theatrical figures as Cole Porter, Jerome Robbins, Josh Logan, Dorothy Fields, Larry Hagman, Irving Berlin, Sophie Tucker, Leland Hayward, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a newcomer named Jane Fonda.