Friday, April 17, 2009

Abracadabra

Are these the same women?

Help me decide.


Youtube is currently hosting multiple parts of a feature film called "Abracadabra." Here's the description:
It's about four bumbling mobsters that face an identity crisis when they discover their fantasy woman is packing more than a garter under her mini-skirt. This "Tootsie meets The Sopranos" film features John Fiore (Brotherhood, The Sopranos), Lou Martini, Jr. (Law and Order SVU, The Sopranos), Tony V. (Brotherhood) and Nino Pepicelli (Stiffs).
The description is kind of similar to "Mob Queen," which I've never seen.

The fantasy woman's character is named "Abra Parkhurst," and she's pictured in the movie above, at left.

I viewed the opening credits in Part I and learned that only one other actor/actress is not identified in the paragraph quoted above -- Tara O'Brien. Here's what I found out after a search:
The actress found out about casting opportunities in Broadway's Victor/Victoria from an ad in Backstage. However her agent could not get her an audition.

"So I went to the open call and I went as a man. I didn't really think I was being that clever, but I was the only person there really dressed as a guy," she explains. "You had to do eight bars of your biggest belt. So I sang the eight bars in the Neil Simon Theatre in the dark. Then a voice barked out from the darkness, `Sing the whole thing.' So I sing and this lone applause comes out of the darkness. Out of that darkness walks Blake Edwards and he said: `Well that was good and you look like a guy. Can you walk like a guy?' So he had me walking across the stage as a man."
Hmmmm.

The photo on the right above is Tara O'Brien (she's on the left with Anne Runolfsson playing the title character) touring with "Victor/Victoria" in 1998. Obviously, she wasn't playing the gender-bending lead role at that time. Is this the same woman?

Is O'Brien now a woman playing a man playing a woman?

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