Is Shia LaBeouf’s sudden departure from what would have been his Broadway debut a boost for Broadway in what would normally be a fallow February? But this week actually has been fertile for theater folk – and, fittingly, considering this is Oscar week, much of it can be fit with Hollywood, such as the announcements that Les Miserables will return to Broadway, and the report that Robert DeNiro may be making his Broadway debut — as a director of a Broadway musical! Tom Hanks is talking about not just his Broadway debut, but his first stage role since 1981.
Also making her Broadway debut: Jane Lynch of Glee.
Speaking of TV: the auxiliary entertainment industry that has built up around Smash. And: What IS a dramaturg, and why are they always ridiculed on television?
The Week in New York Theater
Monday, February 18, 2013
New Memoirs
- Rita Moreno reveals that she was impregnated by Marlon Brando, who insisted she have an abortion. She also dated Elvis
- Sachi Parker, only child of Shirley MacLaine, writes in “Lucky Me” how Mom sabotaged her daughter’s acting career
- In The Soundtrack of My Life, Clive Davis writes he’s bisexual and currently living with a man. He details his efforts to get Whitney Houston off drugs.
Oddly, Clive Davis tells USA Today he plans to ask Anne Hathaway & Colin Firth to star in his planned 2014 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady
(Shouldn’t he tell the press AFTER he asks them?)
Sex in movies? Often great. Sex on Girls on HBO? Immersive. Sex on stage? Rarely works, says Chicago Tribune drama critic Chris Jones
Michael Urie (Ugly Betty, the canceled “Partners”) stars in Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater’s” Buyer and Cellar,” about a struggling actor who bonds with a Streisand-like superstar while cataloguing her collection. Opens April 3.
Tina Landau (@TinaLandau, director of “Old Hats” at the Signature Theater ): Directing in previews is a lot about making lists. I need lists. I love lists. Lists save me.
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Yes, it’s happening; Les Misérables is returning to Broadway, its third run, set to open in March of 2014, producer Cameron Mackintosh announces
Boosted by the Les Miz film, the Les Miz U.S. stage tour is doing $1 million a week. That’s what’ll be coming to Broadway
Should anybody from the #LesMiz film do the Broadway version next year?
Andrew Marcinak (@Droid_boy): Hands down Samantha Barks and Aaron Tveit
Laura (@LauraBethD): Samantha Barks & Aaron Tveit!
Suzanne Du Charme (@SuzanneDuCharme): Hugh Jackman, Colm Wilkinson, some if the townspeople who already work in theatre
Kerri (what_a_dream) I say none of the leads in the Les Mis movie should be in the broadway production but the secondary cast should be
Andy Scott @AndyDirects Perhaps Tom Hooper can also direct it so that there is nothing but religious symbols and water onstage
Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) You forgot the giant noses
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ShkBoom Records (@ShKBoom) Big news! We’re recording Pasek and Paul’s DOGFIGHT with Lindsay Mendez and Derek Klena and the rest of the Second Stage Theater cast!
Which singer/songwriters do people most want to see writing for Broadway? Adele, Rufus Wainwright and Lady Gaga, according to the contest entries for tickets to “Kinky Boots,” Cyndi Lauper’s Broadway songwriting debut.
(After first preview of “Ann”)
W I P E D.
— Holland Taylor (@HollandTaylor) February 19, 2013
SMASH
Memorable lines
Tom (Christian Borle): “Art without torture. I don’t think it’s possible”
Dan Mason (@djdan1033): Very true. Ask most of us who watch the show every week.
Producer Eileen (Anjelica Huston): He’s a professional dramaturg.
Tom: A dramaturg, are you joking?
Librettist Julia (Debra Messing): Laughs.
Eileen: It’s a common practice these days.
Peter the dramaturg (Daniel Sunjata): Dramaturgs are like dentists;no one wants to see them but you’re glad you went once the pain wears off”
(Why do dramaturgs get so little respect?)
Julie Felise Dubiner (@jfdubiner): Too many of us expect it instead of earning it.
A dramaturg is a murderer in “Icarus,” the episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” in which everybody thinks Cynthia Nixon playing a Julie Taymor-like figure was the perpetrator. A dramaturg is a handsome man who lives in a very expensive New York apartment but who hurts the now-scarfless Debra Messing’s feelings in “The Dramaturg,” the latest episode of “Smash….But what is a dramaturg on stage rather than on the small screen? Answer
Smash – theater bloggers weigh in, from Broadway Abridge’s condensed episode scripts to the Smash Reality Index
Will we have “Smash” to kick around any longer? Whatever else the backstage Broadway TV show has been, it’s been an inspiration for many in the theater community – creating what you could almost call a subsidiary entertainment industry
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Shia LaBeouf, who was to make his Broadway debut, has departed “Orphans,” the production announces, “due to creative differences.” No more details at the moment.
The raved-about American Repertory Theater’s production of Glass Menagerie wit Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, and Celia Keenan-Bolger is in talks to open on Broadway.
Robert DeNiro plans to direct a Bway musical of Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale. So claims Showbiz411
Jane Lynch will replace Katie Finneran as Miss Hannigan in ”Annie” starting May 16
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FREE concert March 28 with the casts of Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, Avenue Q and others to celebrate the landmarking status given to Town Hall. Tickets distributed first come, first served starting at noon on March 25 at the box office
On Twitter, Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) publishes e-mails that imply that his “creative differences” were with Alec Baldwin
Ben Foster will replace Shia LaBeouf
The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream,new concert written by Steven Van Zandt (E-Street Band,Sopranos) Ap 15-May 5 Bway’s Richard Rodgers
Terrific project by the New York Philharmonic to put its 170 years of history online. Check out its archives
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Shia LaBeouf Fired, NOT a feud with Alec Baldwin , says Michael Riedel in the New York Post
Last year’s Kennedy Center revue, “First You Dream,” renamed “Kander and Ebb’s Sing Happy,” is reportedly aiming for Broadway this Fall. Cast unclear.
It didn’t catch on on Broadway, but Kander & Ebb’s Scottsboro Boys will open at UK’s Young Vic,Susan Stroman director/choreographer again
Daughter of All That Jazz screenwriter recalls going to the Oscar ceremony without him. (He had died)
Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick to to star in film of Jason Brown’s musical about a frayed marriage, “The Last Five Years”
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I reach 10,000 Twitter followers — and how I built that following
Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates): Twitter makes of loneliness something rich & unexpected.But you must choose your travel-companions with care.
@newyorktheater @nbcsmash @cinderellabway i finished shooting for the season before i began Cinderella. Cut, Print, Moving On. But i miss it
— Ann Harada (@annharada) February 24, 2013
My review of Women of Will
Consider Marina – saved by pirates, who then sell her into a brothel, “but she had such a healing spirit that she convinced every man not to have sex with her,” Tina Packer says to us, greatly amused, near the end of “Women of Will,” a fascinating if flawed work of theater about Shakespeare’s female characters, created and performed by a woman who has been studying them for decades – and is, incredibly, making her New York stage debut.
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New and Once-New Faces of Broadway
The Times as usual features fresh faces of Broadway in its Spring preview. This year that includes performers in “The Nance,” “Pippin,” “Motown The Musical,” “Kinky Boots” and “The Flick”
But what has happened to the new faces of a decade ago. Good things, as it turns out. I catch up on actors Anthony Mackie and Matt Cavenaugh, director Kenny Leon and playwright Kate Fodor.
Tom Hanks talks about his Broadway debut in “Lucky Guy” which begins previews on March 1 and opens on April 1:
“I still feel sometimes that I’d like to be as good as so-and-so actor…I see some other actors’ work, and I think I’ll never get there. I wish I could.”
Tom Hanks was last on stage in 1981, and never on Broadway.
“I lived around the corner from Broadway, but I couldn’t even get arrested,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how to dance, I hadn’t taken a voice lesson, and I wasn’t feeling confident.”
He is starring as the late newspaper columnist Mike McAlary, in a play written by Nora Ephron, who died while she was writing it.
“We’re just resorting to imagining the headlines for bad reviews — ‘Lucky Guy, Unlucky Audience!’ ‘Yucky Guy!’ ”
