This might as well be called the Week in New York Theater Awards. In chronological order: The New York Drama Critics Circle gave their awards to Hamilton and Between Riverside and Crazy Fred and Astelle Award announced their nominations for best Broadway dancers and choreographers. (Winners announced June 1.)


Theatre World Awards went to 12 performers making their Broadway or Off-Broadway debuts, plus special awards to Leanne Cope and Chita Rivera. Actors Equity gave its Derwent Award for promising performers to Josh Grisetti of It Shoulda Been You and Philippa Soo of Hamilton. It gave its Richard Seff Award for established performers to Julie Halston of You Can’t Take It With You and Brad Oscar of Something Rotten.
Hamilton sweeps the 2015 Lucille Lortel Awards for Off-Broadway, with a record-breaking 10 awards.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time tops the 2015 Outer Critics Circle Awards — Meanwhile, in preparation for Hamilton’s move to Broadway in July. (Thomas Kail is the director)
Long meeting w Kail yesterday. We have a list of 25 things to make better. Some are tiny, some less so. 25 is a good number though.
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 7, 2015
Twenty-one theater artists, all of them nominated for 2015 Drama Desk Awards, are asked: Can theater change the world? https://youtu.be/CjW58c2w99E (Article on Howlround)
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
My review of Belarus Free Theater’s Trash Cuisine The two executioners are casually talking shop while dining on strawberries and cream. As they compare how they work—one is paid per day, the other per killing—a man and a woman downstage of them are hooded, stripped naked, pushed onto a piece of black plastic, and pelted with apples and pineapples. Then the man, the woman, the apples, and the pineapples are wrapped in the black plastic as if they are garbage, and carried off. Oblivious, the two executioners, one from Thailand, the other from Belarus, keep talking; they mention, for example, their envy of the executioners in China: “They have a few thousand executed a year—we would’ve retired as millionaires there.” It’s just another startling scene in Trash Cuisine, a sensuous work at LaMaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre through May 17 by Belarus Free Theatre, which promotes their piece as an exploration of capital punishment. But Trash Cuisine seems something more, and maybe also something less, than that. It provokes a huge number of questions, not the least of which is: What’s with the apples and the pineapples—and all the other food featured in the show? Full review of Trash Cuisine
Update: The show has closed, but to see a video of it, go to Howlround.tv here
The Week in New York Theater News
Doctor Zhivago closed Sunday, after just 26 previews & 23 regular performances
Elizabeth Wilson, 18-time Broadway veteran, Hollywood character actor for 70 years, has died at age 94. pic.twitter.com/1gqysDZBi7
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) May 11, 2015
Married couple Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub will star in Beckett’s “Happy Days” in June at The Flea Theater under new artistic director Niegel Smith. National tours have been announced for: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time The King and I If/Then with Idina Menzel It’s not just ticket prices that are keeping poor and uneducated Americans away from the arts: Report from Create Equity
@NewYorkTheater one of the few! even members of my own family spell it differently! — Stephen Adly Guirgis (@CookieRiverside) May 5, 2015
Advice from @MrJasonRBrown to someone who wants to move to NYC to pursue musical theater: “Be very wealthy or very patient.”
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) May 8, 2015
That was quick! MT @2STNYC Brand new marquee went up this morning at the Helen Hayes! pic.twitter.com/SpqlDp7UeX
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) May 7, 2015