Lin-Manuel Miranda, Phillipa Soo and Leslie Odom Jr. announced this week that they will leave “Hamilton” on July 9; Miranda’s long-time alternate Javier Munoz will take over the title role on July 11.
“I’m leaving because I have other opportunities that are going to need my mental real estate,” 
Miranda told reporters in an Irish pub in Washington Heights – need it for his other projects, which include the Disney film “Moana,” for which he’s writing the songs; “The Hamilton Mixtape,” an album of “Hamilton”-related songs by other artists; the sequel to “Mary Poppins,” in which he will co-star with Emily Blunt.
Phillipa Soo is leaving to play the title role in Amelie, A New Musical, which aims for a Spring, 2017 Broadway opening after a run in L.A. starting in December. The musical, based on the 2001 movie starring Audrey Tautou, Audrey Tautou, is directed by Pam MacKinnon (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) with book by Craig Lucas (An American In Paris) and score by Daniel Messe and Nathan Tysen (Tuck Everlasting), with choreography by Sam Pinkleton (“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”, the show that featured Soo immediately after she graduated from Juilliard.)
Leslie Odom Jr. made his announcement during a live Facebook appearance shortly before Sunday’s matinee. It’s not clear what Odom’s next project will be; the Tony winner for best actor simply said “I’m excited to have a blank page again. I’m excited to go out and find something new.”
Black actors won all 4 musical performer categories for the first time since the Tonys began. pic.twitter.com/EMkqyzl219
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) June 13, 2016
Week in New York Theater Reviews
The all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park, with Janet McTeer as the macho Petruchio and Cush Jumbo as the shrew he starves into obedience, seems to be working hard to make the play more palatable. Director Phyllida Lloyd starts by evoking a certain presidential candidate and former beauty pageant owner…
Surely, the director is once again attempting to use a Shakespeare play to prompt the audience to think about gender politics, but the result feels more like her Mamma Mia than her Julius Caesar – a pieced-together, awkwardly integrated entertainment that can be enjoyed as a whole, as long it’s not overly scrutinized.
Week in New York Theater News
Seventy Broadway stars recorded “What The World Needs Now” as benefit for LGBT Center in Orlando.
A Bronx Tale: The Musical, which premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse, is set for Broadway’s Longacre Theatre December 1. (Paper Mill won this year’s Tony Award for regional theater.) The Bronx Tale began life as a one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri, was then made into 1993 directed by and co-starring Robert De Niro. De Niro is co-directing the musical with Jerry Zaks, marking De Niro’s Broadway directorial debut.
The Encounter, a solo show written and performed by Simon McBurney, will run at Broadway’s John Golden Theater from September 20 to January 8. ” Twenty years ago Simon McBurney was given a book written by a Romanian who escaped the Ceaușescu regime to reinvent himself as a Los Angeles screenwriter. Amazon Beaming tells the story of photographer Loren McIntyre, who in 1969 found himself lost amongst the remote people of the Javari Valley, on the border between Brazil and Peru. It was an encounter that changed his life: bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus.”
On Broadway for the third holiday season in a row, The Illusionists will present magic from the early 20th century, at the Lunt-Fontanne November 25, 2016 to January 1, 2017.
Broadway dimmed its lights Thursday for playwright Peter Shaffer (Amadeus, Equus), who died June 6 at the age of 90.
BroadwayHD to live stream She Loves Me for $9.99 June 30 at 8 p.m
Can theater be “risky” and still be safe emotionally & physically for performers & audience? A HowlRound chat
In her writing, playwright @HalleyFeiffer is “inspired by…some part of myself that disgusts me” https://t.co/yHMENw37Vr
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) June 14, 2016
Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark opened five years ago
Following Spider-Man playbook,@Paramour turns pans into raves, by taking critics’ words out of context pic.twitter.com/RAebjEFsoG
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) June 15, 2016
