The Prom Kiss That Shook Thanksgiving. Lion King III. Why you’re Satisfied with Hamilton. #Stageworthy News of the Week.

Thanksgiving is technically over, but this one is going to last. There’s much about this past week in New York theater for which we’re grateful.

Below watch the full number of “The Prom” from the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the 60 Minutes preview of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the trailer for the new Lion King, and the entire documentary, “Harold Prince: A Director’s Life.” Also: stage worthy news about Al Pacino, Head Over Heels, the new season at the Park Ave Armory, an analysis of gender parity Off-Broadway, of Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s An Octoroon and of the most satisfying song in Hamilton. A tale of a Good theatrical Samaritan. Also: Justin Bieber.

Top 10 NYC Theater in 2018 to be Grateful for

Week in NY Theater Reviews and Previews

The Thanksgiving Play: How Not To Celebrate Thanksgiving

from Place No Place

Jump Start: Puppetry from Lyrical to Hysterical at La MaMa

To Kill A Mockingbird, preview on 60 Minutes.

Week in NY Theater News

As expected, the kiss during the performance of The Prom at the 92nd annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (see: Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Broadway Way) provoked passionate reaction

Bonnie Milligan as Pamela (center) with Tanya Haglund, Samantha Pollino, Ari Groover and Amber Ardolino

Head Over Heels will play its final Broadway performance on Sunday, January 6, 2019, after 188 regular performances and 37 previews. Too bad. It’s fun and forward-thinking.

Celebrity Autobiography will play at Broadway’s Marquis Theater on Monday nights starting tonight: November 26, December 3, December 10 and December 17 at 8PM. The celebrities who will make fun of other celebrities’ autobiographies by reading excerpts from them include Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Lewis Black, Mario Cantone, Rachel Dratch, Susan Lucci “and more.” The memoirs ridiculed include those by Vanna White, Dolly Parton, Celine Dion, Ricky Martin, Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers.

The Park Avenue Armory 2019 Season:

Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in The Lehman Trilogy

THE LEHMAN TRILOGY

March 22–April 20, 2019

Directed by Sam Mendes and starring acclaimed actors Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Ben Miles who play the Lehman brothers and their sons and grandsons over nearly two centuries

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AND WOULD HAPPEN

June 3–9, 2019

Artist and composer Heiner Goebbels reenacts 100 years of history to show a world in strife through performance, sound, movement, and moving image

DRILL

June 20–July 21, 2019

Immersive, site-specific film installation Drill by Hito Steyerl that mounts new commissions by the Armory alongside pre-existing works in a dynamic installation exploring the world’s power structures, inequalities, and obscurities

ANTIGONE

September 25–October 6, 2019

Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi’s multicultural adaptation of Antigone, which stages the classic Greek tragedy within a large river of water and incorporates traditions from Japanese Noh, Indonesian shadow play, and Buddhist philosophy

BLACK ARTISTS RETREAT 2019: SONIC IMAGINATION

October 11–12, 2019

Theater Gates’ Black Artist Retreat, hosted for the first time outside of Chicago and designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas and innovation among black visual artists, recreating the kind of public-spirited dialogue associated with the civil rights movement of the sixties. As part of the weekend’s event, the public is invited to a roller skating celebration party in the Drill Hall amidst an installation of Gates’ seven-foot-tall disco-ball glacial sculptures, known as housebergs.

JUDGMENT DAY

December 5, 2019–January 11, 2020

 The world premiere of a new adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 play Judgment Day, part moral fable, part sociopolitical comedy, part noirish thriller commissioned by the Armory and directed by Richard Jones

Al Pacino will play King Lear in a movie version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, directed by Michael Radford, who directed the Oscar-winning actor in The Merchant of Venice in  2004. Says Radford: “Lear is the one that everyone aims for. Al has been toying with the idea for a long time. There’s a difference between Shylock, who’s only in five scenes, and Lear, who is in every scene, pretty much.”

One key scene helped cement ‘Hamilton’ as a Broadway legend. The team that crafted it explains how.

LPTW’s New Count: Gender Parity Up Slightly Off-Broadway

Saks Fifth Avenue unveils dazzling theater-themed holiday windows, partnering with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS

HIV-positive adults explore the therapeutic effects of theater

/The Journal of American Drama and Theater Volume 31, Number 1

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama

Good Samaritan, Performance division

 

 

Below is the trailer for the new Lion King, a CGI remake of the Lion King animated film, which debuted on June 15, 1994. The new film will be released on July 19th 2019.
We probably don’t need to remind anybody reading this that The Lion King, the Broadway musical adaptation directed by Julie Taymor, opened 21 years ago this month, on November 13, 1997. Now, more than 8,700 performances, its the third longest running show in Broadway history (after Phantom of the Opera and Chicago) and, at more than $ 1.5 billion, the highest-grossing Broadway musical ever.
(Will there be an adaptation of the CGI remake?)

Author: New York Theater

Jonathan Mandell is a 3rd generation NYC journalist, who sees shows, reads plays, writes reviews and sometimes talks with people.

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