Broadway Countdown: 6 plays, 4 musicals. 4 Movie Musicals. #Stageworthy News of the Week

The first of the April Avalanche on Broadway begins Thursday with the opening of King Lear, starring Glenda Jackson, and ends on April 25 (the Tony eligibility cut-off date) with Beetlejuice starring Alex Brightman.

April Openings

But the end of the Broadway season doesn’t spell the end of the Broadway musical — adapting for film. Here are the four with release dates:

Aladdin: May 24

The Lion King: July 19

CATS, December 20

In The Heights, June 26, 2020

Also coming up (but without release dates yet): West Side Story, Come From Away, Wicked — actually, too many to mention.

March Quiz

Week in New York Theater Reviews

AIn’t No Mo

Welcome to African-American Airlines, where if you broke & black, we got yo back” – those are the first two messages painted on the wall as we walk up the staircase in the Public Theater to “Ain’t No Mo’.”  The play by Jordan E. Cooper, making his Off-Broadway debut as both a playwright and an actor, takes its audience on a trip through the present-day African-American experience. The trip is meant to be more than just a metaphor.  Black people are leaving the United States en masse on flights to Africa. It appears to be voluntary, but maybe not really. “If you stay here, you only got two choices for guaranteed  housing, and that’s a cell or a coffin,” explains Peaches, portrayed by the playwright. Peaches, a drag queen dressed all in pink, functions as the airline’s flight attendant and ticket agent, and the playwright’s mouthpiece.


Chimpanzee

An hour-long play that presents a chimp in captivity, recalling her youth with a human family.
The chimp is a puppet, manipulated by three puppeteers. “Chimpanzee” shows the power of puppetry to elicit emotion for a story that would surely be less effective told in any other way.


Dad in a Box: A comedienne trying to be funny while her father is dying

William Sheepspeare. A Theater Book for Two Year Olds Full of Sheep Puns.

Week in New York Theater News

Second Stage 2019-20 season (in all 3 of their theaters): On Broadway: Linda Vista by Tracy Letts; Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg. Off-Bway: Our Dear Dead Drug Lord by Alexis Scheer. The Underlying Chris by Will Eno

John Leguizamo is taking his  Latin History for Morons to 15 cities, starting June 20th and 21st at New York’s Apollo Theater, ending up in L.A.’s . Ahmanson Theatre in September.

New announcement/tease by Signature Theater:  Future seasons will be presenting the work of Sarah Ruhl, Anna Deavere Smith, Samuel D Hunter, Lauren Yee and The Mad Ones.

Fifth annual Broadwaycon returns to to the New York Hilton Midtown January 24-26, 2020. First announced guests: Anthony Rapp, George Salazar, Judy Kuhn, Kristolyn Lloyd, Heidi Blickenstaff, Tommy Bracco, Andrew Kober, Brad Oscar, Gillian Pensavalle, Erin Quill, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, and Fredi Walker-Brown

Danielle Brooks, photograph by Jonathan Mandell

Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black, The Color Purple ) will star as Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Delacorte in Central Park this summer “I haven’t done Shakespeare in nine years, I’m ready,”

Wilson Jermaine Heredia (Tony winner as Angel in the original Rent) will star in Original Sound, Adam Seidel’s O play about a young Nuyorican beat maker who calls out a rising pop star for ripping off his track, sometime this Spring the Cherry Lane,

 

 

“Everyone expects to be safe in the theater — maybe challenged a bit with an idea or two — but I say, well, maybe you’re not going to be safe,”

 

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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