Two new plays and a new musical announced for Broadway this past week, and a fourth firmed up dates and theater, bringing the number of confirmed shows in the Broadway 2022-2023 season to 17:
Almost Famous will be at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater
First Preview: October 3, 2022
Opening: November 3, 2022
A musical based on Cameron Crowe’s 2000 semi-autobiographical movie about a teenage rock journalist who goes on tour with a rock group in the early 1970s.
& Juliet will be at the Stephen Sondheim Theater
First preview: October 28
Opening: November 17
A jukebox musical that imagines Juliet living after Romeo,
Ain’t No Mo
Belasco
First preview: November 3
Opening: December 1
The premise: What if the U.S. government offered Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa. In my review of this comedy at the Public Theater in 2019, I wrote: If the premise is mass African-American exodus, and some of the scenes take place at an airport, “Ain’t No’ Mo’” does not offer a direct flight. We make stops at a funeral parlor, an abortion clinic, a TV studio, a mansion, and a prison, and veer from comic and chaotic to pointed and unsettling. Lee Daniels makes his Broadway debut as a producer.
“Ain’t No Mo'” is the first Broadway show to originate in the Fire This Time Festival.
The Collaboration
MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
First preview: November 29
Opening: December 20
Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol and Jeremy Pope as Jean-Michel Basquiat, who, in the summer of 1984, agree to work together.
The Week in Theater News
Paradise Square will conclude its run on Sunday, July 17 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, having played 23 previews and 108 performances. Paradise Square was nominated for 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical, with star Joaquina Kalukango receiving the Tony for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical. (My review.)
Lea Michele (Spring Awakening, “Glee”) will star as Fanny Brice and Tovah Feldshuh (Yentl, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) will star as Mrs. Brice beginning September 6th.
The day before the announcement, Beanie Feldstein over the weekend went on Instagram to say that she was leaving “Funny Girl” two months earlier than planned, July 31st, “once the production decided to take the show in a different direction…”:
(My review of “Funny Girl” starring Feldstein. I was far from alone in thinking she was only occasionally compelling in the role. For the record, I thought she gave stellar performances in the film “Lady Bird,” and as Monica Lewinsky in the FX TV series “Impeachment”)
Fanny Brice standby Julie Benko will perform the title role from August 2 to September 4, and then every Thursday starting September 8.
Rest in Peace
Larry Storch, 99, a comic actor best known for F-Troop, he also appeared on Broadway six times, from 1956 to 2004, including revivals of “Porgy and Bess”, “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “Annie Get Your Gun.”
James Caan, 82, tough-guy movie star best known for The Godfather. The Bronx-born son of butcher, he launched his six-decade acting career when, on a whim, he bluffed his way in the theater training program at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
