The new Broadway season has already begun with the opening of “Grey House,” a new month of theater openings is already underway, but for one more week, attention will be on last season – thanks to the remaining theater awards: the 75th annual Theatre World Awards tonight, the 67th Annual Drama Desk Awards tomorrow night, but, mostly, the 76th annual Tony Awards next Sunday June 11th.
2023 Tony Award Winners — YOUR Picks?
June 2023 New York Theater Openings
June 2023 New York Theater Openings include 2 Broadway shows, at least 9 theater festivals, and a range of queer-oriented works marking LGBTQ Pride Month.
The Week in Theater Awards
2023 Drama Desk Award Winners: Some Like It Hot, Leopoldstadt, Life of Pi
Off Broadway Alliance Award Winners: Fat Ham, Titanique
The special Tony Award that honors educators will go this year to a drama teacher in Florida, Jason Zembuch-Young,who has closed the gap between the deaf and hearing worlds by having productions performed in both voice and American Sign Language (AP)
Actors’ Equity Association’s Advisory Committee on Chorus Affairs has announced the nominees for its ACCA Award, honoring the chorus performers in a Broadway show: & Juliet; KPOP; New York, New York; Shucked; Some Like It Hot;
Sweeney Todd. The winner, voted on by chorus performers past and present, will be awarded in July.
The Week in Theater Reviews
Grey House Review. Can Horror work on stage?
The Week in Theater News
Roundabout will rename American Airlines Theater for Todd Haimes, its longtime leader, who died in April at the age of 66.
Beginning performances in that newly named theater in February: the first Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 play “Doubt: A Parable,” which won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The production will star Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber in the story of sister Sister Aloysius, “the prickly principal of an all-boys Catholic school in a working-class part of the Bronx, who is feared by students and colleagues alike. But when she suspects nefarious relations between the charismatic priest Father Flynn and a student, she’s forced to wrestle with what’s fact, what’s fiction, and how much she’ll risk to expose the difference—all the while wrestling with her own bone-deep doubts.”
The Public Theater’s 2023-2024 season, announced last week, features some exciting shows, including Hell’s Kitchen a new musical by Alicia Keys with a book by Kristoffer Diaz, and Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle, which looks at New York City through the eyes of a member of the Lenape nation, now and four hundred years ago.
What it doesn’t include is the Under Radar Festival; its omission is the way we learned that the Public Theater is ending the festival after eighteen years.
Under the Radar Festival: In Memoriam
Joshua Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic is moving to Broadway. The play about antisemitism will open January 9, 2024 at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Casting and creative team to be announced later. (My review of it Off-Broadway)
Broadway musicians (Local 802) object to David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’s plans to use recorded music instead of a live band (NY Times). (Photograph is of the 2013 production at the Public Theater, which also used recorded music.)
New York City Center will present an adaptation of the 1940 musical “Pal Joey,” November 1-5, now set in a Black community — the South Side of Chicago in the 1940s — starring Ephraim Sykes as Joey Evans, a jazz singer who refuses to compromise his craft in the face of racism, and Jennifer Holliday as a nightclub owner. The production will be directed by Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover.
Then in 2024, a new season of the Encores! Concert series:
Once Upon a Mattress, January 24 – 28, the Mary Rodgers musical starring Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (the role originated by Carol Burnett)
Jelly’s Last Jam, jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton—the directed by Robert O’Hara February 21 – 25)
Titanic directed by Anne Kauffman, June 12 – 16.
In honor of the 22nd year of the Tribeca Film Festival, June 7–18, 2023, the New York Times lists: 10 Movies That Capture the Essence of New York. Two on the list – In the Heights and Six Degrees of Separation – were originally works of theater (one a musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the other a play by John Guare
This Week’s Theater Video
One minute of 2023 Tony Award nominees
The final #Ham4Ham showcasing the Tony nominees of the 2022-2023 Broadway season features & Juliet, Into the Woods, New York, New York A. It begins with Sean Hayes playing part of “Rhapsody in Blue”
Tony Honorees Acceptance Speeches
Lisa Dawn Cave is currently the Production Supervisor for Disney’s The Lion King and Frozen worldwide, along with the re-imagined Aida, which is currently playing in the Netherlands. “Who would have imagined this little Black girl from the projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn would be receiving a Tony Honor of Excellence for becoming what she always dreamed of — a success in the theater world,”
Robert Fried, a practicing certified public accountant for almost four decades, has provided tax, consulting and accounting services almost exclusively to the theatre industry for over 32 years.
Victoria Bailey has been the Executive Director of Theatrical Development Fund since 2001
