Twenty new shows will be opening on Broadway (so far) in the remainder of the 2023-2024 season, including two newly announced — as well as a revival next Fall of one of the country’s most performed plays. How many of them will last for twenty years? Today is the twentieth anniversary of the opening of “Wicked,” one of the six longest-running shows currently on Broadway. What does a show need to run so long? Three things, “Wicked” original cast members Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel say below.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Stereophonic
“Stereophonic” chronicles a year of recording studio sessions by the members of a popular 1970s rock band (never named, fictional) as they put together their latest album and have their ups and downs with one another. Watching this play by David Adjmi made me think of the last (and possibly the only other) play I’ve seen that was set in a recording studio, “Million Dollar Quartet,” not because there were any similarities between the two, but precisely because their differences made me realize how I could be impressed by the writing and acting in “Stereophonic” and still be greatly disappointed by it.
At three hours long (plus intermission), “Stereophonic” feels as if it’s in Annie Baker territory – which is to say long and slow but meticulously observed from real life, unfolding as if in real time, but also offering a subtle wit and the possibility of deeper meaning. But does that sound like the right approach for a play about ROCK N ROLL?!
King of the Jews
a Holocaust-set play at HERE that is inventively staged and well-acted, but both intentionally and unintentionally disturbing… When its characters explore their moral dilemma, “King of the Jews” is at its most nuanced and most engaging… [but the debate is] overshadowed by some superficial character portraits. Full Review
The Holylanders
a fascinating glimpse into Israeli culture, including some intriguing moral dilemmas, and laced with an implicit, often harsh (if comically presented) critique.
Broadway Poll: Best and Worst Jukebox Musical?
Fifteen jukebox musicals were featured in an odd concert at Merkin Hall, “Jukebox: The Musical,” part of the Kaufman Music Center’s Broadway Close Up seriese. So I asked: Which of the fifteen do you consider the best of the genre; which the worst? There was no huge consensus, but “Jersey Boys” got the most votes for best jukebox musical (selected by 23 percent of respondents) and “Escape to Margaritaville” got voted the worst (26 percent)
The Week in New York Theater News
The remaining season (so far). Details in my Broadway 2023-2024 season preview
Three newly announced shows for Broadway:
A “reimagined” production of “The Who’s Tommy”is opening at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater on March 28th.
“Lempicka,” a musical about the life and times of the peripatetic artist Tamara de Lempicka, will open at the Longacre on April 14, starring Eden Espinosa.
Kenny Leon will direct a new Broadway production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder in the fall of 2024. This will be the first major Broadway revival of the play in nearly 25 years. The dates, cast, and a theatre will be announced at a later date.
Broadway cast of The Notebook, opening March 14 at the Schoenfeld: Leading the company will be Tony winner Maryann Plunkett as Older Allie, Joy Woods as Middle Allie, and Jordan Tyson as Younger Allie, and Dorian Harewood as Older Noah, Ryan Vasquez as Middle Noah, and John Cardoza as Younger Noah. With the exception of Harewood (who replaces the late John Beasley), all originated their roles during the musical’s debut run at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2022.
“Wicked” opened on Broadway twenty years ago today.
For Wicked’s 20th birthday, the original Glinda and Elphaba Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel reunite to talk about high notes, low rumors, and onstage emergencies (New York Magazine.)
Menzel:…if the show has three magical moments that can get everybody all the time, it’s worth holding onto and figuring it out. Six months later it changes and it sucks and then you come back a year later and fix it again.
Chenoweth.: Once we got to our San Francisco tryout, the critics weren’t loving it, but the audiences were. I remember thinking that between “Defying Gravity”—
Menzel.: “Popular”—
Chenoweth.: —And “For Good,” there’s your three things.
Fall 2023 issue of American Theatre Magazine, online, but also now back in print.
Why American Theatre Magazine is back in print by Rob Weinert-Kent:
“we weathered our own shutdown of sorts, pausing our print publication in May 2020. Now that we’re back on ink and paper, I have frequently been asked: Why now? Isn’t this a counterintuitive move, given the state of the American theatre, let alone of publishing?
One good reason: We published full original playscripts in print (185 in total)..
But the bigger reason we’re back is that we surveyed you, the readers, earlier this year and got the clear message that you want something to hold in your hands, to contemplate and digest and take your time with…[A] print publication about the ephemeral art of the theatre seems an apt way to place a regular marker amid the churn of openings and closings in a way that the daily drip of the internet, optimized for news and quick responses, doesn’t.
Two “new” teatros in 2026
Nuyorican Poets Café is closing for three years for what they call #Nuyoricanstruction (renovation.) after a 50th anniversary Halloween party. Starting November 1, everything moves online
Meanwhile, last week saw the groundbreaking for a new building for The People’s Theatre. The Centro Cultural Immigrante will become the first flexible theater in the Washington Heights and Inward neighborhood. It is expected to open its doors in 2026, the same year the Nuyricanstruction is scheduled to finish.
In Memoriam
Robert Brustein, 96, critic, dramatist, teacher and administrator who started repertory companies at Yale and Harvard
Matthew Perry, 54, best-known for his role as Chandler Bing in the TV series “Friends.” In 2017, he wrote and starred in a play Off-Broadway called “The End of Longing,” about a character struggling to overcome his alcoholism.
