“With all the activity on Broadway, there will be plenty of good targets,” says Gerard Alessandrini, the wit behind the satirical revue “Forbidden Broadway,” which after more than forty years and 26 editions as a side-splitting thorn in Broadway’s side, announced on Leap Year Day its first-ever run on Broadway itself, opening this summer.
In “Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song,” running July 29 to November 1 at Hayes Theater, Alessandrini promises to spoof many of the 18 shows that are opening on Broadway in March and April, the remaining eight weeks of the Broadway Spring 2024 season, including: The Great Gatsby, Hell’s Kitchen, The Notebook, and Water for Elephants, as well as recent Sondheim revivals Merrily We Roll Along (hence the title), Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Company.
Forbidden Broadway will certainly take note of how many of the new musicals have also been movies, and of the news that Netflix is becoming a Broadway producer (see below.) After all, the last edition just before the pandemic, “Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation” (featuring a parody of “Fosse/Verdon” pictured above), made a point of lampooning the movie-to-musical trend, with new lyrics to “Let It Go” from Frozen:
Overblown, overblown
Is imagination dead?
Overdone, under fun
kids would rather be home in bed…
Will “Forbidden Broadway” also mock Broadway ticket prices now that it surely will start charging them as well?
Check out: Broadway Rush and Lottery for Spring 2024 Shows
Of course, Broadway no longer has a monopoly on overpricing.
March 2024 New York Theater Openings
Theater Quiz for February 2024
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
It’s been seven years since Cynthia Nixon has appeared on a New York stage (when she won a Tony for “The Little Foxes”), but that’s not what Jordan Seavey’s new play is about, despite the coincidence of the title – or, at least, we’re led to believe that what “The Seven Year Disappear” Is about is a famous performance artist who disappears for seven years. But the play is so discombobulating — with Nixon portraying eight characters and a jumbled 26-year timeline — that by the end of the play it was hard to be sure what it was about, other than that it was about ninety minutes. Full Review
With “The Ally,” playwright Itamar Moses clarifies with laser precision the dilemma facing liberal American Jews largely because of Israel. But the play takes wider aim as well, exploring some of the most charged issues roiling college campuses these days. If the play starts off feeling like a comedy about a well-meaning if uninvolved character who gets roped into allyship, Moses is unafraid to turn his entertainment into an intellectual debate, each of the seven characters articulating (and embodying) a different point of view, while the play itself largely avoids taking sides.
“The Ally” is much-needed, timely theater, but it isn’t completely up-to-date: Written before the October 7 2023 massacre of Israelis by Hamas and subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, it’s set in September, 2023. So much has intensified in the last few months that “The Ally” could almost feel like a period piece, a time when people who sharply disagreed could still talk to one another. Full Review
“You might have seen me in the official revival of “1776” playing Edward Rutledge, aka the villain,” Sara Porkalob begins. And indeed we did – although many New York theatergoers might remember her more vividly (and some would say more villainously) for what she said about that musical rather than what she sang in it. Among her frank comments in an interview with New York Magazine, she castigated the production she was in as “cringey” and said that she was only giving “75 percent” to “1776” since she was “compromising my desire to do my own work.”
That was in 2022. This week, I finally got a chance to see her perform her own work – the solo show that convinced director Diana Paulus to hire her for “1776” – and now I understand what she was trying to say. Full Review
Puppetopia: Adventures of Curious Ganz and Pescador
The Week in New York Theater News
Netflix has become a first-time Broadway producer, for the play “Patriots” by Peter Morgan.
The streaming service has been involved with Broadway before, albeit indirectly, bringing “a number of adaptations of stage productions to the screen, including the musicals “The Prom,” “Matilda,” “13” and “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the plays “The Boys in the Band” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Netflix also filmed for streaming staged performances of the musical “Diana” and the concert show “Springsteen on Broadway.” And now, “even before “Patriots” begins its Broadway previews on April 1, Netflix is already in the early stages of developing a screen adaptation of the story…” (NYTimes)
“Patriots” written by the creator of the popular television series “The Crown,” will open April 22 at the Ethel Barrymore. Michael Stuhlbarg portrays the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was an early supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin but then fell out with him and wound up dead. The 18-member cast (including four understudies) will also feature Luke Thallon, making his Broadway debut, as Russian oligarch and politician Roman Abramovich, and Will Keen, making his Broadway debut recreating his Olivier Award-winning performance as Vladimir Putin.
“A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” starring James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton, Spamalot) will open November 11, 2024 at Studio 54 on Broadway
The 78th Annual Theatre World Awards will be held on Monday evening, June 10, 2024 (venue to be announced) and will honor actor Len Cariou and theater journalist (and long-time TWA host) Peter Filichia.
Extended
“Brooklyn Laundry” at NY City Center through Sunday, April 14.
“FIVE: The Parody Musical” at Theater 555 through April 21
Interim Artistic Directors
Scott Ellis will remain Interim Artistic Director of the Roundabout Theater Company for the 2025-26 season..
Bennett Leak will be Second Stage Theater’s Interim Artistic Director
Jon Jon Briones and daughter Isa Briones will join the cast of “Hadestown” as ‘Hermes’ and ‘Eurydice,’ respectively. The father-daughter duo will join the production on March 19, 2024 and will succeed Lillias White and Lola Tung who depart the production on March 17, 2024.
Sandra Oh and Ann Harada will be among the stars of “The Welkin” by Lucy Kirkwood, at Atlantic Theater Company May 16 – June 30, opening June 12th. Rural England, 1759. As the country awaits the return of Halley’s comet, a young woman is sentenced to death. When she tries to escape the noose by claiming she is pregnant, twelve ordinary women are gathered to decide whether she is telling the truth.
In Memoriam
Lynda Gravatt, 77, a formidable actress, who made her Broadway debut at age 4, and appeared as Mrs. Muller in the original Broadway production of “Doubt.” But I was must struck by her performances beyond Broadway — for example, the Off-Broadway production of Skeleton Crew as somebody tired, weighed down, but not crushed. and in the Round House and McCarter Theater production of Adrienne Kennedy’s “Ohio State Murders”
The Broadway League has announced that all Broadway theatres will dim their marquee lights for one minute at 6:45 PM March 12 in honor of three-time Tony winner Hinton Battle, who died January 30 at the age of 67. The news reverses course from a March 1 announcement that the lights of only a select few theatres would dim in Battle’s honor, a decision that was swiftly met with confusion and outcry on social media. (Playbill)
