Broadway at the Oscars 2024, clockwise from top left: New Academy Award winners and Broadway veterans Da’Vine Joy Randolph (who was nominated for a Tony in 2012 for Ghost the Musical) and Emma Stone (who starred as Sally Bowles in the 2014 Broadway revival of Cabaret.) as did Cillian Murphy has not (yet) performed on Broadway, but did win acclaim for his starring role in Enda Walsh’s “Misterman” at St. Ann’s Warehouse a decade ago. The forthcoming movie’s Elphaba and Glinda (Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, both Broadway veterans), were presenters, dressed in green and pink, and sly quoting lyrics from Wicked and The Wizard of Oz. See the videos below. Full list of winners.
Broadway Poll: Favorite March and April 2024 Shows
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
The nun is certain, or says she is, that the priest is molesting one of the students in her school, but we never are so sure, thanks to John Patrick Shanley’s exquisitely well-crafted play. which debuted on Broadway in 2005, winning both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and four Tony Awards, including Best Play. In this first Broadway revival of “Doubt: A Parable”…the deceptively simple script holds up, the production is sturdy, but only one of the four performances is superb…Full Review
For all the high-powered theatrical talent involved, this stage interpretation of Sufjan Stevens’ acclaimed 2005 album “Illinois” could probably use a warning label. It’s extraordinary, it’s queer, it’s often thrilling, but regular New York theatergoers might need to adjust their expectations. …“Illinoise” is a dance theater piece, not a musical, and unconventional even as that. …Full review
The show, largely a dance theater piece with minimal dialogue, is billed in the program as a choreographic reflection on state violence…“Oasis of Impunity,” is a series of scenes that often feel like an assault – on the senses, on my sensibilities, sometimes on the actors’ dignity — without explicitly illuminating the history that led to it, or the issues it claims to raise….At the same time, there is undeniably a powerful theatrical intelligence at work, an intricacy of metaphor at play. Full review
The Week in New York Theater News
“Days of Wine and Roses” is ending on Broadway March 31st, having transferred from Off-Broadway and then played 25 previews and 73 regular performances. The closing date is a month earlier than planned — which is a little shocking, since the Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are so exquisite.
“Spamalot” is closing April 7, after a 24-week run.
The Who’s Tommy” to offer $40 tickets through a digital lottery. Details added to my list of Broadway Rush and Lottery for Spring 2024 Shows
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Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will star together on Broadway in William Shakespeare’s Othello. The production, directed by Kenny Leon, will open in Spring 2025, with details still to work out.
“Just for Us”, Alex Edelman’s solo show about his comic confrontation with antisemites in Queens, will be presented on HBO in April, having been filmed in front of a live audience at Broadway’s Hudson Theater last August. (My Broadway review.)
Production workers at the Public Theater seek to join The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), a labor union, through a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election, after the Public declined to recognize the union voluntarily. This is the latest Off-Broadway unionization drive that previously organized theater workers at the Atlantic at Vineyard Theaters.(Broadway Journal)
(IATSE commented on a moment at the Oscars:
The musician and curator Taja Cheek (center), also known as L’Rain, is joining Performance Space New York as artistic director, the nonprofit organization announced on Friday. She and its two other executives — Ana Beatriz Sepúlveda-Echegaray (left) and Pati Hertling (right) — will share power at the East Village institution.(NY Times)
There is a vibrant and resurgent indie theater scene happening in non-traditional spaces.In Downtown Brooklyn, there’s the Loading Dock Theatre, founded by a couple who converted half their loft into a black-box theater. Smaller groups, like Feral Theatre Company, conduct readings in Washington Heights homes. Pocket Ghost Productions puts on “site-specific” shows in a Flatbush kitchen and dining room. In her Bushwick apartment, Ann Liv Young hosts an avant-garde “Marie Antoinette” show during a dinner party. Other theater companies include New Relic Theatre, which has productions on restaurant patios or rooftops, and Wet Spot, which does queer shows in a Bedford-Stuyvesant backyard. (Gothamist)
In Memoriam
Steve Lawrence, 88, a Grammy and Emmy-winning pop singer, and Tony-nominated actor (“What Makes Sammy Run” in 1964) who often performed with his late wife Eydie Gormé as the duo Stevie & Eydie. The couple appeared together in the Broadway show Golden Rainbow. “Although the show flopped, it introduced the standard ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me.'”
Edward Bond, 89, an outrageous British playwright who claimed his place in the history of theatre in the 1960s with “Saved,” whose portrayal of alienated urban youth “climaxed in a notorious scene of a baby being stoned to death in a pram. Despite a passionate defence by grandees including Laurence Olivier, the Royal Court was prosecuted and fined a token 50 guineas for defying the Lord Chamberlain’s attempts to censor the play.” That, along with a later Bond shocker, played a key part in ending 200 years of theater censorship in Great Britain.
Linda Balgord, 64, a six-time Broadway veteran performer whom Andrew Lloyd Webber favored as an interpreter of his work, starring as Grizabella in Cats, Madame Giry in The Phantom of the Opera, and Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
The Week’s Theater Video
Watch other actors praise each of the five Best Actor nominees (four of whom are Broadway veterans)
Ditto with best actress nominees:
The Erivo-Grande playful introduction
Can you now see “Barbie” as a Broadway musical, given this musical number?
