With twelve shows opening on Broadway in the next ten days– and several Off Broadway – it’s a taxing time (yes, a pun) for theater award voters and critics, and a busy one for theater makers. But one theater company sees April as a Month of Rest for theatergoers; Playco is offering free events including a group nap, a sound path, and a walk in the park.
Today is not going to be a walk in the park for those taxpayers who haven’t filed yet, it seems the right time to look at examples of Taxes in Broadway musicals (and in a couple of plays), from “Casino Girl” in 1910 to “Hamilton” today.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
A woman is pictured as a machine several times in “Lempicka,” a musical about Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), an artist whose heyday was in the 1930s, painting Art Deco-style portraits of rich and titled Europeans. ..It suddenly struck me as a clarifying metaphor for my mixed reaction to “Lempicka,” – artful lyrics, polished performances, most notably Eden Espinosa in the title role, and especially Amber Iman as Rafaela. But the songs and scenes ultimately add up to an almost mechanical-feeling sameness, loud and overwhelming. Full Review
In “The Outsiders,” an exciting cast of gifted young performers, a lovely if little-varied folk and country score, and some thrillingly muscular, almost cinematic choreography are all employed to tell a story that’s been told many times before. Rival teenage gangs? Angsty adolescents? Kids who put grease in their hair? It’s hard to avoid comparisons to, among others, “West Side Story” and “Grease.” But of course the most unavoidable comparison – which is both boost and burden – is to the two landmark works on which “The Outsiders” is directly based. Full Review
By the end of “Oh, Mary!,” we have learned that First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln was a homicidally bitter alcoholic and frustrated cabaret singer married to a vicious closet homosexual whose assassination didn’t go down the way we were taught. This is not meant to be historically accurate, of course; that’s beside the point. The point is to make the audience laugh. So, what if you don’t find this alternative history all that funny? Full Review
Book: The Great Gatsby: The 1926 Broadway Script
Since the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of the Jazz Age – on April 10, 1925, 99 years ago — “The Great Gatsby” has been turned into an opera, a ballet, several movies, and a musical that will open on Broadway later this month, with a completely different musical adaptation of the novel also aiming for Broadway…. But the first adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was a non-musical play written by playwright Owen Davis for Broadway in 1926, opening just ten months after the novel’s publication. “The Great Gatsby appeared on Broadway at the right moment,” editors Anne Margaret Daniel and James L. W. West III write in their introduction of “The Great Gatsby: The 1926 Broadway Script” (Cambridge University Press, 142 pages.) “The play made Fitzgerald a substantial amount of money and spread his name across the country.” Full Review
The Week in New York Theater News
“Commercial Off Broadway, a long-dormant sector of the city’s theater economy, is having a banner season. But can it last?”(NYTimes) Examples cited of commerical hits Off-Broadway: “Oh, Mary!” “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Titanique.”
“Historically, Off Broadway tickets have been less expensive than tickets for Broadway shows, but these commercial hits have engaged in the same dynamic pricing practices as Broadway shows — meaning tickets are more expensive when they are more in demand. “Oh, Mary!” has a top price of $191. (That’s still vastly less than the top priced ticket on Broadway, which is $649 at “Merrily We Roll Along.”)”
Nicole Scherzinger and Broadway-bound ‘Sunset Boulevard’ lead winners of London’s 2024 Olivier Awards”
The Third Annual Broadway Celebrates Earth Day Concert, will take place on Saturday, April 20th from 11am – 3pm ETin the heart of Times Square, on Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets – and streaming online – as part of the NYC Department of Transportation’s “Car-Free Earth Day.”
Lea Salonga and Bernadette Peters will reprise on Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater their London performance of “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” as part of MTC’s 2024 – 2025 season. Previews begin March 25, 2025. Also in their season: “Eureka Day” by Jonathan Spector, previews being November 25, 2024, and Erika Sheffer’s “Vladimir,” (yes, about Putin), Off-Broadway in Fall 2024.
