Three plays and four musicals opened on Broadway last week, the last of the 39 shows that opened during the 2023-2024 season. Awards season has already begun in earnest, with the nominations for two major theater awards announced last week (see below), two more later today (Drama Desk and Chita Rivera), and the Tony Award nominations announced tomorrow (which is a birthday gift for me) by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Renée Elise Goldsberry at 8:30 am on CBS Mornings.
Broadway Season Closer Quiz 2024
Check out videos below from the Tony Awards (looking at the whole season), Sondheim’s “Here We Are,” “The Great Gatsby,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” and “Illinoise.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
A musical about the Jazz Age with almost no jazz? A man of mystery who tells us everything in his first song? A critique of wealth in a show whose main pleasure is how expensive it looks? These are lessons that high school students assigned to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel could learn by attending “The Great Gatsby” at the Broadway Theater – lessons in irony….The “Gatsby” on stage is not a reliable adaptation of the book…this last Broadway musical to open this season is also just not very satisfying to me as a musical,…The one exception is its exceptional visual splendor. Full Review.
Jessica Lange is unforgettable in Paula Vogel’s unforgiving portrait of the title character in “Mother Play,” her semiautobiographical new play…a role that is so demanding that it feels tantamount to actor abuse. …“Mother Play” is not as great as plays Paula Vogel has written in the past – perhaps not as great as she might be able to make it in time – but under Tina Landau’s direction, it is a mesmerizing production, albeit not always easy to watch. Full Review
“Illinoise” is extraordinary, it’s queer, it’s often thrilling. But it could probably use a warning label. This stage interpretation of Sufjan Stevens’ album “Illinois” could be mistakenly assumed to be a Broadway jukebox musical, given Stevens’ already popular score and the marquee names involved in adapting it for the stage…But “Illinoise” is not a conventional Broadway musical. It’s a dance theater piece, and unconventional even as that. Full Review.
The Lincoln Center “Uncle Vanya,” which is the 11th production of the play on Broadway, doesn’t completely solve the central difficulties of staging it. The production still requires patience; there’s no concession to the Tik-Tok generation. And while Heidi Schreck’s translation does bring out the humor, and gets rid of the stuffiness, it introduces potential problems of its own. Still, under Lila Neugebauer’s direction, the performances of the nine-member cast do click often enough to reward those of us who are patient. Full Review
Rachel McAdams might at first seem to be miscast in her first role on Broadway. She portrays the title character in Amy Herzog’s deceptively casual play about the mother of a severely disabled son….fresh-faced and cheerful….McAdams winds up startling effective in a play whose weight and power sneak up on you. Full Review
“Very poppy,” a character says to Bobby (Corey Cott), the Leading Man, just after he’s performed “Do You Believe in Love,” one of more than two dozen songs from the 1980s band Huey Lewis and the News in this new jukebox musical opening tonight on Broadway. I knew “poppy” was meant as an insult only because the character saying it is the Villain,…Ok, so I won’t call “The Heart of Rock and Roll” poppy. If not poppy, it’s certainly predictable, a blast of 1980s nostalgia with a by-the-numbers plot that would not be out of place in a conventional 1950s musical comedy. But for what it is, the show has its moments. Cott gives another reliable central performance, surrounded by stand-out supporting players. Lorin Latarro’s choreography rocks, and hops, and sometimes completely flips (there are acrobatic dancers in the ensemble.) In between the catchy tunes, eye-rolling contrivance competes with cleverness; sometimes, clever wins. Full review.
a smart and entertaining historical drama, if an odd fit for Broadway right now. “Patriots” focuses on the man from whom Vladimir Putin sought favors: Boris Berezovsky, a math prodigy and PhD who shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 became a billionaire businessman and something of a political boss, or at least bossy — the most prominent of the so-called oligarchs, the term used for Russian entrepreneurs who took advantage of the privatization of state-run industries to become both insanely wealthy and frighteningly influential.
The Week in New York Theater News
Outer Critics Circle Award 2024 Nominations
Drama League Award 2024 Nominations
I suppose this was inevitable: “Oh, Mary,” Cole Escola’s campy Off-Broadway hit that makes up things about First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln for laughs, is opening at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater July 11. (limited run June 26 – September 15) My (outlier) review
What Began as a War on Theater Won’t End There
An essay in the New York Times by James Shapiro, the acclaimed Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro (the author of one of my favorite books on theater, and of the forthcoming “The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.”)
“…in the Educational Theater Association’s most recent survey, 85 percent of American theater teachers expressed concern about censorship. Even Shakespeare is at risk: In Florida, new laws led to the restriction of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to grades 10 through 12 and “Romeo and Juliet” could not be taught in full to avoid falling afoul of legislation targeting “sexual conduct.” Kill off young people’s exposure to theater, and you kill off a generation of playgoers, along with the empathy and camaraderie (already in short supply) that are intrinsic to theater….
Robert O’Hara is set to direct a film adaptation of his play Barbecue, starring will star Colman Domingo, Marisa Tomei, and Danai Gurira. The satirical racial comedy with a stunning twist debuted at the Public Theater in 2015. (My review.)
Photo Call: The Theater Photos of Joan Marcus and Carol Rosegg is on view May 1 – September 28 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The exhibition “presents an extensive selection of the many theater productions Marcus and Rosegg have photographed over the past four decades, and tells some of their fascinating and unique stories of their experiences capturing some of Broadway’s most iconic images.”
The Week’s Theater Video
“Exit Music” from Sondheim’s musical “Here We Are”
Music video from “The Great Gatsby”
montage from “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a jukebox musical of Huey Lewis and the News songs.
Moments from “Illinoise” which has now moved to Broadway.
