Amid the distressing midsummer news of the defunding of public broadcasting, the suspiciously-timed axing of Stephen Colbert, and the uncertainty behind the arts desk shakeup at the New York Times, we got an encouraging glimpse last week of two long-awaited, and soon-to-be theatrical makeovers, with press announcements/events for the Public Theater’s Delacorte in Central Park, which is reopening next month with a starry “Twelfth Night,” and The Cherry Lane Theater, which will officially relaunch the week of September 8.
(I personally didn’t get those glimpses, which I unreasonably consider snubs, since both theaters figured prominently in my youth: I worked as an usher during high school in the first, and grew up across the street from the second. We’ve aged together. )
The Week in New York Theater Reviews and Previews
Joy A New True Musical
The story of Joy Mangano, harried single mother on Long Island turned successful inventor and entrepreneur of household products, was told in the 2015 movie “Joy” starring Jennifer Lawrence, and then in Mangano’s 2017 bestselling “Inventing Joy,” a combination autobiography and self-help book…“Joy: A New True Musical” lies somewhere between the movie and book in tone, but it has a quirkiness all its own, in part because, well, it’s fifteen musical numbers about a woman who sold a mop…Theatergoers can surely be won over by the musical’s inspirational message, AnnMarie Milazzo’s pleasing if not especially memorable score, Joshua Bergasse’s lively choreography, and an appealing cast led by the phenomenal Betsy Wolfe – as long as they don’t mind occasionally feeling like the target of a marketing campaign.
Transgression
An art photographer, who is as famous as the celebrities he shoots, starts having sex with a girl who is in ninth grade, and takes pictures of her naked while she’s sleeping in his bed, without her knowledge or consent….the play tries, without great success, to dramatize the longstanding ethical debate about artists vs. their art, which is summed up in the play by an exchange between the photographer’s widow Gina (Jane Ives) and his now grown-up model Robin (Susan Bennett):
Gina: “The behavior is inexcusable. The work transcends the man.”
Robin: “Bullshit.”
EdFest (pre-Edinburgh): Tell Me Where Home Is
Michael DeBartolo’s path to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival began in a childhood of “profound shame” and a series of unhealthy infatuations with straight boys. Years later, now a New Yorker, he took to Facebook and posted 100 stories in 100 days about growing up gay…[Now] he stepped onto the stage of The Tank, wearing Dorothy-like ruby red sneakers and gingham shorts, having adapted those experiences into “Tell Me Where Home Is (I’m Starting to Forget).” The solo play launched EdFest, a new week-long theater festival that’s presenting a dozen one-night-only previews of shows that will be debuting for full runs next month in Edinburgh, Scotland.
EdFest: Furniture Boys
Watching Emily Weitzman talk to a couch as if it were her ex-lover brought two names to mind: JD Vance and Andy Kaufman…In “Furniture Boys,” which will be presented next month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Weitzman reminisced about a lamp (“ I realized he wasn’t that bright”), a drawer (“I could never get him to open up.”), a grandfather clock (“a bit too old for me”), and chairs, many chairs, all of them gathered around the stage with her, all of them with names (or pseudonyms) of her ex-boyfriends. It was funny at first, a series of clever puns. Sometime before the end of the hour, the show turned uncomfortably weird
Book: Baldwin: A Love Story
James Baldwin met Marlon Brando at an adjacent urinal in the men’s bathroom at the New School for Social Research when they were both 19 years old and dreaming of success as, respectively, a writer and an actor – just a few years before each became among the mid-century’s most famous Americans. They wound up life-long friends – and maybe something more, as author Nicholas Boggs speculates in Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 720 pages), the first major biography in three decades of James Baldwin (1924-1987), the Harlem-born writer and civil rights activist probably best known for his coming-of-age novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and his collections of eloquent essays on race and racial justice, “Notes of a Native Son” and “The Fire Next Time’….
Boggs’ speculation about whether Brando and Baldwin had sex is an example in this biography of how Baldwin’s homosexuality serves as the prism through which we’re asked to view his life and art. ..
This is not to say that Baldwin’s homosexuality is the sole subject of the book. Far from it…Theater lovers might be surprised at how interested and involved Baldwin was throughout his life in writing and directing plays: In his high school yearbook he listed his desired occupation as “novelist/playwright”; he apprenticed to director Elia Kazan on two productions, Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth,” which he liked, and Archibald MacLeish’s “JB,” which he loathed, before writing his own two plays on Broadway, “Blues for Mister Charlie” and “The Amen Corner”; the final literary work of his life was a play entitled “The Welcome Table”
The Week in New York Theater News
Gypsy is closing August 17, two months earlier than planned, after 28 preview and 269 regular performances This sixth Broadway production of the musical winds up having the shortest run. The production was nominated for five Tony Awards, including best revival of a music, but won none.
Sunset Blvd closed on Sunday, as scheduled.
There are now 28 shows running on Broadway.
Joining Jinkx Monsoon in the cast of Oh, Mary starting August 4: Kumail Nanjiani as Mary’s husband (ie Abe Lincoln), Michael Urie as Mary’s teacher (JW Booth), and Jenn Harris as Mary’s chaperone
“John Proctor is the Villain” has been extended “for the final time” until September 7.
Meanwhile, Universal has picked up the film rights to the play, with Tina Fey and Marc PLatt producing, star Sadi Sink executive producing, and playwright Kimberly Belflower adapting her play for the screen. (The Hollywood Reporter)
(Last month a recording of the play was added to the Theater on Film and Tape archive at the Library for the Performing Arts)
Broadway Tax Credit Program Runs Out of Money. The $400 million NYC Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit is expected to allocate all remaining funds by October. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Lin-Manuel Miranda will use the tenth anniversary Broadway performance of “Hamilton” on August 6, a by- invitation only event, as a fundraiser for the newly formed Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, made up of 14 leading immigration service and advocacy groups.. (AP)
The Cherry Lane Theater, now owned by the A24 movie studio, is reopening at last, with a block party etc. starting Sept. 8. Initial programming: A Sunday film series curated by Sofia Coppola; “Weer,” Natalie Palamides’ one-woman show. (It will not plan have a formal season, or subscribers. (NYTimes)
Matte Martinez will take over the title role of MJ the Musical on Sept 2. He was pretty spectacular at the Braodway in Bryant Park concert a couple of weeks ago.
The Week’s Theater Video
For Connie Francis (1937-2025): Watch Gracie Lawrence sing “Who’s Sorry Now” at Broadway in Bryant Park
