Ariana DeBose to star in Stephen Schwartz musical. Rosie O’Donnell has her say far away. A Chorus Line at 50. Ephraim Sykes at #Hamilten block party
Stars are what sell shows in New York, more so now than ever, which made the absence of celebrity casting at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival feel especially refreshing – until I realized how many of the shows I chose to see revolved around famous people: Rosie O’Donnell’s solo show, and plays about Charlie Chaplin, Miles Davis, Gertrude Stein, and Ann Miller. (Do shows by the Bengsons and about the Shaggs count?) You can take the critic out of the celebrity-obsessed culture, but can you take the celebrity-obsessed culture out of the critic?
Theater in Edinburgh, as in the rest of the UK, rely heavily on another kind of star system: ***** Critics assess shows using from one to five stars. That’s not unheard of in New York, but it’s not as common. I tried it for the first week, but stopped, because it seems to encourage theatergoers/readers to ignore the nuance and complexity of the show, and of the review. And it makes the artists feel like they’ve failed if they don’t get five stars.
Hamilton at 10
What has distinguished “Hamilton” from the start is not just how clever and tuneful the show, but how adept its marketing. On the day of its tenth anniversary, the matinee was filled by some 1,200 fans who had won a $10 lottery; the evening performance was an invitation-only fundraiser for the Hispanic Federation’s Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, which included curtain call speeches by producer Jeffrey Seller and director Thomas Kail with appearances by current and past Broadway company members, followed by a block party on 46th Street.
Earlier, on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” Lin-Manuel Miranda announced that Walt Disney Studios will release the film “Hamilton” (which was originally streamed on Disney+) in cinemas on September 5th.
A Chorus Line at 50
The one-night-only performance of “A Chorus Line” to celebrate its 50th anniversary and raise funds for the Entertainment Community Fund, featured performances and appearances from original 1975 Broadway cast members Scott Allen, Kelly Bishop, Wayne Cilento, Donna Drake, Brandt Edwards, Patricia Garland, Baayork Lee, Priscilla Lopez, Donna McKechnie and Michael Serrecchia, with special guests including Nick Adams (Drag: The Musical), Fund Board Chair Annette Bening, Sarah Bowden (SMASH), Tommy Bracco (Newsies), Charlotte d’Amboise (Chicago), Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Jessica Lee Goldyn (Moulin Rouge! The Musical), Mandy Gonzalez (Sunset Blvd.), Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), Robyn Hurder (SMASH), Jay Armstrong Johnson (Moulin Rouge! The Musical), Francis Jue (Yellowface), Bebe Neuwirth (Cabaret), Brad Oscar (Something Rotten!), Krysta Rodriguez (SMASH), Christopher Sieber (Death Becomes Her), Jennifer Simard (Death Becomes Her), Jessica Vosk (Hell’s Kitchen), Anthony Wayne (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical), Tony Yazbeck (Flying Over Sunset) and Olivier winner Leigh Zimmerman.
The Week in Edinburgh Fringe Reviews and Previews
Roșie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge
Rosie O’Donnell does eventually talk about her longtime feud with ”Mango Mussolini”; she also makes a brief and self-effacing reference to her film career; she is of course often laugh-out-loud funny. But “Rosie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge,” her hour-long debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is primarily a heartfelt story about her relationship with her youngest daughter, with whom she moved to Ireland in January to “escape” before President Trump’s second inauguration…
Miles.
Miles Davis comes back to life through an encounter with current trumpeter Jay Phelps in this play that inventively mixes live music, biography, history, even musicology, to illuminate the storied if rarely likeable jazz musician and his 1959 masterpiece, the album “Kind of Blue.” Written and directed by Oliver Kaderbhai as a two-hander, “Miles” is often fascinating – sometimes too much so; there’s a lot to absorb in an hour.
The subject of the play, an earthquake in Alaska in 1964, didn’t hold any inherent fascination for me. What initially impressed me was the cleverness and dexterity with which the two performers..portrayed some twenty characters…. But “Down to Chance” winds up becoming a riveting drama, driven by a genuinely challenging ethical dilemma….Kudos to the Maybe You Like It theater company, based in Cornwall, England, for plucking a now-obscure moment from American history and making it matter.
Will “Hot Mess” be the first climate-crisis musical to make it to Broadway – and the second Broadway musical, after “Six,” to have originated at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival? The idiosyncratic romantic comedy features Earth and Humanity as star-crossed lovers. This is not to say their relationship resembles Romeo and Juliet’s; it’s longer and more complicated, and the partners are far older: Earth (Danielle Steers) has been putting up with bad dates for almost a billion years. when Humanity (Tobias Turley) first enters the picture: “What’s a planet like you doing in a place like this?” he says to her — the oldest pickup line in the universe….I don’t see “Hot Mess” as ready anytime soon for Broadway… But people are talking about it, which is apparently a main activity at the Fringe – speculating about the next Six (and the next Fleabag and the next Baby Reindeer.)
(Coda from The Independent: “If Edinburgh Fringe wants more hits like Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, it needs a complete overhaul”)
Philosophy of the World, No Apologies, Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banajos Saved My Life…
l three shows are oddly connected, and not just because I saw them on the same day at Summerhall, the former veterinary college that is the venue with the most character at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (Which a new novel set at the Fringe, Charlotte Runcie’s “Bring The House Down,” had told me about, albeit in a snarky way.) Each is about music — the Shaggs, Kurt Cobain, the banjo — but really about something else.
Watch 11 Edinburgh Fringe shows at #TheSpaceUk
Sample: After Shakespeare
Lexi Wolfe portrays Hamlet reflecting back on his life after the curtain has fallen, one of the four Shakespearean characters she portrays in her show — the others Lady Macbeth, Portia, and Henry V,. (This is one of more than a dozen shows in this year’s Edinburgh Fringe that is either of version of “the Scottish Play” or features a character from it — and that’s the way it should be, right?)
The Week in New York Theater News
Ariana DeBose will star in “The Baker’s Wife,” opening November 11 at Classic Stage Company. The 1976 musical, with a a score by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) and a book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof), never before received a full-scale production in New York. Based on the film La Femme du Boulange, the musical is set in a quiet French village, where a baker and his wife bring fresh bread…and fresh gossip. But when temptation stirs and hearts wander, the whole town gets caught up in a swirl of romance, mischief, and melody.
The Off-Broadway cast of Beth Wohl’s “Liberation” will move intact to Broadway, the producers announced today. The show will open at James Earl Jones Theater on October 28 and run through January 11.
“44,” will open at the Daryl Roth Theater November 6, after runs in Chicago and L.A. The musical comedy is described as a satirical look at “the rise and presidency of Barack Obama, well as the eccentric political characters he met along the way.”
Pregones/PRTT 2025 – 2026 season: Baile Cangrejero(Oct 23 – Nov 16); Burned (Dec 2 – 18); Dulcineas (Feb 19 – 28); The Wedding March (April 9 – May 3)
National Black Theater 2025-2026 season: “This year’s season is composed of two theatrical productions and three multidisciplinary community events. Together, they explore themes of heritage, humanity, motherhood, the prison-industrial complex, and intergenerational healing”
The Festival in Da Back (April 8-12); The Peculiar Patriot (May 2026)
Ensemble Studio Theater 2025-2026 Season: A Bodega Princess Remembers La Fiesta de los Ryes Magos, 1998 (Nov 17 – Dec 14); The Reservoir (Feb-March, 2026)
Rubén Polendo, the founding artistic director of Theater Mitu and a long-time arts professor, has been appointed the new dean of the Tisch School of the Arts. An innovative, tech-savvy guy!
The Week’s Theater Videos
Edinburgh Fringe Royal Mile Buskers and Flyerers
Sample:
