June 7, 2018 Leave a comment
Below are my preferences — not my predictions — for the 72nd Annual Tony Awards. See my article in DC Theatre Scene for an explanation for each of my choices.
Nominated:
The Band’s Visit
Frozen
Mean Girls
SpongeBob SquarePants, The Broadway Musical
My preference: The Band’s Visit
June 6, 2018 Leave a comment
Do the Tony nominees feel like best friends from high school you’ve never actually met, given all the photographs and interviews and….celebrations over the past six weeks? It feels just like the last few weeks as a Senior. Graduation is this Sunday.
June 5, 2018 Leave a comment
At the 74th annual Theatre World Awards, luminous performers, including this year’s winners — a dozen honored for their New York stage debuts — talked about when they first knew they would be professional performers.
“My father owned a theater when I was growing up, so I never knew a life without the theater,” says Hailey Kilgore, who is one of the winners in 2018 for her role as Ti Moune in Once Upon This Island.
“Around 20, life sort of hit me in the face, and I said I’m going to do something,” says Harry Hadden-Paton, a 2018 winner for portraying Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
Also, Wesley Taylor, explains how he lost his embarrassment over not being Daniel Day Lewis.
June 4, 2018 Leave a comment
Performers from some 20 current Broadway shows offered a free concert in Shubert Alley, to celebrate the Broadway season just past, and whet appetites for the Tony Awards on Sunday, June 10th.
Read more of this post
June 3, 2018 Leave a comment
SpongeBob SquarePants won best musical and Angels in America won best revival of a play in the 63rd annual Drama Desk Awards. Andrew Garfield and Glenda Jackson won outstanding actor and actress in a play, Ethan Slater and Jessie Mueller outstanding actor and actress in a musical.
Complete list of winners below, in red with an * (Click on titles to get more information about the show.)
Those nominees with a heart mark (♥) are ones I voted for. (I’m a voting member of the Drama Desk.)
Outstanding Play
June 2, 2018 Leave a comment
Broadway’s focus is on the Tonys – no Broadway shows are opening this month – but Off-Broadway is bursting.
It’s not just all the familiar faces that lure. As the list below makes clear, it’s the unfamiliar (and sometimes outright weird) that intrigue as well.
Some (potential) highlights: Anika Noni Rose stars in CSC’s revival of Carmen Jones, one of a number of shows this month about the African-American experience. Idina Menzel stars in Skintight, one of the strikingly diverse new plays with LGBT characters and/or themes this month. (June is Pride Month, after all.) Melissa Errico Read more of this post
June 1, 2018 Leave a comment
How well were you paying attention to New York theater in May? Answer these 10 questions to find out.
May 31, 2018 Leave a comment
The boys are on Broadway, and they are fabulous.
Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer and the rest of the nine-member cast of “The Boys in the Band” look like they are enjoying themselves as they trade quips and kisses; eat cake and unwrap birthday gifts; and dance the Madison to 1960’s R&B music.
Fifty years after the Off-Broadway opening of Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking play about a group of gay men at a birthday party, “The Boys in the Band” is debuting on Broadway with an all-gay cast of A-list actors who make the play pop. The show is often fun, funny and inviting.
Is the script dated? Yes. That’s surely why it’s trimmed to 110 minutes for this production, turned into one act, and presented as a period piece, set in April, 1968, which is the month it premiered on stage. (The movie, with the original Off-Broadway cast, came out in 1970.) Does the play traffic in stereotypes and depict characters who are self-loathing, as it’s long been accused of doing? Well, yes, especially in the second half. Yet, at the same time, helped by the alchemy of Joe Mantello’s smart direction and a stellar cast, the play can still feel daring, and its characters delightfully defiant.
Full review on DC Theatre Scene
Click on any photograph by Joan Marcus to see it enlarged.
May 30, 2018 Leave a comment
The 2017-2018 Broadway season was “the best attended and highest grossing season in Broadway recorded history,” according to The Broadway League, which presented its annual statistics Tuesday. Some 13.7 million people shelled out nearly $1.7 billion.
Each year when the League, the trade association of the Broadway theater industry, releases these statistics, I wonder whether the song-and-dance of Broadway is limited to the stage.
May 29, 2018 Leave a comment
Yes, there are several theater awards still to be given out for the season just past – Drama Desk, June 3; Theatre Worlds, June 4; Tonys, June 10 – but summer theater in New York is pushing its way into view, and not just summer theater festivals (two of which have already begun. ) There are some half dozen shows beginning on Broadway during the summer months. Scroll below for details, right after the week in NY theater awards, and before the week in NY theater reviews and news about Andy Karl , Katharine McPhee, Alex Newell, and John Kander’s great nephew. Also: a list of those who have died.
