Take a look at the 2019 Drama Desk Award nominations; stay tuned for the winners to be announced at the 64th Annual Drama Desk Awards ceremony on Sunday, June 2nd.
"Hadestown" leads in Outer Critics Circle nominations, followed by "Tootsie" and "Oklahoma!"; Disney plans revival of "Beauty and the Beast"; “Sea Wall/A Life" headed to Broadway this summer; Phylicia Rashad to direct "Blue" on Broadway next spring; Mel Brooks will play a two night residency at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre; MCC announces 2019-2020 season; "The Boys in the Band" cast to reunite for Netflix adaptation; "Survivor: The Destiny's Child Musical" will premiere in Houston; Noah Galvin to join the cast of "Waitress"; “The Lehman Trilogy" eyes Broadway; "Nowhere Boy" musical in development; "The Prom" to receive YA novel treatment; cast album news update; RIP Harvey Sabinson
REVIEW: Get ready, “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations” is out of sight
“Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations” is a seamless, slick, and exuberantly entertaining new musical that reclaims the “jukebox” genre with an energetic, fast-moving, and engrossing portrait-like study of The Temptations. This show looks good, sounds good, and feels good, and is easily one of the best catalogue musicals ever to grace The Great White Way.
REVIEW: “Hadestown”—an exquisitely crafted musical triumph
Breathtaking and exquisitely crafted, “Hadestown” is easily the most tautly constructed and beautifully realized musical on this side of “Hamilton”—a riveting, heart-wrenching, and sumptuous folk opera that vibrantly renders some of mankind’s oldest and most enduring myths as an epic and compelling piece of modern musical theatre. This musical triumph is a must-see.
Jackie Sibblies Drury's "Fairview" wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Laurie Metcalf, Eddie Izzard, Russell Tovey, and Patsy Ferran to star in 2020 Broadway revival of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"; "Oklahoma!" musical television series in development; 2019-2020 seasons announced at Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre and Playwright's Horizons; "Grease" movie prequel is in the works; Mike Faist will play Riff in “West Side Story" film; Olga Merediz, Gregory Diaz IV, Jimmy Smits join "In the Heights" film; Lila Neugebauer to make film debut; RIP Georgia Engel
REVIEWS: “The Cradle Will Rock” and “The Lehman Trilogy”
From The Great Depression to The Great Recession, I take a look at a musical and a play that are now unwittingly in conversation with each other some eighty years and fifty blocks apart, from “The Cradle Will Rock” downtown at Classic Stage Company to “The Lehman Trilogy” uptown at the Park Avenue Armory.
REVIEW: Glenda Jackson is ravishing in an uneven “King Lear”
Glenda Jackson is ravishing in an otherwise incohesive and uneven “King Lear” by auteur Sam Gold. Ms. Jackson’s captivating storm of a performance, an original score by Philip Glass, and arresting visual and aural moments are highlights. The balance of the cast is uneven, and the play itself rendered as emotionally clinical.
List of Olivier Award winners; Michael Urie to host Drama Desk Awards; Ryan Murphy to adapt "The Prom" into a movie musical for Netflix; "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" books Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre; Patti LuPone may head all-female version of "Glengarry Glen Ross" on Broadway next season; "Do You Feel Anger?" extends; a musical of "The Outsiders", a Maya Angelou bio-play, 3 musicals using the BMG catalogue, and a musical of "Mr. Saturday Night" are all in development; 2 new songs from “Beetlejuice”; “The Cher Show” cast recording out tomorrow; RIP Eric LaJuan Summers
REVIEW: An athletic and thrilling “Julius Caesar” at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn
Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn presents a new nondescript production of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” featuring an athletic use of choreographed movement to summon the emotional charge created by crowd and battle scenes, elevating and sustaining the intensity of the political drama. “Julius Caesar” is hard to get right; TFANA pulls it off with this well-acted, smartly staged, deeply engaging, and flat-out thrilling production.
REVIEW: Reinterpreted for today, “Oklahoma!” on Broadway is a must-see
Fresh from an acclaimed Off-Broadway run, director Daniel Fish’s reinterpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking 1943 musical “Oklahoma!” completely deconstructs this canonical and totemic masterpiece of American musical theatre by stripping it of its corn and highlighting the darker themes of violence and injustice that have always been simmering underneath. Sexually charged and presented with a striking naturalism, this bold new production is a revelation and a must-see.
Lucille Lortel Award nominees; Rachel Bloom to host the Obie Awards; "What the Constitution Means to Me" and “Ink” extend; Lizzie Borden rock musical to play Off-Broadway this summer; Chris Evans wants to do a musical; "To Kill a Mockingbird" will launch a two-year national tour in August 2020; Patti LuPone joins Twitter
REVIEW: The sublimely surreal satire of “Do You Feel Anger?”
Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s new play “Do You Feel Anger?” at the Vineyard Theatre is a razor-sharp, whip-smart satire of contemporary workplace culture that is the blissful antithesis of complacent theatre-making, this play serves up a highly digestible, surrealist critique of mores around empathy consciousness, sexual harassment, hyper-masculinity, and female agency that is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.