EXCLUSIVE: Newly minted Tony Award winner Jonathan Groff will play the 1950s and ’60s crooner Bobby Darin in a staged reading next month, ahead of a planned Broadway opening in spring 2025, people familiar with the musical said.Continue Reading
‘HELL’S KITCHEN’ AIMS TO DEFY BIG BUDGET SLUMP
In a tough time for big Broadway productions, Hell’s Kitchen is burning up the box office.
Despite its surprise loss to The Outsiders for the Best Musical Tony Award, Alicia Keys’ semi-autobiographical show has consistently posted the biggest weekly ticket sales among new musicals from the past season. Just over two months after opening, it’s paid back 10 percent of its $22 million capitalization to investors.Continue Reading
‘OUTSIDERS’ WIN TONY RUMBLE; ‘SUFFS’ SCORES TOO
The Outsiders may have had the inside track at the Tony Awards after all.
In awarding Best Musical to the $22 million adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel and Francis Ford Coppola movie about an ill-fated gang of teenagers in 1967 Tulsa, Oklahoma, voters rewarded Danya Taymor’s meticulously staged production over the propulsive glitz of Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, the presumptive favorite in the category going into the evening.Continue Reading
TONY OVERLORDS HOLD FIRM ON CO-PRODUCERS STAGE BAN
Tony Award leaders today affirmed their decision to bar Broadway co-producers from the stage of the David Koch Theater on June 16, while offering the investors and bundlers a consolation prize: live shots of them elsewhere in the theater on Broadway’s big night.
According to a Tony Awards memo circulating this afternoon, a “Voice of God” in the Koch Theater will announce a specific category during a commercial break and invite co-producers to gather in the lobby off the first tier. When a winning show is named, the triumphant cluster will congregate on a riser for their live moment on primetime television.Continue Reading
OPENING DOORS: DAVID CARPENTER ON CAROLINE PRUGH
While working as an arts reporter for Bloomberg News, I met Caroline Prugh in March 2006 at the now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. She was there on behalf of the revered producer and general manager Stuart Thompson. Just 32, Caroline seemed to know everything about theater, commercial and nonprofit, past and present.
Keenly insightful and quick to laugh, Caroline later left the safety of Stuart Thompson’s office to go to graduate school and become a playwright. During the pandemic, she created interactive video dramas with her close friend David Carpenter. Continue Reading
DONALD TRUMP CONVICTED OF FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS
Donald J. Trump, the former president who received a Broadway producing credit in 1970, was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.
For further information about the Manhattan jury’s historic verdict, see The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Paris is Out!, a comedy by Richard Seff that ran 96 regular performances in 1970 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, was produced in association with Trump, according to the Internet Broadway Database.
TONY AWARDS TO BAR CO-PRODUCERS FROM STAGE (EXCLUSIVE)
The Tony Awards are enmeshed in a high-stakes dispute over who gets stage time on Broadway’s big night.
Some co-producers — whose primary role is to invest or raise money for shows — have been informed by Tony Award staffers that they aren’t welcome onstage at the David H. Koch Theater on June 16. In recent years as production budgets swelled, swarms of co-producers have taken the stage when awards were handed out for the categories of best musical, play, musical revival and play revival.Continue Reading
BROOKE SHIELDS ELECTED ACTORS’ EQUITY PRESIDENT
EXCLUSIVE: Celebrity prevailed over experience at Actors’ Equity Association, where Brooke Shields was elected president of the labor union representing about 51,000 actors and stage managers.
Shields got 2794 votes, vs. 1940 votes for stage manager Erin Maureen Koster and 834 for Chicago-based actress Wydetta Carter, according to a tally shared with Broadway Journal.Continue Reading
DECLINING SALES MUTE SEASON’S CURTAIN CALL
The frenetic 2023-24 Broadway season officially ended Sunday. Notwithstanding encouraging results this Spring amid back-to-back openings ahead of the Tony Award nominations, industry statistics indicate a stalled recovery from the pandemic.
Broadway recorded 2023-24 attendance of 12.3 million, which was little changed from the previous season and down 17 percent from 2018-19, the last full season before the industry shutdown. Box office grosses in 2023-24 dropped 2.4 percent to $1.54 billion, according to the Broadway League, the trade association of theater owners and producers. That’s the lowest since 2016-17, not counting seasons that were partially or entirely cancelled due to the pandemic.Continue Reading
JEREMY O. HARRIS LANDS STARRING ROLE AT WILLIAMSTOWN (EXCLUSIVE)
In an out-of-the-box hire to revive one of the nation’s preeminent summer theaters, the playwright, producer and actor Jeremy O. Harris has been tapped to program the Williamstown Theatre Festival, a person familiar with the company said.
The 34-year-old Slave Play playwright will lead a “creative collective” at the 70-year-old Western Massachusetts institution, which in recent years has been a prime tryout venue for Broadway. Acting alumni include Matthew Broderick, Audra McDonald and Bradley Cooper.Continue Reading