EXCLUSIVE: Scott Rudin knows the territory — the Broadway territory, that is. Visiting River City with Hugh Jackman in Rudin’s upcoming revival of The Music Man won’t come cheap.Continue Reading
HUGH JACKMAN TO STAR IN RUDIN-PRODUCED ‘MUSIC MAN’
Cementing his position as Broadway’s most prolific and arguably most powerful producer, Scott Rudin said today that he’s reviving The Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman, in October 2020.Continue Reading
ACTORS’ EQUITY ENDS STRIKE AGAINST BROADWAY LEAGUE
After 33 days, Actors’ Equity has ended its limited strike against the Broadway League over how its members are compensated for developing new work.
Actors had sought profit share and a raise from the current $1,000 weekly salary when participating in a developmental lab, which are multi-week workshops to create new plays and musicals.Continue Reading
‘DO NOT WORK’: ACTORS’ EQUITY AUTHORIZES MINI STRIKE
Actors’ Equity Association, which has been negotiating a new contract for play and musical development, authorized a strike today to halt collaboration in rehearsal rooms known as developmental labs.
FROM ‘REBECCA’ TO RUMPELMAYER’S: PRODUCER SEEKS INVESTORS FOR REVIVAL OF DINING ICON
EXCLUSIVE: Ben Sprecher raised and spent millions on a Broadway musical version of Rebecca that never opened. For his next act, he wants to recreate an Old World family restaurant, updated for the Instagram age.
Will investors pick up the tab?
‘OKLAHOMA!’ IN DUMBO IS A BOLD TAKE ON A PERFECT MUSICAL: REVIEW
Some theatrical ideas are so ambitious it almost doesn’t matter whether they succeed or fail – the fun is in seeing them play out. In his audacious, stripped-down staging of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, which opened Sunday at St Ann’s Warehouse, director Daniel Fish exposes the repression, lust, and violence that always lay beneath the surface of this seminal musical.
FONTANA FANTASTIC IN JUICY ‘TOOTSIE’ ROLE: REVIEW
CHICAGO — “Being a woman is no job for a man,” Michael Dorsey (Santino Fontana) concludes in the winning but inconsistent Broadway-bound musical comedy Tootsie, which opened last night at the Cadillac Palace Theatre here. So how come his Dorothy Michaels holds the stage as well as his Michael Dorsey?
In an auburn wig, beige high heels and glasses, Fontana is sublime as Michael/Dorothy, the temperamental, opinionated, unemployed New York actor who finds stardom and self-awareness after putting on a dress and posing as an actress. Fontana borrows a gesture or two from Dustin Hoffman’s performance in the brilliant 1982 Columbia Pictures comedy. But Fontana makes the role his own with fine timing, crisp dancing and a gender-bending vocal range interpreting David Yazbek’s varied and mostly wonderful score. (Plus, of course, nonstop changes of William Ivey Long’s wry costumes.)Continue Reading
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL ‘BE MORE CHILL’ IS EXPLOSIVE FUN: REVIEW
The musical Be More Chill has some baggage. It’s about high school angst that verges on cliché, and it’s a showcase for the kind of head-banging pop, in this case by composer/lyricist Joe Iconis (Smash), that’s commonplace in today’s musical theater. It also has an out-there sci-fi premise: Hopelessly uncool high school sophomore Jeremy Heere (Dear Evan Hansen’s Will Roland) swallows a pill-shaped supercomputer called a SQUIP that implants itself in his brain and instructs him in the finer points of teenage social etiquette.Continue Reading
CLASSIC MUSTANGS, TEXAS BRISKET & LUCAS HNATH: INSIDE THE COLORADO NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO — The 502 Ford Mustangs, both late-model show cars and immaculately restored classics, created a hotel room crunch and congestion downtown.
But the 31st-annual Rocky Mountain Mustang Roundup competition last weekend didn’t hurt the first annual Colorado New Play Festival, held at the 123-seat Chief Theater. “We got walk-up traffic,” festival co-executive producer Jim Steinberg said. “People saw the sign and came in. I was amazed.”
DANIEL RADCLIFFE, CHERRY JONES & BOBBY CANNAVALE STAR IN A BROADWAY MAVERICK’S SWAN SONG
EXCLUSIVE: Conventional wisdom dictates that most new plays need an off-Broadway or out-of-town tryout before they’re Broadway-ready.
Norman Twain didn’t do conventional.
The New York movie and theater producer spent years nurturing The Lifespan of a Fact, a comic-drama about the interplay of facts and truth in the magazine world, based on the 2012 book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. Twain sought to open it cold on Broadway, in a starry one act, while putting a cleaver to runaway production costs.
