EXCLUSIVE: With investors to repay and resellers on the prowl, the producers of Hadestown increased ticket prices by as much as 47 percent, coinciding with the show’s best musical win at the Tony Awards on June 9.Continue Reading
INCLUSIVENESS AS BIG BOX OFFICE & OTHER TONY TAKEAWAYS
Hadestown’s strong sales and its Tony Award for Best Musical may advance the cause of female theater artists more effectively than any speech advocating for industry inclusiveness.
The inventive folk opera, which won eight awards at Radio City Music Hall Sunday night, is an all-but-guaranteed hit — and just the latest musical written in part or entirely by a woman to demonstrate staying power.
Of the dozen new musicals running on Broadway longer than a year, six have a female composer, lyricist or book writer. (They are Wicked, Waitress, Mean Girls, Frozen, Come From Away and Beautiful, the Carole King jukebox show.)Continue Reading
TOOTSIE’S INSIDER ADVANTAGE AT THE TONY AWARDS
EXCLUSIVE: In competitive Tony Awards contests, can producers who vote for their own shows have an outsized impact? Apparently.
I obtained a list of voters in the 2017-18 season — which I’m told is largely current — and cross-referenced it with names above the title of this year’s Best Musical nominees.
I counted 17 Tootsie producers and co-producers who were eligible to vote, 16 on Ain’t Too Proud, 12 on Hadestown and nine on The Prom. With just 831 voters, those margins aren’t negligible. Continue Reading
ESCAPE FROM MANDERLEY: ‘REBECCA’ PRODUCER SETTLES WITH PRESS AGENT
EXCLUSIVE: Broadway’s oddest and most enduring financing-scandal-turned-courtroom-drama has closed.
After six years, 471 legal filings, one trial and another that had been on tap, Rebecca producer Ben Sprecher has ended his effort to hold his former press agent accountable for the collapse of his musical. Last month, Sprecher settled his personal lawsuit against publicist Marc Thibodeau, obviating a second trial concerning the aborted Broadway show.Continue Reading
BROADWAY POSTS RECORD SALES, RISING ATTENDANCE
Thanks to Hamilton, The Lion King, Harry Potter and other blockbusters that draw fans from around the world, Broadway reported a record $1.8 billion in sales — up 7.8 percent — for the season that ended on Sunday.
A SAFE SPACE IN THE DARK: NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP’S JAMES NICOLA
What the Constitution Means to Me and Hadestown, two of the most of the acclaimed Broadway shows of the season, were both developed at New York Theatre Workshop. Last night, Artistic Director James C. Nicola received an Obie Award for lifetime achievement and discussed theater’s role as a haven and a vehicle for rebellion. An excerpt of his acceptance follows:
Somewhere along the way, I understood the absolute primacy of sitting in a dark room, with other people, watching other humans re-enact, ritualistically, that which we lived in daylight outside the holy space.
THE FIRE BEHIND THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE: JEFFREY HOROWITZ AT THE OBIES
While accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Obies last night, Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz described how an apartment fire helped him create the nonprofit Theatre for a New Audience.
Thank you to Michael Feingold and the OBIE Committee….Over four decades ago, when I was an out of work actor, on a very hot and humid New York summer’s day, while waiting for that big break to come, I decided to engage in a little D.I.Y. and polyurethane the wooden floor of my studio apartment. Continue Reading
WOMEN COMPOSERS SHINE LIGHT ON B’WAY BOYS CLUB
For female musical theater composers, this season has been a mixed bag. Of eight original Broadway scores, just one, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, was written by a woman. Yet with its standing-room-only audiences and 14 Tony Award nominations, the folk opera appears to be a hit, a sign that non-traditional work — by a man or woman — can defy conventional wisdom of what belongs on Broadway.
Amazingly, Hadestown is only the 38th Broadway musical composed by a woman since 1930, according to a new interactive timeline by Maestra Music Inc.Continue Reading
A NERD’S GUIDE TO THE 2019 TONY NOMINATIONS
It’s been a few years since an old-fashioned mainstream comedy won best musical at the Tony Awards. Tootsie could change that.
Its primary challenger appears to be the acclaimed New Orleans-infused folk opera Hadestown. But don’t count out the thriving Temptations musical, Ain’t Too Proud, or the inclusive comedy The Prom.Continue Reading
HEEDLESS BARON AT TOPLESS TABLOID: ‘INK’ REVIEW
Students of Rupert Murdoch may wonder why an 88-year-old multi-billionaire would devote his last years to destabilizing democracy, promoting division and thwarting efforts to slow climate change.
“There is no why,” newspaper editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) says early in James Graham’s absorbing Ink, as part of a discussion with the young Murdoch about journalism’s five “W’s.” (Who, What, Where and When are the others.) “Sometimes shit just happens.”
Ever-so-timely although ripped from headlines a half-century old, Ink chronicles The Sun‘s first year under Murdoch control, 1969-70.Continue Reading
