Broadway Journal

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA TO PRODUCE & OCCASIONALLY STAR IN HIP-HOP SHOW

by

Lin-Manuel Miranda & Tommy Kail/Tammy Shell

With a top-ticket (so far) of $119, Lin-Manuel Miranda and three co-producers are mounting an engagement early next year of Freestyle Love Supreme,  the improv hip-hop group that the Hamilton  creator has performed in since 2004.

“There is nothing like a live hip-hop show that is improvised from the first moment til the final curtain,” Miranda said in a statement. Previews begin on Jan. 30 at the tiny Greenwich House Theater. That’s three days after a run of Hamilton  is scheduled to end in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which stars Miranda in the title role.  Continue Reading

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD NAMED FOR REVERED YALE DESIGNER (VIDEO)

by

Ming Cho Lee & Jeffrey Eric Jenkins/Monica Simoes

The set designer and Yale professor Ming Cho Lee is officially synonymous with excellence in theatrical design.

Last week at the Palm West Side restaurant, Lee was recognized for lifetime achievement as part of the annual Henry Hewes Design Awards. Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, a professor of theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the Hewes Design chairman, announced that future lifetime achievers will be given an award named after Lee.Continue Reading

‘THE FERRYMAN’ IS GREAT FECKIN’ THEATER: REVIEW

by

Laura Donnelly/Joan Marcus

Ninety minutes, no intermission has its appeal. But Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, with two dozen actors, a rabbit, goose, and a real-life baby dramatizing plot lines that explosively coalesce, makes the case for epic drama.

As directed by Sam Mendes, it has more humor and vitality than one might expect from a play set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.Continue Reading

THE PLAY BOOM & DERREN BROWN’S ‘SECRET’ AMBITION: WEEKLY WRAP

by

Derren Brown

Derren Brown‘s challenge: make a vacant Broadway theater appear out of thin air.

In a conversation with Adam Green at the New Yorker Festival on Oct. 7, the British illusionist said he’s “hopefully doing Broadway next spring, fingers crossed.” Greg Day, his United Kingdom-based spokesman, told Broadway Journal  that Brown seeks to bring in Secret  later this season. Ben Brantley called the show “enthrallingly baffling” when it played off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater in 2017.

Continue Reading

FONTANA FANTASTIC IN JUICY ‘TOOTSIE’ ROLE: REVIEW

by

The marquee in Chicago

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

SHANE O’REGAN ON TOGGLING AMONG 24 CHARACTERS

by

Shane O’Regan/Ahron R. Foster

Shane O’Regan is going places — for starters, Philadelphia, Chicago and Austin, Texas. He and the 24 characters he plays in the World War I drama Private Peaceful  tour the U.S. after an off-Broadway run ends on Oct. 7.

Casting agents are checking out the 25-year-old. He slips “from one character to the next with preternatural ease,” critic Alexis Soloski wrote in the New York Times, citing his “actorly excellence (and he really is excellent).” Back home he was nominated for an Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for the role in Dublin.Continue Reading

‘FROZEN,’ ‘MEAN GIRLS’ POST WORST WEEK SINCE OPENING

by

Mean Girls

Sales of Frozen and Mean Girls took a hit last week as schools reopened and Broadway contended with oppressive heat and competition from the latter rounds of the U.S. Open tennis championships in Queens.

Disney’s Frozen fell 16 percent to $1.6 million, the lowest since the adaptation of the 2013 animated movie opened in March. Mean Girls, produced by Lorne Michaels and the late Stuart Thompson and based on the Tina Fey movie, dropped 21 percent to $1.2 million, its weakest seven days since opening in April.Continue Reading

LAVISH ‘DOLLY!’ EARNS MODEST RETURNS

by

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

EXCLUSIVE: Investors in Scott Rudin’s celebrated revival of Hello, Dolly! have earned a profit of 5 percent, according to two people familiar with the production.

In a flop-filled business, recouping is considered the benchmark for success, and investors months ago earned back their money. The musical was the talk of the 2016-17 season, won four Tony Awards, and last week was the third-bestselling musical, behind Hamilton and The Lion King. For angels seeking prestige, glamour and the satisfaction of helping to create a revival worthy of the iconic, 1964 original, Dolly delivered and made them money.

Others, however, expected more from a production that’s grossed $126 million.Continue Reading

KITT & YORKEY ON NAVIGATING DISNEY & BROADWAY

by

Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey have a new musical that airs tonight on the Disney Channel.

They say their adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel Freaky Friday, the mother-daughter body swapping comedy, isn’t so different from Next to Normal, their acclaimed rock musical that explores mental illness. Both pieces seek to convey emotional truths.Continue Reading

Copyright © 2019 Broadway Journal.