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
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.
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.
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
“I always thought that my lot in life was to help people en masse,” pontificates Susan Sarandon as an unbearable community theater diva in Jesse Eisenberg’s half-baked new play, Happy Talk.
“Through my work. People see me on stage. They see the human condition — it filters through me — and maybe they learn a little something about themselves,” Sarandon’s character, Lorraine, says.Continue Reading
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
LONDON — Man of La Mancha is being revived at the London Coliseum, starring Kelsey Grammer as a blustery Don Quixote. Directed by Lonny Price, with the English National Opera’s 30-piece orchestra, it’s a luscious delight.
For the show — the 1966 Tony Award winner for Best Musical — lyricist Joe Darion and composer Mitch Leigh crafted a perfect score, built on a base of Spanish guitars periodically punctured by explosions of brass.Continue Reading
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
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
Disturbing, timely and leavened by dry wit, What the Constitution Means to Me is an impassioned play about American governance that may renew your faith in Broadway.
Heidi Schreck, who wrote the autobiographical appraisal of U.S. democracy and appeal to improve upon it, plays herself, both at present day and at 15 years old.Continue Reading
