UPDATE WITH ADL statement: Patti LuPone and Jesse Tyler Ferguson have taken themselves out of the running for a Presidential Medal of Freedom in a Donald Trump administration.
RUDIN SEEKS TO SILENCE ANGELS
EXCLUSIVE: While expanding Broadway’s boundaries, Scott Rudin is reining in his investors.
The daring and powerful producer is requiring backers to sign away their right to criticize him and the plays and musicals that they’re capitalizing. The unusual provision appears in recent prospectuses obtained by Broadway Journal. It prohibits investors from making “negative remarks orally or in writing in any medium,” including social media, about him, his show or his business practices.
RUDIN PAPERS DEFINE NON-DISPARAGEMENT, NEGATIVE ACT
EXCLUSIVE: The first investor non-disparagement clause we found was for the Scott Rudin-produced revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. (Click on the text for easier reading.)
CRITICS SHOW LIEV LITTLE LOVE & SPLIT ON ‘LIAISONS’
The Associated Press raved, the Hollywood Reporter was mixed and Ben Brantley at the Times panned while questioning whether Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses holds up in a new Broadway revival, particularly with a scene that blends rape and seduction.
‘HAMILTON’ SETS ANOTHER RECORD WITH $998 TICKETS
EXCLUSIVE: The producers of Hamilton are selling a new block of $998 tickets for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays that handily sets a Broadway price record.
The $998 seats are up 18 percent over the $849 tickets Hamilton introduced in early June — the previous record holder. When including Ticketmaster’s $18 service fee, the new ticket, at $1,016, is the first on Broadway to run four figures.
CLINTON BACKER BENANTI ON TRUMP & TWITTER TROLLS
Laura Benanti gained 8 million YouTube views and the wrath of Donald Trump’s angriest devotees when she satirized his wife on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert during the Republican National Convention. On Friday, the actress spoke to Broadway Journal about the experience. Tonight, she headlines a Hillary Clinton fundraiser at Industry bar in Hell’s Kitchen.
Q: Did you learn anything about Trump or politics from appearing on television as Melania?
Benanti: Yes sir. Almost every time I tweet I will get a barrage of terrifying tweets, that range from ‘you’re ugly and fat’ to really scary — like, ‘I want to kill you.’ IContinue Reading
BROADWAY SHRUGS AT TRUMP PRODUCING CREDIT, COALESCES BEHIND CLINTON
Donald Trump may be the only major-party presidential candidate in history with a Broadway producing credit, but that hasn’t won him much support in theater circles.
“All he was was a big investor,” said Richard Seff, who wrote the 1970 comedy Paris is Out!, about a longtime married couple planning a European vacation that played 112 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. “He didn’t have any input,” Seff said about Trump’s role. Now an 89-year-old reviewer and columnist for the website DC Metro Theater Arts, Seff recalled the second-generation real estate developer as a pleasant, stage-struck 23-year-old.
JASON ROBERT BROWN DECRIES ‘INSANE’ GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC
Jason Robert Brown said a tweet from a fan inspired the Sept. 12 benefit concert of his two-character musical The Last Five Years.
The composer, lyricist and performer has worked independently with Joshua Henry (Aaron Burr in Hamilton in Chicago) and Cynthia Erivo, a Tony Award winner for The Color Purple on Broadway. About a year ago, “Somebody tweeted, ‘Oh my god, you have to do The Last Five Years with Cynthia and Joshua,” Brown, 46, recalled in an interview. Continue Reading
SECOND STAGE BORROWED $16.5 MILLION FOR HELEN HAYES, BACKED BY PROSPECTIVE ‘FROZEN’ LANDLORD
EXCLUSIVE: Second Stage Theatre has less than two years to repay a $16.5 million mortgage on its new Broadway home.
In April 2015, the nonprofit completed its long-awaited purchase of the Helen Hayes Theatre. The “amazing moment,” as Artistic Director Carole Rothman put it, should help raise the profile of the 37-year-old company and the contemporary American plays and musicals it produces, which have won three Pulitzer Prizes since 2010. But in buying Broadway’s smallest venue, Second Stage accepted a big burden.Continue Reading
PRESERVING CAST RECORDINGS IN THE AGE OF FREE MUSIC
As ticket prices for Broadway musicals consistently rise, independent record labels like Sh-K-Boom, which preserves musical theater scores, must grapple with the proliferation of free music: specifically, web services such as YouTube and Spotify that cannibalize CD sales and iTunes downloads.
“There have to be the purchases,” Sh-K-Boom President Kurt Deutsch said Aug. 3 at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble, before a concert promoting his new Broadway cast recording of She Loves Me. His company has put out about 100 cast recordings since 2002, beginning with Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years.
