Josh Groban

BEN PLATT TO LEAD $6.5 MILLION ‘PARADE’ (EXCLUSIVE)

December 23, 2022 by Philip Boroff

Parade, the 1998 Broadway musical featuring a Tony Award-winning score by the-then 28-year-old Jason Robert Brown, will be revived this spring by Greg Nobile’s Seaview Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group, according to a pitch deck distributed to investors.

Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen) will star in the dark historical drama, following an acclaimed weeklong tryout at New York City Center in November. Platt will reprise the role of Leo Frank, a Jewish Brooklynite transplanted to Marietta, Georgia, where he was falsely accused of murder and lynched by a mob in 1915. Micaela Diamond (The Cher Show), who earned stellar reviews playing Leo’s loyal wife, Lucille Frank, also returns to the cast. Platt, who like Diamond is Jewish, has spoken eloquently about the story’s timeliness amid rising antisemitism. Continue Reading

WILL A NEW ‘SWEENEY TODD’ MAKE ITS INVESTORS A KILLING? (EXCLUSIVE)

August 23, 2022 by Philip Boroff

Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller is raising as much as $14.5 million to revive Sweeney Todd on Broadway this spring, a test of whether a big-budget Stephen Sondheim revival can succeed in the post-Sondheim era.

Josh Groban (The Great Comet) will play the vengeful barber and Annaleigh Ashford (Sunday in the Park with George) will play the creative pie maker Mrs. Lovett, according to an operating agreement distributed to investors and reviewed by Broadway Journal. The musical, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, will be staged by Hamilton director Thomas Kail with a full orchestra playing the score, a person familiar with the revival said. (Two prior Broadway revivals, while critically acclaimed, were comparatively small-scale productions.)Continue Reading

CELEBRATING RISK & THE INDEPENDENT PRODUCER: A TRIUMPHANT ‘BAND’S VISIT’

June 11, 2018 by Philip Boroff

There’s cause for celebration in Bet Hatikva and Petah Tikva.

The Band’s Visit, a drama about acceptance, missed connections and the romance and ennui of everyday life, won 10 Tony Awards, including best musical. The triumph raises the profile of the quiet show about an Egyptian police band marooned in a sleepy Israeli town, who’d intended to go to a cosmopolitan city with a similar-sounding name.

Some takeaways from the CBS telecast:Continue Reading

BROADWAY SEASONAL GROSSES HIT RECORD; AVG. TICKET $109

May 15, 2017 by Philip Boroff

With a week to go, 2016-17 has already surpassed last season’s record grosses.

After 51 weeks, Broadway has sold $1.415 billion of tickets, vs. $1.373 billion for all of 2015-16. Sales are on track to rise 5 percent, according to figures from the Broadway League.