Producers Orin Wolf and Greg Nobile are preparing to move the acclaimed dance piece Illinoise to the St. James Theater, packing another new musical into the busy 2023-24 season.
The transfer from the Park Avenue Armory — where Illinoise is scheduled to play its final, sold-out performance on March 26 — would be so quick that the show may not have time for previews on Broadway, industry sources said. To be eligible for Tony Awards this year, productions must open by April 25. Continue Reading
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which has been busy organizing off-Broadway, has turned its attention to downtown Manhattan’s most storied and prolific producer.
On Wednesday, the management of the Public Theater declined a request by production workers at the 70-year-old institution to voluntarily recognize their petition to unionize under IATSE. In response, a group calling itself “Unionize the Public” posted on Instagram that it will seek an election supervised by a third party.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Four decades after Gerard Alessandrini introduced his Broadway satirical revue at an Upper West Side cabaret, the ever-changing spoof will finally plant its funny flag in a Broadway theater.
Forbidden Broadway, Merrily We Stole a Song is scheduled to run at the Hayes Theater July 29 to Nov. 4, according to a pitch deck prepared for prospective investors. The title is a play on Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, which evolved from 1981 flop to this season’s boffo revival, which is on the cusp of recouping its $13 million capitalization.Continue Reading
Stage technicians at the musical Titanique have voted to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). If the National Labor Relations Board certifies the election results, it would be the first victory for IATSE in its roughly year-old campaign to expand its off-Broadway presence, opening the door for better pay and higher production costs.
“It plants a flag for other off-Broadway workers,” said Daniel Little, an IATSE organizer, in an interview.Continue Reading
Producers are working on two high-profile additions to the busy 2023-24 Broadway season: Stereophonic, an ecstatically reviewed play with music about a fictional mid-1970s rock band creating an album; and The Great Gatsby via Paper Mill Playhouse, one of two Broadway-bound musicals based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Roaring ’20s novel.
John Johnson, Sue Wagner and Greg Nobile are in discussions to move Stereophonic to the John Golden Theatre, following a sold-out, two-and-a-half-month run at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway, people familiar with the plans said. Continue Reading
Last season, 25 to 49-year-olds who attended Broadway shows outnumbered those 50 and up for the first time since 2008-09.
It’s too early to proclaim a generational shift. The audience was younger in the year ending May 21, 2023, than in the prior full season, 2018-19, because youngish age groups shrank less than the entire Broadway pie, which is still missing a slice or two.Continue Reading
Water for Elephants, the circus-themed new musical, will be under pressure to make a big splash when it arrives on Broadway.
Scheduled to open March 21, 2024, at the Imperial Theatre, it will need to sell at least $960,000 of tickets each week to cover operating expenses, according to an internal budget prepared over the summer and reviewed by Broadway Journal. (The sales here refer to “gross gross,” the weekly figure that the trade association the Broadway League makes public, which includes credit card commissions and other fees the production doesn’t keep.)
Joining the million dollar club at the Broadway box office used to be a matter of prestige. Today, it’s often a requirement for a show’s survival.Continue Reading
Investing in Cabaret at the August Wilson Theatre this spring might seem like a safe bet, after the success of the Kander & Ebb classic in London and earlier productions in New York.
That’s until you see the price tag: $24.25 million, a record for a Broadway revival.Continue Reading
Capitalized for $22 million, the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love dramatizes the rise and fall of the Marcos regime, in a Broadway theater repurposed as a discotheque.
Last week, it was outgrossed by $35,000 by a little-known comic on an open stage with three stools. Just for Us, Alex Edelman’s monologue about antisemitism and identity that ended its run on Saturday, was capitalized for $2.25 million.
In an era of mammoth Broadway budgets and huge losses, one-person shows have been a relative safe haven for investors. Prima Facie, James Bierman’s $4 million production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play starring Jodie Comer, is the only show from 2022-23 to announce that it recouped.Continue Reading
Ambassador Theatre Group and Underbelly Productions plan to transfer their hit West End revival of Cabaret to Broadway, two people familiar with the production said.
Eddie Redmayne has committed to reprise his performance as the louche Weimar-era nightclub emcee — a role made famous by Joel Grey in the 1966 Hal Prince-directed musical and in the 1972 Bob Fosse-helmed movie, and more recently by Alan Cumming in two Roundabout Theatre Co. revivals. Rebecca Frecknall is slated to direct the production, which is to begin previews in March 2024 ahead of an April opening.Continue Reading
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