This Weekend’s Highlights:
Friday, March 19
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes ballet, featuring Ashley Shaw (Victoria), Adam Cooper (Boris Lermontov), Dominic North (Julian Craster), Michela Meazza (Irina Boronskaya), Liam Mower (Ivan Bolelawsky), and Glenn Graham (Grischa Ljubov), begins streaming here.
Saturday, March 20
Chicago Sings Rock & Roll Broadway benefit concert, directed by Michael Weber, featuring Terrell Armstrong, Adia Bell, Chuckie Benson, Blu, Lydia Burke, Ariana Burks, Darilyn Burtley, Elisa Carlson, Satay Chávez, Pierce Cleveland, Shantel Cribbs, Robin DaSilva, Andres Enriquez, Jillian-Giselle, Lucy Godínez, Allyson Graves, maya Hlava, Donterrio Johnson, Christopher John Kelley, Heidi Kettenring, Nik Kmiecik, Michelle Lauto, Eric Lewis, Eban K Logan, Melanie Loren, Alejandro Medina, Andrew Mueller, Jarais Musgrove, Juwon Tyrel Perry, Billy Rude, Lorenzo Rush Jr, Laura Savage, Oliver Schilling, Aalon Smith, Sawyer Smith, Kyra Sorce, TJ Tapp, Tiffany T. Taylor, Cherise Thomas, Benthany Thomas, and Ariel Etana Triunfo, begins streaming at Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre.
The Parrot Trap reading, by Brenda Withers, directed by Dan Foster, featuring Christopher Fitzgerald, Richard Hollis, and Peggy J. Scott, streams for FREE at 8 PM ET at Hudson Stage Company.
Cassidy Janson in concert streams at 7 PM ET at Broadway on Demand.
Broadway Trivia Night benefit, created by Charles Kirsch, with special guests Lee Roy Reams, Ken Kantor, Carolyn Kirsch, Michael Lavine, Lawrence Leritz, Todd Buonopane, Kevin David Thomas, Kevin Winkler, and Michael Colby, streams for FREE at 7 PT ET here.
Sunday, March 21
“Genius: Aretha” anthology series, starring Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin, premieres on National Geographic.
“Sunday Pancakes,” a new podcast, created & hosted by Celia Keenan-Bolger, which focuses s on humanity and what keeps people connected to, motivated by, and curious about the world around them, premieres at 9 AM ET (and every Sunday thereafter) here (and on all podcast platforms).
Stars in the House, a “West Wing” reunion, featuring Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Jimmy Smits, Mary McCormack, Janel Moloney, Melissa Fitzgerald, and more, streams at 8 PM ET here.
Jackie Hoffman in concert livestreams at 3 & 8 PM ET PM here.
Three Days of Rain virtual production, by Richard Greenberg, directed by Evan Yionoulis, featuring Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, and Bradley Whitford, concludes streaming at Manhattan Theatre Club.
Women Without Men on-demand production, by Hazel Elli, directed by Jenn Thompson, featuring Mary Bacon, Joyce Cohen, Shannon Harrington, Kate Middleton, Aedin Moloney, Alexa Shae Niziak, Kellie Overbey, Dee Pelletier, Beatrice Tulchin, Emily Walton, and Amelia White, concludes FREE streaming at Off-Broadway’s Mint Theatre.
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes ballet, featuring Ashley Shaw (Victoria), Adam Cooper (Boris Lermontov), Dominic North (Julian Craster), Michela Meazza (Irina Boronskaya), Liam Mower (Ivan Bolelawsky), and Glenn Graham (Grischa Ljubov), concludes streaming here.
Hershey Felder Puccini concludes streaming at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre.
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Video: Stars in the House, a “Little House on the Prairie” reunion, with special guests Melissa Gilbert, Rachel Lindsay Greenbush, Sidney Greenbush, Matthew Labyorteaux, Alison Arngrim, Dean Butler, and more, who reunite more than 45 years after the first episode. (1:37:25)
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Anything Goes will now run July 23 – Oct. 17 at the Barbicon Theatre, directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, with music supervision by Stephen Ridley.
Megan Mullally (Reno Sweeney), Robert Lindsay (Moonface Martin), Felicity Kendal (Evangeline Harcourt), Gary Wilmot (Elisha Whitney), Samuel Edwards (Billy Crocker), Nicole Lily Baisden (Hope Harcourt), Haydn Oakley (Lord Evelyn Oakleigh), and Carly Mercedes Dyer (Erma).
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Off-Broadway’s York Theatre will stream a conversation on Mon. Mar. 22 at 7 PM ET, about its 2016 production of Debra Barsha & Hollye Levin’s A Taste of Things to Come, which was directed & choreographed by Lorin Latarro, with music direction by Gillian Berkowitz.
James Morgan, Gerry McIntyre, Charles Wright, director Lorin Latarro (director), Debra Barsha & Hollye Levin (book, lyrics, music), Gillian Berkowitz (music director), and Staci Levine (producer), with original cast members Allison Guinn, Autumn Hurlbert, Paige Faure, and Janet Dacal.
Smack-dab in the middle of America in Winnetka, Illinois, four women enter a Betty Crocker cooking contest in hopes of changing their lives. What they get is much more than they bargained for. Little did they know that it would take a zoologist from Indiana University, Alfred C. Kinsey, to really get them “cooking”!
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NYC’s Roundabout Theatre Company has joined forces with Black Theatre United to launch a multi-year initiative seeking to elevated and restore marginalized plays to the American canon. The Refocus Project will encompass Broadway productions, play readings, resource libraries, panel discussions and more. The first year of the project will focus on 20th-century Black playwrights Alice Childress, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Angelina Weld Grimké, Zora Neale Hurston, and Samm-Art Williams. The second year of the project will focus on Latinx playwrights.
A Broadway production of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind (dates TBA), directed by Charles Randolph-Wright.
Free reading series (spotlights works by all of the first year playwrights, with suggested donations benefiting Black Theatre United:
Apr. 23: Rachel, by Angelina Weld Grimké’, directed by Miranda Haymon. Written in 2016, the work focuses on young woman who must confront what it means to bring a Black child into the world after her mother shares a brutal story from the family’s past.
Apr. 30: Home, by Samm-Art Williams, directed by Kenny Leon. The story of Cephus Miles, an orphan who’s forced to move up north from North Carolina after being imprisoned for dodging the Vietnam draft.
May 7: I Gotta Home, by Graham Du Bois, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III. A destitute Reverend learns his long-lost sister might be the heir to a celebrity fortune.
May 14: Spunk, by Zora Neale Hurston, directed by Lile-Anne Brown. A guitar-playing transient becomes the talk of a rural Florida town when he develops a love affair with a married woman.
May 21: Wine in the Wilderness, by Alice Childress, directed by Dominique Rider. The play focuses on Bill Jameson and a model that rocks his notion of Black womanhood.
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Video: Liz Callaway performs “Look to the Rainbow” from Finian’s Rainbow
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The newest episode of “Broadway Profiles with Tamsen Fadal” will premiere Sat. Mar. 20 & Sun. Mar. 21 at 6 PM ET on NYC’s WPIX TV.
Norm Lewis, Sophia Anne Caruso, Barrett Wilbert Weed, Ainsley Melham, Josh Daniel Green, Ed Burns,
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Off-Broadway’s Red Bull Theater presents a reading of MJ Kaufman’s Galatea on Mon. Mar. 22 at 7:30 PM ET, directed by Will Davis.
Ty Defoe, Esco Jouléy, Joe Lampert, Pooya Mohseni, Aneesh Sheth, Futaba Shioda, and TL Thompson.
A trans love story set against the backdrop of climate crisis. The story of two young people who escape a virgin sacrifice by dressing up as boys and running away to the woods where they meet and fall in love.
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Video: Lupita Nyongo explains how she learned how to kiss on Zoom. (starts at 1:22).
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A Little New Music returns with a new concert on Tues. Mar. 23 at 7 PM PT here, featuring the songs of Tim Rosser & Charlie Sohne.
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Eddie Shapiro’s “A Wonderful Guy: Conversations with the Great Men of Musical Theater” will be released on Hardcover and Kindle on Apr. 1 here.
with: Joel Grey, Michael Cerveris, and John Cullum.
Shapiro sits down for intimate, career-encompassing conversations with 19 of Broadway’s most prolific and fascinating leading men. Full of detailed stories and reflections, the talks dig deep into each actor’s career; together, these chapters tell the story of what it means to be a leading man on Broadway over the past fifty years.
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The St. Louis Muny has announced its 2021 summer season. Casting and creative teams TBA.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (July 5-11)
Mary Poppins (July 14-22)
Smokey Joe’s Cafe (July 25-31)
Sweeney Todd (Aug. 12-18)
On Your Feet (Aug. 21-27)
Chicago (Aug. 30 – Sept. 5)
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“Bernstein on Broadway at the Bicentennial” will stream Thurs. Apr. 8 at 1:30 PM ET at NYC’s 92Y, hosted by Louis Rosen.
Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner wrote 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for Broadway in anticipation of the U.S. bicentennial. Begun with great expectations, the work turned out to the biggest failure of Bernstein’s theatrical career, opening on May 4, 1976, and closing 7 performances later. Bernstein was so unhappy with the final version of the work that he refused to have the score recorded or published;, and so, for Bernstein admirers, this became the “lost score” of his legendary career. After his death, his estate commissioned a concert version of part of the score titled A White House Cantata. What this partial version of selected songs reveals is an exceptionally fine score, with Bernstein effective fusing the theater and classical sides of his compositional style, and Alan Jay Lerner again writing with the keen sense of character and sharp wit that characterized his work with Frederic Loewe. The lost score – at least some of it – is found, and happily well worth getting to know.