Today’s Highlights:
Broadway Cares‘ Broadway Dream Roles benefit concert in support of BCEFA, hosted by Cara Young, featuring Erich Bergen, Liz Callaway, Tom Francis, Jennifer Holliday, Lesli Margherita, Jimin Moon, Zachary Noah Piser, Jasmine Amy Rogers, and Damson Chola Jr., and more, at 7 PM at Broadway’s Al Hirschfeld Theatre.
Swept Away reunion concert, featuring John Gallagher, Jr., Stark Sands, Adrian Blake Enscoe, Wayne Duvall and the original Broadway ensemble & swings, at 7 & 9 PM at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St.).
Red Bull Theater‘s reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus, directed by Carey Perloff, featuring Isabel Arraiza, Teagle F. Bougere, Nike Imoru, Rocco Sisto, Rebecca S’Manga Frank, Chauncy Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, and Raphael Nash Thompson, concludes at Off-Broadway’s Sheen Center.
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GRACE NOTES 
Dynamic Duos by Jim Bernhard
Match these notable portrayers of Othello with the actors who played Iago opposite them:
| 1. Denzel Washington (2025) | A. Brian Aherne |
| 2. James Earl Jones (1982) | B. Frank Finlay |
| 3. Paul Robeson (1943-45) | C. John Neville |
| 4. Walter Huston (1937) | D. Christopher Plummer |
| 5. Ben Kingsley (1986) | E. Kenneth Branagh |
| 6. Laurence Olivier (1964) | F. José Ferrer |
| 7. Laurence Fishburne (1995 film) | G. Jake Gyllenhaal |
| 8. Richard Burton (1956) | H. Michael MacLiammóir |
| 9. Orson Welles (1951 film) | I. Laurence Olivier |
| 10. Ralph Richardson (1937) | J. David Suchet |
Scroll down for the answers…
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Reviews for The Pirates of Penzance at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre:
New York Times (Jesse Green): A Broadway remake of the operetta, starring David Hyde Pierce, moves the plot to the Big Easy, where good times roll, even if some jokes don’t quite land… Though jolly enough, the latest Broadway incarnation, which opened on Thursday at the Todd Haimes Theater, trusts neither the material nor us as much as it might. Clumsily but accurately (retitled Pirates! The Penzance Musical,) and transported to post-Reconstruction New Orleans, it is also significantly altered in tone. Except for the central performance by David Hyde Pierce, marvelously underplaying the tongue-twisting Major-General, the production has a sweaty quality, bordering on frenzy, that’s hopelessly at odds with the cool wit of the original… now takes place in a French Quarter theater — a clever touch, given Louisiana’s historic proximity to actual piracy, but one that requires laborious workarounds and, apparently, an uplifting lesson…
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): …the wanton plunder of intellectual property (specifically of their earlier hit, H.M.S. Pinafore) by piratical American producers had convinced the British songwriters to debut their newest work at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, to be better protected by the copyright laws of this still-wild country… New Orleans leg of a national tour led by Gilbert and Sullivan themselves, for which they had the stamina to rearrange large sections of the score as Dixieland jazz. This delightfully anachronistic concept offers the opportunity for cultural alchemy, blending styles and sensibilities across time and borders to create musical comedy bliss. This has been done successfully with Gilbert and Sullivan before. Unfortunately, this attempt is thwarted by a one-two punch of timidity and smarm…
Variety (Christian Lewis): …This new production — an adaptation by Rupert Holmes with new orchestrations by Joseph Joubert and Daryl Waters — does a laudable job updating the material for a contemporary audience, re-christening it Pirates! The Penzance Musical, now set in New Orleans… Before things get started, however, this adaptation begins with a metatheatrical curtain speech by composer Arthur Sullivan (Preston Truman Boyd, who also plays the Police Sergeant) and writer William S. Gilbert (David Hyde Pierce, also appearing as Major-General Stanley)… They preface the performance by offering an unconvincing explanation for why this “Pirates!” is set in New Orleans and has incorporated the city’s “colorful personality” and “exotic rhythms.” … There’s fun to be had in this reconceived setting and a litany of lyrics and jokes about New Orleans have been incorporated, but it brings up some dramaturgical questions. The program and the curtain speech inform us we are in 1880, yet the score is infused with jazz and blues and there are several choreographic nods to the Charleston, all of which imply a setting later than 1880…
New York Theater (Jonathan Mandell): …billed as a reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 146-year-old comic operetta. But luckily there is plenty it shares with the twenty-six previous Broadway productions… The creative team’s noodling doesn’t get in the way of some exciting performances, such as David Hyde Pierce’s, mastering “I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” the granddaddy of all patter songs, and Ramin Karimloo’s, swashbuckling his way through “I Am The Pirate King,” leaping from the ship’s deck, sword at the ready… The most thrilling performance for me is actually the one that Nicholas Barasch gives as Frederic… One might say something similar about Jinkx Monsoon… She now seems a great comic fit for Ruth, who spends the early part of the show trying to hoodwink Frederic, who has never met any other woman, into thinking she’s a great beauty. This works, until Frederic meets Mabel Stanley (Samantha Williams) and the other young daughters of Major General Stanley.
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Reviews for Dead Outlaw at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre:
New York Times (Jesse Green): …the gorgeously perverse opening of Dead Outlaw, the feel-good musical of the season, if death and deadpan feel good to you. As directed by David Cromer, in another of his daringly poker-faced stagings, the show is to Broadway what a ghost train is to an amusement park, with screams and laughs but much better music… That it should be on Broadway at all is a scream and a laugh… The funny-gross story is largely true, and feels even truer as pared to the bone by Itamar Moses in the musical’s terse, brisk, sure-footed book. After that campfire prologue, and a barnburner of a welcoming number that establishes the theme — “Your mama’s dead / Your daddy’s dead / Your brother’s dead / And so are you” — the narrative cuts to Elmer’s childhood in Maine, normal on the surface, wackadoodle underneath. Let’s just say he already has mummy issues…
Chicago Tribune (Chris Jones): …Most great Broadway musicals are about mortality. From Les Misérables to The Lion King, they preach that we don’t die but live on in another form. But very few Broadway musicals are about corpses. … Dead Outlaw is a deliciously sardonic little tuner from the cheerfully nihilistic, ever anti-sentimental, ever macabre team of David Yazbek (music, here alongside Erik Della Penna), Itamar Moses (book) and David Cromer (direction). Cromer has turned his Broadway attention from the Hollywood superstar George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck to a mummified dude in a matter of days and coaxed decent if understated performances from both … when combined with Moses’s very shrewdly toned book, the show does explore substantial themes, beyond its immediate purpose of persuading an audience not just to confront the certainty of their own death (always fun on a Saturday night) but their own corporal decay. The show notes that nothing ever was truly sacred or revered on the American frontier, the living and the dead all attracting their price, all susceptible to transactional exploitation. The notion lingers that not so much has changed…
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): As we contemplate the end of a century of American dominance, it’s a great time to examine the circumstances of our rise—the ingenuity, dynamism, and exploitation that built a global empire. Dead Outlaw, the new musical at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, feels like an autopsy, a gruesome look at the American genius for monetizing absolutely everything… Itamar Moses (book), and David Cromer (direction) have reunited, joining songwriter Erik Della Penna (who did not work on The Band’s Visit) to create a musical that feels miles away from that dreamy dip into love and possibility… profoundly, wickedly irreverent, with lyrics that elicit side-by-side laughs and gasps.
Variety (Frank Rizzo): …Following its well-received Off Broadway run produced by Audible last year, the musical retains its wickedness, vibrancy and nerve, as well as its extraordinary ensemble of actors. It also has Arnulfo Maldonado’s giant cube of a set, housing its kick-ass band, honkytonk ambiance and much of the action… Itamar Moses, whose book for “Dead Outlaw” gives new meaning to “deadpan humor” as he slyly and concisely tells a wild Americana story that’s mostly true — with the nuttiest parts being the factual ones… The strong score by the always surprising Yazbek… On the surface, “Dead Outlaw” is a boisterous and wildly entertaining show that should attract young audiences who like their entertainment bold, bracing and outrageous. But amid the delicious quirkiness in the telling and the macabre nature of the narrative, it has something to say about a nation’s mythology and our own sooner-than-you-think mortality…
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Chad Beguelin, Gim Herlihy & Matthew Sklar’s The Wedding Singer will run June 5-29 (opening June 7) at Burbank’s Colony Theatre, directed by Michael Donovan, with choreography by Michelle Elkin, and music direction by Brent Crayon.
Blake Jenner, Kay Cole, Hannah Sedlacek, Juliane Godfrey, Michael Austin Deni, Colin Huerta, Chris Bey, Natalie Holt MacDonald, and Whitney Kathleen Vigil, with Madison AiSanaye, Mike Baker, Lisa Dyson, Chris Ho, Liv Kaplan, Samantha Lawrence-Mata, Kailyn Leilani, Veronica Carolina Leite, Almand Martin Jr., Honza Pelichovský, Michael Wells, and Stephen Wilson.
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Sierra Boggess in concert will run May 8-10 & May 12 (all at 7 PM) at NYC’s 54 Below, with music direction by Brian Hertz.
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Bowl EP, written & directed by Nazareth Hassan, will run May 1 – June 8 at the Vineyard Theatre, directed by Nazareth Hassan.
Essence Lotus (Kelly K Klarkson), Quentavius da Quitter (Oghenero Gbajge), and Lemon Pepper Wings (Felicia Curry), and Kalonjee Gallimore.
Kelly K Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter need to find a name for their rap group. Through flirty interludes, cringy overshares, and practicing their ollies, they grow increasingly closer. Skating and Smoking. Skating and Drinking. Skating and exorcizing a demon. With live skating and original music, enter Bowl EP: a skateboard park, in the middle of a wasteland, at the edge of the galaxy.
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Readings of Marilyn Campbell-Low & Kim D. Sherman’s Sentinels, a new play with music, will take place Sun. June 1 (at 7 PM) and Wed. June 4 (4 PM) at NYC’s A.R.T./New York Theatres (502 W. 53rd St.), directed by Joe Barros.
(free): Click here.
Bella Dunbar, Laura Marina Ulerio, Olivia Sartori, Gabby Boera, and Josephine Phoenix, with Schenoa Ramos-Martin. Jadyn Rainforth.
We’ve all heard about the all-male “secret society” at Yale. But, what if there was an all-female secret society that makes its home out of an abandoned dome room at a university in Milwaukee? Since 1945, this group of brilliant, courageous college women have made it their goal to ensure women are at every table where important stuff happens. From their refuge overlooking the campus, they’ve been involved with such monumental events as the first Black woman to star at the Met Opera, the election of the first female leader of a Muslim country, and the discovery of polio vaccine. Facing the dissolution of their society we see the developing sisterhood among the Sentinels of each era as they experience the societal sea changes of those periods. This is their story. The Sentinels.
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Thomas B. Waites’ Lucky Man – A Warrior’s Journey, directed by Joe Danisi, will run June 5-22 (opening June 11) at Off-Broadway’s Gene Frankel Theatre.
Thomas G. Waites
A deeply personal one-man rock monologue backed by his band Heartbreak Waites, that chronicles Waites rise, fall, and redemption. Waites rips the curtain wide open on his wild ride through fame and flameout. The show begins in 1976, just after being kicked out of Juilliard’s Drama Division, and rockets ahead two years later when, at just 23, Waites hits it big with starring with roles in On the Yard, The Warriors, …And Justice for All, and The Thing—working with icons like Al Pacino, John Heard, Kurt Russell and many others, as alcohol destroyes his career, marriage, and family before finding redemption, serenity, and hope – through AA, friendship, music, forgiveness, and the fierce power of love. It will break your heart—then heal it with laughter and song.
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Fred Alley & James Alco’s The Spitfire Grill will run May 2 – June 8 at LA’s Actor’s Co-op, directed by Bonnie Hellman, with music direction by Stephen Van Dorn.
Lori Berg (Hannah Ferguson), Caitlin Gallogly (Shelby Thorpe), Gavin Michael Harris (Sheriff Joe Sutter), Hannah Howzdy (Percy Talbott), Ben Kientz (The Visitor), Spencer Rowe (Caleb Thorpe) and Treva Tegtmeier (Effy Krayneck).
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“Stephen Sondhehim’s Old Friends: Lea Salonga in Conversation” will take place Mon. May 5 at 7:30 PM at NYC’s 92NY, with Frank DiLella.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz Answers: Dynamic Duos
1-A. Denzel Washington (2025) – Jake Gyllenhaal
2-D. James Earl Jones (1982) – Christopher Plummer
3-F. Paul Robeson (1943-45) – José Ferrer
4-A. Walter Huston (1937) – Brian Aherne
5-J. Ben Kingsley (1986) – David Suchet
6-B. Laurence Olivier (1964) – Frank Finlay
7-E. Laurence Fishburne (1995 film) – Kenneth Branagh
8-C. Richard Burton (1956) – John Neville
9-H. Orson Welles (1951 film) – Michael MacLiammóir
10-I. Ralph Richardson (1937) – Laurence Olivier