Today’s Highlights:
Hailee Kaleem Wright (Catherine of Aragon), Leandra Ellis-Gaston (Anne Boleyn), Bella Coppola (Jane Seymour), Leandra Ellis-Gaston (Anne Bolyen), Nasia Thomas (Anna of Cleves), Zoe Jensen (Katherine Howard), and Taylor Iman Jones (Catherine Parr), with Marilyn Caserta, Kristina Leopold, Aubrey Matalon, Holli’ Conway and Ayla Ciccone-Burton begin their runs in SIX at Broadway’s Lena Horne Theatre.
Orlando, by Neil Bartlett, directed by Michael Grandage, featuring Emma Corrin (Orlando), Deborah Findlay (Mrs. Grimsditch), Jessica Alade (Virginia/Drunken Tory), Debra Baker (Virginia/Favilla/The Captain), Akuc Bol (Virginia/Euphrosyne/Prue), Lucy Briers (Virginia/Queen Elizabeth/Officer), Richard Cant (Virginia/Harriet/Kitty), Melissa Lowe (Virginia/Drunken Tory), Jodie McNee (Virginia/Marmaduke), Oliver Wickham (Virginia/Clorinda), and Millicent Wong (Virginia/Sasha/Nell), opens at London’s Garrick Theatre.
The Far Country, by Lloyd Suh, directed by Eric Ting, featuring Ben Chanse, Jinn S. Kim, Whit K. Lee, Christopher Liam Moore, Shannon Tyo, Amy Kim, and Eric Yang, opens at Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theatre Company.
Ralph Fiennes reads TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land” at 7:30 PM at NYC’s 92Y. 
Only the livestream version is available.
Love The Struggle in concert, by Stacy Krayand Yair Evnine, featuring Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, Grace McLean, and Margo Seibert, at 7 PM at NYC’s Joe’s Pub.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz: All Dressed Up by Jim Bernhard
1. In Company Joanne asks, “Does anybody still wear”….a cummerbund…spats…a hat…high-button shoes
2. In What Makes Sammy Run? Sammy buys and then sings about…a camel hair coat…a beaver hat…a new pair of shoes…a silk tie
3. In Dear Evan Hansen Evan appears with a cast on his arm and wearing…a leather jacket…a lumberjack shirt…a high-school letter sweater…a striped polo shirt
4. In Annie the orphan heroine’s iconic dress is red…blue…gray….brown
5. In Bye Bye Birdie, Conrad Birdie performs in a cowboy outfit…tuxedo…Superman costume…gold lamé jumpsuit
6. The boots in Kinky Boots are….cowboy boots…high-heeled thigh boots…baby booties…combat boots
7. In Pygmalion, just before Eliza throws them at him, Higgins demands, “What the devil have I done with my”….cuff links…slippers…pajamas…black socks
8. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is based on a story in…Aesop’s Fables…Tales of A Thousand and One Nights…the Book of Genesis…Mother Goose Rhymes
9. In the musical Heathers, the three girls named Heather wear red, yellow and green…blazers…pinafores…
10. In The Full Monty steelworkers form a group called Hot Metal that plans to appear…in drag…in their underwear…in bikinis…in the nude
Scroll down for the answers…
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Reviews for A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre:
New York Times (Elisabeth Vincentelli): A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him [Neil Diamond] in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of [the musical], the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show… is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell)… Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.
Theatermania (David Gordon): The best thing I can say about the Neil Diamond musical A Beautiful Noise is that it knows its audience… Clearly, the AARP crowd will get the most out of Broadway’s latest bio-musical…Most of McCarten’s musical is based on Diamond’s inner conflict of being so famous and feeling so unsatisfied by it… [Mark] Jacoby takes it on home in an extraordinary eleven o’clock crescendo of “I Am…I Said”… But what McCarten inadvertently ends up proving is that Diamond, for all his great songs, didn’t really lead an interesting life… Mayer’s direction here is of the traffic cop variety… Mayer, cruising on autopilot, certainly doesn’t do much substantial work with his principal actors, who all seem to be having a very nice time doing their own thing…
New York Post (Johnny Oleksinski): Good times never seemed so dull. So dull. So dull. So dull… begins in the most sedate and uninvolving manner imaginable… The lights come up on a plain-looking therapy session and the titular musician, now in old age (Mark Jacoby), sits opposite a woman in a red leather armchair.“I’m sorry,” the doctor (Linda Powell) says to him. “I don’t know your songs.” Diamond, not offended, then whips out his handy dandy songbook, cracks it open and explains who he is through his tunes. That is a confounding way to start a show… Just wait till you get to the repressed memory childhood flashback in Act 2, set to the songs “Brooklyn Roads” and “Shilo,” in which nothing perceivable happens…
NY Theatre Guide (Joe Dzimianowicz): …a lukewarm look at the Brooklyn-born superstar… This production, directed by Michael Mayer, ends up light in terms of insights and provocative juice… Anthony McCarten’s script relies on a framing device that begins on a downer note and returns there regularly… In predictable fashion, the story moves back in time and retraces Diamond’s humble beginnings as a struggling songwriter from a Jewish family with a wife and a baby of his own… As Diamond’s nonstop career soars, his marriage and luxurious life in Malibu with Marcia sours. “Seems like she wanted more time with you, not more things,” says the doc to the older Diamond. Cue Marcia, who belts “Forever in Blue Jeans,” accompanied by a ridiculously bloated dance number…
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Reviews for Lincoln Center’s Becky Nurse of Salem at Off-Broadway’s Mitzi Newhouse Theatre:
NY Times (Maya Phillips): …brings in the witches but forgets the magic… the play is strongest…when it bridges Rebecca Nurse’s witch trial with Becky Nurse’s contemporary witchcraft… The technical elements also feel incongruous… The more realistic bits of Becky’s story feel like little more than loose sketches of characters and circumstances, and there’s a lack of chemistry among cast members… The play spends two hours dancing around a vaguely defined feminist message. That’s the very problem in this production: It hasn’t figured out the spell that will bring real magic to the stage.
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): …It is inspired partly by the rage Ruhl felt after seeing a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible — specifically, how it distorted the actual motivation behind the Salem Witch Trials to make them about a young woman’s desire for an older man… Director Rebecca Taichman’s tight staging somewhat clothes the naked contrivance of the script… Tal Yarden’s screensaver projections, which are not as magical as they seem meant to be. The cast valiantly delivers three-dimensional performances throughout, despite the cardboard play world they have been asked to inhabit.
Yahoo (Robert Hofler): For a play about witches and the spells they cast, Becky Nurse of Salem is long on hocus-pocus and short on everything else… Deirdre O’Connell delivering a blizzard of blue-collar mannerisms… a play that traffics in all the clichés of the genre… Ruhl not so subtly lets us know that Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible at a time when he was in love with Marilyn Monroe but couldn’t yet have sex with Marilyn Monroe because he was married to another woman… This has something to do with his character John Proctor lusting after one of the pubescent girls in the play. It also has something to do with Becky’s addiction to opioids, which has something to do with her ancestor’s behavior, which had something to do with her being accused of witchcraft…
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Jon Hartmere’s Once Upon a One More Time will begin previews May 13 and opens June 22 at the Marquis Theatre, directed & choreographed by Keone & Mari Madrid.
Casting TBA.
The story centers on a book club of fairy tale damsels—including Cinderella, Snow White, and the Little Mermaid—whose own stories get a rewrite when a fairy godmother gives them Friedan’s landmark 1963 feminist tome “The Feminine Mystique.”
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The 2021 Chichester Festival Theatre’s production ob Crazy for You will transfer to the Gillian Lynne Theatre, to run June 24, 2023 – Jan. 20, 2024 (opening July 3), directed by Susan Stroman.
Charlie Stemp (Bobby Child), Carly Anderson (Polly Walker), Mathew Craig (Land Hawkins), and more TBA.
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Samuel Beckett’s Endgame will run Jan. 25 – Mar. 12, 2023 (opening Feb. 2) at Irish Rep, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly.
Bill Irwin, John Douglas Thompson, Joseph Grifasi, and Patrice Johnson.
The macabre tragicomedy follows Hamm, and isolated, blink, and chair-bound man whose only company is his parents, aging and legless, and his servant Clov.
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Nathan Tysen, Jason Howland & Kait Kerrigan’s The Great Gatsby is currently in development, directed by Marc Bruni. A private industry reading will be presented later this month. A regional premiere is expected during the 2023-24 season with additional details TBA.
Set in the Roaring ’20s, the musical follows eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby, who will stop at nothing in his tragic pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman who he loved in his youth.
This is only one of many Gatsby adaptations in the works. Florence Welch, Thomas Bartlett & Martyna Majok are also developing the musical, with others in various stages of development, including an immersive production, created & directed by Alexander, which will have an interactive production beginning Mar. 9, 2023 at NYC’s Park Central Hotel, transforming its 16,000 square foot ballroom into The Gatsby Mansion. Additional details TBA.
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Miss: Broadway’s Women Songwriters, will run Dec. 10-12 at NYC’s 92Y, conceived, co-written & directed by Kate Baldwin & Georgia Stitt
Kay Swift, Mary Rodgers, Micki Grant, Lucy Simon and Elizabeth Swados to contemporary artists including Jeanine Tesori, Lisa Kron, Sara Bareilles, Erin McKeown and Quiara Alegria Hudes,
Kennedy Kanagawa, Bryonha Marie Parham, Nicholas Rodriguez, and Emily Skeggs.
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A private industry reading of Nathan Tysen, Jason Howlands & Kait Kerrigan’s The Great Gatsby will take place later this month, directed by Marc Bruni.
Casting, creative team and additional information TBA.
A regional production is expected during the 2023-24 season with additional details TBA
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The 24 Hour Plays will premiere in Philadelphia for the first time, in collaboration with InterAct Theatre Company and the Dramatist Guid, on Mon. Dec. 12 at 8 PM at Philadelphia’s Interact Theatre Company. The one-night event will feature 6 new plays, written, rehearsed & performed by local Philadelphia actors, directors, and playwrights.
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Cabaret on the Couch Live!: Home for the Holidays returns to NYC’s Green Room on Mon. Dec. 19 at 9:30 PM, hosted by Kristin “KP” Sgarro, with music direction by Camille Johnson.
André Jordan, Kimberly Marable, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Devin Bowles, Emily Croft, Siobhan Jones, Elle Prado, and Kenzie Elizabeth.
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Aaron Tveit will return to his role of Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical for a 12-week limited engagement beginning Jan. 17, 2023 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.
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“Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage” is now available on Disney+, directed by Anne McCabe.
The film follows Menzel on a national tour over the course of of 16 shows as she juggles the challenges of being a working mom with a grueling travel schedule, all while preparing finally to realize her dream. The documentary al features footage of Menzel onstage in Wicked and Rent, alongside interviews with her family, friends, co-stars, and creative collaborators. The film also tells the story of her personal experience with in vitro fertilization.
Video: Clip
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An all-new production of The Wiz, adapted by William F. Brown & Charlie Smalls will play a limited engagement on Broadway following a Fall 2023 national tour, directed by Schele Williams.
Creative team, casting, and tour & Broadway dates TBA.
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National Theatre Live’s screening of London’s Much Ado About Nothing will take place Sat. Dec. 10 at 3 PM at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater, directed by Simon Goodman
Katherine Parkinson, John Heffernan, and more.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz Answer: All Dressed Up
1. In Company Joanne asks, “Does anybody still wear a hat?”
2. In What Makes Sammy Run? Sammy buys and then sings about a new pair of shoes.
3. In Dear Evan Hansen Evan appears with a cast on his arm and wearing a striped polo shirt.
4. In Annie the orphan heroine’s iconic dress is red.
5. In Bye Bye Birdie, Conrad Birdie performs in a gold lamé jumpsuit.
6. The boots in Kinky Boots are high-heeled thigh boots.
7. In Pygmalion, just before Eliza throws them at him, Higgins demands, “What the devil have I done with my slippers?”
8. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is based on a story in the Book of Genesis.
9. In the musical Heathers, the three girls named Heather wear red, yellow and green blazers.
10. In The Full Monty steelworkers form a group called Hot Metal that plans to appear in the nude.