Today’s Highlights
Patti LuPone: Songs From a Hat concert continues through Jan. 8 at NYC’s 54 Below.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz: Missing Links by Jim Bernhard
The solutions are all titles of plays, musicals, or songs, to be filled in the appropriate blank spaces. One word in each title appears in the next title on the list, and to complete the circle, one word in the last title appears in the first. To get you started, one word in the first answer is provided.
- _ _ _ Skin _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — play by Thornton Wilder
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — another play by Thornton Wilder
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — musical by George Abbott and Bob Merrill
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — play by Bella and Sam Spewack
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — play by Clifford Odets
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ – musical by John Latouche and Jerome Moross
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — musical by Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock, and Jerome Coopersmith
- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ — play by Lawrence Roman
- _ ‘_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ – song by Cole Porter
Scroll down for the answers…
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Reviews for The Collaboration at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (opened Dec. 20):
New York Times (Laura Collins Hughes): …The Collaboration…is fundamentally invested in pitting the two painters against each other: their styles, their philosophies, their musings on art and commerce. And their fluctuating cultural currency… considerably less curious about whatever lies behind each man’s public facade… Pope summons not only his charm…but also his brilliance, ache and depth… plays the frenetic former graffiti artist as if he knows every pulse of Basquiat’s life that we don’t see onstage, and that McCarten’s blunt instrument of a script can’t convey… Bettany, though, barely locates more than two dimensions in Warhol… The Collaboration feels emptily formulaic…
Variety (Marilyn Stasio): …in The Collaboration… the two artists are articulate and unpredictable individualists. With director Kwame Kwei-Armah at the helm of this Young Vic production, the acting is nothing if not eye-catching… even on the intimate stage of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Friedman Theater on Broadway, he [Jeremy Pope] has both theatrical presence and a personal dynamism that make him impossible to resist… captures the vulnerability and the youthful breath of innocence behind the bragging… It’s hard to call this gushing fountain of clever talk a play. There’s no dramatic shape to it: No plot, no event, no conflict, no danger. But there are two richly drawn characters on stage with plenty to say for themselves…
NY Daily News (Chris Jones) …the interesting new Broadway play by the prolific Anthony McCarten, capably directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah… That’s mostly because the actor Jeremy Pope depicts the neo-expressionist artist, a genius who was part of the Whitney Biennial at 22 years old and whose paintings now sell for hundreds of millions, with such tenderness and empathy… Pope’s fascinating performance… which is not showy but ranges deep, deftly captures an artist whose work was suffused with paradox… McCarten gets to debate attacks on artistic freedom, the importance of allowing artists to do what they feel called to do, not what is politically correct…
New York Sun (Elysa Gardner): …predictably, delivers its mix of romance and cynicism with more sophistication, it can still flirt with clichés and overstatement… Under Kwame Kwei-Armah’s direction, the leading actors manage a convincing and compelling rapport. Mr. Pope, whose lavish gifts as a musical performer have been on display in previous Broadway productions, physicalizes his character’s manic energy with grace and, when Basquiat is emotionally or perhaps chemically addled, poignance. There is pathos in Mr. Bettany’s performance as well — a pained, self-conscious quality lurking behind the sharp wit, suggesting Warhol’s reputed shyness and loneliness.
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Remembering the theatre artists we lost in 2022.
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Death of a Salesman continues through Jan. 15 at the Hudson Theatre, directed by Miranda Cromwell.
Wendell Pierce (Willy Loman), Sharon D Clarke (Linda Loman), Khris Davis (Biff), McKinley Belcher III (Happy), André De Shields (Ben), Blake DeLong (Howard/Stanley), Lynn Hawley (The Woman/Jenny), Grace Porter (Letta/Jazz Singer), Kevin Ramessar (Musician), Stephen Stocking (Bernard), Chelsea Lee Williams (Miss Forsythe), and Delaney Williams (Charlie).
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& 
Red Bull Theater will present free on-demand presentations of Elizabeth Inchbald’s Animal Magnetism Jan. 23-29, directed by José Zayas.
Online access is Free, but registration is required (click on link above). Donations will also be gratefully accepted.
Amir Arison, Carson Elrod, Yonatan Gebeyehu, Brad Oscar, Cara Rickets, and Alexandra Silber.
An hour-long delight about a Doctor – a quack – who keeps his beautiful young ward, Constance, under lock and key, and is determined to force her into marrying him. But Constance is determined to get free and the Marquis, who loves her, offers an escape route. When Le Fleur, the Marquis’s servant, arrives at the house under the guise of an expert in mesmerism, the scene is set for the Doctor to get his comeuppance.
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Best Broadway performances over the years from “The Kennedy Center Honors”
Video: Angela Lansbury (2000), with Glenn Close, Len Cariou, Nathan Lane, Marin Mazzie, Donna Murphy, and Karen Ziemba
Video: Barbara Cook (2011), with Laura Osnes, Rebecca Luker, Kelli O’Hara, Glenn Close, Sutton Foster, Patti LuPone, and Audra McDonald.
Video: Chita Rivera (2002), with Hal Prince, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Donna Murphy, Valarie Pettiford, and Charlotte d’Amboise
Video: Jerry Herman (2010), with Angela Lansbury, Carol Channing, Chita Rivera, Sutton Foster, Kelsey Grammer, Matthew Morrison, Christine Ebersole, Christine Baranski, Laura Benanti, Kelli O’Hara, and Matt Bomer
Video: Julie Andrews (2001), with Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald, Carol Burnett, Robert Goulet, Jeremy Irons, and Rebecca Luker
Video: Shirley MacLaine (2013), with Kathy Bates, Sutton Foster, Anna Kendrick, Karen Olivo, and Patina Miller
Video: Andrew Lloyd Webber (2006), with Corey Glover, Christine Ebersole, Elena Roger, Josh Groban, and Betty Buckley
Video: Kander & Ebb (1998), with Alec Baldwin, Alan Cumming, Joel Grey, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera, and Liza Minnelli
Video: Carol Burnett (2003), with Julie Andrews, Chita Rivera, Elaine Stritch, Tim Conway, Scott Bakula, John Schneider, Kim Cattrall, Florence Henderson, Reba McEntire, Harvey Korman, Gary Beech, and Bernadette Peters
Video: Jule Styne (1990), with Tyne Daly, Hal Linden, Maureen McGovern, Jerome Robbins, Tommy Tune, and Ann Reinking
Video: Stephen Sondheim (1993), with Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Scott Bakula, and Jason Alexander
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Complete casting has been announced for King Lear, to run Feb. 23 – Mar. 26 at DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, directed by Simon Godwin.
Patrick Page (King Lear), Shirine Babb (Kent), Terrance Fleming (Burgundy), Jake Loewenthal (Albany), Raven Lorraine (Ursula), Michael Milligan (Fool), Todd Scofield (Oswald), Craig Wallace (Glouster), Yao Dogbe (Corwall), Rosa Gilmore (Goneril), Matthew J. Harris (Edgar), Stephanie Jean Lane (Reagan), Julian Elijah Martinez (Edmund), Hunter Ringsmith (France), and Lily Santiago (Cordelia), with Ryan Neely, Bekah Zornosa, Robyn Cohen, Gil Mitchell, Jackson Knight Pierce, Rachel Sanderson, and James Whalen.
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Complete casting has been announced for a reading of Elizabeth Inchbald’s Animal Magnetism, which will be available to stream on demand Jan. 23-29 at Off-Broadway’s Red Bull Theater, directed by José Zayas.
Amir Arison, Carson Elrod, Yonatan Gebeyehu, Brad Oscar, Cara Ricketts), and Alexandra Silber.
A brilliant riff on the art of performance and a hilarious and all too relevant takedown of some of men’s insistence that they own and control women’s bodies. A Doctor (a quack) keeps; his beautiful young ward, Constance, under lock and key, and is determined to force her into marrying him. But Constance is determined to get free, and the the Marquis, who loves her, offers an escape route. When LeFleur, the Marquis’ servant, arrives at the house under the guise of an expert in mesmerism, the scene is set for the Doctor to get his comeuppance.
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Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre presents its 13th season of All Star Comedy (all at 8 PM):
Feb. 4: Mike Cicoli, Nick Witmer, and Ben Demarco
Feb.25: TBA
Mar. 25: TBA
…and more dates TBA
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The 89th Annual Drama League Awards will take place Fri. May 19 at 12 PM at NYC’s Ziegfeld Ballroom.
Nominations for the 2022-23 Broadway and Off-Broadway season will be announced Tues. Apr. 25 at 11 AM.
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Without You, written & performed by Anthony Rapp, will run Jan. 14 – Apr. 30 (opening Jan. 25) at New World Stages, directed by Steven Maler.
In 1994, Rapp was twenty-two, out of money and working at a Starbucks, about to audition for a new musical by a young writer named Johnathan Larson. This is where the story of Without You begins. Anthony shares his unimaginable real-life of the early years of Rent in this intimate evening of unsurpassed joy and unspeakable loss.
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Original cast members will reunite for Pippin: The 50th Anniversary Original Broadway Cast Reunion Concert on Feb. 6 & 7, at 7 & 9:30 PM both evenings, at NYC’s 54 Below, directed by Walter Willison, with music direction by Michael Lavine.
John Rubinstein, Candy Brown, Cheryl Clark, Gene Foote, Will D. McMillan, Jennifer Nairn-Smith, Pamela Sousa, Walter Willison, Leland Palmer, and Joy Franz, with additional surprises.
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David Foster’s Betty Boop Musical is aiming for a pre-Broadway run in Chicago this year.
Creative team, casting, and additional information TBA.
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(read here): Patti LuPone on “New Year’s Eve Live with Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper.”
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Video: Teaser for Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, which begins previews Mar. 2 and opens Mar. 19 at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre, directed & musically staged by Wayne Cilento, with music direction by Justin Hornback.
Yeman Brown, Peter John Chursin, Dylis Croman, Jovan Dansberry, Karli Dinardo, Tony d’Alelio, Aydin Eyikan, Manuel Herrera, Gabriel Hyman, Kolton Krouse, Mattie Love, Krystal Mackie, Yani Marin, Nando Morland, Khori Michelle Petinaud, Ida Saki, Ron Todorowski , and Neka Zang .
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Complete casting has been announced for the world premiere of Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees, to run Feb. 12 – Mar. 19 (opening Mar. 5) at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Tina Satter.
Jess Barbagallo (David), Marcia DeBonis (Sheryl), Crystal Dickinson (Sheila), Sean Donovan (Jared), Xander Fenyes (Ezra), Nile Harris (Julian), Max Gordon Moore (Saul), Pauli Pontrelli (Tavish), Ray Anthony Thomas (Norman), Danusia Trevino (Grandmother), Sam Breslin Wright (Terry/Vendor), and Becky Yamamoto (Charlotte).
How does a makeshift community take room in a mercenary world? The play offers an unexpected answer in the story of a brother and sister who unwittingly establish a utopia in the park next to their father’s house. Lyrical and epic in scope, Agnes Borinsky’s contemporary parable investigates the precariousness of staying put.
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The world premiere of Gabriel Oliva’s Final Interview will run Jan. 13, 14, 27-29 at the Pico Playhouse, directed by Katierose Donahue-Enriquez.
Dana Derrick, Colleen Foy, Frank Martinelli, Gabriel Oliva, and Brian Stanton.
The stress of a job interview is cranked up to 10 when a gun is thrown in the mix. If the interview goes poorly, someone dies. In a claustrophobic game of cat and mouse, both interviewer and interviewee desperately try to escape a high-rise office with their lives.
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Jonathan Hogue’s Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical, which was to have closed on Jan. 1 at Off-Broadway’s Playhouse 46, has been extended and will now run Jan. 13 – Mar. 5, directed by Nick Flatto, with choreography by Ashley Marinelli, and music supervision by Michael Kaish.
Casting TBA.
Take a trip back to Hawkins, Indiana: 1983… when times were simpler, hair was bigger, and unsupervised children were getting snatched by inter-dimensional creatures.
Video: Teaser
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Concert for Caleb Benefit will take place Sun. Jan. 15 at 7 PM at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre, co-hosted by Megan O’Brien, Leah Walton, and Grayce Carson.
Rob McClure, Maggie Lakis, Jake Blouch, Kim Carson, Rachel Brennan, Adam Hoyak, Ben Michael, Rob Tucker, Jenna Pinchbeck, Amanda Jill Robinson, Marissa Hines, Nancie Sanderson, and Brittany Wit Martin.
Caleb O’Brien is an incredible six-year-old who has been diagnosed for a second time with Pre B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and must endure demanding treatments and chemotherapy.
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LA’s Actors Co-op Theatre has announced its Spring 2023 season:
The Human Comedy (Mar. 10 – Apr. 16), written & directed by Thom Babbes. Set in war front America in 1942, this coming-of-age tale tells the story of Homer Macaulay, a 14-year-old boy who delivers telegrams at night to make money for his family.
Tornado (Apr. 21 – May 28), by Chris Gragin-Day, directed by Linda Kerns. Set in the aftermath of the devastating 2012 Oklahoma tornado, Jade, a college student at Oklahoma Baptist University, and Becca, a corporate lawyer from New York City, have come to volunteer in the clean-up efforts. When a Chick-fil-A lunch truck arrives to offer free lunch to the volunteers, their vastly different cultural perspectives clash head-on, and they must struggle to set aside their differences for the good of the tornado victim they hope to serve.
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Matthew Doherty’s Brothers Play will run Jan. 13 – Feb. 5 (opening Jan. 14) at Legacy LA (1350 San Pablo St.), directed by James Eckhouse.
Rob Nagle, Jeffrey Nordling, and Jamie Wollrab.
Youngest brother Thomas has just been bailed out of jail — having thrown a rock through the stained-glass rose window at their local Catholic church, shattering his family’s code of silence mere days before Christmas. This event upsets middle brother Francis’s plans to marry a stripper, and eldest brother Jude’s commitment to honor the tradition of going to the gambling boats for the holidays like they always do. But Thomas has been sleep-walking and his stammer has returned along with memories he can no longer ignore, forcing everyone to unwrap their shared trauma just in time for Christmas.
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Turn The Beat Around, a salute to Studio 54, will take place Wed. Jan. 4 at 7 & 9:30 PM both evenings, at NYC’s 54 Below, directed by Scott Coulter.
Susan Agin, Scott Coulter, Natalie Douglas, Tyce Green, Jessica Hendy, Michael Holland, Blaine Alden Krauss, Larry Lelli, Anthony Murphy, Tim Quartier, Kelli Rabke, Devin L. Roberts, Matt Scharfglass, and Mike Schwitter.
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Lydia R. Diamond’s Toni Stone will run Jan. 28 – Feb. 26 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, directed by Ron OJ Parson.
Tracey Bonner (Toni Stone), Kai Ealy (King Tut), Joseph Aaron Johnson (Elzie), Chiké Johnson (Alberga), Travis Knight (Stretch), Victor Musoni (Jimmy), Jon Hudson Odom (Millie), Edgar Miguel Sanchez (Spec), and Terence Sims (Woody), with Jabari Khaliq, Krystel McNeil, and Matty Robinson.
The story of the first woman to play professional baseball, who overcomes the racist and sexist barriers to play the sport she loves.
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Sara Bareilles and Joe Tippett have announced their engagement.
No word yet on a wedding date.
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Mateo Lizcano (Dear Evan Hansen) in concert will take place Thurs. Jan. 11 at 9:30 PM at NYC’s 54 Below, with both live and livestream options, directed by Ryan Duncan-Ayala, with music direction by Jon Balcourt.
Mark Aguirre, Yale Langworthy, and Zach Podair.
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Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel, written & performed by Tim Crouch, continues through Jan. 8 at SoHo Playhouse, directed by Karl Janes & Andy Smith.
The play uses King Lear as a point of departure to explore the aftermath of the last three year: the loss of life, the wrecking of families, the abuse of power, the digital encroachment of live theatre and the decimation of our industry. Crouch draws on the ideas of virtual reality to send him back to the future of the play he left.
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Tom Kitt’s Almost Famous, directed by Jeremy Herrin, will close Jan. 8 at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, after 30 previews and 77 regular performances.
Chris Wook, Anika Larsen, Solea Pfeiffer, Drew Gehling, Rob Colletti, and Casey Likes, with Matt Bittner, Chad Burris, Gerard Canonico, Julia Cassandra, Brandon Contreras, Jakeim Hart, Van Hughes, Jana Djenne Jackson, Katie Ladner, Danny Lindgren, Erica Mansfield, Alisa Melendez, Emily Schultheis, Daniel Sovich, Libby Winters, and Matthew C. Yee.
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Chopin in Paris, written & performed by Hershey Felder, will run Jan. 4-15 at CA’s Laguna Playhouse, directed by Joel Zwick.
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The Entertainment Community Fund’s Ragtime Reunion Concert, originally set for 2020, will now take place in 2023 (date TBA).
Casting, creative team, and additional information TBA.
Click here for updates.
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LA’s Mark Taper Forum has just dropped its 3-show subscription to only $60 (reg. $121). Offer deadline: Jan. 2 at 11:59 PM PT.
Also included in the offer: Free ticket exchanges, low prices on additional tickets, and same-seat guarantees at every performance.
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Dave Malloy’s Preludes will run Jan. 6 – Feb. 5 at Boston’s Lyric Stage, directed by Courtney O’Connor, with music directed by Dan Rodriguez.
Aimee Dahl, Will McGarrahan, Anthony Pires Jr., Dan Prior, Kayla Shimizu, Allison Beaureguard, and Matthew Zahnzinger.
When success and failure collide, can a young Rachmaninoff rediscover his musical genius?
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Big Apple Performing Arts has announced its NYC Gay Men’s Chorus Gala Benefit will take place Mon. Feb. 13 at 6 PM at NYC’s Hotel Edison Rooftop, hosted by Frank DiLella. For more information: contact Jim Vivyan at Harmony@bapany.org.
Tom Viola and T. Oliver Reid.
Performers TBA.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz answers: Missing Links
- The Skin of Our Teeth
- Our Town
- New Girl in Town
- Boy Meets Girl
- Golden Boy
- The Golden Apple
- The Apple Tree
- Under the Yum-Yum Tree
- I’ve Got You Under My Skin