Today’s Highlights:
The Lonely Few, by Zoe Sarnak & Rachel Bonds, directed by Trip Cullman & Ellenore Scott, featuring Damon Duanno, Taylor Iman Jones, Peter Mark Kendall, Loren Patten, Helen J. Shen, and Thomas Sillcott, opens at Off-Broadway’s MCC Theatre.
The Hours are Feminine, world premiere written & directed by José Rivera, featuring Maribel Martínez (Evalisse), Hiram Delgado (Fernán), Donovan Monzon Sanders (Jaivín), Sara Koviak (Mirella), Robert Montano (Little Anthony), and Dan Grimaldi (Charlie), opens at Off-Broadway’s Intar Theatre.
The 2024 Chita Rivera Awards ceremony, featuring Debbie Allen, Corbin Bleu, Kristin Chenoweth, Anthony Crivello, Joel Grey, Bebe Neuwirth, Brooke Shields, and Ben Vereen, at 7:30 PM at NYC’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
Project Shaw‘s Heartbreak House script-in-hand performance, directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, featuring Christine Pedi (Nurse Guiness/Narrator), Teresa Avia Lim (Ellie Dunn), Dakin Matthews (Captain Shotover), Laila Robins (Lady Ariadne Utterword), Patrice Johnson (Hesione Hushabye), Mark Nelson (Mazzini Dunn), Robert Cuccioli (Hector Hushabye), Steven Skybell (Ross Mangan), Carman Lacivita (Randall Utterword (Carman Lacivita), and Nick Wyman (Burglar), at 7 PM at NYC’s Symphony Space.
York Theatre’s The Pin-Up Girls free readings, by James Hindman & Jeffrey Lodin, directed by Kerry Butler, featuring Sara Glancy, Jillian Louis, Gina Milo, and Barrett Riggins, at 3 & 6:30 PM at Off-Broadway’s Pearl Studios. 
: boxoffice@yorktheatre.org
Closet Writer free reading, by Antu Yacob, directed by Laiona Michelle, featuring Kianné Muschett and Chantal Jean-Pierre, at 7 PM at Off-Broadway’s Theater555. : 555readingseries@gmail.com
Cabaret’s Eddie Redmayne & Gayle Rankin in conversation with Josh Horowitz, at 7 PM at NYC’s 92NY.
Steve Ross: Finding Words for Spring concert, at 7 PM at NYC’s Birdland.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz: Who Is It? by Jim Bernhard
Match these descriptions on their first entrances with the characters in plays:
| 1. He is past sixty years of age, dressed quietly. His exhaustion is apparent. | A. John Barrymore in Barrymore by William Luce |
| 2. A Rather Old and Disheveled Man in decrepit suit…carrying a battered suitcase full of scraps. | B. “Captain” Jack Boyle in Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey |
| 3. He is indeed portly and Falstaffian. He is wearing an elaborate velvet smoking jacket and a very loud tie, and he looks like every caricature ever drawn of him. | C. Grandpa in You C |
| 4. [He] enters, in a suit and hat, pulling a garment rack hung with Richard III costumes. He is modestly inebriated. | D. Roy Cohn in Angels In America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner |
| 5. He is a small, thin, ridiculous little man who might be any age from thirty to fifty-five. He has sandy hair, watery compassionate blue eyes, sensitive nostrils, and a very presentable forehead….He carries a big bundle, is very poorly clad, and seems tired and hungry. | E. Big Daddy in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams |
| 6. He is a man of about sixty, stout, grey-haired and stocky….His cheeks, reddish-purple, are puffed out. On his upper lip is a crisp, tightly cropped moustache. His walk is a slow, consequential strut… | F. The Librarian in Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger |
| 7. [He] appears above the audience, standing on a chair, his arms folded on his chest, his hat at a combative angle, his moustache on end, his nose terrifying. | G. Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller |
| 8….a tall man with a fierce, anxious look, moving carefully not to betray his weakness even, or especially, to himself | H. Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman |
| 9. …about 75, a wiry little man whom the years have treated kindly. His face is youthful, despite the lines that sear it; his eyes are very much alive. He is a man who made his peace with the world long, long ago, and his whole attitude and manner are quietly persuasive of this. | I. Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand |
| 10. [He] is at an impressive desk, bare except for a very elaborate phone system, rows and rows of flashing buttons that bleep and beep and whistle incessantly….[He] conducts business with great energy, impatience, and sensual abandon: gesticulating, shouting, cajoling, crooning, playing the phone, receiver and hold button with virtuosity and love. | J. Androcles in Androcles and the Lion by Shaw |
Scroll down for the answers…
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2024 Drama League Award winners.
Click here for the complete list.
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Manhattan Theatre Club‘s world premiere production of Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane has been extended again, now through June 30 at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Rachel McAdams
The story of a single mother in an impossible family situation. Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Mary Jane relies on unflagging optimism and humor, along with the wisdom of the women around her who have become a makeshift family, to take on each new day. But will inner strength and n
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The Complete History of the American Musical Theatre of the 1960s will take place Sat. June 1 at 8 PM at LA’s Odyssey Theatre, narrated by Dan Fishbach & Mark D. Kaufmann, with music direction by Anthony Lucca.
Mary Gordon Murray, Scott Harlan, Sharon McNight, Sophie Beck and Hayden Kharrazi.
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Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage has announced its 2024-25 season:
Laughs in Spanish (Sept. 13 – Oct. 23), by Alexis Scheer, directed by Mariela López-Ponce. A cafecito-infused comedy about mothers and daughters and art and success. On the eve of Art Basel, Mari is about to open a career-defining show in her Miami gallery, when suddenly all the paintings go missing. To make matters worse, her once-famous, mostly-absent mother hits town with a mysterious agenda. Part telenovela and part whodunit, Laughs in Spanish is a poignant and playful exploration of family and identity, bursting with joy.
Pru Payne (Oct. 18 – Nov. 16), by Steven Drukman, directed by Paul Daigneault, featuring Marianna Bassham, Gordon Clapp, De’Lon Grant, Greg Maraio, and Paula Plum. A contemporary Dorothy Parker: a sharp-tongued intellectual and critic who recently signed on to share her extraordinary life in an eagerly-awaited autobiography. But when Pru’s memory starts to fade, her son sets her up in a state-of-the-art care facility, where love takes hold just as the world she once knew begins to slip away. With wit, verve, and above all, heart, Pulitzer Prize nominee Steven Drukman explores questions of memory.
Ain’t No Mo’ (Jan. 10 – Feb. 8, 2025), by Jordan E. Cooper, directed by Dawn M. Simmons.
A Man of No Importance (Feb. 21 – Mar. 22), by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens, directed by Paul Daigneault, featuring Kerry A. Dowling, Will McGarrahan, Billy Meleady, Eddie Shields, and Kathy St. George.
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (May 2-31), by Jocelyn Bioh. I t’s a hot summer day in 2019, and in Harlem, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding salon is open for business, even though its eponymous owner is hours away from getting married. Presiding over the shop’s team of talented, high-spirited, West African designers is Jaja’s daughter Marie, a DREAMer who has set her sights on college. When shocking news disrupts the day’s festivities, the women must grapple with what it means to be outsiders in the place they call home.
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Once Upon a Mattress, a pre-Broadway production, will run Dec. 10 – Jan. 5, 2025 at the Ahmanson Theatre, directed by Lear deBessonet, with choreography by Lorin Latarro.
Sutton Foster (Princess Winifred) and more TBA.
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The American Popular Song Society will present its Annual Gala Benefit on Mon. June 17 at 7 PM at NYC’s Cutting Room (44 East 32nd St.), directed, music directed, and hosted by Michael Lavine.
Richard Maltby Jr. & David Shire.
Loni Ackerman, Danny Bacher, Barbara Blieier, Margery Cohen, Gretchen Cryer, Ed Dixon, Sean Harkness, Judy Kaye, Sally Mayes, Charlotte & Emily Maltby, Christiane Noll, Benjamin Pajak, Austin Pendleton, Steve Ross, Thom Sesma, Elena Shaddow, Jenny Lee Stern, Martin Vidnovic, Mark William, and Walter Willison … plus surprise guests.
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Dr. Glas, by Hjlmar Söderberg, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, will run June 7-8 at Venice, CA’s Pacific Resident Theatre.
Daniel Gerroll
Dr. Glas is a man who has never had the opportunity to engage his passions, or rather has sublimated them until this one opportunity. The psychological thriller is about the need to act when you’re a passive character. “It’s kind of like an episode of “Columbo” written by Edgar Allan Poe.”
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The cast album of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, is now available on most platforms worldwide.
Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce and Jeremy Shamos.
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Off-Broadway’s The Tank has announced it 10th annual PrideFest, to run June 21-30.
Click the link above for the complete schedule of events.
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Wayne Brady (The Wiz) will depart Broadway’s The Wiz on June 12. He will be replaced by Alan Mingo Jr. on June 13 at the Marquis Theatre.
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John Logan, & the Avett Brothers’ Swept Away will open on Broadway this Fall (theater & dates TBA), directed by Michael Mayer, with choreography by David Neumann.
Casting and additional information TBA.
1888, off the coast of New Bedford, MA. When a violent storm sinks their whaling ship, the four surviving souls—a young man in search of adventure, his big brother who has sworn to protect him, a captain at the end of a long career at sea, and a worldly first mate who has fallen from grace—each face a reckoning: How far will I go to stay alive? And can I live with the consequences?
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The 24 Hour Plays will take place Mon. June 10 at 7 PM at Off-Broadway’s Classic Stage Company. As in previous years, the event will see artists write, rehearse, and perform 4 new musicals in just 24 hours.
Carolyn Cantor, Jesse Eisenberg, Kathryn Gallagher, Josh Koenigsberg, Heath Saunders, and many more TBA.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz answers: Who Is It?
1-G. He is past sixty years of age, dressed quietly….Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman
2-F. A Rather Old and Disheveled Man in decrepit suit…The Librarian in Underneath the Lintel
3-H. He is indeed portly and Falstaffian…. Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner
4-A. [He] enters, in a suit and hat, pulling a garment rack hung with Richard III costumes….John Barrymore in Barrymore
5-J. He is a small, thin, ridiculous little man…Androcles in Androcles and the Lion
6-B. He is a man of about sixty, stout, grey-haired and stocky…“Captain” Jack Boyle in Juno and the Paycock
7-I. [He] appears above the audience, standing on a chair… Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano de Bergerac
8-E….a tall man with a fierce, anxious look…Big Daddy in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof
9-C. …about 75, a wiry little man whom the years have treated kindly…Grandpa in You Can’t Take It With You
10-D. [He] is at an impressive desk, bare except for a very elaborate phone system…Roy Cohn in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches