Today’s Highlights:
Macbeth, directed by Sam Gold, featuring Daniel Craig (Macbeth), Ruth Negga (Lady Macbeth), Phillip James Brannon (Ross), Grantham Coleman (MacDuff), Asia Kate Dillon (Malcolm), Maria Dizzia (Lady Macduff), Amber Gray (Banquo), Emeka Guindo (Fleance), Paul Lazar (Duncan), Bobbi MacKenzie (Macduff’s Child), Michael Patrick Thornton (Lennox), Danny Wolohan (Seyton), and Stevie Ray Dallimore (standby for Macbeth), with Che Ayende, Eboni Flowers, and Peter Smith, opens at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre.
Jerusalem, by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson, featuring Mark Rylance (Johnny “Rooster” Byron), Mackenzie Crook (Ginger), Kemi Awoderu (Pea), Alan David (The Professor), Shane David-Joseph (Mr. Parsons), Gerard Horan (Wesley), Ed Kear (Davey), Charlotte O’Leary (Tanya), Indra Ové (Dawn), Jack Riddiford (Lee), Barry Sloane (Troy Whitworth), Niky Wardley (Linda Fawcett), and Eleanor Worthington-Cox (Phaedra), with Kobe Champion-Norville, Jesse Manzi, Matteo Philbert while Abigail Green, Amanda Gordon, Callum Sheridan-Lee, Greg Snowden, and Anthony Taylor, opens at London’s Apollo Theatre.
Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, with direction & musical staging by Wayne Cilento, featuring Iona Alfonso, Yeman Brown, Peter John Chursin, Dylis Croman, Tony d’Alelio, Jōvan Dansberry, Karli Dinardo, Jacob Guzman, Manuel Herrera, Kolton Krouse, Mattie Love, Yani Marin, Nando Morland, Khori Michelle Petinaud, Ida Saki, and Ron Todorowski, with Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Gabriel Hyman, Krystal Mackie, and Michaeljon Slinger, opens at San Diego’s Old Globe.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, directed by Gordon Greenberg, featuring Zachary Quinto (George), Calista Flockhart (Martha), Graham Phillips (Nick), and Aimee Carrero (Honey), opens at LA’s Geffen Playhouse.
Spring Awakening, directed & choreographed by Brenda Didier, featuring Ariana Burks (Martha), McKinley Caret (Adult Women), Jack DeCesare (Melchior), Maya Lou Hlava (Wendla), Quinn Kelch (Moritz), Maddy Kelly (Thea), John Marshall Jr. (Hanschen), (Adult Men), Juwon Tyrel Perry (Georg), Kevin James Sievert (Otto), Kelan M. Smith (Ernst), and Tiffany T. Taylor (Ilse), with Isis Elizabeth, Desiree Gonalez, Ryan Hamman, Drew Mitchell, Michael Joseph Mitchell, Sydney Monet Swanson, Genevieve Thiers, and Anthony Whitaker, opens at Chicago’s Porchlight Theatre.
An Evening with Fran Lebowitz opens at LA’s Broad Stage.
Roundabout Theatre‘s Exception to the Rule, world premiere by Dave Harris, directed by Miranda Haymon, featuring Mayaa Boateng (Erika), Malik Childs (Tommy), Mister Fitzgerald (Abdul), Toney Goins (Dayrin), Amandla Jahaya (Mikayla), and Claudia Logan (Dasani), begins previews at Off-Broadway’s Steinberg Center.
New Golden Age, by Karen Hartman, directed by Jade King Carroll, featuring Carmen Castillo, Ricardy Fabre, Doug Harris, Maria Kakkar, and Claire Siebers, begins previews at Off-Broadway’s 59E59 Theaters.
Afterglow, written & directed by S. Asher Gelman, featuring Noah Bridgestock (Josh), James Hayden Rodriguez (Alex), and Nathan Mohebbi (Darius), begins previews at Hollywood’s Hudson Theatre.
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Reviews for Mr. Saturday Night at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre:
NY Times (Laura Collins-Hughes): …Billy Crystal was at the apex of his film stardom when he made the 1992 movie “Mr. Saturday Night.” If you watch it now, you can see why it flopped, not least because Crystal was playing against type as Buddy Young Jr., a ruthlessly selfish has-been comic with a vicious streak… Three decades later, he slips much more naturally into Buddy’s skin… As a piece of theater, the show is a bit of a mess; the jokes, even some of the hoary ones, work better than the storytelling, and the acting styles are all over the place. Still, it makes for a diverting evening… Ad-libbing his way through the script, fine-tuning the funniness, he feeds off the energy of the crowd at the Nederlander Theater… The musical, though, is an ungainly beast, by turns zany and sentimental…
New York Daily News (Chris Jones): Billy Crystal, a comedic treasure now 74 years old, has aged into the role of Buddy Young Jr., a standup comedian who spent his glory years telling 1950s jokes on his own network show only to fall into the oblivion… In an era when shows work like crazy to brand themselves apart from their costly stars, this one remains an old-school vehicle, with Crystal and his struggling character joined at the (artificial) hip… Indifferent about Crystal? Move on down the street, sucker. Love him? You’re in musical-comedy heaven, to quote the curtain speech at a different Broadway show… As directed by John Rando, “Mr. Saturday Night” feels more like a play with music: its focus is on the price paid to be funny…
Variety (Frank Rizzo): …a funny thing happened on the way to Broadway. For this new stage adaptation, Crystal and his co-screenwriters Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz have re-envisioned Buddy with warmer tones and softer edges. They’ve also given him some self-awareness and playfulness, so an audience immediately loves rather than loathes him… With Crystal turning on the impish charm and non-stop zingers, that’s an easy reach — at least until the backstory kicks in and Buddy is revealed to be a bit of a bastard. By then, though, it’s too late. Buddy is near-redeemable enough for audiences to root for him to cross the nice-guy finish line… The end result is certainly the funniest show on Broadway in years, if not the most likable….
Theatermania (David Gordon): Billy Crystal’s sweet and hilarious Broadway musical adaptation of his unsuccessful 1992 movie “Mr. Saturday Night” is practically created with two groups in mind: old Jews, and old Jews at heart. Rarely has there been a show more perfectly tailored to its target audience, the kind of people who either have fond memories of summering in the Catskills at Kutsher’s or Grossinger’s, or fond memories of hearing their parents talk about their fond memories… Though a solid 45 minutes too long, it feels like a warm hug from your bubbe… In short, it’s one of my favorite musicals of the season, even if it doesn’t entirely know how to be a musical… The film’s downfall is that Buddy is an obnoxious prick from start to finish…
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Reviews for POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre:
NY Times (Jesse Green): … the snappy and intermittently hilarious farce… The play, in any case, is happy to be rid of him… Fillinger, like a politician, is trying to have it both ways. In this, her Broadway debut, the ways aren’t always working together. As a farce, POTUS still plays by old and almost definitionally male rules; farce is built on tropes of domination and violence. On the other hand, and more happily, POTUS lets us experience the double-bind of exceptional women unmediated by the men who depend on their complicity… Rachel Dratch, doing a deep dive into the absurd… Farce works best as an amoral and apolitical genre (ideally with power as its main target), but these are moralistic times on Broadway and Fillinger has to thread the needle of making these characters sympathetic and sufficiently progressive…
NY Daily News (Chris Jones): …Selina Fillinger’s entertaining POTUS… The premise of the knockabout piece, directed with manic but crafty intensity by Susan Stroman, is that the White House is kept afloat by a bevy of weird but individually gifted crisis counselors, all spinning like tops in a hapless attempt to get ahead of a POTUS so out of control, they all fear for democracy itself… The structure of the show, staged on a funny revolving set by Beowulf Boritt, is that POTUS is a walking scandal machine and the women collectively are running the place, at great cost to their own sanity… Farce works best as an amoral and apolitical genre (ideally with power as its main target), but these are moralistic times on Broadway and Fillinger has to thread the needle of making these characters sympathetic and sufficiently progressive…
Theatermania (David Gordon): … a cast of scene-stealers led by Julie White, Vanessa Williams, and Rachel Dratch… word is funny when Julie White is screaming it, and there would be far fewer funny words in Selina Fillinger’s POTUS…at the Shubert Theatre were Julie White and a great cast not screaming them… Fillinger’s heart is in the right place, and we can’t fault her ambition… [she] has crafted a script that aims high but too often relies on easy laughs… All the promise completely falls off the rails following a needless intermission… and the show pretty much ends when the characters run into a glass ceiling the playwright can’t figure out how to shatter… Susan Stroman, the estimable director who spins a baffling, amateur script into gold…
Time Out(Adam Feldman): …The running joke of Selina Fillinger’s lightly feminist political farce—which bears the annotational subtitle Or, Behind Every Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive—is that the women who populate it are all highly capable in different ways, yet they’re stuck in the orbit of an incompetent and morally bankrupt oaf who is the world’s most powerful man. Why aren’t they in charge instead? Well: “That’s the eternal question, isn’t it?” as two characters ruefully ask… Mostly, the jokes in POTUS are less pointed… It helps enormously that the production, directed by Susan Stroman, is so well-cast… The great Julie White, stage queen of the slow build, plays the Chief of Staff…
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Reviews for Prima Facie at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre:
The Guardian (Arifa Akbar):…A one-woman play about a lawyer who specializes in defending men accused of sexual assault, until she is assaulted herself, it demands frenetic, non-stop physical and emotional engagement from its lead. Comer delivers. She roars through Suzie Miller’s script. The play roars, too, sometimes too loudly in its polemic, but Comer works overtime to elevate these moments…. There is a touch of “Killing Eve’s” Villanelle in Comer’s darkly comic – almost camp – performance in the opening scene… Comer’s performance compensates for the clompy-footed parts of Miller’s script, which falls into a loudly lecturing tone at the end…
Time Out (Andrzej Lukowski): Jodie Comer gives a tour de force performance in this slightly clunky sexual assault monologue… In short, the entire run sold out aeons ago, and she absolutely owns the stage for 100 uninterrupted solo minutes… [Comer] works hard and she plays hard, participating in a boozy chambers culture that sees her embark upon a flirtation with a colleague that gradually turns into a relationship. Then, she is sexually assaulted, and Justin Martin’s production takes a very different turn as Tessa makes the difficult decision to report her attacker to the police… Comer is magnetic throughout…
Metro (Claire Allfree): Jodie Coomer makes a blistering West End debut in this new monologues play, playing a slick working-class criminal defense lawyer, Tess, with a knack for successfully defending those accused of sexual assault… The first 50 minutes deftly allows the audience to infer, through the swaggering character of Tessa herself, the ways in which the exacting and yes, gendered process of justice is incompatible with the less easy-to-define nature of most sexual assault… Perhaps this is indeed the impact on women who have experienced sexual assault; certainly one can’t argue with the validity of Miller’s points. Yet the more her play channels self-righteous anger, the more theatrically deadening it becomes.
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The “Wicked” film adaptation, written by Winnie Holzman (based on Gregory Maguire’s novel, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”) will be released in two parts — the first part on Dec. 25, 2024, and the second part on Dec. 25, 2025.
Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda), with more TBA.
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Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of Uncle Vanya will run June 1-26 (opening June 5) at Pasadena Playhouse, directed by Michael Michetti.
Hugo Armstrong (Vanya), Anne Gee Byrd (Marya), Brian George (Serebryakov), Khetanya Henderson (Elena), Brandon Mendez Homeras (Astroy), Jane Taini (Marina), and Sabina Zuniga-Varela (Sonya).
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“You’ll Be Swell! You’ll Be Great! The Fine Art of Performance” will be available May 2 – Aug. 31 at NYC’s Helicline Fine Arts.
The exhibition will offer more than 30 works of art depicting theatre, film, dance, music, and circus. In-person viewings can be arranged by appointment at the midtown gallery.
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Dario Fo & Franca Rame’s Can’t Pay! Don’t Pay! has been extended through June 11 at LA’s Actors Gang Theater, directed by Bob Turton.
Kaili Hollister (Antonia), Lynde Houck (Margherita), Jeremie Loncka (Giovanni), Steven M. Porter (Agent, Old Man, Sergeant, Undertaker), Luis Quintana (Luigi), and Stephanie G. Galindo (Officer, Agent, Nurse, Assistant).
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A reading of David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette will take place Sat. May 14 at 7 PM ET at CT’s Sharon Playhouse, directed by Michael Kevin Baldwin.
Lauren Ambrose, Andrus Nichols, Pun Bandhu, Spencer Scott Barros, James Rose, Danny Tieger, and Lou Hagen.
In this contemporary take on the young queen of France, Marie is a confection created by a society that values extravagance and artifice. But France’s love affair with the royals sours as revolution brews, and for Marie, the political suddenly becomes very personal.
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Cabaret, will run May 13 – July 1 (opening May 25) at CT’s Goodspeed, directed by James Vásquez, with choreography by Lainie Sakakura, and music direction by Adam Souza.
Jelani Remy (MC), Aline Mayagoitia (Sally Bowles), Bruce Landry (Cliffor Bradshaw), Jennifer Smith (Fraulein Schneider), Kevin Ligon (Herr Schultz), Tera C. MacLeod (Fraulein Kost), and Tim Fuchs (Ernst Ludwig), with Matt Allen, Shelby Finnie, Aurore Joly, Caroline Kane, Kathy Liu, Connor McRory, Christian Elán Ortiz, Antonia Raye, Adam Rogers, and Georgia Monroe.
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DC’s Signature Theatre will present its annual Sondheim Award 22 Presentation to Carol Burnett on Mon. May 16 at 12 PM ET, followed by the Sondheim Award Gala, at 7 PM ET, with both events taking place at Capital One Hall in Tysons, VA.
Bernadette Peters, Santino Fontana, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Nova Y. Payton, and Bobby Smith.
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A re-imagined production of The Three Musketeers, adapted by Catherine Bush, will run Apr. 30 – May 22 at Cleveland Play House, directed by Laura Kepley, with fight direction by Rod Kinter.
Leraldo Anzaldúa, Isaac Baker, Sean Maximo Campos, Nehassaiu deGannes, Kristina Gabriela, Josh Innerest, Bridget Kim, Eli Lynn, Gustavo Márquez, Hassiem Muhmmad, Tom Myers, Mark rose, Jasmine Rush, Jordan Taylor, Dawn L. Troupe, and Noah Williams.
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The Acting Company‘s 50th Anniversary Gala will take place Tues. June 13 at NYC’s Capitale (start time TBA), directed by Ian Belknap.
Jack O’Brien, Duane Boutté, Jimonn Cole, Keith David, Stephen DeRosa, Harriet Harris, Ezra Knight, JD Mollison, Mary Lou Rosato, Roslyn Ruff, Derek Smith, and Henry Stram.
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Britta Johnson’s Life After will run June 11 – July 17 (opening June 22) at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, directed by Annie Tippe, with music supervision by Lynne Shankel.
Samantha Williams (Alice), Paul Alexander Nolan (Frank), Lucy Panush (Hannah), Bryonha Marie Parham (Beth), Jen Sese (Mrs. Hopkins), Skyler Volpe (Kate), Chelsea Williams (Fury), Lauryn Hobbs (Fury), and Ashley Pérez Flanagan (Fury).
Alice is a young woman who, in search of facts, uncovers a more complicated truth as she pieces together events of the fateful night that changed her family forever.