Today’s Highlights:
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), by Jim Barne & Kit Buchan, directed by Tim Jackson, featuring Dujonna Gift and Sam Tutty, opens at the West End’s Criterion Theatre.
Fat Ham, by James Ijames, directed by Sideeq Heard, featuring Nikki Crawford (Tedra), Chris Herbie Holland (Tio), Billy Eugene Jones (Rev/Pap), Adrianna Mitchell (Opal), Marcel Spears (Juicy), and Benja Kay Thomas (Rabby, and Matthew Elijah Webb (Larry), opens at LA’s Geffen Playhouse.
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, directed by Brian Allman, featuring Steven R. O’Brien (Katurian) and Daniel T. McCann (Upolski), opens at LA’s Broadwater Main Stage Theatre.
Gun & Powder, by Angelica Chéri & Ross Baum, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, featuring Rickens Anantua, Reed Campbell, Carrie Compere, Meghan Olivia Corbett, Joann Gilliam, Francesca Granell, Aaron Arnell Harrington, Mary Claire King, Malik Shabazz Kitchen, Rayshun LaMarr, Zonya Love, Tiffany Mann, Tony Perry, Adam Roberts, Hank Santos, Christine Shepard, Katie Thompson, Aurelia Williams, and Jason SweetTooth Williams, begins previews at NJ’s Paper Mill Playhouse.
The Lehman Trilogy, by Stefano Massini, directed by Oánh Nguyễn, featuring Troy Blendell, Chris Butler and Leo Marks, begins previews at Santa Barbara’s New Vic.
Dinner with Friends, by Donald Margulies, directed by Peter Allas, featuring Jack Esformes (Gabe), Marieh Delfino (Karen), Lieth Burke (Tom), and Amy Mottoa (Beth), with Chala Savino and Rick Segall, previews at LA’s Zephyr Theatre.
**********************
The revival of Our Town will begin previews Sept. 17 and open Oct. 10 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, directed by Kenny Leon.
Jim Parsons (Stage Manager), Zoey Deutch (Emily Webb), Katie Holmes (Mrs. Webb), Billy Eugene Jones (Dr. Gibbs), Ephraim Sykes (George Gibbs), Richard Thomas (Mr. Webb), Michelle Wilson (Mrs. Gibbs), Julie Halston (Mrs. Soames), and Donald Webber Jr. (Simon Stimson), with Ephie Aardema, Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Matthew Elijah Webb, Nimene Sierra Wureh, and more TBA.
**********************
Cabaret‘s Eddie Redmayne & Gayle Rankin in conversation with Josh Horowitz will take place Mon. May 20 at 7 PM (and Wed. May 22 at 5 PM online) at NYC’s 92NY.
**********************
Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre has announced its 2024-25 season:
Fish (Sept.), by Melis Aker, directed by Tatiana Pandiani. Casting TBA. 
The play follows a British-Turkish teen in 2016 London embarking on a mission to confront the unresolved disappearance of her mother…by catfishing ISIS with her best friend.
Bad Kreyol (Fall), world premiere by Dominique Morisseau, directed by Tiffany Nichole Green. The play centers on Simone, a first generation Haitian American, and her cousin Gigi, Haitian-born and raised, who reunite to honor their grandmother’s dying wish for them to reconnect.
Grangeville (Winter 2025), by Samuel D. Hunter. Two half-brothers, separated by a void of thousands of miles and oceans of hurt, tentatively reconnect over the care of their ailing mother.
Eurydice (Spring 2025), by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Lee Waters. An innovative reimagining of the classic myth follows Eurydice after falling into the underworld, where she reunites with her father.
**********************
S. Asher Gelman’s Scarlett Dreams, currently in previews, will open Apr. 15 at the Greenwich House Theatre, directed by Gelman.
Brittany Bellizeare (Liza), Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Kevin), Caroline Lellouche (Scarlett), and Borris Anthony York (Milo).
Two siblings have created a fitness app for a virtual reality headset. When Milo’s husband Kevin falls in love with his virtual trainer Scarlett, the dividing lines between the digital world and reality come into question.
**********************
Backstage Babble Live Celebrates Joe Allens will livestream Mon. Apr. 27 at 7 PM at NYC’s 54 Below, hosted by Charles Kirsch, with music direction by Michael Lavine. The concert will celebrate the iconic wall of Broadway flop posters at Joe Allen Restaurant.
Brenda Braxton (representing Legs Diamond), Philip Casnoff (representing Rockabye Hamlet), Robert Creighton (representing Laughing Room Only), Anita Gillette (representing Kelly), Josie De Guzman (representing Nick and Nora), Willy Falk (representing Marilyn), Beth Fowler, her husband Jack Witham, and singer Elena Shaddow (representing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), Amanda Green (representing High Fidelity), Ruth Gottschall (representing The Prince of Central Park), Michael Korie & Tam Mutu (representing Doctor Zhivago), Michael Kubala (representing A Broadway Musical), Heather MacRae (representing Here’s Where I Belong), Jim Walton (representing Merrily We Roll Along), and Martin Vidnovic (representing Home, Sweet Homer).
**********************
RIP: Playwright Christopher Durang has died after an extended battle with logopenic progressive aphasia. He was 75. Information on a public memorial is forthcoming.
Mr. Durang’s unique comedic flair, which often utilized absurdism and outrageous conceits, leapt to prominence in the latter half of the century.
Although typically a writer of comedies, he did not shy away from complex cultural issues, with child abuse, Catholic dogma, and homosexuality figuring prominently within many of his works. As Mr. Durang told BOMB Magazine in 1987, “I exaggerate awful things further, and then I present it in a way that is funny, and for those of us who find it funny, it has to do with a very clear suspension of disbelief. It is a play, after all, with acted characters; it allows us a distance we couldn’t have in reality. To me this distance allows me to find some rather serious topics funny.”
Broadway was hardly the only home of Mr. Durang’s work, however. Many of his most-produced plays intentionally never came to the Broadway stage, instead valuing the more intimate staging options provided within Off-Broadway and regional theatres. These works include The Idiots Karamazov, Titanic, Death Comes To Us All, Mary Agnes, The Nature and Purpose of the Universe, The Vietnamization of New Jersey, ‘Dentity Crisis, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, The Actor’s Nightmare, Baby with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Laughing Wild, Naomi in the Living Room, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Miss Witherspoon, Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them, and Turning Off the Morning News.
Mr. Durang also received Obie Awards for Sister Mary Ignatius, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and Betty’s Summer Vacation, and numerous fellowships and high-profile grants including a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller, the CBS Playwriting Fellowship, the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation Grant, and the Kenyon Festival Theatre Playwriting Prize.
**********************
John Caird & Paul Gordon’s Jane Eyre (chamber version) will run May 29 – June 9 at North Carolina’s Theatre Raleigh, directed by Megan McGinnis.
Julie Benko (Jane Eyre), Matt Bogart (Rochester), and more TBA.
**********************
A free reading of David Lindsey’s 165 Years of Walking: 1865 – 2025 will take place Sun. Apr. 7 at 2 PM at LA’s Theatre West (link NA), directed by Nancy Cheryll Davis & Veronica Tompson. Reservations not required.
David Lindsey
Based on the playwright’s African-American family’s journey from enslavement to 2025, the play is a bold attempt to chronicle the Black experience in America.
**********************
Complete casting ias been announced for Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy, to run May 3 – June 15 at the Hamstead Theatre, directed by Michael Longhurst.
Danny Sapani (Pops), Ayesha Antoine (Church Lady), Tiffany Gray (Lulu), Martins Imhangbe (Junior), Daniel Lapaine (Lieutenant Dave Caro), Sebastian Orozco (Oswaldo), and Judith Roddy (Audrey O’Connor).
A comedic look at life in rent-controlled New York City. Recently widowed ex-cop Walter “Pops” Washington and his paroled son Junior try to hold onto their rent-stabilized apartment.
**********************
Red Bull Theater will present How Shakespeare Saved My Life, written & performed by Jacob Ming-Trent, will take place Mon. Apr. 15 at 7:30 PM at Off-Broadway’s Sheen Center, directed by Karen Ann Daniels.
With verse rhyme and song, Jacob tells us how Shakespeare raised him, saved him and ultimately showed him that forgiveness and mercy could set him free. “America tried to take my life, a five-hundred-year-old white dude saved it.”