Today’s Highlights:
The Power of Sail, by Paul Grellong, directed by Weyni Mengesha, featuring Bryan Cranston (Charles Nichols), Hugo Armstrong (Frank Sullivan), Amy Brenneman (Amy Katz), Donna Simone Johnson (Quinn Harris), Tedra Millan (Maggie Rosen), Seth Numrich (Lucas Poole) and Brandon Scott (Baxter Forrest), opens at LA’s Geffen Playhouse.
Assassins, directed by Snehal Desai, featuring Gedde Watanabe (Charles Guiteau), Joan Almedilla (Sara Jane Moore), Adam Kaokept (Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald), Trance Thompson (John Wilkes Booth), Max Torrez (The Proprietor), Christopher Chen (Samuel Byck), George Xavier (Leon Czolgosz), Astoncia Bhagat (Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme), Arvin Lee (John Hinckley, Jr.), Aric Martin (Giuseppe Zangara), and Kym Miller (Emma Goldman), with Andrea Somera, Jalen Lum, Michael Cavinder, and Maya Nahree McGowan, begins previews at LA’s East West Players.
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Disney’s Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Stage Adaptation will run June 18 – July 31 at Theatre Row, created & directed by Jonathan Rockefeller.
Casting TBA.
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The world premiere of Brian Quijada’s Somewhere Over the Border will run Feb. 23 – Mar. 13 at Syracuse Stage, directed by Rebecca Martinez.
Robert Ariza, Gloria Vivica Benavides, Tany De León, Bobby Plasencia, and Arusi Santi.
The play is based on the true story of Quijada’s mother Reina and the journey she took from El Salvador to the United States as a teenager alone in the 1970s. At the age of 16, Reina got pregnant and had a baby she named Fernando. Not long after, Reina left El Salvador hoping to cross the Mexican-U.S. border in the hope of finding a better life for herself and her baby. She thought she would be gone for a few weeks. It was ten years before she could return to El Salvador and bring Fernando to the U.S.
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Amber Gray (Persephone)will depart Broadway’s Hadestown on Feb. 19 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
She will be replaced by current alternate Lana Gordon on Feb. 22.
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The St. Louis Muny has announced creative teams for its Summer 2022 season:
Chicago (June 3-19), directed & choreographed by Denis Jones, with music direction by Charlie Alterman.
Camelot (June 22-28), directed by Matt Kunkel, with choreography by Beth Crandall, and music direction by Abdul Hamid Royal.
Mary Poppins (July 5-13), directed by John Tartaglia, with choreography by Patrick O’Neill, and music direction by Brad Haak.
Sweeney Todd (July 16-22), directed by Rob Ruggiero, with music direction by James Moore.
Legally Blonde (July 25-31), directed by Maggie Burrows, with choreography by William Carlos Angulo, and music direction by Lon Hoyt.
The Color Purple (Aug. 3-0), directed by Lili-Anne Brown, with choreography by Breon Arzell, and music direction by Jermaine Hill.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Aug. 12-18), directed & choreographed by Josh Rhodes, with music direction by Sinai Tabak.
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Complete casting has been announced for Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here, to run Apr. 13 – May 22 (opening May 2) at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch.
Nikki Massoud, Nazanin Nour, Artemis Pebdani, Roxanna Hope Radja, and Marjan Neshat.
The play begins in 1978, as protests are breaking out all across Iran, encroaching on a suburb where girlfriends in a tight-knit circle plan weddings, trade dirty jokes, and try to hold onto a sense of normalcy. But as the resolution escalates, each woman is forced to join the wave of emigration or face an equally uncertain future at home.
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A new stage show based on the life of Whitney Houston in currently in development, produced by Sonia Friedman.
Timeline, casting, and additional information TBA.
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The world premiere of the Avett Brothers & John Logan’s Swept Away has been extended through Mar. 13 at CA’s Berkely Rep, directed by Michael Mayer.
John Gallagher Jr., Stark Sands, Wayne Duvall, and Adrian Blake Enscoe, with Taurean Everett, Cameron Johnson, Brandon Kalm, Coleton Schmitto, Ben Toomer, Vishal Vaidya, Ryan Watkinson, and Jacob Keith Watson.
Set in 1888, off the coast of New Bedford, MA., a violent storm sinks a whaling ship, and the four surviving souls – a young man in search of adventure, his older brother who was 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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Karen Zacarías’ The Book Club Play will run at WA’s Village Theatre (Issaquah: Mar. 2 – Apr. 3… &… Everett Apr. 8 – May 1), directed by Arlene Martinez-Vazquez & Jehan Òsanyín.
Maya Burton, Marquicia Dominguez, Nik Doner, Lauren Paris, Richard Nguyen Sloniker, and Arlando Smith.
The play follows a group of people whose book club is the subject of a famous documentary filmmaker. The members of the club differ in perspective, race, sexual orientation, and viewpoint on the world so completely, that their colliding assumptions also create a ripe environment for the comedy.
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RIP: Playwright Arthur Giron has died at the age of 85. He was best known for co-writing the 2015 Broadway production of Amazing Grace with Christopher Smith.
In over 20 plays spanning the areas of social justice, political corruption, and science, his work as been performed in the U.S. and abroad. Among them are Emilie’s Voltaire, which recently played in the U.S., Portugal, and Australia. Alfred Molina and Jessica Chastain starred in L.A. Theatre Works’ Moving Bodies.
A passionate educator, Giron was the former head of the Graduate Playwriting program at Carnegie Mellon University and a participant with the Playwrights and Directors Unit of the Actors Studio.
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Eliana Pipes’ Dream Hou$e will run Mar. 15 – Apr. 3 at CT’s Long Wharf Theatre, directed by Laurie Woolery.
Darilyn Castillo, Renata Eastlick, Marianne McClellan, Katie Gonzalez, Shelby Woolridge, Kenneth C. Lewis, Gabrielle Stephenson, and Blake Lowe.
Two Latinx sisters are selling their family home on an HGTV-like show, and hope to capitalize on the gentrification in their “changing neighborhood.” As they perform for the camera, the show starts to slip into the surreal: one sister grapples with turmoil in the family’s ancestral past and the other learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the family’s future. What’s the cultural cost of progress in American – and is cashing in always selling out?
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Video: Trailer for Showtime’s new series “The First Lady,” directed by Susanne Bier. The series has not yet announced a premiere date.
Viola Davis (Michelle Obama), Michelle Pfeiffer (Betty Ford), Aaron Eckhart (Gerald Ford), Aya Cash (Esther Liebowitz), Ben Cook (Steven Ford), Cailee Spaeny (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt), Cayden Boyd (Michael Ford), Charlie Plummer (Young Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Clea Du Vall (Malvina “Tommy” Thompson), Dakota Fanning (Susan Elizabeth Ford), Donna Lynne Champlin (Melissa “Mel” Winter), Eliza Scanlen (Young Eleanore Roosevelt), Ellen Burstyn (Sara Delano Roosevelt), Evan Parke (Allen Taylor), Jackie Earle Haley (Louis McHenry Howe), Jake Pickering (Young Jerry Ford), Jayme Lawson (Young Michelle Obama), Jeremy Bobb (Theodore Roosevelt), Judy Greer (Nancy Howe), Julian DeNiro (Young Barack Obama), Kate Mulgrew (Susan Sher), Kathleen Garrett (Laura Lane Welch Bush), Kiefer Sutherland (Franklin D. Roosevelt), Kristine Froseth (Young Betty Ford), Leslie Rodrguez (Martha Graham), Lexi Underwood (Malia Obama), Lily Rabe (Lorena “Hick” Hickock), Marc Hills (Jack Ford), Maria Dizzia (Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd), Michael Potts (Fraser Robinson III), Michelle Pfeiffer (Betty Ford), O-T Fagbenle (Barack Obama), Patrice Johnson Chevannes (Clara Powell), Paul Wilson (Richard Nixon), Regina Taylor (Marian Shields Robinson), Rhys Wakefield (Dick Cheney), Rosalind Chao (Tina Tchen), Saniyya Sidney (Sasha Obama), and Thomas E. Sillivan (Bill Warren).
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An invitation-only workshop performance of Holly & Kelvin Reed’s True North: A Magical New Musical will take place Mar. 14 in NYC, directed by Ilana Ransom Toeplitz, with music direction by Micah Young.
Amanda Jane Cooper, and more TBA.
When his widowed father is deployed on a top-secret mission just weeks before Christmas, young Ben Patterson embarks on an unexpected quest to bring his dad – and Christmas – home.
Click here to learn more about the musical.
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Rick Crom’s NEWSical will run Apr. 1-24 at Las Vegas’ Majestic Repertory Theatre, directed by Mark Waldrop, with music direction by Ed Goldschneider.
Kristen Alderson, Michael West, Taylor Crousore, and Carly Sakolove.
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Video: Highlights from Company, in Spain, directed by & starring Antonio Banderas.