Today’s Highlights:
The Marriage of Figaro, a 90 minute remix, directed by Dustin Wills, featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo, Avery Bayani, Kai Gelber-Higgins, Xavier Griffin, Noic Nguyen, Dean Riley-Driver, Nicholas Tanner, and Oliver Tanner, with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, opens at NYC’s Little Island.
Romeo and Juliet, directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, featuring Terence Archie (Lord Capulet) Jason Bowen (Prince), Sharon Catherine Brown (Nurse), Bradley Dean (Lord Montague/Friar John), Brandon Dial (Benvolio) Adi Dixit (Paris), Terrence Mann (Friar Laurence), Abiola Obatolu (Lady Montague, Rudy Pankow (Romeo), Alex Ross (Tybalt), Will Savarese (Abraham), Adam Shaukat (Sampson,), Clay Singer (Mercutio), Emilia Suárez (Juliet), and Nicole Villamil (Lady Capulet), opens at Cambridge’s A.R.T.
McNeal, by Ayad Akhtar, directed by Bartlett Sher, featuring Robert Downey, Jr., Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Andrea Martin, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Saisha Talwar, begins previews at Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.
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George Tabori’s The Goldberg-Variations will run Sept. 19 – Oct. 6 at Theater for the New City, directed by Manfred Bormann.
Jeff Burchfield, Jee Duman, Derrick Peterson, Alyssa Simon, Matt Walker and Dana Watkins.
A darkly comedic exploration of the Holocaust’s lingering impact blends absurdity with tragedy, delving into themes of guilt, memory and survival, questioning the nature of evil and the possibility of redemption.
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Mark St. Germain’s The Happiest Man on Earth will run Nov. 20 – Dec. 14 at the UK’s Southwark Playhouse, directed by Ron Lagomarsino.
Kenneth Tigar (Eddie Jaku)
Born in Leipzig, Germany, Jaku was only a teenager when he was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp, facing unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald and Auschwitz over the next seven years. Against all odds, he found the will to persevere and vowed to smile every day in thanks for the gift of life.
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Dan Dulin’s Tesla, A Radio Play for the Stage will run Oct. 4-6 (for 5 performances) on CA’s Caltech campus, directed by Michael Arabian .
Gregory Harrison, Dan Lauria, Hal Linden, Charles Shaughnessy, French Stewart, and Vanessa Claire Stewart.
When Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning named their newly incorporated company Tesla Motors, Inc. in 2003 to build “a car manufacturer that is also a technology company” as a tribute to the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, his name became one of the world’s most known brand names.
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Musical Theatre Guild‘s concert presentation of The Light in the Piazza will take place Sunday, Sept. 29 at 7 PM at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage, directed by Kirsten Chandler, with music direction by Brad Ellis.
Kim Huber (Margaret), Valerie Larson (Clara), Gabriel Navarro (Fabrizio), Tal Fox (Franca), Will Collyer (Guiseppe), Robert Yacko (Signor), Eydie Alyson (Signora), and Brent Schindele (Roy), with Maura M. Knowles, and David Zack.
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Norman Barasch’s Standing By will run Sept. 21 – Oct. 6 at North Hollywoods’ Playhouse West – Magnolia Studio, directed by Wolfgang Bodison.
Erin Hadfield (Ellen) and Abraham Arias (Jeffery).
Through a chance meeting, Jeffery, a rambunctious, free-spirited television writer, and Ellen, a concert flutist who is more private and reserved, fall deeply in love despite their differences. But their blossoming romance is cut short by Ellen’s leukemia relapse. Forced to confront their deepest fears and past wounds, they learn the true meaning of love and courage.
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Signature Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club will present the world premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s Bad Kreyol, which run Oct. 8 – Dec. 1 at the Signature Theater, directed by Tiffany Nichole Gree.
Pascale Armand, Fedna Jacquet, Andy Lucien, Kelly McCreary, and Jude Tibeau.
The play is about interrogating cultural identity and global impact. Simone, first-generation Haitian American, and her cousin Gigi, Haitian-born and raised, reunite to honor their grandmother’s dying wish for them to reconnect. Simone’s pilgrimage back to her ancestral homeland forces both cousins to confront their differing world views.
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Shirley Jones: A Gala Celebration ofr Her Life, Career and Legacy will take place Sat. Sept. 21 at 4 PM at Pittsburgh CLO, hosted by Shaun Cassidy, Patrick Cassidy, and Ryan Cassidy.
Sierra Boggess, Norm Lewis, Jessie Mueller, Kelli O’Hara, and Adam Pascal, with Pittsburgh CLO Academy students.
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The Actors Gang will present the return of Topsy Turvy, (A Musical Greek Vaudeville), written & directed by Tim Robbins, to run Sept. 26 – Nov. 16 (opening Oct. 4).
TBA
Set in a humorous and comedic hybrid world of classical Greek theater and a raucous vaudeville show, in Topsy Turvy the unity of a Greek Chorus is shattered by a mysterious illness. The Chorus desperately invoke the Gods, seeking divine intervention to help mend their divisiveness and restore their ability to sing together.
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LA’s Actors Co-op has announced its 2024-25 season:
Trouble in Mind (Oct. 4 – Nov. 10), by Alice Childress, directed by Kimberly Hébert Gregory. The play delves into the power dynamics in the entertainment industry. Set during rehearsals for the Broadway show Chaos in Belleville, which tackles the harsh truths of American racism of the 50s and 60s, the story centers on Wiletta Mayer, an African American actress who has long been cast in stereotypical roles. As rehearsals progress, Wiletta’s fight for dignity clashes with the realities of the industry’s racial biases, threatening her career.
These Shining Lives (Feb. 21 – Mar. 30, 2025), by Melanie Marnich, directed by Thom Babbes. Women in the 1920s are thrilled to earn high wages doing the delicate work of painting iridescent dials on watch faces in a factory in the Midwest. Catherine, a mother of twins, eagerly joins the workforce, but as she grows older, she and her coworkers discover that they all suffer from radium poisoning. Despite their deteriorating health, they courageously take action against the watch company.
The Spitfire Grill (May 2 – June 8), by James Valcq and Fred Alley, directed by TBA.
The School for Scandal (Nov. 22 – Dec. 16) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, directed by Mikey Mulhearn.**********************
The world premiere of Shem Bitterman’s The Civil Twilight will run Oct. 6 – Nov. 24 (opening Oct. 18) at LA’s Broadwater Studio Theatre (1076 Lillian Way), directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky.
Taylor Gilbert and Andrew Elvis Miller.
A twisty thriller, the play takes place over a single night during a once-in-a-century storm when a popular radio personality winds up trapped in a motel room in the Midwest with his biggest fan and a deadly game of trust and recrimination is played.
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York Theatre will present Lissa Levin & Ron Abel’s Twist of Fate Sept. 7 – 15 (opening Sept. 8) at Theater at St. Jean’s, directed by Bill Castellino, with music direction by Abel.
David Baida, Joanna Carpenter, Allyson Kaye Daniel, Lianne Marie Dobbs, Ben Jones, Maya Lagerstam, Jillian Louis, Cal Mitchell, and Eric Phelps.
A fortuneteller is arrested in 1970’s Los Angeles, and to win the respect of her teenage daughter, fights the law instead of running from it. But first, she needs the respect of her court-appointed attorney.
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Off-Broadway’s York Theatre Company will present an invitation-only developmental reading of Stephen H. Gardner & Logan Medland’s Once in a Lifetime, Again on Mon. Sept. 9 at 2 & 7 PM at NYC’s Pearl Studios (Room 414), directed by Samantha Saltzman, with music direction by Medland. For more information: boxoffice@yorktheatre.org
Andrea Frierson, David M. Lutken, and Michele Ragusa.
Jesse met Lydia in 1974…one of many couples in a generation thrown into new gender roles: two careers, shared parenting, new stresses. Lydia dies in her 50s, leaving Jesse devastated that his career took priority over his marriage. After lashing out, he begins therapy. There, he learns to express his emotions with unsparing honesty by writing songs…then sets out on an often awkward, occasionally comic, and tender search to find love anew.
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Sara Porkalob’s Dragon Lady, currently in previews, will open Sept. 12 and continue through Oct. 6 at the Geffen Playhouse, directed by Andrew Russell.
Sara Porkalob, with Pete Irving, Jimmy Austin & Mickey Stylin.
On the eve of her 60th birthday, Maria Porkalob Sr. fires up her new karaoke machine to regale her granddaughter Sara with her astonishing life story. As a lounge singer who escaped a gangster-controlled nightclub in Manila to become a free-range mother of five in the United States, Maria is a matriarch not to be trifled with. Broadway star and storyteller Sara Porkalob embodies dozens of characters in a trigenerational tour-de-force performance that fuses killer karaoke with laugh-out-loud comedy to tell her family’s incredible origin story.