Today’s Highlights:
The Ally, world premiere by Itamar Moses, directed by Lila Neugebauer, featuring Josh Radnor (Asaf), Cherise Boothe (Nakia/Rabbi), Elijah Jones (Baron), Michael Khalid Karadsheh (Farid), Joy Osmanski (Gwen), Ben Rosenfeld (Reuven), and Madeline Weinstein (Rachel), opens at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater.
An Enemy of the People, newly adapted by Amy Herzog, directed by Sam Gold, featuring Jeremy Strong (Thomas Stockman) and Michael Imperioli (Peter Stockman), Victoria Pedretti (Petra Stockmann), and David Patrick Kelly (Morten Kiil), with Katie Broad, Bill Buell, Caleb Eberhardt, Matthew August Jeffers, David Mattar Merten, Max Roll, Thomas Jay Ryan, and Alan Trong, begins previews at Broadway’s Circle in the Square.
My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?), written by & starring Rob Madge, directed by Luke Sheppard, begins previews at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater.
The Club, world premiere by Chris Bohjalian, directed by David Saint, featuring Grace Experience (Marion Willows), Ryan George (Peter Kendricks), Ali Marsh (Anne Barrows), Brendan Ryan (John Willows), Samaria Nixon-Fleming (Angela Kendricks), Skyler Hensley (Olive Barrows), and Fred Weller (Richard Barrows)., begins previews at NJ’s George Street Playhouse.
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RIP: Broadway actor Lanny Flaherty passed away Feb. 18 at the age of 81.
Born in Pontotoc, Mississippi July 27, 1942, Mr. Flaherty served in the U.S. Army throughout the 1960s before attending Mississippi State University and Southern Methodist University, with a focus on acting and playwriting. By the mid-1970s, Mr. Flaherty had moved to New York City, where he was a part of the 1974 Broadway revival cast of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
Alternating his time between Mississippi and New York for the rest of his life, Mr. Flaherty went on to appear on Broadway in Sweet Bird of Youth, Inherit the Wind, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Requiem for a Heavyweight, in addition to numerous productions at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Steppenwolf Theatre.
As a playwright, Mr. Flaherty wrote numerous works, including A-Birthing At Nubbin Ridge, Cedars Mark The Campground, Crisscrosscreeks, and Whilhom. His piece Showdown at the Adobe Model, presented at Hartford Stage in 1981, starred Oscar winner Henry Fonda in his final live performance.
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MA’s Barrington Stage Company has announced its 2024 Summer season:
La Cage Aux Folles (June 11 – July 6), directed by Mike Donahue, with choreography by Paul McGill.
A Tender Thing (June 25 – July 20), by Ben Power, directed by Alan Paul
Boeing Boeing (July 17 – Aug. 3), by Marc Camoletti, directed by Julianne Boyd, featuring Mark H. Dold, Debra Jo Rupp, and more TBA.
Forgiveness (July 30 – Aug. 25), world premiere by Mark St. Germaine, directed by Ron Lagomarsino.
Next to Normal (Aug. 13 – Sept. 8), directed by TBA, with choreography by Eamon Foley.
Primary Trust (Sept. 18 – Oct. 31),with a creative team TBA.
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Gingold Theatrical Group will present a script-in-hand performance of Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession on Mon. Mar. 18 at 7 PM at NYC’s Symphony Space, directed by Lily Kanter Riopelle.
Tina Benko (Mrs. Kitty Warren), Madeline Seisman (Vivie Warren), Jason Veasey (Praed), Jay O Sanders (Crofts), Robert Kilhas Kollman (Frank Garner), Arnie Burton (Reverend Sam Gardner), and Fareeda Pasha (Nattator).
George Bernard Shaw brings us his most provocative play, which examines how six people face their past to plan for their future, including the mysterious title character who has built a global empire from the ground up.
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Jeff Whiting, CEO of Open Jar Studios, has launched a new non-profit aimed at supporting artists and developing theatre. The Stage Door Foundation will look to carry out that mission through a number of programs.
Among those programs are opportunities for subsidized space rental, offering Open Jar Studios’ spaces for as low as $5 an hour for qualifying artists; a show accelerator that will provide developing projects with up-front investments; and a number of grants and scholarships for onstage and backstage artists.
Click here for more information.
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The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Solo Festival will run Mar. 28-31 at North Hollywood’s Theatre 68, with the theme “Telling Our Truths.”
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A reading & conversation of Christopher Monger’s Dear Mr.Thomas: A New Play for Voices will take place Tues. May 14 at 7:30 PM at NYC’s 92NY.
Matthew Rhys (Dyland Thomas), Keri Russll, and more TBA.
An interpretation of events and not a definitive biography. It includes several important figures in Dylan Thomas’ life, several works by the great poet, and it highlights a seminal moment in his history — and ours.
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Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play will run June 29 – Sept. 21 at the Noël Coward Theater, directed again by Robert O’Hara. Some of the cast appeared in the Off-Broadway and/or Broadway productions.
Kit Harington, Olivia Washington, James Cusati-Moyer, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara, Irene Sofia Lucio, McNamra, La Tour, Fisayo Akinade and Aaron Heffernan.
The work is set at the MacGregor Plantation in the Antebellum Old South, but nothing is as it seems.
The Broadway bow became the most Tony-nominated play in Tony Awards history, receiving 12 nods, though winning none.
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Make Me Gorgeous, written & directed by Donnie, has been extended through Mar. 24 at Off-Broadway’s Theatre at St. Lukes.
Darius Rose (aka Jackie Cox), replacing Wade McCollum.
The fabulous and incredible true story of Kenneth Marlowe, an oft-overlooked trailblazer in LGBTQ history. Described as one of mid-Century America’s gayest and most openly homosexual personalities, Marlowe took on many roles in life. Kenneth was private hairdresser to the stars; the madam of a notorious gay prostitution ring in Hollywood; an author; a hustler; a female impersonator; a private in the U.S. Army, a call boy; a Christian missionary, a mortuary cosmetologist; a newspaper columnist … and for the final decade of an incredibly lived life, Marlowe was a woman, having transitioned to become Kate Marlow.
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Ossie Davis’ Purly Victorious, starring Leslie Odom, Jr.,will premiere Fri. May 24 at 9 PM on PBS.
The story of a Black preacher’s scheme to reclaim his inheritance and win back his church from a plantation owner.
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Off-Broadway’s Urban Stages continues it’s free staged reading series through Mar. 4, titled Dynamic Duos,
Augusto Federico Amador, Lynda Crawford, Ian McRae, Juan Ramirez Jr., John Scavone, and Sam Walsh.
Maria Mileaf, Vincent Scott, Leigh Selting, Kim T. Sharp, Daniela Thome, and José Zayas.
Christopher Daftsios, Dave Droxler, José Febus, Michael James, Antoinette LaVecchia, Eric Perceval, Joel Ripka, Isabella Rojas, Reza Salazar, Socorro Santiago, Claire Siebers, and Jehan O. Young.
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Hamlet, currently running through Mar.16 at the Greenwich House Theatre, will then transfer to the Orpheum Theatre Mar. 10 – Apr. 14.
Eddie Izzard.
In Hamlet, Izzard takes on 23 roles in a version cut down from Shakespeare’s scripted four hours. Izzard points out that the show has not always been performed in its entirety. “We went through choosing what we wanted for a two-hour play—as street performer for four years, I know how long people can stand on their feet. That’s what the Groundlings did. We wanted it to play like it would have been in the 1600s,” says Izzard. During the show, as Izzard jumps from the stage and walks through the aisles and even into the balcony, she begins to create a 24th character: the audience itself, another trick she learned from interacting with those who gather round her on the streets. “I should be talking to the audience when I do the soliloquies. Most actors would talk at an audience,” she says. “There is a difference.”