Today’s Highlights:
Another slow news day…
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Reviews for Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical
NY Times (Jesse Green): As bad as the pandemic has been for plays, it has been even worse for musicals, which are not only intensely collaborative but also inherently unhygienic… And so we now have Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, a show that turns crowdsourcing from a danger into an aesthetic. Compared with the excellent 2007 Disney-Pixar film “Ratatouille,” it’s a trifle, but I mean that in the culinary sense: It’s a silly, multilayered delight… It still lacks the “actual show” part; the haste that gave “Ratatouille” its moxie has also kept it shallow.
NY Stage Review (Bob Verini): …there won’t be a more entertaining tradeoff for your donated buck than Ratatouille: The Tik Tok Musical… Essentially it’s a hour-long concert with acted-out segments, punctuated by a dozen songs by a dozen Tik Tok devotees and built, as Remy (Tituss Burgess) points out, “with just the right amount of cheese”… director Lucy Moss manages to integrate the pieces smoothly, supported by a crackerjack tech team.
NY Theater (Jonathan Mandell): “Ratatouille” traces the journey not just of Remy, an unappreciated sewer rat who attains his dream of becoming an acclaimed chef in Paris. It is the remarkable journey of the musical itself, which – as you may have heard – began in the middle of the pandemic as a ten-second video on TikTok… The production as a whole is most accurately described as a work in progress. For one thing, it’s designed for streaming; how easily adaptable is it to the stage?… The starry cast is terrific. The dialogue is bright.
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Pasadena Playhouse presents You I Like: A Musical Celebration of Jerry Herman, to run Jan. 10 – Feb. 7, conceived & music directed by Andy Einhorn.
Bernadette Peters and David Hyde Pierce (opening night, Jan. 10 at 5 PM PT only).
Ashley Blanchet, Nick Christopher, Lesli Margherita, Andrea Ross, and Ryan Vona.
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PBS streaming events currently available:
“From Vienna: The New Years Celebration 2021”
“Lea Salonga in Concert”
“Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles”
“Horowitz: Piano Pyrotechnics”
“About Act II of Tosca”
“The Magic of Horowitz”
…and many more…
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TCG has announced the publication of Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop. 
Order the script in paperback or Kindle here.
Usher is a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. The piece follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not the least of which are the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to understand his own strange loop.
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New York Theatre Barn will host a free preview of Joe Iconis’ Love in Hate Nation and Rob Rokicki & Sarah Beth Pfeifer’s Experience Marianas on Wed. Jan. 20 at 7 PM ET. The one-hour show will include musical excerpts from both new musicals, as well as conversations with the writers and creative teams.
(Love in Hate Nation): Sydney Farley, Amina Faye, Jasmine Forsberg, Lauren Marcus, Kelly McIntyre, Lena Skeele, Emerson Mae Smith, and Tatiana Wechsler (all from the 2019 world premiere at NJ’s Two River Theater). The musical is set in a reformatory for young women in the 1960s.
(Experience Marianas): Rob Rokicki and Sarah Beth Pfeifer. A wild sapphic rock musical adventure about one woman’s journey to escape an oceanic cult.
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“One Night in Miami,” based on the 2013 play by Kemp Powers, will be released in select theaters on Jan. 8, and on Amazon Prime on Jan. 15 , directed by Regina King.
Leslie Odom Jr. (Sam Cook), Kingsley Ben-Air (Malcolm X), Eli Goree (Cassius Clay), and Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown), with Joaquina Kalukango, Nicolette Robinson, Beau Bridges, and Lance Reddick.
Set on the night of Feb. 25, 2964, the film follows a young Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali), as he emerges from the Miami Beach Convention Center as the new World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. Clay, unable to stay on the island because of Jim Crow-era segregation laws, spends the night at the Hampton House Motel in one of Miami’s historically Black neighborhoods celebrating with three of is closest friends: activist Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke, and football star Jim Brown.
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Article: “Marsha Mason: What I Miss About Broadway”
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Off-Broadway’s Mint Theater has released the HD recording of Lillian Hellman’s Days to Come, directed by J.R. Sullivan, which will be available through Feb. 21.
Mary Bacon, Janie Brookshire, Larry Bull, Chris Henry Coffey, Dan Daily, Ted Deasy, Roderick Hill, Betsy Hogg, Kim Martin-Cotton, Geoffrey Allen Murphy, and Evan Zes.
Andrew Rodman is running the family business and failing at it. The workers are out of strike and things are getting desperate. “Papa would have known what to do,” his sister Cora nags, “and without wasting time and money.” But it’s too late, Rodman is bringing in strikebreakers, naively failing to anticipate the disastrous impact that this will have on his family and their place in the community where they have lived for generations.
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Video: “Jim Caruso’s Cast Party,” with special guests Ilene Graff, Zach Pizer, Ben Hale, and Therese Curatolo. (1:18:42)
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“Stars in the House,” celebrating “The Waltons,” will stream Thurs. Jan. 7 at 8 PM ET here.
Michael Learned, Richard Thomas, Mary Beth McDonough, Eric Scott, Kami Cotler, and Judy Norton.
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A re-broadcast of Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley’s Circle Jerk is now available on demand through Jan. 17 here.
Michael Breslin, Patrick Foley, and Catherine María Rodríguez.
The piece examines how politics can empower a group of people who have been historically oppressed to become oppressors. It’s winter on Gaymen Island, a summer retreat for the homosexual rich and fam-ish, and this off-season, two white, gay internet trolls hatch a plot to take back what’s wrongfully theirs.
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Video: Alex Brightman‘s virtual concert with Seth Rudetsky (available through Jan. 18)
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This week’s selection at the Metropolitan Opera, all at 7:30 PM ET (and available for 23 hours).
Jan. 5: La Donna del Lago (2015), by Rossini, starring Joyce DiDonato, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, John Osborn, and Oren Gradus, conducted by Michele Mariotti.
Jan. 6: Les Pêcheurs de Perles (2016), by Bizet, starring Diana Damrau, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecień, and Nicolas Testé, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.
Jan. 7: I Puritani (2007), by Bellini, starring Anna Netrebko, Eric Cutler, Franco Vassallo, and John Relyea, conducted by Patrick Summers.
Jan. 8: Cavalleria Rusticana (by Mascagni) and Pagliacci Cavalleria Rusticano (by Leoncavallo) (2015), starring Eva-Maria Westbroek, Jane Bunnell, Marcelo Álvarez, and George Gagnidze, conducted by Fabio Luisi. Pagliacci: Patricia Racette, Marcelo Álvarez, George Gagnidze, and Lucas Meachem, conducted by Fabio Luisi.
Jan. 9: Maria Stuarda (2013), starring Elza van den Heever, Joyce DiDonato, Matthew Polenzani, Joshua Hopkins, and Matthew Rose, conducted by Maurizio Benini.
Jan. 10: Il Trovatore (2011), by Verdi, starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Štefan Kocán, conducted by Marco Armiliato.
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Video: “United in Song: Celebrating the Resilience of America,” which was filmed in front of a small, socially distanced audience at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the Kennedy Center, premiered Dec. 31 on PBS. (1:23:15)
Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Renée Fleming, Anna Deavere Smith, Josh Groban, Morgan James, Jamie Barton, Joshua Bell, Denyce Graves, Soloman Howard, Juanes, Patti LaBelle, Yo-Yo Ma, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.