Today’s Highlights:
Soul Divas Reprise concert, featuring Awa Sal Secka and Shayla S. Simmons, opens at DC’s Signature Theatre.
Into the Woods, directed by directed by Scott Weinstein, featuring Carolee Carmello (The Witch), Patti Murin (Baker’s Wife), Manu Narayan (The Baker), Joe Serafini (Jack), Kyla Jordan Stone (Cinderella), Jordan Tyson (Little Red Riding Hood), Gene Weygandt (Narrator/Mysterious Man), Theo Allyn (Jack’s Mother), Conor Bahr (Steward), Allison Cahill (Cinderella’s Mother/Granny), Melessie Clark (Lucinda), Haley Holmes (Florinda), Christine Laitta (Cinderella’s Stepmother), Jhardon DiShon Milton (Rapunzel’s Prince), Brady Patsy (Cinderella’s Father), and Lu Zielenski (Milky White), opens at Pittsburgh CLO.
Porchlight Theatre‘s Broadway in your Backyard FREE concert, directed by Frankie Leo Bennett & Michael Weber, featuring (rotating) Adrian Aguilar, Bryce Ancil, Lydia Burke, Desiree Gonzalez, Lorenzo Rush Jr and Ciarra Stroud, opens in parks throughout Chicago.
Beneatha’s Place, written & directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, featuring Cherrelle Skeete (Beneatha), Zackary Momoh (Joseph Asagai/Wale Oguns), Sebastian Armesto (Daniel Barnes/Prof Mark Bond), Jumoké Fashola (Prof Shirley Jones/Aunty Fola), Tom Godwin (Mr. Nelson/Prof Gary Jacobs), and Nia Gwynne (Mrs. Nelson/Dr Harriet Banks), begins previews at London’s Young Vic.
Starring Cherrelle Skeete (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hanna) as Beneatha Younger, the play follows Beneatha after the events of A Raisin in the Sun, exploring her life in Lagos and her eventual return to the home where it all began.
Dial M for Murder, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by Walter Bobbie, featuring Mamie Gummer, Rosa Gilmore, Erich Bergen, Max Gordon Moore, and Ref Rogers, begins previews at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre.
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Reviews for Just for Us at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre:
NY Times (Jesse Green): Is it a stand-up act or a morality play? Either way, Alex Edelman’s look at race, religion and the limits of empathy is at home on Broadway. It may be too much to ask a human hummingbird like Alex Edelman to try to stick to the subject. In Just for Us, his three-jokes-per-minute one-man show, he zooms from punchline to punchline almost as fast as he caroms around the stage of the Hudson Theater… he describes his usual style as “benign silliness” and says this “isn’t Ibsen” — that you are in for a cheerful evening of laughs. And even though he’s telling a story about white supremacy, you are….
New York Daily News (Chris Jones): Enter now Alex Edelman, a Jewish comedian of a much-younger generation whose very funny new solo show at the Hudson Theatre, Just For Us, has one foot in that great Mason history and another in the tradition of Mike Birbiglia, another cheerfully geeky Broadway performer who is generally seen as more of a storyteller than merely someone who stands up and cracks jokes… Edelman structures his show around an event at once ordinary and bizarre. In the case of Just For Us, which opened Monday night, that would be his uninvited attendance — he grew up as an Orthodox Jew — at a meeting of tawdry white supremacists in Queens.
New York Theatre Guide (Joe Dziemianowicz): Did you hear the one about the Orthodox Jewish standup comedian who crashes a meeting of white supremacists and turns the incident into the nucleus of his one-man show that’s now on Broadway?… That’s the two-second backstory of Alex Edelman’s tangy, topical, and, best of all, laugh-out-loud solo work, Just for Us. It’s that rare theatrical production that doesn’t just live up to the hype — it exceeds it… he displays his irresistible gift for storytelling, comedy, and capturing theatregoers’ undivided attention… Edelman, meanwhile, claims his brand of humor is “so dumb and small.” It isn’t. At all. But it is very personal. It’s about his Jewishness, about his whiteness, about his family.
Variety (Naveen Kumar): …Edelman’s college-buddy congeniality is the key to this 75-minute narrative set. How else could a nice Jewish boy walk into a meetup of white supremacists and turn his experience into hilarious social commentary? How else could a nice Jewish boy walk into a meetup of white supremacists and turn his experience into hilarious social commentary?… blends elements of memoir and social critique into well-paced, punchline-driven standup… as he bounds from one corner of the stage to another, his energy is less nervous or hyperactive than confident and curious. Who are the people assembled in that room, grazing “whites only muffins” and nodding in agreement over some perceived loss of position and power?
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Video: Broadway Bares 2023 opening number.
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Chicago’s Goodman Theatre has announced its Free Staged Readings series, to run July 10-16. Casting TBA.
Stalled (July 10), by Lena Barnard, directed by Halena Kays. 
Olive is back home in the country after her life fell apart in the city. But when her mom gives her an ultimatum to get her life on track, Olive is suddenly placed in charge of the family rental property: protecting the chickens from coyotes and making sure the sad lesbian AirBNB renters are okay. All she wants to do is watch the same episode of a bad TV show over and over and over again. Lena Barnard’s new play is a funny and moving exploration of how we seek comfort and how we get un-stuck.
It Girl (July 12), by Hanna Kime, directed by Jessica Fisch. It’s 2002 and rising teen starlet Caitie Clark is a favorite fixture of all the major Hollywood tabloids. As the rumor mill churns with stories of Caitie’s professional and personal troubles, a massive breakdown on set brings her career to a screeching halt. Twenty years later, a major streaming corporation seeks to hold us all accountable by revealing the true story of Caitie Clark through a brave and timely biopic.
Campy: The Search for Summer’s Campiest Camper (July 15), by Dillon Chitto, directed by Bo Frazier. As the competition draws closer, the campers are forced to reveal their true selves and confront their hidden feelings.
St. Miles (July 16), by Jarrett King, directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent. What are protests if not a form of prayer? Five years ago, the Ellis family lost one of its members, a young Black man named Miles, to an act of police violence. Now Miles’s mother Opal wants him to be recognized as a saint. As the Ellises navigate the arduous canonization process, the family clashes and battle lines are drawn. Is true salvation on the other side of it all? There are 10,000 saints in the Catholic Church—not one of them is African American. Yet.
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North Hollywoods’ Road Theatre Company will present its Summer Playwrights Festival July 7-16, offering staged readings of 25 plays. Casting is TBA.
Click the link above for the complete schedule.
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Tom D’Angora, Taylor Crousore & Scott Richard Foster’s A Musical About Star Wars – or Why Stars Wars is the Greatest Thing the Galaxy…Much Much Better than Star Trek in the History of the Galaxy has announced complete casting for its Off-Broadway return, which will begin July 7 at the AMT Theater.
Taylor Crousore (Scott, the Gen X-Winger), Stone Mountain (Taylor, the Millennial Falcon), and Maggie McDowell (“actor-vist” Emily).
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John Legend & Lynn Nottage are developing a stage musical adaptation of the 1033 novel “Imitation of Life,” directed by Liesl Tommy. Private industry readings were held in April. Stay tuned for further updates.
Written by Fannie Hurst, the novel traces a family living in Atlantic City, New Jersey at the turn of the century. Weaving together stories of a single, white mother struggling to provide for her family in a sexist world and a Black nanny whose daughter’s skin allows her to pass as white, the story digs into themes of gender, race, and class.
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Jerry Orbach’s Broadway will take place Mon. July 24 at 7 PM at NYC’s 54 Below, with music direction by Matthew Martin Ward.
Jerry Orbach’s Sons Chris and Tony
Jay Aubrey Jones, Nikita Burshteyn, Jill O’Hara, and Lee Roy Reams.
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RIP: Actor John Deyle passed away June 2 of esophageal cancer at the age of 68.
After studying at the North Carolina School of the Arts, John moved to NYC. While auditioning for I Remember Mamma, Martin Charnin pulled him aside and him aside to instead cast him in the original Broadway production of Annie. A member of the third-year cast, which featured Sarah Jessica Parker in the title role, Mr. Deyle played Louis Howe, Fred McCracken, and Bert Healy.
Additional Broadway productions include Elsewhere on Broadway … Camelot … Footloose, and …Urinetown (one of the only performers to remain with the satirical production for the entirety of its Broadway run).
John toured with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, as well as Camelot (3 different tours).
Off Broadway credits include Pageant and The Fantasticks.
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Video: Lea Salonga performs “Love Who You Love” at Broadway Backwards.
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Anne Nelson’s The Guys will run Sept. 10-11 at Theatre Aspen, directed by Scott Ellis.
Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy.
The play follows two individuals less than two weeks after the September 11 attacks – New Yorkers are still in shock. One of them, an editor named Joan, receives an unexpected phone call on behalf of Nick, a fire captain who has lost most of his men in the attack. He’s looking for a writer to help him with the eulogies he must present at their memorial services. Nick and Joan spend a long afternoon together, recalling the fallen men through recounting their virtues and their foibles, and fashioning the stories into memorials of words. In the process, Nick and Joan discover the possibilities of friendship in each other and their shared love for the unconquerable spirit of the city. As they make their way through the emotional landscape of grief, they draw on humor, tango, the appreciation of craft in all its forms—and the enduring bonds of common humanity.
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Steve Ross Sings Cole Porter: From Lists to Lusts will take place Mon. July 17 at 7 PM at NYC’s Birdland.
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Complete casting has been announced for Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre & Tricia Paoluccio’s Here You Come Again, to run July 26 – Aug. 27 (opening Aug. 2) at CT’s Goodspeed, directed by Barre, with music direction by Eugene Gwozdz.
Tricia Paoluccio (Dolly Parton) and Matthew Risch (Kevin), with more TBA.
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The Who’s Tommy has extend its run again, now through Aug. 6 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, re-imagined by Pete Townshend & Des McAnuff, and directed by McAnuff.
Ali Louis Bourzgui (Tommy), Adam Jacobs (Captain Walker), Alison Luff Mrs. Walker), John Ambrosino (Uncle Ernie), Bobby Conte (Cousin Kevin), and Christina Sajous (Acid Queen), with Jeremiah Alsop, Stephen Brower, Haley Gustafson, Sheldon Henry, Aliah James, Gabriel Kearns, Tassy Kirbas Lily Kren, Nathan Lucrezio, Alexandra Matteo, Morgan McGhee, Mark Mitrano, Reagan Pender, Daniel Quadrino, Jenna Nicole Schoen, Zach Sorrow, Ayana Strutz, and Andrew Tufano. The role of Young Tommy will be in rotation with Ava Rose Doty, Presley Rose Jones, Annabel Finch, and Ezekiel Ruiz.
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Article. “Why did LA’s Center Theatre Group really halt programming at the Mark Taper Forum?”
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A Tribute to Howard Ashman and Alan Menkin, which will run July 2-3 at NYC’s 54 Below, has announced an updated list of performers:
Mary Beth Peil, Melissa Errico, John Yi, Jana Djienne Jackson, Cameron Loyal, Nic Mains, Audrey Belle Adams, Juwan Crawley, Chiubeze Ihouma, Katherine D’Souza, Tymothee Harrell, Ali Regan, Cryphyn Karimloo, Tristan David Caldwell, Nadia Duncan, Rachel Lloyd, and Lesoe-Payton Alston, and Alex Lugo.