Today’s Highlights:
Hamlet, directed by Richard Icke, starring Jennifer Ehle (Gertude), opens at NYC’s Park Avenue Armory.
Into the Woods, directed by Lear deBessonet, featuring Sara Bareilles (Baker’s Wife), Brian D’Arcy James (Baker), Patina Miller (Witch), Phillipa Soo (Cinderella), Gavin Creel (Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince), Nancy Opel (Cinderella’s Stepmother), Joshuah Henry (Rapunzel’s Prince), Alysia Velez (Rapunzel), Ta’Nika Gibson (Lucinda), Annie Golden (Cinderella’s Mother/Grandmother/Giant’s Wife), Albert Guerzon (Cinderella’s Father), Brooke Ishibashi (Florinda), Kennedy Kanagawa (Milky White), David Patrick Kelly (Narrator/Mysterious Man), Julia Lester (Little Red Riding Hood), Cole Thompson (Jack), Aymee Garcia (Jack’s Mother), and David Turner (Steward), with Jason Forbach, Mary Kate Moore, Cameron Johnson, Delphi Bortich, Felicia Curry, Alexander Joseph Grayson, Paul Kreppel, Diane Phelan, and Lucia Spina., begins previews at Broadway’s St. James Theatre.
Anna in the Tropics, by Nilo Cruz, directed by Marcos Santana, featuring Christian Barillas (CheChe), Maria Isabel Bilbao (Marela), Serafin Falcon (Santiago), Iliana Guibert (Ofelia), Gullermo Ivan (Paloma/Eliades), Anthony Michael Martinez (Juan Julian), and Christine Spang (Conchita), begins previews at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre.
A Celebration of Richard Rodgers concert, recorded on Mar. 26, 1972, directed by Donald Saddler, featuring Mary Martin, Leonard Bernstein, Jan Clayton, Helen Gallagher, Celeste Holm, Patsy Kelly, Richard Kiley, Gordon MacRae, Pamela Myers, Gene Nelson, Tricia O’Neil, Tony Randall, John Reardon, Terry Saunders, Bobby Short, Joanna Simon, Benay Venuta, Walter Willison, Agnes De Mille, and Rodgers himself, streams at 7 AM ET/4 AM PT on the 96.5 Inner FM Radio website.
To Steve with Love: Liz Callaway Celebrates Sondheim concert, in-person, with special guest Nick Callaway Foster, at 7 PM ET at NYC’s 54 Below.
Camelot, directed by Matt Kunkel, featuring Robert Petkoff (Arthur), Shereen Pimentel (Guenevere), Brandon Chu (Lancelot), Evan Ruggiero (Sir Dinadan), Daryl Tofa (Sir Lionel), Sarah Quinn Taylor (Sir Sagramore), Riley Carter Adams (Tom of Warwick), and Barrett Riggins (Mordred/Squire Dap), with Harris Milgrim, Trenay Caruthers, Kelly Berman, Jack Brewer, Trenay Caruthers, Sydney Chow, Jacob Guzman, Maggie Kuntz, Kiara Lee, Sage Lee, Nathaniel Mahone, Melissa Hunter McCann, Evan Kinnane, Spencer Davis Milford, Harris Milgrim, Brendon Stimson, and Kristin Yancy, closes at the St. Louis Muny.
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Reviews for the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s Mad House at London’s Ambassador’s Theatre:
The Guardian (Arifa Akbar): …It is a good setup for emotional sparks to fly. Under the direction of Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the first half seems like a particularly savage episode of “Frasier,” especially when the slightly square son, Nedward (Stephen Wight) and hospice nurse Lillian (Akiya Henry) enter the fray. There are some sharp lines in Rebeck’s script, though the serrated humour is not as blistering as it strives to be. Mad House loses the threads of its first half to turn into a different kind of family psychodrama that could easily be another play. [Bill] Pullman does all he can with the part but his character never develops… Too much is thrown in without enough depth or structural coherence…
Evening Standard (Farah Najib): …Both stars are brilliant. [Bill] Pullman as Daniel is sallow and sunken, frequently wiping gunk from the corners of his mouth, every word an effort. Don’t be fooled by this weakness though, there’s brute force behind his verbal abuse. With his body mostly confined to a chair or bed, so much is communicated through his eyes, which dart mischievously as he spews insults… [David] Harbour Harbour gives a tender and hilarious performance as the long-suffering family pariah Michael, who openly wishes for his father to die sooner rather than later… The supporting cast is excellent, too.
Variety (David Benedict): You can see why actors of the caliber of David Harbour and Bill Pullman …wanted to appear in this world premiere. Rebeck has barely been produced in the U.K., but it’s immediately clear she knows how to whip up bitterly comic set-pieces for actors to sink their teeth into. But she has come up with a clutch of juicy, smart-mouthed roles rather than making them cohere into anything with true resonance beyond the melodramatic twists and turns of a secondhand family plot…Despite the light touch of the hard-working cast, the play’s over-inflated highs and lows are like eating a meal of sugary food: It provides a rush, but leaves you unsatisfied.
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Additional casting has been announced for Death of a Salesman, to run Sept. 19 – Jan. 15, 2022 (opening date TBA) at the Hudson Theatre, directed by Miranda Cromwell.
Wendell Pierce (Willy Loman), Sharon D Clarke (Linda Loman), McKinley Belcher III (Happy), Khris Davis (Biff), André De Shields (Ben), and more TBA.
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Music and Memories with Marilu Henner will take place Thurs. July 7 at 7 PM ET at Studio City’s Feinstein’s at Vitello’s, with music direction by Michael Orland.
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Will Arbery’s Corsicana has been extended through July 17 at Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons, directed by Sam Gold.
Jamie Brewer (Ginny), Will Dagger (Christopher), Deirdre O’Connell (Justice), and Harold Surratt (Lot).
In the small city of Corsicana, Texas, Ginny, a woman with Down syndrome, and her half-brother Christopher have recently lost their mother. As they try to find ways of moving forward, close family friend Justice introduces the pair to Lot, and artist and outsider to the local community, in this play about caregiving and caretaking.
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Video: Teaser for the tour of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Richard Thomas.
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. The world premiere of Peter Lefcourt’s Remembering the Future will run July 15 – Aug. 21 (opening July 16) at the Odyssey Theatre, directed by Terri Hanauer.
Michael Corbett, Fatima El-Bashir, David Jahn, Andrew Neaves, and Tarina Pouncy.
What would your 18-year-old self say to your 58-year-old self it had the opportunity?
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David Hare’s Straight Line Crazy will run Oct. 18 – Dec. 18 (opening Oct. 26) at The Shed (545 W. 30th St.), directed by Nicholas Hytner & Jamie Armitage.
Ralph Fiennes (Robert Moses), David Bromley (Stamford Fergus), Alana Maria (Shirley Hayes), and Guy Paul (Henry Vanderbilt), with Judtih Roddy (Finnuala Connell), Helen Schlesinger (Jane Jacobs), Mary Stillwagon Stewart
(Nicole Savage), and Danny Webb (Governor Al Smith).
Robert Moses was considered the most powerful man in New York as he envisioned and built public works whose aftereffects determined how New Yorker experience the city to this day. The play presents an imagined retelling of the arc of Moses’ controversial career in two decisive moments: his rise to power in the late 1920s and the public outcry against the corrosive effects of that power in the mid-1950s.
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Michael Orland: An Open Mic Event will take place Thurs. June 30 at 7:30 PM PT at Studio City’s Upstairs at Vitello’s.
Marilu Henner, Chris Mann, and Adriana McPhee.
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Mark Saltzman’s Romeo & Bernadette: A Musical Tale of Verona and Brooklyn, closed unexpectedly on June 26 at Theatre 555, due to Covid cases within the company, and has unfortunately canceled its extension (which was scheduled through July 31).
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The world premiere of Donja R. Love’s Soft has been extended again, now through July 17, at Off-Broadway’s MCC Theater, directed by Whitney White.
Leon Addison Brown (Mr. Cartwright), Biko Esisen-Martin (Mr. Isaiah), Dharon Jones (Antoine), Essence Lotus (Dee), Travis Raeburn (Bashir), Shakur Tolliver (Kevin), Dario Vazquez (Jamal), and Ed Ventura (Eddie).
Flowers are in full bloom – in Mr. Isaiah’s classroom, in the halls of the correctional boarding school where he teaches, and in the depts of his students’ imaginations. After one boy dies, Mr. Isaiah is committed to saving the students he teaches from a world that tries to crush their softness.
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The world premiere of Jeremy Desmon & Jeff Thomson’s The Last Supper will run July 27 – Aug. 7 at NJ’s South Orange PAC, directed by Sheryl Kaller, with choreography by Lorin Latarro.
Charlotte d’Amboise, Mark Evans, Alex Newell, Pomme Koch, Megan Kane, Allan K. Washington, and Wes Zurick, with Josh Canfield, Jennifer Frankel, and Alan Wiggins.
Five liberal grad students share a house in a conservative college town, who, in their efforts to save the world, host a collection of their neighbors for a friendly evening of dinner and discourse. Things to not go well.
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Broadway Bares XXX raised $1,893,715 for BCEFA.
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The world premiere of Joey Soloway, MJ Kaufman & Faith Soloway’s Transparent, based on the Amazon series, will run May 20 – July 25, 2023 at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Tina Landau, with choreography by James Alsop.
Casting TBA.
A new story as the Pfeffermans, a Jewish family living in Los Angeles, explores family secrets, self-discovery, acceptance, and joy.
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The world premiere of Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries will run July 26 – Aug. 21 (opening July 31) at La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Kaufman.
Scott Barrow, Charles Browning, Rosina Reynolds, Jeanne Sakata, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Charlie Thurston, Grant James Varjas, and Frances Uku, with Abby Huffstetler, Noah Keyishian, and Sabrina Liu.
An album of never-before-seen World War II-era photographs arrives at the desk of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding. As Rebecca and her team of historians begin to unravel the shocking story behind the images, the album soon makes headlines around the world. In Germany, a businessman sees the album online and recognizes his own grandfather in the photos. He begins a journey of discovery that will take him into the lives of other Nazi descendants – in a reckoning of his family’s past and his country’s history. The play tells the story of these photographs, and what they reveal about the Holocaust and our own humanity.