Today’s Highlights:
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, directed by Rupert Goold, featuring Tom Hollander (Boris Berezovsky), Will Keen (Vladimir Putin), Luke Thallon (Roman Abramovich), Matt Concannon (Assistant/Daniel Kahneman / Russian Captain), Ronald Guttman (Professor Perelman), Sean Kingsley (Voloshin/Nurse), Paul Kynman (Korzhakov /Yeltsin/ FSB Boss/ Reporter/ Bodyguard), and Jessica Temple (Anna Berezovsky / Newscaster/ Journalist/ Secretary /Pianist), Josef Davies (Alexander Litvinenko, Ashley G Gerlach (Lawyer / Home Office), Howard Goddington (Teacher /Compromised Newscaster), Stefani Martini (Marina Litvinenko / Nina Berezovsky), and Evelyn Miller (Taaianna / Katya / Judge / Lover), opens at London’s Noel Coward Theatre.
Wet Brain, world premiere by John J. Caswell, Jr., directed by Dustin Wills, featuring Frankie J. Alverez (Ron), Ceci Fernández (Angelina), Florencia Lozano (Mona), Julio Monge (Joe), and Arturo Luis Soria (Ricky), opens at Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons.
Nicole Parker (Céline Dion), Lindsay Heather Pearce (Rose), Michael Williams (Jack), Anthony Murphy (Victor Garber), and Brandon Contreras (Cal), begin their runs in Titanique at Off-Broadway’s Daryl Roth Theatre.
The Mountaintop, by Katori Hall, directed by Patricia McGregor, featuring Jon Michael Hill (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Amanda Warren (Camae), begins previews at LA’s Geffen Playhouse.
The 2023 Drama Desk Awards ceremony will take place at 3 PM at NYC’s Sardi’s Restaurant, hosted by Mandy Patinkin & Kathryn Grody.
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Reviews for Days of Wine and Roses at Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theatre:
NY Times (Laura Collins-Hughs): If not for the unbridled drinking, it might easily have been a screwball comedy… In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy, aching musical based on the teleplay and the film, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are an awfully glamorous Kirsten and Joe… O’Hara, in exquisite voice, singing 14 of the show’s 18 numbers… Lucas and Guettel, in which O’Hara also starred, have each spoken publicly of past personal struggles with substance abuse. Excising the heavy-handedness of previous versions of Days of Wine and Roses, and softening the details of Joe’s degradation, they go deeper into the heart-rending familial fallout of addiction… Affecting as O’Hara is, Kirsten is less fully drawn than Joe…
Theatermania (David Gordon): If you’re looking for the feel-bad hit of the summer, the Atlantic has you covered with Days of Wine and Roses… has a lot going for it: a complex and milieu-defining score, two stars — Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara — who are the best they’ve ever been, and a hypnotic staging from director Michael Greif. But as TV producer Fred Coe told Frankenheimer in 1958, it’s all Wine and no Roses… The musical fast-forwards to different points in their relationship with each other and the bottle… book writer Lucas has managed to tone down some of the brutality of the film…
Chicago Tribune (Chris Jones): …a gorgeously and expressionistically scored new musical from Adam Guettel… directed in typically uncompromising fashion by Michael Greif… beautiful performances from mature actors (Byron Jennings plays the father), whose exquisite instruments fill the tiny Atlantic theater space. It has a suite of beautiful songs, although it lacks a fully introspective, cumulative ballad for both of its lead characters, the provision of which would be a great improvement… In this musical form, the piece needs to lose more of the noir reality of the film and find more of an overtly theatrical metaphor… True emotional engagement only kicks in with the couple’s child, a heart-wrenching section of the piece still in my head as I write…
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The Public Theater‘s annual Gala on the Green will take place Mon. June 12 at 7 PM at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Christopher Jackson, Brandon Victor Dixon, Joi Moon, and Anna Uzele.**********************
An Evening with Rene Fleming will take place Sat. June 10 at 7:30 PM at LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Merle Dandridge, the Emerson String Quartet, and pianist Simone Dinnerstein.
The concert will feature Penelope, a new concert work created expressly for her by André Previn and Tom Stoppard. The piece takes the audience into the mind of the mythic heroine, waiting years on end for her beloved husband’s return from war and standing strong against a hundred suitors.
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Fela Kuti, Bill T. Jones & Jim Lewis’ Fela will run July 7 – Aug. 13 at MD’s Olney Theatre, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, with choreography by Breon Arzell, and music direction by S. Renee Clark.
Duain Richmond (Fela), Nova Y. Payton (Funmilayo), and Shantel Cribbs (Sandra), with Bryan Archibald, Terrence J. Bennett, Simone Brown, Patrick Leonardo Casimir, Jyreika Guest, Bryan Jeffrey, Raquel Jennings, Emmanuel Kikoni, Raven Lorraine, Vaughn Ryan Midder, Ywande Odetoyinbo, Jantanies Thomas, Galen J. Williams, Jalisa Williams, Kanysha Williams, and Amadou Kouyate.
It’s 1978, and we meet musician, activist, and global superstar Fela Anikulapo Kuti at his farewell show at the Afrika Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria. After losing his own mother in a dictator’s violent attack, Fela’s final act in Nigeria is to use his iconic music—a spirited blend of traditional African drumming, jazz, and funk—to tell his story of survival and global revolution through Afrobeat and floor-shaking dance.
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Gabriel Oliva’s Final Interview will run July 14-23 at the Pico Playhouse, directed by Katierose Donahue-Enriquez.
Colleen Foy, Frank Martinelli, Gabriel Oliva, and Brian Stanton.
The stress of a job interview is cranked up to 10 when a gun is thrown in the mix. If the interview goes poorly, someone dies. In a claustrophobic game of cat and mouse, both interviewer and interviewee desperately try to escape a high-rise office with their lives.
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The original Broadway cast album of “Other Lives: The Story Songs of Michael Colby.” with music direction by Michael Lavine, will be released Fri. June 16 on all platforms.
Andrea Colby, Ned Paul Ginsberg, Larry Hochman, Paul Katz, Peter Millrose, Gerald Jay Markoe, Alex Rybeck, Steven Silverstein, Joseph Thalken, and Herman Yabaloff.
Janet Aldrich, Bethe Austin, Ari Axelrod, Klea Blackhurst, Stephen Bogardus, David Edwards, Luke Nephat, Jane Seaman, Dan Hoy, Sean McDermott, Megan Styrna, Marianne Tatum, Maureen Taylor, Deborah Jean Templin, Deborah Tranelli, Joshua Turchin, Stuart Zagnit, Lauren Baker, Talia Cutulle, and Heeya Kim.
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Gingold Theatrical Group will present a script-in-hand performance of Shaw’s Man and Superman on Mon. June 19 at 7 PM at NYC’s Symphony Space, directed by David Staller.
Dakin Matthews (Roebuck Ramsden/Statue), Carman Lacavita (Octavius Robinson), Ryan Spahn (Jack Tanner/Don Juan), Shavanna Calder (Anne Whitefield/Dona Ana), Christine Toy Johnson (Mrs. Whitefield), Olivia Kinter (Violet Robinson), Shawn K. Jain (Henry Straker), Michael McCorry Rose (Hector Malone), Nick Wyman (Mr. Malone), and John-Andrew Morrison (Mendoza/Devil).
Written in 1903, this colorful collection of characters do everything they can to both face and hide from their deepest desires and fears, fleeing across continents and even – in the dream act of Don Juan in Hell – to Hades for a chat with the Devil and back again. It’s a fast-paced verbal battle between hopeful humans about love, sex, money, life and even eternity.
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The Lyric Stage production of Deborah Laufer’s Rooted continues through June 25 at Boston’s Calderwood Pavilion, directed by Courtney O’Connor.
Katherine Callaway, Karen MacDonald, and Lisa Tucker.
In the claustrophobic town of Milleryville, Emery Harris lives alone in a treehouse named Mabel surrounded by a dozen or so plants she researches, names, and talks to. Her overbearing sister Hazel is Emery’s only connection to reality, along with her YouTube channel where she documents her studies that have garnered several thousand followers. When her calm and quiet is disrupted by an entourage of devotees chanting and singing to her–their botanical, new-age messiah–she is forced to look down from the branches and face the outside world.
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An Evening with Brian Stokes Mitchell will take place Fri. June 23 at 8 PM at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center.
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The world premiere of Madeline Myers’ Double Helix continues through June 18 at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre, directed by Scott Schwartz.
Samantha Massell (Rosalind Franklin), Anthony Chatmon II (Maurice Wilkins), Matthew Christian (Jacques Mering), Max Chlumecky (James Watson), Anthony Joseph Costello (Raymond Gosling), Amy Justman (Adrienne Weill), Austin Ku (Francis Crick), Thom Sesma (John Randal), and Tuck Sweeney (William Bates), with Kate Fitzgerald and Ethan Yaheen-Moy Chan.
The story of the race to discover the structure of DNA in the 1950s and follows the brilliant young researcher, Rosalind Franklin, as she contends with adversity, anti-semitism, and love to uncover one of life’s great mysteries.
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CORRECTION: On Your Feet will run July 20 – Aug. 19 (opening July 22) at ME’s Ogunquit Playhouse, directed by Jayme McDaniel, with choreography by Kristyn Pope, and music direction by Matt Smedal.
TBA.
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Complete casting has been announced for Pittsburgh CLO‘s 2023 summer season:
Anything Goes (June 13-18), directed by Ameenah Kaplan, with choreography by Mara Newbery Greer, and music direction by James Cunningham, featuring Rashidra Scott (Reno Sweeney), A.J. Shively (Billy Crocker), Liz Leclerc (Hope Harcourt), Jeff Howell (Moonface Martin), Goeff Packard (Lord Evelyn Oakleigh), Andrea Weinzierl (Erma), Theo Allyn (Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt), Ryan Cavanaugh (Purser), Joseph Domenic (Captain), Ted Guzman (John), Jerreme Rodruguez (Luke), and Allan Snyder (Elisha Whitney), with Ashely Agrusa, Sean Bell, Kristen Grace Brown, Bobby M. Davis, Zachary Doran, Kylie Edwards*, Brady Miller, Marjorie Failoni*, Mathew Fedorek*, Nathan Fister, Jordan Giles, Laura Guley, Michael Pesko, Madysen Piper, Myah Segura, and Renell Taylor.
Into the Woods (June 27 – July 2), directed by Scott Weinstein, with choreography by Willam Carlos Angulo, and music directed by James Cunningham, 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).
The Sound of Music (July 11-16), directed & choreographed by Marc Robin, with music direction by Thom Culcasi, featuring Hanley Smith (Maria), Will Ray (Captain Von Trapp), Daniella Dalli (Mother Abbess), Maddie Dick (Liesl Von Trapp), Blake Hammond (Max Detweiler), Katie Sina (Elsa Schraeder), Susan Cella (Frau Schmidt), Sam Greene (Rolf) Erika Strasburg (Sister Mararetta), Anna Bakun (Sister Sophia), Rebecca Robins (Sister Berthe), J Alex Noble (Franz), Carlianna Connors (Brigitta), Emily Harajda (Louisa), Aubree Liscotti (Gretl), Sloan Masula (Marta), Max Peluso (Fredrick), Henry Thomas (Kurt), and many more…
Once On This Island (July 25-30), directed & choreographed by Gerry McIntyre, with music direction by James Cunninham, featuring Frenchie Davis (Asaka), Melessie Clark (Mama Euralie), Zephaniah Divine (Agwe), Darius Harper (Papa Ge), Haja Hetsberger (Ti Moune), Mason Reeves (Daniel Beauxhomme), Hailey Thomas (Erzulie), Siggy Bijou (Andrea), Brady Patsy (Tonton Julian), LaTrea Rembert (Armand), and Eden Greene (Young TiMoune).
Guys & Dolls (Aug. 8-13), directed by Darren Lee, with choreography by Mark Esposito, and music direction by James Cunningham, featuring Lesli Margherita (Miss Adelaide), Matt Saldivar (Nathan Detroit), Nikki Renée Daniels (Sarah Brown), Jeff Kready (Sky Masterson), John Treacy Egan (Nicely-Nicely Johnson), Herschel Sparber (Big Julie), Chris Laitta (General Cartwright), Richard McBride (Lt. Brannigan), Jeffrey Howell (Arvide Abernathy), Aaron Calligan-Stierle (Benny Southstreet), Richard McBride (Lt. Brannigan), and Brady Patsy (Angie the Ox), withAndres Acosta, Grace Arnold, Ryan Cavanaugh, Bobby M. Davis, Zephaniah Divine, Austin Taylor Dunn, Kylie Edwards, Mathew Fedorek, Zanna Fredland, Michael Greer, Jessica Ice, Jolina Javier, Caroline Kane, Alex Manalo, Tay Marquise, Brittany Pent Rohm, Filip Przybycien, Austine Schulte, Ben Sears, and Allan Snyder.
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Aug. 22-27), directed by Dantee Kiehn, with choreography by Charlie Sutton, and music direction by James Cunningham, featuring Jacob Gotay (Anatole Kuragin), Natascia Diaz (Marya), Austen Danielle Bohmer (Mary), Billy Cohen (Andrey/Bolkonsky), Kennedy Caugh (Sonya), Sondra Okuboyejo (Natasha Rostova), Nick Rehberger (Pierre Bezukhov), Lili Thomas (Hélène Bezukhov), and Jamari Williams (Balaga), with Lawrence Alexander, Anna Bakun, Siggy Bijou, Matthew Diston, Zephaniah Divine, Kylie Edwards, Logan Farine, Mathew Fedorek, Nathan Fister, Katie Griffith, Kyra Klonoski, Kiara Lee, Alicia Newcom, Alexander Podolinski, Kiana Rodriguez, Austin Schulte, Laura Yen Solito, David Toole, Joseph Torello, Elizabeth Yanick, Genny Lis Padilla, and Sam Marzella.