Today’s Highlights:
Manhattan Theatre Club‘s Golden Shield, by Anchuli Felicia King, directed by May Adrales, featuring Cindy Cheung, Fang Du, Kristen Hung, Daniel Jenkins, Michael C. Liu, Max Gordon Moore, Ruibo Qian, and Gillian Saker, opens at Off-Broadway’s NYC Center.
Grease, directed by Nikolai, featuring Olivia Moore (Sandy), Dan Partridge (Danny), Peter Andre (Vince Fontaine at certain performances), Jason Donovan (Teen Angel at certain performances), Jocasta Almgill (Rizzo), Paul French (Kenickie), Mary Moore (Jan), Jake Reynolds (Doody), Lizzy-Rose Esin-Kelly (Marty), Damon Gould (Sonny), Eloise Davies (Frenchie), Jessica Croll (Patty Simcox), Katie Lee (Cha Cha), Ronan Burns (Johnny Casino), Corinna Powlesland (Miss Lynch), and Darren Bennett (Officer Mailie and Vince Fontaine at certain performances), with Jack Harrison-Cooper, Pearce Barron, Ben Culleton, Rishard-Kyro Nelson, Ellie Kingdon, Kamilla Fernandes, Remi Ferdinand, Kalisha Johnson, Zack Guest, Imogen Bailey, Kevin O’Dwyer, and Carly Miles, opens at London’s Dominion Theatre.
Skylar Astin begins his run as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at Off-Broadway’s Westside Theatre.
1776, directed by directed by Jeffrey L. Page & Diane Paulus, featuring (all identify as female, non-binary, and trans): Gisela Adisa (Robert Livingston), Nancy Anderson (George Read), Becca Ayers (Col. Thomas McKean), Tiffani Barbour (Custodian / Andrew McNair), Allison Briner Dardenne (Stephen Hopkins), Allyson Kaye Daniel (Abigail Adams / Rev. Jonathan Witherspoon), Elizabeth A. Davis (Thomas Jefferson), Mehry Eslaminia (Charles Thomson), Joanna Clushak (John Dickinson), Shawna Hamic (Richard Henry Lee), Eryn LeCroy (Martha Jefferson / Dr. Lyman Hall), Crystal Lucas-Perry (John Adams), Liz Mikel (John Hancock), Patrena Murray (Benjamin Franklin), Oneika Phillips (Josheph Hewes), Lulu Picart (Samuel Chase), Sara Porkalob (Edward Rutledge), Sushama Saha (Judge James Wilson), Brooke Simpson (Roger Sherman), Salome Smith (Courier), Sav Souza (Dr. Josiah Bartlett), Jill Vallery (Caesar Rodney), and Grace Stockdale (Standby), begins previews at Cambridge’s A.R.T.
Ann Morrison: Merrily from Center Stage concert, at 7 PM ET at NY’s 54 Below.
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2022 Drama Desk Award nominations. Click here for the complete list of nominees.
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Ben Elton’s The Upstart Crow will run Sept. 23 – Dec. 3 at the Apollo Theatre, directed by Sean Foley.
David Mitchel, Gemma Whelan, and more TBA.
Tis 1605 and England’s greatest playwright is in trouble. Will Shakespeare has produced just two plays; Measure for Measure, which according to King James was incomprehensible bollingbrokes by any measure, and All’s Well That End’s Well which didn’t even end well. Will desperately needs to maketh a brilliant new play to bolster his reputation and avoid being cast aside by King and country. But Will’s personal life is encountering more dramatic twists and turns than any theatrical story he can conjure. How the futtock can a Bard be expected to find a plot for a play whilst his daughters run amok and his house is used as refuge for any old waif and stray. As time runs out, can Will hold on to his dream of being recognized now and for all time, as indisputably the greatest writer that ever lived, or will family woes thwart Will’s chances of producing his masterwork?
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The national tour of Pretty Woman will run June 15 – July 3 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, directed & choreographed by Jerry Mitchell.
Adam Pascal (Edward Lewis), Olivia Valli (Vivian Ward), Jessica Crouch (Kit De Luca), Kyle Taylor Parker (Happy Man/Mr. Thompson, and Matthew Stock (Philip Sutckey), with Nella Cole, Michael Dalke, Nico DeJesus, Christian Douglas, Danny Drewes, Alex Gibbs, Em Hadick, Joshua Kenneth Allen Johnson, Chris Manuel, Alexa Xioufaridou Moster, Kaylee Olson, Amma Osei, Jonathan Ritter, Becca Suskauer, Kelsee Sweigard, Matthew Vincent Taylor, Brent Thiessen, Bria J. Williams, and Imani Pearl Williams.
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Dori Berinstein’s new documentary, “The Show Must Go On,” is now available on Apple TV and Broadway on Demand.
The film, set primarily in South Korea, is about the survival of theater in the midst of the global pandemic and features Andrew Lloyd Webber as well as the World Tour of The Phantom of the Opera and the South Korean Tour of Cats as they strive to make it to opening night against all odds.
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A benefit concert of White Rose The Musical – We Will Not Be Silent will take place Thurs. May 19 at 7 PM ET at NYC’s Green Room 42,, directed by Will Nunziata.
Mauricio Martinez, Wren Rivera, Nic Rouleau, Chad Burris, Troy Iwata, and Nathan Salsone.
The true story of a group of German university students who secretly met to write, print, and distribute leaflets exposing Hitler’s lies and deceptions to their fellow Germans during WWII. In the musical, Sophie Scholl arrives in Munich to join her brother Hans at the university. Inspired by a rebellious professor, Sophie joins with a group of fellow students, to meet, discuss, and carry out their plans for resisting Nazi rule. Sophie is passionate, impulsive, and bold… traits that are dangerous in Hitler’s Germany.
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CharityBuzz has launched its Broadway Curtain Up Auction, in support of live theater, with its biggest fan giveaway ever, in support of BC/EFA. Bidding is available through May 26.
The sweepstakes will support the remarkable revitalization of Broadway, as it continues its triumphant return, with proceeds benefitting important causes, performing artists, and theatrical organizations, as well as celebrating the positive social activism effort of the community at large, with auction lots of all shapes and sizes.
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Ann Kittredge: re-Imagine will take place Thur. May 26 at 7 PM ET at Off-Broadway’s Laurie Beechman Theatre, directed by Barry Kleinbort, with music direction by Christopher Denny.
Steve Ross
Ann’s “reIMAGINE” album is now available on all digital platforms.
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Off-Broadway’s Red Bull Theater 2019 production of Mac Beth continues streaming through May 29, directed by Erica Schmidt.
Isabelle Fuhrman, AnnaSophia Robb, Sharlene Cruz, Sophie Kelly-Hedrick, Ismenia Mendes, Lily Santiago, Ayana Workman.
On an autumn afternoon, in an empty lot outside the city, seven girls meet up to do a play. School uniform tartan transforms in this American urban wasteland. The girls are witches, ghosts, and kings. They hurl headlong into the unchecked passions of Macbeth—in Shakespeare’s original text—as the line between real life and blood fantasy quickly blurs. Through prophecies and smartphones, unexpected resonances emerge from Shakespeare’s dark nightmare of ambition gone awry. These young women discover what’s done cannot be undone.
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FCP Theatre Group will present No One Will Be Immune and other plays and pieces, a collection of rarely seen short one-act plays by David Mamet, which will run for 4 performances only — June 4, 12, 17 & 24 at Hollywood’s The Complex.
Cooper McAdoo, Molly B. Thomas, Elliot White, and Harry White.
The short one-act plays are Almost Done, No One Will Be Immune, A Perfect Mermaid, Sunday Afternoon, and L.A. Sketches, all published in the 90s, and which revolve around a single question — when one person tells a story, can any other person truly understand?
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Lessons in Survival: 1971, co-conceived by Marin Ireland, Peter Mark Kendall, Tyler Thomas, Reggie D. White, and created with The Commissary, will run May 26 – June 30 (opening June 9), at the Vineyard Theatre, directed by Tyler Thomas.
Carl Clemons-Hopkins (James Baldwin) and Crystal Dickinson (Nikki Giovanni).
In 1971, 28-year-old poet Nikki Giovanni interviewed renowned novelist James Baldwin, 47, on America’s first “Black Tonight Show,” SOUL! Fifty years later, Lessons in Survival: 1971 reintroduces their candid, provocative dialogue on race and liberation in America to our present moment.
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A special production of The Music Man will run June 17 – July 24 (opening June 23) at MD’s Olney Theatre, directed by Sandra Mae Frank & Michael Baron. This special production will feature deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing artists. 
All performances will be performed in ASL, spoken English, and open-captioned.
James Caverly (Harold Hill), Adelina Mitchell (Marian), Vishal Vaidya (Marcellus) Florrie Bagel (Ethel Toffelmeier), Heather Marie Beck (Alma Hicks), Amelia Hensley (Eulalie Shinn), Matthew August (Tommy), Gregor Lopes (Olinn Britt), Andrew Morrill (Mayor Shinn), Anjel Piñero (Woman #1), Mervin Primeaux-O’Bryant (Maude Dunlap), Nicki Runge (Mrs. Paroo), Christopher Tester (Oliver Hicks), and Dylan Toms (Ewart Dunlop) with Jay Frisby, Sarah Ann Sillers, Sophia Early, Aarron Loggins, Jane Enabore, and Stephen Russell Murray.
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L.A. Theatreworks presents Kate McAll’s audio adaptation of The Sun Also Rises. Available now, although dates are not listed.
Patrick Heusinger (Jake Barnes), Rhian Rees (Lady Brett Ashley), Geoffrey Arend (Robert Cohen), Seamus Dever (Bill Gorton), André Sogliuzzo (Mike Campbell/Count), Devon Sorvari (Frances/Georgette), Herbert Siguenza ( Montoya), and Derrick Kemp (Pedro Romero).