Today’s Highlights:
Illinoise, by Jackie Sibblies Drury & Suffan Stevens, directed & choreographed by Justin Peck, featuring Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, Tasha Viets-VanLear, Yesenia Ayala, Kara Chan, Ben Cook, Gaby Diaz, Jeanette Delgado, Carlos Falu, Christine Flores, Jada German, Zachary Gonder, Rachel Lockhart, Brandt Martinez, Dario Natarelli, Tyrone Reese, Craig Salstein, Ahmad Simmons, Byron Tittle, Ricky Ubeda, and Alejandro Vargas, previews & opens at Broadway’s St. James Theatre.
Uncle Vanya, newly translated by Heidi Schreck, directed by Lila Neugebauer, featuring Steve Carell (Uncle Vanya), Alfred Molina, Anika Noni Rose, Jonathan Hadary, William Jackson Harper, Jayne Houdyshell, Spencer Donovan Jones, and Mia Katigbak, opens at Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by August Wilson, directed by Chuck Smith, featuring A.C. Smith (Herald Loomis), Harper Anthony (Reuben Mercer), Anthony Fleming III (Jeremy Furlow), TayLar (Bertha Holly), Gary Houston (Rutherford Selig), Kylah Jones (Zonia), Nambi E. Kelley (Mattie Campbell), Krystel V. McNeil (Molly Cunningham), Tim Rhoze (Bynum Walker), Shariba Rivers (Martha Loomis) and Dexter Zollicoffer (Seth Holly), with Sean Blake, Stacie Doublin, Kristin E. Ellis, Anthony Irons, Bill McGough, Jean-Luc Nazaire, André Teamer, and Riley Lauren Wells, opens at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.
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Reviews for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Mary Jane at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre:
New York Times (Jesse Green): Soon after Alex was born at 25 weeks, with multiple catastrophic disorders, Mary Jane’s husband, unable to cope, fled their marriage. Still, she hopes he “finds some peace, I really do”… Mary Jane’s own moral agony is likewise something to behold… That, at its heart, is the condition that Amy Herzog’s steel-trap play “Mary Jane” explores: The death of the self in the love for one’s child. As with Alex, so for his mother: There is no cure… Like all great plays, “Mary Jane” catches light from different directions at different times, revealing different ideas. On the other side of the worst of Covid, “Mary Jane” feels less like a parent’s cry for more life than an inquest into the meaning of death… it’s Herzog’s technique that makes even the dullest conversation feel as sharp as a scalpel… This turn toward questions of faith, and the way they finally breach Mary Jane’s defenses, took me by surprise. I hadn’t remembered the play that way, perhaps because I’d seen it first through parental tears. Now, as its chorus of diverse women suggests, it seems to be about everyone’s participation in loss…
Variety (Aramide Tinubu): Parenting inspires varying schools of thought… the 2017 play written by Amy Herzog and making its Broadway debut under Anne Kauffman’s direction, viewers witness both a young mother’s joy and her anguish as she works around the clock to keep her disabled toddler alive… Even armed with her cloak of optimism, it’s apparent to everyone except Mary Jane that her emotional well-being is teetering on the edge… [Mary Jane’s] nurturing energy extends beyond the young boy to Mary Jane, making the trio a makeshift family… Performances are solid throughout, though McAdams’ projection was muted at a recent performance. Still, it’s the story that truly drives Mary Jane.
Theatermania (Christian Lewis) …Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane is all about care, specifically the coterie of women that surround the title character, single mother Mary Jane (Rachel McAdams), and her disabled two-and-a-half-year-old son Alex… Care, as the play reveals, can take on many forms and can come from unexpected sources… Herzog’s strategically elusive and elliptical writing gradually reveals details… Herzog and director Anne Kauffman deftly avoid every ableist trope (particularly the bitterness and centering the suffering of the able-bodied mother), instead masterfully capturing the experience with hyperrealism and empathy…
Time Out (Adam Feldman): … Mary Jane is a single mother with a severely disabled toddler named Alex; he is running a fever, and Amelia’s aunt Sherry (April Mathis), a nurse, is tending to him in the back room. Exactly what they might be waiting for is a question that hangs with gray menace in Amy Herzog’s exquisite and deeply moving Mary Jane: Alex is almost certainly not getting better, and even the best-case scenarios break your heart. Yet the play does not dwell in helplessness; it’s more interested in how people try to help… There are no villains here, only people doing their best under sometimes crushing circumstances.
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending Apr. 21.
Click here for the complete analysis.
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The 2024 Drama League Award nominations have been announced.
Click here for the complete list of nominees.
Winners will be announced at the 2024 Drama League Awards ceremony on May 17.
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The 2024 Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations have been announced. Click here for the complete list.
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Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company will present VENTURA LIVE: Music, Laughter & Magic, offering one-night and short-run concerts, jam sessions, new play readings, magic nights, comedy, and much more, from May 11 – June 16.
Click the link above for the complete schedule of events.
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Bring Them Back, written & directed by David Willinger, will run May 9-19 at Theater for the New City.
Paul Korzinski (Paul) and Carole Forman (Trudy).
Paul is still sheltering in place long after the Covid threat, only sometimes visited by his schleppy older family friend, Trudy. Now of a certain age, Paul realizes that more people he has known are dead than alive. With amusing desperation, and against Trudy’s better judgement, Paul resolves to bring them back using a medieval Cabalistic ritual that never works due to his countless mistakes. Nevertheless, random affinity groups of dead former friends, family, enemies, and lovers of both sexes begin to appear. Is it all in his mind? Is it on the page? How do these unorthodox methods satisfy Paul’s desire to resolve unfinished business?
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Danny Robins’ 2:22 – A Ghost Story will run May 25 – Aug. 4 at the Gielgud Theatre, directed by Matthew Dunster & Isabel Marr.
Stacey Dooley (Jenny), James Buckley (Ben), and more TBA.
Jenny believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam isn’t having any of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is getting closer, so they’re going to stay up… until 2:22… and then they’ll know.
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Troubadour Theater Company will celebrate its 29th season with Duran DurAntony & Cleopatra June 6-16 (opening June 7) at Burbank’s Colony Theatre, adapted & directed by Matt Walker.
Beth Kennedy, Rick Batalla, Mike Sulprizio, Cloie Wyatt Taylor, John Paul Batista, Katie Kitani, Mark McCracken, Philip McNiven, Suzanne Jolie.
So make it a REFLEZ to get your tickes to see Shakespearian GIRLD ON SAND. And AY A PRAYER that you’ll be safe from the UNION OF THE SNAKE in your ringside seat with a VIEW TO A KILL, and be sure to bo no ORDINARY WORLD!
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Eric Anthony & Ben Hope’s Lay It Down: The Music of the Everly Brothers will run May 8-19 at Virginia Stage Company, directed by Ben Hope.
Eric Anthony & Ben Hope (as the Everly Brothers)
Be transported back in time to experience the timeless melodies and harmonies that defined an era. From “Bye Bye Love” to “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” and “Wake Up Little Susie,” the Everly Brothers’ hits continue to resonate with music lovers of all ages. Playing the Everly Brothers are also co-creators of this musical tribute.
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Frank D. Gilroy’s The Subject was Roses will run May 28 – June 16 (opening June 1), at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater, directed by Scott Wittman.
Jon Slattery, Talia Balsam, and Harry Slattery.
Like roses, family relationships are beautiful but thorny. Set in The Bronx in 1946, this drama is about the emotional struggles and hidden tensions within a family as their son returns from service in WWII. As they confront their past and present, this timeless play explores enduring themes of reconciliation and the fragility of love.
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Principal casting has been announced for Les Les Misérables, to run June 17 – 23 at the St. Louis Muny, directed by Seth Sklar-Heyn, with choreography by Jesse Robb, and music direction by James Moore.
John Riddle (Jean Valjean), Jordan Donica (Javert), Teal Wicks (Fantine), Red Concepción (Thénardier), Jade Jones (Madame Thénardier), Ken Page (The Bishop of Digne), Emily Bautista (Éponine), Gracie Annabelle Parker (Cosette), Peter Neureuther (Marius), James D. Gish (Enjolras), and more TBA.
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MD’s Olney Theatre Center will present the world premiere of Dahlak Brathwaite & Khiyon Hursey’s Long Way Down, to run May 22 – June 23 (opening May 25), directed by Ken-Matt Martin, with choreography by Ken-Matt Martin & Victor T. Musoni, and music direction by Cedric Lyles.
Tyrese Shawn Avery (Will), IO Browne (Shari), and Victor Musoni (Shawn), Frick (Colin Carswell), Buck Parris (Mone’t Lewis), Dani (Cheryse Dyllan), Quincy Vicks (Mike), and Naiqui Macabroad (Uncle Mark), with Ciara Hargrove and Bryan Archibald.
Growing up, Will’s big brother taught him three iron-clad rules of how to behave when gun violence claims someone close: Don’t cry. Don’t snitch. Get revenge. So when his brother is himself gunned down, Will is determined to follow the code and gets in the elevator on the top floor of his apartment building, armed and ready to hit the streets in search of vengeance. What happens on the way down is an emotional hip-hop journey through the cycles of violence that have plagued Will’s family and too many others.
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Ryan Craig’s new adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, will run Sept. 20-28 (opening Sept. 25) at Theatre Royal Bath, directed by Lindsay Posner. The production will subsequently launch a U.K. tour.
Casting and additional information TBA.