Today’s Highlights:
New York, New York, by Kander & Ebb, David Thompson, Sharon Washington & Lin-Manuel Miranda, directed & choreographed by Susan Stroman, featuring Colton Ryan (Jimmy Doyle), Anna Uzele (Francine Evans), Clyde Alves (Tommy Caggiano), John Clay III (Jesse Webb), Janet Dacal (Sofia Diaz), Ben Davis (Gordon Kendrick), Oliver Prose (Alex Mann), Angel Sigala (Mateo Diaz), and Emily Skinner (Madame Veltri), with Wendi Bergamini, Allison Blackwell, Giovanni Bonaventura, Jim Borstelmann, Lauren Carr, Mike Cefalo, Bryan J. Cortés, Kristine Covillo, Gabriella Enriquez, Haley Fish, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Richard Gatta, Stephen Hanna, Naomi Kakuk, Akina Kitazawa, Ian Liberto, Kevin Ligon, Leo Moctezuma, Aaron Nicholas Patterson, Dayna Marie Quincy, Julian Ramos, Drew Redington, Benjamin Rivera, Vanessa Sears, Davis Wayne, Jeff Williams, Darius Wright, opens at Broadway’s St. James Theatre.
NEXT@LCT3 concert, featuring Michael R. Jackson, opens at 7:30 PM at Lincoln Center‘s Claire Tow Theatre.
The Realistic Joneses, by Will Eno, directed by Judy Hegarty-Lovett, featuring Faline England (Pony), Sorcha Fox (Jennifer), Conor Lovett (John), and Joe Spano (Bob), begins previews at Laguna Playhouse.
Lainie Kazan: Inside Hollywood Stories solo show, at 7 PM at Palm Springs’ Oscars.
Porchlight Music Theatre‘s New Faces Sing Broadway 1984 concert, directed by Tommy Novak, featuring Neala Barron, Frankie Leo Bennett, Dawn Bless, Katherine Bourne, Kayla Boye, Anna Brockman, Tim Foszcz, Haley Gustaffson, Josiah Haugen, Cam Turner, Jerod Turner, and Evan Wilhelm, Lydia Burke, and Molly Kral, with Darilyn Burtley, Max Cervantes, Maddison Denault, David Moreland, Gilbert Domally, Andres Enriquez, Nik Kmiecik, Ziare Paul-Emile, Alis Rhode, Thero Germaine, Lucy Godinez, Emily Goldberg, Nicole Michelle Haskins, Michelle Lauto, Yando Lopez, Henry McGinniss, Brandy Miller, Bryce Ancil, Chloé Nadon-Enriquez, Anthony Norman, Patrick Rooney, Aalon Smith, Katherine Thomas, Aeriel Williams, Nicole Lambert, Courtney Mack, Mallory Maedke, and Samanthan Pauly, at 7:30 PM at Chicago’s Evanston Space.
“Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love,” with special guests Bernadette Peters, Billy Porter, Jane Lynch, Katy Perry, Kristin Chenoweth, Aileen Quinn, Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Bob Mackie, Cher, Ellen DeGeneres, Julie Andrews, Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Lily Tomlin, Marisa Tomei, Sofia Vergara, Steve Carell, Susan Lucci, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Vicki Lawrence, airs at 8 PM on NBC (then begins streaming on Peacock on Apr. 27).
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Reviews for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Summer, 1976 at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre:
NY Times (Laura Collins-Hughes): …David Auburn’s bittersweet, comic memory play… Daniel Sullivan’s sun-dappled Broadway production for Manhattan Theater Club, Laura Linney plays the austere, censorious Diana to Jessica Hecht’s vastly chiller Alice — or, as Diana describes this fresh acquaintance, a “sleepy-eyed little hippie with her shorts and her coconut oil”… Stretching from 1976 to 2003, this is a story of profound connection and awakening disquiet, which Sullivan directs with his customary unostentatious lucidity… Auburn…has once again sown a script with riches for actors. Linney and Hecht mine them for all they’re worth… In that red, white and blue summer, they question what’s gone wrong with their American dreams. And they start, with poignant imperfection, to put things right.
New York Daily News (Chris Jones): …when you have actors of the quality and appeal of Laura Linney…and Jessica Hecht… the two stars of David Auburn’s subtle Summer, 1976, an intimate chance to visit with them can be reason enough to buy a ticket… The relationship is hardly lacking in mutual criticism and annoyance but it sustains the women through various quotidian Central Ohio crises, none earth-shatteringly surprising but some more serious than others… I could see audience members appreciating that these performers’ facility for sharing subtext allowed them to become lost in their own thoughts and memories. I intend that as a complement to the work of both Auburn and these two highly accomplished stage performers, both very much present…. That said, you don’t always feel like there is enough here at risk, existential fear or vivacious denial for a truly memorable show…
New York Stage Review (Frank Scheck): …As beautifully played by stage veterans Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht, Diana and Alice are both well-drawn, interesting characters whose significant differences in personality and viewpoints don’t prevent them from forming a close bond. It’s too bad, then, that playwright David Auburn didn’t introduce them to each other… This new drama from the author of Proof is the latest in a seemingly endless series of plays in which the story is told, not shown. Rather than dramatizing the events onstage, the characters, often sitting at opposite ends of a long table as if attending a board meeting, mainly tell their story via alternating monologues. It makes you wonder why theater has so often seemed to become a platform for bedtime stories for adults…
Variety (Frank Rizzo): …Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht — two of the most accomplished and compelling actors around — create a pair of indelible characters looking back at their brief relationship during a long-ago season… the play is an insightful and engaging two-hander that will have audiences pondering the nature of friendship, the values we place on it, and even how well we really know each other… Auburn presents two very different women telling and then reliving the history of their evolving friendship as it grows and, eventually, fades, charting their story with humor, compassion and complexity… As their twin narratives continue, Auburn jostles audience expectations, steering the story away from potentially melodramatic plot points, eschewing sentimentality — even offering a flight of fancy or two. When the storytelling returns to the present in the end, it does so in a scene that is both real and relatable…
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending Apr. 23:
Click here for the complete analysis.
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2023 Drama League Award nominations.
Click here for the complete list. Winners will be announced May 19.
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In rehearsal for Oliver at NY City Center:
Video: Benjamin Pajak performs “Where is Love”
Video: “Consider Yourself” with Benjamin Pajak and Julian Lerner
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LA’s Geffen Playhouse has announced its 2023-24 season: Casting and additional information TBA.
Every Brilliant Thing (Sept. 6 – Oct. 15), by Duncan Macmillan & Jonny Donahoe, directed by Colm Summers, starring Daniel K. Isaac. 
A boy’s handwritten list to cheer up his despondent mom becomes a surprisingly funny and poignant ode to humanity.
The Engagement Party (Oct. 4 – Nov. 5), by Samuel Baum, directed by Darko Tresnjak. An engagement party that goes awry when a glass of wine is spilled.
POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive (Jan. 17 – Feb. 18, 2024), by Selina Fillingers, directed by Jennifer Chambers. A derogatory comment, a summit gone awry, an anal abscess—it’s a bad day at the White House. When the President unwittingly spins a PR nightmare into a global crisis, it inevitably falls on the seven women he relies on most to clean up the mess. Take a raucous romp through the halls of the West Wing in a riotous and irreverent farce about the men who hold the power vs. the women who get the job done.
Black Cypress Bayou (Feb. 7 – Mar. 17), world premiere by Dristen Adele Calhoun, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene. Both suspenseful and comedic, the work sees Vernita Manifold inviting two daughters down to the bayou on a hot Texan summer night with secrets to share about the death of the richest, meanest man in town.
Fat Ham (Mar. 27 – Apr. 28), by Duncan Macmillan & Jonny Donahoe, directed by Saheem Ali. The reinvention of the Shakespeare classic moves the action to a modern day Southern cookout, where queer college kid Juicy is grappling with identity questions, the ghost of his father, and a supernatural demand for vengeance.
The Hope Theory (Apr. 25 – June 9), written by & starring Helder Guimarães, directed by Frank Marshall. As a Portuguese immigrant, storyteller, and sleight-of-hand magician, Helder Guimarães arrived in America at age 29. Wide-eyed and full of ideas, he discovers a fascinating puzzle of cultural and professional challenges to solve while he tries to build a home.
tiny father (June 12 – July 14), world premiere by Mike Lew directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel. In a hospital NICU, the early arrival of a baby girl forces Daniel to forge an uncertain path to parenthood.
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A FREE 90-minute livestream pre-show of the 2023 Tony Awards will be broadcast on June 11 at 6:30 PM ET on Pluto TV. The main awards ceremony will follow, broadcasting live from Washington Heights’ United Palace Theatre on CBS, and streaming live (for Paramount+ subscribers) beginning at 8 PM ET.
Hosts and additional details TBA.
Watch the broadcast on smart TVs, streaming devices, mobile devices, and in-browser via Pluto.TV and Pluto TV’s apps.
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Will Power’s Fetch Clay, Make Man has announced new dates, and will now run June 18 – July 16 (opening June 25) at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, directed by Debbie Allen.
TBA
In the days leading up to one of his most anticipated fights, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) forms an unlikely friendship with the controversial Hollywood star Stepin Fetchit (born Lincoln Perry). The play explores the improbable bond that forms between two drastically different and immensely influential cultural icons.
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Two private industry readings of William Semans & Roy M. Close’s A Brief Crack of Light will take place May 4 & 5 in NYC, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. 
& 
: martin@pstheatricals.com
Tyne Daly, John Glover, and Billy Eugene Jones.
The inspirational story of Mae and James, the last two residents of a shabby rooming house about to be demolished. Mae is the live-in caretaker and James a former actor and professor who resigned amid scandal. They live day-to-day on social security and faded dreams. But suddenly they’re faced with eviction. Then Alex, a mysterious and charismatic stranger, enters and wants their help with a caper. They’re tempted but have deep misgivings. What if they get caught? Meanwhile, the loss of the Penley is a reminder that James’ and Mae’s options are shrinking in number and time is running out.
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Judy on TV: Celebrating The Judy Garland Show (from the 1963-64 TV show), by Dick Scanlan, will run May 6-8 at NYC’s 92Y, directed, musical directed, arranged, and hosted by Billy Stritch, with choreography by Richard Stafford.
Aisha De Haas, Gabrielle Stravelli, Alysha Umphress, and Max Von Essen.
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Antaeus Theatre Company will present a new production of The Tempest June 11 – July 17 (opening June 16) at Glendale’s Kiki & David Gindler Performing Art Center, directed by Nike Doukas.
Peter Van Norden (Prospero), Anja Racié (Miranda), Peter Mendoza (Ferdinand), Elinor Gunn (Ariel), Leo Marks (Caliban), Bernard K. Addison (Antonio), John Allee (Sebastian), Adrian LaTourelle (Alonso/Stephano), Saundra McClain (Gonzala), and Erin Pineda (Trincula).
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MUSI-CAL will return to LA’s Bourbon Room on June 5 at 7:30 PM, with song selections from new musicals. Casting and additional information TBA.
Musicals included:
The Art Forager, by Laura Watkins & Nicholas David Brandt
Housewives: An Unauthorized Musical Parody, by Richelle Meiss, Sam Johnides & Tony Gonzales.
This Used to be a Disco, by Brett Ryback, Jeff Luppino-Esposito & Jimi Darkness.
Alcoholic Superhero, by James byous & Stein Malvey.
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Rogue Machine Theatre will present the world premiere of Francisca Dasilveira’s can i touch it, to run May 6 – June 11 at the Matrix Theatre, directed by Gregg T. Daniel.
Safiya Fredericks (Shay), Suzen Baraka (Meeka/Beth), Iesha Daniels (Ruth/Lili), Scott Victor Nelson (Mark/Nicky/Leo).
Shay Solomon is many things – but there’s one thing she’s definitely not: a pawn in the bank’s efforts to buy up foreclosed real estate. The play examines Black hair politics, the racial inequities faced by Black-owned businesses and the fantastical place women of color have to recede into when they get asked stupid ass questions.