Today’s Highlights:
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, by Tennessee Williams,directed by Jack Heller, featuring Paul Coates, Remington Hoffman, Susan Priver, and Rene Rivera, begins previews at Hollywood’s Hudson Backstage Theatre.
Donna McKechnie in concert cancelled at at 8:30 PM at Hollywood’s Catalina Jazz Club.
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Reviews for Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre:
New York Times (Jesse Green): Old Friends… is a lot like its predecessors. The 41 numbers it features come from the main pool, with an emphasis on songs from Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Follies and Into the Woods. Most of them were brilliant in their original context; many remain so outside it. Some are sung spectacularly by a bigger-than-usual cast of 17, led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. Others are middling, a few are misfires… Well, newish. Even when vocally and emotionally specific, the performances here are often physically generic… does much better with the explicitly darker numbers…
Variety (Frank Rizzo): …Manhattan Theatre Club’s fresh, surprising and very special Broadway production…. Lea Salonga brings additional star power to the sizable roster of extraordinary talents, including Tony and Olivier winners Gavin Lee, Beth Leavel and Joanna Riding… Beginning with the title, the show presents itself simply yet exquisitely… But this is no musical shiva for close friends and family. More than a tribute, it’s a feast — and one of the most heartfelt and joyous shows of the season… Meaningfully, the dozen-plus members of the orchestra are symbolically placed in full view, honoring not only the composer’s work but his musicians, and indirectly the orchestrators, arrangers and music directors…
Theatermania (Sandy MacDonald): …one smart revue, as befits the genius who radically upped Broadway’s game… Long-time fave Beth Leavel, for instance, delivers a game-changing, stone-cold sober “The Ladies Who Lunch,” at once vicious and vulnerable. She’s also a knockout as half of the mmhmm-ing couple in “The Little Things You Do Together” (her partner, Gavin Lee, overplays his half; the British male contingent of the production, in general, veers toward to music-hall broadness)… Fans know going in that Peters is going to own the show, and she does. Her “Send in the Clowns,” rendered reservedly in a single spotlight… is understated and unsurpassably poignant. In contrast, a more fully staged totemic solo in Act II – “Losing My Mind” – comes across as overdone to the point of goopy…
New York Theatre Guide (Caroline Cao): …cozy as a longtime friend’s living room. Best of all, the honeyed orchestrations (originally by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick) and crisp sound mixing in the Old Friends setlist help remind us why the best of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s repertoire still attracts talented titans… As devised by megaproducer Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Matthrew Bourne with Julia McKenzie, Old Friends is where you celebrate Sondheim in fragments. The production feels less about Sondheim himself and more about the performers who embody and interpret his work… I do have one note: As the exit music, we hear Sondheim singing “Love Is in the Air,” a cut song from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. If this production missed anything, it’s a meditative finale on the man’s artistic process. Many people were already out the door when Sondheim’s voice filled the theatre.
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending Apr. 6.
Click here for the complete analysis.
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Lolita Chakrabarti’s Life of Pi will run May 6 – June 1 at the Ahmanson Theatre, directed by Max Webster.
Taha Mandviwala, Jessica Angleskhan, Alan Ariano, Emmanuel Elpenord, Rishi Jaiswal, Sinclair Mitchell, Mi Kang, Sorab Wadia, Shiloh Goodin, and Betsy Rosen.
After a shipwreck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi survives on a lifeboat with four other companions—a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. What happens next leads them on an edge of your seat unforgettable Told with jaw-dropping visuals, world class, innovative puppetry and exquisite stagecraft, the Broadway and West End sensation Life of Pi creates a visually breathtaking journey that will leave you filled with awe and joy.
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Drama Desk will offer An Evening with Sandy Duncan on Tues. May 13 at 7 PM at Off-Broadway’s Laurie Beechman Theatre, moderated by Michael Portantiere. A special evening of stories, memories, and showbiz lore!
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All The Devils are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, created & performed by Patrick Page, directed by Simon Godwin, has cancelled all performances at Santa Monica’s Broadstage, due to a recent injury.
Hopefully the production will be rescheduled. Stay tuned for updates.
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Negro Ensemble Company will present Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men will run Apr. 11 – May 18 (opening Apr. 18) at Theatre at St. Clements, directed by Clinton Turner Davis.
Norm Lewis, Felicia Boswell, James Foster Jr., Morgan Siobhan Green, Jeremiah Packer, Calvin M. Thompson, and Bryce Michael Wood.
It’s New York in the 1950s. Russell Parker, a ne’er-do-well barber and the widowed father of three adult children, spends his days playing checkers and reminiscing about his life in vaudeville as a song and dance man. His two sons, Theo and Bobby, are dreamers of a different sort – a pair of petty criminals looking for a “score” in the form of ill-conceived and dangerous bootlegging and numbers schemes. Russell’s daughter, Adele, the only gainfully employed member of the family, refuses to work herself into an early grave like her mother. When Adele’s long-simmering resentments boil over and the boys’ criminal enterprise falls apart, tragic consequences ensue for the whole family.
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Simply Barbra, starring Steven Brinberg, will take place Wed. May 14 at 7 PM at NYC’s Laurie Beechman Theatre, with music direction by christopher Denny.
The concert will also run May 22-23 at London’s Crazy Coqs.
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Red Bull Theater (Link TBA) will present the world premiere of Jacob Ming-Trent’s How Shakespeare Saved My Life, to run Sept, 2026 (dates TBA), directed by Tony Taccone. This production is part of a rolling world premiere.
TBA.
An epic poem with verse rhyme and song. The playwright tells us how Shakespeare raised him, saved him and ultimately showed him that forgiveness and mercy could set him free. “America tried to take my life, a five-hundred-year-old white dude saved it.”
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Evita will run June 14 – Sept. 6 (opening July 1) at the London Palladium, directed by Jamie Lloyd, with music direction by Alan Williams and choreography by Fabian Aloise.
Rachel Zegler (Eva Perón), Diego Andres Rodriguez (Che), and more TBA.
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An Evening with Alex Newell will take place Thurs. May 8 at 7:30 PM at NYC’ s92Y.
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On Sunday April 27, LA’s Center Theatre Group will present “ONE LA: Celebrating the LA Community and the Artists Who Call It Home.“
This special event features a cocktail reception and dinner (select ticket levels) and a one-night only show at the Mark Taper Forum, featuring LA artists, celebrities, some favorites from our ONE CTG. ONE LA. Season, and a surprise or two. This amazing evening will conclude in an after party on the Plaza!
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Douglas Lackey’s Four Evangelists Walk into a Fog will run May 1-18 (Thursdays – Saturdays at 8PM/Sundays at 3 PM) Theater for the New City (link TBA) , directed by Mark Harborth.
Zephyr Caulfield (Matthew), John Gionis (Mark), Nick Freedson (Luke), Matthew Foley (John), Andy English (Paul) and Barbara McCulloh (Mary Magdalene.
Founding of a major new world religion is an occasion for intellectual dark comedy. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote four differing gospels and created Christianity. These four evangelists actually never met, but they do–as members of a comedic literary synod. The results are hilarious and profound.
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The world premiere of Leda Siskind’s Beatnik Girl will continue through Apr.19 at Theatre Forty, directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky.
Leda Siskind
In Greenwich Village in 1957, a young female writer enters the community of Beat poets and finds romance, antisemitism, and misogyny while striving for success in the literary world.