Today’s Highlights:
The Tap Dance Kid, adapted by Lydia Diamond, directed by Kenny Leon, with choreography by Jared Grimes, featuring Trevor Jackson (Uncle Dipsey), Adrienne Walker (Ginnie), Joshua Henry (William), Alexander Bello (Willie), Tracee Beazer (Carole), DeWitt Fleming (Daddy Bates), Shahadi Wright Joseph (Emma), and Chance K. Smith (Winslow), with Brinae Ali, Kurt Csolak, Aniya Danée, Zachary Downer, Francine Espiritu, Izaiah Montaque Harris, Madison Hilligoss, Ben Lanham, John Manzari, Jodeci Millhouse, Dario Natarelli, Janelle Neal, Justin Prescott, and Bethany Tesarck, opens at NY City Center Encores.
Dream House, by Eliana Pipe, directed by Laurie Woolery, featuring Darilyn Castillo (Julia), Jacqueline Correa (Patricia), Marianna McClellan (Tessa), with Katie Gonzalez, Kenneth C. Lewis, Blake Lowe, and Shelby Woolridge, opens in person at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.
**********************
Reviews for MJ The Musical at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre:
Video: Highlights
NY Times (Jesse Green): …Michael Jackson was such a magnet for strange stories that they nearly obliterated his gift. Yet in defensively brushing off the ones that don’t matter while pointedly ignoring the one that does, the new musical MJ… may be the strangest Michael Jackson story yet… Not all strangeness is bad, of course, and within the confines of the biographical jukebox genre, MJ, with a book by Lynn Nottage, is actually pretty good — for a while… an eerie mimicry of his mannerisms… soon begins to seem animatronic… MJ settles for baldly providing, in the relatively small space allotted to words, an avalanche of astonishing and sorrowful facts. Which is why the absence of the biggest one is so jarring…
Daily News (Chris Jones): …brilliantly choreographed… this new show…feels deeply influenced by Ortega’s later film… This show makes no meaningful mention of any of that. Given that Broadway ruthlessly has canceled other artists for far less, this is a level of hypocrisy that must be noted… Wheeldon’s movement will read as authentically Jacksonian to any superfan, but it also elevates the subject’s work within the realm of modern dance… Frost is a dynamic singer. But he’s first and foremost an actor who not only captures his character’s vulnerability but his restless energy and paranoia. It’s a star-making turn… it’s a gorgeously executed celebration of a pained subject’s artistry. No less. No more. No apologies.
Variety (Naveen Kumar): …so much a biomusical as a high-shine and surface-skimming rehabilitation tour for its late subject, flattening rather than reckoning with his complex legacy… The narrative premise from book writer Lynn Nottage…creates a suggestion of scrutiny, though the results are less than revelatory… Songs that are actually linked to the story convey a clear message from an artist who feels both defensive and misunderstood… MJ” narrows in on a troubled time for the artist, apparently for the sake of depicting him as a victim of the tabloid press and presenting an oblique denial of unspecified wrongdoing…
Hollywood Reporter (Lovia Gyarkie): …a remarkable Broadway musical… Who was Michael Jackson?… deftly probes this weighty topic. That question was difficult to answer when he was alive and is even more so now after his death… Michael Jackson, played with incredible verve here by Myles Frost… Nottage highlights young Michael’s relationship with his brothers, his devotion to his mother Katherine (Ayana George) and the growing tension with his father Joe… The patriarch’s abuse of Michael is well-known, but MJ explicitly connects this mistreatment to the musician’s fractured psyche… David Holcenberg’s arrangements use the musician’s catalog to great effect, creating a euphoric production…
**********************
Reviews for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Prayer for the French Republic at Off-Broadway’s NY City Center:
NY Times (Elizabeth Vincentelli): … Joshua Harmon’s ambitious and maddening, thought-provoking and schematic new play… it takes much of the play’s three-hour running time and some toggling between 2016-17 and 1944-46 for the connections and their consequences to sink in… Some of the show’s concerns, including the temptation of appeasement via assimilation — a position embodied by Marcelle’s brother, Patrick (Richard Topol) — echo those Harmon explored, in a much more comic vein, in his blistering debut, Bad Jews, from 2012… The two narratives progressively start bleeding into each other… The play’s finale that aims for the lofty and falls short…
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): How do you know when it’s time to end a relationship? When does the bad start to outweigh the good?… As Patrick, Topol makes a prickly and sarcastic narrator… Francis Benhamou, who plays Marcelle’s daughter Elodie, giving her second scene-stealing performance of the season… The acting is uniformly stellar, topped off by an astounding and emotional third-act performance from Pierre Epstein as the Salomon family patriarch… While the production is top-of-the-line, the play itself leaves something to be desired. The drama crackles, but doesn’t knock the wind out of you as so many of Harmon’s plays have in the past.
The Wrap (Robert Hofler): …Joshua Harmon cuts between the Benhamou family living in 2016-17 and an earlier generation of the wife’s family, the Salomons, living there in 1944-46. Only one character bridges the two groups… Nancy Robinette and Kenneth Tigar, giving beautiful, understated performances… a didactic play, and aside from the bipolar screed, the arguments flying back and forth captivate and hold our attention for more than three hours. Harmon writes smart, easy, often funny dialogue. Sometimes that dialogue is maybe a little too easy and funny… a very entertaining play.
**********************
GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.” ~ Laurence Olivier
**********************
Click here for Broadway Grosses for the week ending Jan. 30 (scroll down).
**********************
. Westport Country Playhouse will present a script-in-hand reading of Edward Taylor’s Murder by Misadventure on Mon. Feb. 21 at 7 PM ET, directed by Mark Shanahan. The performance will be filmed for on-demand streaming Feb. 24-27.
Casting TBA.
Harold Kent and Paul Riggs have been successful writing partners for years, winning awards and making money. Harold saved and invested his earnings: Paul spent his cash on alcohol and women. Harold wants to break the partnership that is Paul’s lifeline, but Paul knows a sinister secret from Harold’s past. As they finish concocting the perfect crime for their latest television film, old grudges and devilish schemes boil to the surface causing their alliance to face its final curtain.
**********************
Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play will run Feb. 9 – Mar. 13 (opening Feb. 16) at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Robert O’Hara.
Ato Blanson-Wood, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Jonathan Higginbotham, Devin Kawaoka, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Annie McNamara, and Paul Alexander Nolan, with Eboni Flowers, Blake Russell, Luigi Sottile, Elizabeth Stahlmann, and Galen J. Williams.
At the MacGregor Plantation, nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems. It’s an antebellum fever-dream as three interracial couples converge to rip open history at the intersection of race, love, and sexuality in 21st century America. It’s a world where the sex is as raw as the emotions, and the twists as salacious as the truth.
**********************
Harrison David Rivers’ This Bitter Earth will run Feb. 16 – Mar. 20 (opening Feb. 20) at TheaterWorks Hartford, with streaming on demand Mar. 7-20, directed by David Mendizábal.
Tom Holcomb and Damian Jermaine Thompson.
Jesse, an introspective black playwright, finds his choices called into question when his boyfriend, Neil, a white Black Lives Matter activist, calls him out for his political apathy. As passions and priorities collide, this couple is forced to reckon with issue of race, class, and the bravery it takes to love out loud.
**********************
The Broadway premiere of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes will return to previews at Studio 54, two weeks later than originally scheduled. Previews will now begin Apr. 2 and open Apr. 17, directed by Anna D. Shapiro.
Tracy Letts, Blair Brown, Jessie Mueller, Ian Barford, K. Todd Freeman, and Austin Pendleton, with Cliff Chamberlain, Danny McCarthy, Sally Murphy, Jeff Still, and Noah Reid.
A look at the inner workings of a city council meeting and the hypocrisy, freed, and ambition that bubble to the surface when a newcomer to the small town of Big Cherry starts to ask the wrong questions.
**********************
NYC’s Town Hall has announced schedule changes for the Broadway by the Year concert series, created, written hosted & directed by Scott Siegel, with music direction by Ross Patterson. Performers TBA.
The New Wave (Mar. 21 at 8 PM ET), celebrating songs from Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormon, RENT, and more.
From The Ziegfeld Follies to Moulin Rouge (May 23 at 8 PM ET), celebrating Jukebox and Revue Musicals.
Almost on Broadway (June 27 at 8 PM ET), celebrating the songs born Off-Broadway and in shows that played everywhere but Broadway.
A One Night Only History of Broadway Song and Dance (Sept. 19 at 8 PM ET), celebrating an explosion of dance on the Great White Way.
**********************
Initial casting has been announced for Marcus Gardley’s film adaptation of the Broadway musical “The Color Purple,” directed by Blitz Bazawule.
Taraji P. Henson (Shug Avery), Corey Hawkins (Harpo), H.E.R. (Squeak), and more TBA.
**********************
The cast recording of the 2019 world premiere of Joe Iconis’ Love in Hate Nation (at NJ’s Two River Theater) will be released Feb. 11 on Ghostlight Records.
Sydney Farley, Amina Raye, Jasmine Forsberg, Lauren Marcus, Kelly McIntyre, Lena Skeele, Emerson Mae Smith, Ryan Vona, and Tatiana Wechler.
A love story about two women caught in the middle of a changing America in the 1960s, centering on teenagers Susannah and Sheila and their time at the oppressive National Reformatory for Girls.
**********************
Nick Rashad Burroughs: Groove Machine Live will take place Mon. Feb. 7 at 8 PM ET at NYC’s Cutting Room, directed by Zhailon Levingston, with music direction by Michael O. Mitchell.
A night of Funk, Pop, R&B, and Rock & Roll.
**********************
Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen will run Apr. 8 – June 18 at the Golden Theatre, directed by Matthew Dunster.
Alfie Allen, David Threlfall, Tracie Bennett, Own Campbell, Jeremy Crutchley, Gaby French, Josh Goulding, John Hodgkinson, Richard Hollis, John Horton, and Ryan Pope, with Sebastian Beacon, Peter Bradbury, Katie Fabel, Colin McPhillamy, and Andy Nyman.
A hangman finds himself unemployed when hanging is abolished. Set in a small pub in Northern England in the 1960s, regulars gather to hear Harry’s reaction to the news when a mysterious stranger from London, Mooney, enters their world.
**********************
Off-Broadway’s Irish Rep presents A Tribute to Our Pal: The Musicals of Harold Prince, which will take place Mon. June 13 at 7 PM ET at NYC’s Town Hall.
Loretta Brennan Glucksman, in recognition of her philanthropic support of Irish communities and her tireless work in promoting Irish culture and heritage in the U.S. and around the world.
TBA.
**********************
She Loves Me will run Mar. 1 – Apr. 24 at DC’s Signature Theatre, directed by Matthew Gardiner, with choreography by Kelly Crandall d’Amboise, and music direction by Jon Kalbfleisch.
Ali Ewoldt (Amalia Balash), Deven Kolluri (Georg Nowack), Emmanuel Elliot Key (Arpad Laszlo), Bobby Smith (Ladislav Sipos), Maria Rizzo (Ilona Ritter), Vincent Kempski (Seven Kodaly), Lawrence Redmond (Mr. Maraczek), and David Schlumpf (Head Waiter), with Andre Hinds, Christopher Mueller, Daniel Powers, Olivia Ashley Reed, Katherine Riddle, Jillian Wessel, Drake Leach, Sarah Anne Sillers, and Dylan Toms.
**********************
& 
An Evening with Barry Manilow & Bruce Sussman will take place Sat. Mar. 12 at 7 PM ET at NYC’s 92Y.
The event will examine Manilow & Sussman’s musical Harmony: A New Musical.
Performers TBA.