Today’s Highlights:
But I’m a Cheerleader, world premiere by Bill Augustin & Andrew Abrams, directed by Tania Azevedo, featuring Alice Croft (Megan Williams), Oliver Brooks (Dad/Larry), Edward Chitticks (Jared/Rock), Damon Gould (André), Tiffany Graves (Mary Brown), Jodie Jacobs (Mom/Lloyd), Lemuel Knights (Mike), Evie Rose Land (Graham), Harry Singh (Jalal), Jodie Steele (Kimberly/Hilary), Aaron Teoh (Dolph), and Kia-Paris Walcott (Sinead), opens at London’s Turbine Theatre.
The Chinese Lady, by Lloyd Suh, directed by Ralph B. Peña, featuring Daniel K. Isaac, Shannon Tyo, Cindy Im, and Jon Norman, begins previews at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater.
Play-Per-View’s Jane Anger, by Talene Monahon, directed by Jess Chayes, featuring Michael Urie, Ryan Spahn, Talene Monahon, and Amelia Workman, begins previews in person at Off-Broadway’s New Ohio Theatre.
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Reviews for English at Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theatre:
NY Times (Jesse Green): … How our mother tongue gives us voice yet limits our world — and how a new tongue expands that world yet may strangle our voice — is the subject of English… Both contemplative and comic, it nails every opportunity for big laughs as its English-learning characters struggle with accents and idioms. But the laughter provides cover for the deeper idea that their struggle is not just linguistic… The cast is uniformly excellent, in a suitably unshowy but fully lived-in way.
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): …Toossi’s script contains a quiet power: Characters are introduced, and we slowly get to know them as their dreams and resentments are unveiled over the course of 100 minutes. Not everything is explicit, mysteries are allowed to linger, and the unsaid regularly hovers over the stage in moments of exquisite dramatic tension. English feels like a breath of fresh air when so many new plays seem to follow a thesis with which the playwright delights in bludgeoning the audience. It’s a remarkably mature off-Broadway debut for Toossi.
Talkin’ Broadway (David Hurst): …a moving play that will undoubtedly provoke soul-searching from its audiences about the causal relationship between our identity and our language… this haunting, lyrical exploration of a group of Iranian students enrolled in a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) class… Beautifully directed by Knud Adams with welcome touches of levity and cultural humor… the cast is uniformly superb, with rich portraits of complex characters created by everyone on stage.
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GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “I have always felt that Sir John Gielgud is the finest actor on earth from the neck up.” ~ Kenneth Tynan
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Lincoln Center Theater will present Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, with additional material by Branden Jacob Jenkins, to begin previews Apr. 1 and open Apr. 25 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.
James Vincent Meredith (Mr. Antrobus), Roslyn Ruff (Mrs. Antrobus), Paige Gilbert (Gladys Antrobus), Julian Robertson (Henry Antrobus), Gabby Beans (Sabina), and Priscilla Lopez (Fortune Teller), with Eunice Bae, Terry Bell, Ritisha Chakraborty, William DeMeritt, Jeremy Gallardo, Avery Glymph, Donnetta Livinia Grays, Tyrone Mitchell Henderson, Maya Loren Jackson, Anaseini Katoa, Cameron Keitt, Megan Lomax, Kathiamarice Lopez, Lindsay Rico, Julian Rozzell Jr., Julyana Soelistyo, Phillip Taratula, Beau Thom, Alphonso Walker Jr., Adrienne Wells, and Sarin Monae West.
The play catapults us forward and back in time and place, spanning 5000 years and no time at all. We follow the Antrobus family as they confront the challenges of nothing less than the apocalypse, dinosaurs, war, a wooly mammoth, the Ice Age, and raising two kids in suburban Excelsior, New Jersey. It is mayhem, sometimes absurd and funny, and sometimes deeply moving, but it is always real.
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A Grand Night for Singing will run Mar. 10-27 at San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon, directed & choreographed by Cindy Goldfield, with music direction by Lynden James.
Alison Ewing, Edu González, Jacqueline DeMuro, Joel Champman, and Keith Pinto.
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Woody King’s New Federal Theatre presents the world premiere of Charles L. White’s Gong Lum’s Legacy will run Mar. 24 – Apr. 24 at the Theatre @ St. Clements, directed by Elizabeth Van Dyke.
Anthony Goss, Alinca Hamilton, Hansel Tan, DeShawn White, and Henry Yuk.
It’s 1925 in the Mississippi Delta. Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South, we witness the unexpected romance that blooms between Joe Ting, a Chinese immigrant, and Lucy Sims, a Black school teacher.
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The Hudson Valley’s Bard SummerScape has announced its Summer 2022 season (June 23 – Aug. 14):
Dom Juan (June 23 – July 17), world premiere adaptation by Sylvaine Guyout & Gideon Lester, directed by Ashley Tata. This new version blends 17th century France with late 1970s America.
Song of Songs (July 1-3), world premiere by Pam Tanowitz & David Lang. A new take on the biblical Song of Songs, which explores Tanowitz’s Jewish identity through a proscenium ensemble dance set to Lang’s choral interpretation of the text.
The Silent Woman (July 22-31), comic opera by Richard Strauss, directed by Christian Räth.
. Spiegeltent (July 22-31), a new dance with music by David Lang, and choreography by Pam Tanowitz, which provides an environment for live music and dancing throughout the festival. A curated celebration of Black roots music by Michael Mwenso & Jono Gasparro.
. Treemonisha (dates TBA), by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.
…and more TBA…
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Anthony McCarten’s A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical will run June 21 – July 21 at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, directed by Michael Mayer.
Casting and additional creative team members TBA.
With his first break into songwriting in the 1960s and his meteoric rise in the 1970s, and plenty of crushing disappointments and heart-stopping triumphs along the way, Neil Diamon has maintained an almost unthinkable level of superstardom for five straight decades. How did a poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn become one of the most universally adored showmen of all time? There’s only one way to tell it: a musical set to his era-defining smash hits that entranced the world.
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The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has announced complete casting for Barry Manilow & Bruce Sussman’s Harmony, to run Mar. 23 – May 8 (opening Apr. 13) at NYC’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, directed & choreographed by Warren Carlyle.
Sierra Boggess (Mary), Chip Zien (Rabbi), Jessie Davidson (Ruth), and Ana Hoffman (Josephine Baker), with Sean Bell, Danny Kornfeld, Eric Peters, Blake Roman, Steven Telsey, Kenny Morris, Elise Frances Daniells, Zak Edwards, Abby Goldfarb, Eddie Grey, Shayne Kennon, Benjamin Harold Moore, Matthew Mucha, Tori Palin, Barrett Riggins, Kayleen Seil, Andrew O’Shanick, Nancy Ticotin, and Kate Wesler.
The true story of the Comedian Harmonists, an ensemble of six young men in 1920s Germany who took the world by storm with the blend of sophisticated close harmonies and uproarious stage antics, until their inclusion of Jewish singers put them on a collision course with history.
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& 
Red Bull Theater presents a reading of Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest (Une Tempête), to livestream on Mon. Feb. 28 at 7:30 PM ET from NYC’s Florence Gould Hall (55 E. 59th St.), directed by Lanise Antoine Shelley. The reading will also be available on-demand through Mar. 6.
Isabel Ellison, Carson Elrod, Kimberly Exum, Manoel Feciano, Enid Graham, Isaiah Johnson, Anthony Michael Lopez, Paul Niebanck, Jay O. Sanders, Derek Smith, and Anthony Venturini.
This adaptation of Shakespeare’s play is seen through a postcolonial lens. The characters and plot are largely unchanged. Prospero conjures a violent storm to drive his enemy’s ship ashore on the island on which he is exiled with his daughter. Césaire’s island is located specifically in the Caribbean, with Caliban and Ariel, depicted here as black slaves to Prospero, are centralized. Their opposing voices echo Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Written in the tumultuous 1960s. A Tempest confronts complex intersections of race, power, and anti-imperialism with intelligence, wit, and beauty.
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Celebration Theatre‘s Buyer & Cellar, by Jonathan Tolan, will run Mar. 17 – Apr. 17 (opening Mar. 25) at Hollywood’s Broadwater Second Stage, directed by Katie Lindsay.
Mike Millan (and standby Daniel Burns).
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Article: Christopher Wheeldon discusses the process of creating the dance numbers, and shaping such well-known movement for the Broadway stage.
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Complete casting has been announced for The Bridges of Madison County, to run Mar. 11-27 at NJ’s Axelrod Performing Arts Center, directed by Hunter Foster, with music direction by Keith Levenson.
Kate Baldwin (Francesca Johnson), Aaron Lazar (Robert Kincaid), Bart Shatto (Bud Johnson), Thomas Cromer (Michael Johnson), and Emily Pellecchia (Carolyn Johnson), with Giuliana Augello, Sealth Grover, Lara Hayhurst, Mark Megill, Natalie Myrick, Rutledge Varley, and Nikki Yarnell.
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Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney will run Mar. 26 – May 1 at the Odyssey Theatre, directed by Peter Richards.
Kevin Ashworth (Walt Disney), Thomas Piper (Roy Disney), Brittney Bertier (Diane), and Cory Washington (Ron).
Meet Walt Disney. He’s got a screenplay that he wants you to hear. It’s about Walt Disney (everything’s about Walt) and about how his family is all going to miss him when he’s dead. You’re going to miss him, too. Walt’s sure of it. This is a play about egos and empires and changing the world, whether it wants to be changed or not. In the play, the character of Walt fights with his brother, has problems with his daughter, and doesn’t like his son-in-law — human problems Hnath has both taken from biographies and invented. Says director Richards, “Hnath has take a lot of liberties here. People should not assume that everything is true.”