Today’s Highlights:
Dear Mr. Bottrell, I Cannot Possibly Accept This, starring David Dean Bottrell, opens at LA’s Matrix Theatre.
The Journals of Adam and Eve, by Ed Weinberger, directed by Anders Corcoran, featuring Hal Linden and Marilu Henner, previews at Off-Broadway’s Sheen Center.
**********************
Reviews for Jason Robert Brown &Taylor Mac’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil at Chigago’s Goodman Theatre, starring J. Harrison Ghee, Tom Hewitt, and Sierra Boggess :
Chicago Tribune (Chris Jones): …gutsy but needs a conflict worthy of its star … This show, evocatively designed by Christopher Oram, is something new, weird and gutsy enough to jettison most conventional expectations. Like many pre-Broadway tryouts, it has its strengths and weaknesses and a wildly uneven second half of a second act that suggests everyone simply ran out of enough time to fashion an ending that really satisfies… The strengths? There are two. One is the truly fabulous performance of [J. Harrison] Ghee as The Lady Chablis, a transgender Savannah performer who was but a minor character in Berendt’s original work… Ghee commands the stage with so much zest, brio and life that everything else feels sepia-toned by comparison… The second strength is the restless and overstuffed Jason Robert Brown score, filled with enough thrilling musical ideas and rich, sensual pleasures for three musicals… The show’s fundamental weakness? It has taken a book written from an ironic, outsider perspective with all characters treated equally and so stacked the deck in favor of the anti-establishment outsiders…
Variety (Steven Oxman) …the admirably bold, unconventionally self-aware new stage musical… at the end of the first act in Taylor Mac’s script, J. Harrison Ghee’s intensely entertaining Lady Chablis steps in front of the shooting scene that formed the storytelling spine of both book and film, alarmed that attention may stray from her starring role: “Don’t look at the True Crime,” she directs us. “Don’t look at the white man who shot the hottest piece of ass in town” …a musically and choreographically diverse adaptation — filled with diverting performances, but also overly diverted in its approach to the beloved title… Taken purely on its own terms, the musical (now premiering at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago) has an abundance of riches…
Broadway World Chicago (Rachel Weinberg): …a sprawling, messy musical that weaves together the threads of several characters in 1980s Savannah, Georgia… Composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown draws on a variety of different musical styles, while Taylor Mac’s book scenes present a series of vignettes for the Savannah residents. Brown uses a hodgepodge of musical styles to develop the characters, but the result is a score that lacks cohesion and is occasionally redundant. Along with director Rob Ashford, Mac and Brown took a “go big or go home” approach to MIDNIGHT. I admire the musical risk-taking, but the adaptation of John Berendt’s 1994 best-selling book is full of character threads but relatively light on plot…
**********************
Broadway Grosses for the week ending July 7.
Click here for the complete analysis.
**********************
the people vs. Lenny Bruce, adapted by Susan Charlotte, will run July 21-22 (both at 7 PM) at Burbank’s Garry Marshall Theatre, directed by Antony Marsellis.
Matthew Arkin, Michael Citriniti, Nicholas Guest, Martha Hackett, Scott Marshall, Greg Mullavey, Larry Pressman, and Alex Purcell.
Martin Garbus, who has been called one of the world’s finest trial lawyers, has represented: Lenny Bruce, Philip Roth, Samuel Beckett, Igor Stravinsky, John Cheever, Daniel Ellsberg, Al Pacino, and Susan Sontag, to name a few! He also smuggled letters from Andrei Sakharov to Jimmy Carter. In April 1964, Lenny Bruce appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. He was arrested along with club owners Howard and Elly Solomon, who were arrested for allowing an obscene performance. On both occasions, Bruce was arrested after leaving the stage. A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Richard Kuh, with Ephraim London and Martin Garbus as the defense attorneys. Bruce and Howard Solomon were found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from—among other artists, writers and educators—Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans. Bruce was sentenced to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon, the owner of the club where Lenny was arrested, later saw Bruce’s conviction overturned.
**********************
York Theatre Company has announced a benefit concert presentation of NEO, by RJ Christian, Eli Cohen, Amy Engelhardt & Molly Horan, Danielle Koenig & Justin D. Cook, Ron Spivak & Michiru Oshima, and Jessica Wu & TJ Rubin, will take place Mon. July 15 at 7 PM at NYC’s Green Room 42, directed by Annette Jolles, with music direction by Beth Falcone, and hosted by Debra Walton.
Sherz Aletaha, Sojourner Brown, Marilyn Caserta, Hillary Fisher, Skye Alyssa Friedman, Sean Doherty, Alex Joseph Grayson, Ellis Gage, August Miller, Diane Phelan, Allison Posner, Lili Thomas, Viet Vo, and more TBA.
**********************
La Cage aux Folles will run Aug. 1-18 at Kansas City’s Music Theater Heritage, directed by Daisy Buckët & Artistic Director Tim Scott, with choreography by Tina Jane Rojas, and music direction by Ty Tuttle.
Phil Fiorini (Albin/Zaza), with Eddie Andrews, Christopher Barksdale-Burns, Sydnee Bell, Courtney Germany, Margo Mikkelson, Colleen O’Gara, Terry O’Reagan, Keenan Ramos, Julian Rivera, Ryan Russell, and Jackson Tomlin.
**********************
Linda Purl in concert will take place Thurs. July 11 at 7 PM at Ithica’s Triphammer Arts Festival, with music direction by Tedd Firth.
**********************
Red Bull Theater‘s Medea: Re-Versed, adapted by Luis Quintero, will run Sept 12 – Oct. 13 (opening Sept. 23) at the Sheen Center, co-conceived & directed by Nathan Winkelstein.
Sarin Monae West (Medea), Siena D’Addario, Melissa Mahoney, Mark Martin, Jacob Ming-Trent, Luis Quintero, and Stephen Michael Spencer.
An ice-cold, high-octane adaptation of Euripides’ play written in battle rap verse, this brand-new hip-hop version of Medea sheds contemporary light on the classic tragedy of family, power, and revenge – as terrifying and shocking today as it was two thousand years ago. Quintero’s version of the story reignites the sacred rage of our ancestors and illuminates in the most human terms the extraordinary lengths that some people will travel to even the scales of justice.
**********************
Lianne Marie Dobbs: The Windmills of My Mind… for Dusty Springfield will take place Thurs. Aug. 22 at 8:30 PM at LA’s Catalina Jazz Club, with music direction by Ron Abel.
**********************
Workshop presentations of Drew Droege’s Messy White Gays will take place July 19 & 20 (8 PM) and July 21 (2 PM) at Poughkeepsie, NY’s Powerhouse Theatre (at Vassar College), directed by Mike Donahue.
Drew Droege, Nico Greetham, Aaron Jackson, Jeffrey Self, and Pete Zias.
Sunday morning. Hell’s Kitchen. Brecken and Caden have just murdered their throuple-mate and stuffed him into a Jonathan Adler credenza. Unfortunately, they’ve invited friends over for brunch. Feel bad for them!
**********************
Sandy Rustin, Hunter Foster & Eric Price’s Clue will run July 30 – Aug. 25 at the Ahmanson Theatre, directed by Foster.
Mariah Burks (The Cook), John Treacy Egan (Colonel Mustart), Michelle Elaine (Miss Scarlet), Joanna Glushak (Mrs. Peacock), Tari Kelly (Mrs. White), Mark Price (Wadsworth), John Startzer (Mr. Green), Jonathan Spivey (Professor Plum), Alex Syiek (Mr. Boddy), Teddie Trice (The Cop), and Elisabeth Yancy (Yvette), with Greg Balla, Alison Ewing, Mary McNulty, and James Taylor Odom.
**********************
Lianne Marie Dobbs: The Windmills of My Mind… for Dusty Springfield will take place Thurs. Aug. 22 at Hollywood’s Catalina Jazz Club, with Ron Abel, Grant Geissman, Randy Landas & Tom Walsh.
**********************
The Mint Theatre will present Lynn Riggs’ Sump’n Like Wings Sept. 21 – Nov. 2 (opening Oct. 10) at Theatre Row, directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges.
Casting TBA.
The play is set in Oklahoma, six years after the Indian and Oklahoma Territories combined to become the 46th state in the Union in 1907. Wille Baker is a 16-year-old girl too proud and too wild for the life she’s living. Her mother runs the dining room in the hotel her uncle owns. Willie is stuck helping her, squirming under her thumb while her uncle argues for tenderness and compassion. A story of the lessons learned by families about freedom and limits — about love, respect, and safety. It’s a story about home and about leaving home.
**********************
Shirley Jones: A Gala Celebration of Her Life, Career, and Legacy will take place Sat. Sept. 21 at 4 PM at Pittsburgh CLO, hosted by Shaun Cassidy, Patrick Cassidy, and Ryan Cassidy.
Sierra Boggess, Norm Lewis, Jessie Mueller, Kelli O’Hara, and Adam Pascal.