Today’s Highlights:
Regretfully, So The Birds Are, by Julia Izumi, directed by Jenny Koons, featuring Sasha Diamon (Illy), Gibson Frazier (Cam the Snowman), Kristine Nielsen (Elinore), Sky Smith (Neel), Pearl Sun (Srey), and Shannon Tyo (Mora), begins previews at Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons.
Picnic, directed by John Farmanesh-Bocca, featuring Monti Washington (Hal Carter), Mattie Harris Lowe & Caitlin O’Grady (alternating as Madge Owens), Symphony Canady (Millie), Yolanda Snowball (Flo), Ahkei Togun (Alan Seymour), Sydney A. Mason (Rosemary Sydney), Ronin Lee & Derrick Parker (alternating as Howard Bevans), Rosemary Thomas (Helen Potts), and Erika L. Holmes (Irma Kronkite), begins previews at LA’s Odyssey Theatre.
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending Mar. 19.
Click here for the complete analysis.
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Finally! TV’s Smash, by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Rick Elice & Bob Martin, is coming to Broadway in the 2024-25 season, directed by Susan Stroman, with choreography by Joshua Bergasse.
No news yet on casting. Click here for the show’s website.
The theatre-centric series’ long journey to the stage has shifted from a fully realized production of the series’ fictional Marilyn Monroe bio-musical Bombshell to a musical adaptation of the series itself, with many of the series’ songs joining new tunes. It’s unclear if “Let’s Be Bad,” written for Smash but now interpolated into the Broadway score of Shaiman and Wittman’s Some Like It Hot, will be included — though the duo left room for that possibility.
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The world premiere developmental production of Jonathan Prince, Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett & Steve Robson’s Dark of the Moon will run Mar. 29 – Apr. 16 (opening Apr. 1) at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre, directed by James O’Neil, with choreography by Christopher Gattelli, and music direction by Brent Crayon.
Ava Delaney (Barbara Allen), Jake David Smith (John), Jennifer Leigh Warren (Conjur Woman), Timothy Warmen (Conjur Man), Lesli Margherita Raven), Juliette Redden (Arwen), Dylan Goike (Devin), Terri Bibb (Gemma Allen), Joseph Fuqua (Thomas Allen), CJ Cruz (Floyd), Anna Demaria (Ella), and Jane Macfie (Patricia Bergen).
Twilight meets West Side Story. The musical follows John, a witch boy from the Smoky Mountains, who falls i love with Barbara Allen, a beautiful and rebellious mortal girl who longs for more life than she finds in the fictitious Appalachian town of Buck Creek. John is willing to give up anything to be with Barbara Allen, and makes a deal with the conjur people to give up his immortality and become mortal if Barbara and he can stay true to each other for a year.
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Goodspeed (link TBA) has announced its season of new musicals at the Norma Terrace Theatre:
Here You Come Again (July 26 – Aug. 27), by Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre, & Tricia Paoluccio, directed & choreographed by Barre, with songs written by or performed by Dolly Parton. A rollicking and touching new musical that brings Dolly Parton together with a diehard fan going through a trying time.
Private Jones (Oct. 13 – Nov. 5), written and directed by Marshall Pailet, with music direction by Madeline Benson, and choreography by Misha Shields. Inspired by the true story of a deaf soldier in Word War I who displays remarkable skill as a sniper while hiding his profound hearing loss. Witness how one man’s journey through war becomes all the more treacherous because he―and we―can’t hear what’s coming next.
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Highlights from the original run of Dancin’ on Broadway:
Video: 1978 TV commercial
Video: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” on “Merv Griffin”
Video: Tribute to America on “USO Honors Bob Hope”
Video: Cast performs “Sing, Sing, Sing” at the 1978 Tony Awards
Video: Bob Fosse wins Tony Award for Dancin’
Video: “Dancin’ Man” performed by the 2023 cast
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Dancers Responding to Aids‘ annual Fire Island Dance Festival will return July 14-16 at Fire Island Pines.
Further details TBA.
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Eric Bogosian’s Drinking in America has been extended through Apr. 13 at Off-Broadway’s Minetta Lane Theatre, directed by Mark Armstrong.
Andre Royo
Royo performs in over a dozen characters, all of whom are intoxicated, in this comic exploration of the modern American male psyche was first performed in 1986, and now coincides with contemporary conversations about toxic masculinity and male fragility.
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J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company will present Kander & Ebb’s Woman of the Year Apr. 13-23 at Theatre Row, directed by Robert W. Schneider, with choreography by Deidre Goodwin, and music direction my Miles Plant.
Janine LaManna (Tess Harding), John Leone (Sam Craig), Eric Michael Gillett (Gerald), Rebecca Spigelman (Helga), Kelly Lester (Jan), and Jake Urban (Alexi), Sarah Mackenzie Baron (Ballet Mistress), Andrew Eckert (Chip Salisbury), Jeremy Konopka (Ellis), Tony Romero (Abbott), Timmy Lewis (Phil), and Eddie Marco (Pinky), Marcus Canada (Maury), with Tyler Mell and Nicole Weitzman.
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Video: Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, and Tommy Kail talk Sweeney Todd on “CBS Sunday Morning”
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The Manhattan School of Music – Musical Theatre will present the world premiere of Emily Loesser, Don Stephenson, Jim Wann & David Shenton’s Paperboy Mar. 24-26, directed by Don Stephenson, with choreography by Liza Gennaro, and music direction by Miles Plant.
Students from the school’s Musical Theatre Division.
Set in 1950s Memphis, the musicals tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who stutters, and how his life is transformed one summer when he takes over a friend’s paper route.
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Upcoming concerts at Hollywood’s Catalina Jazz Club:
Joey Arias: Strange Resume (Mar. 30 at 8:30 PM). 
here.
An Evening with James Snyder (Apr. 27 at 8:30 PM). here.
Willie Barcena: Perfectly Flawed (May 4 at 8 PM). here.
Alisan Porter: The Songs That Made Me (June 24 at 8:30 PM). here.
An Evening With Charlo Crossley (Sept. 28 at 8:30 PM). here.
An Evening with Thelma Houston (Nov. 10-11 at 8:30 PM). Nov. 10 here. and Nov. 11 here.
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Arlene Hutton’s According to the Chorus previews Mar. 23 and opens Fri. Mar. 24 at 59E59 Theatres, directed by Chris Goutman.
Karen Ziemba (Audrey), Sofia Ayral-Hutton (Nicki), Dana Brooke (KJ), Joy Donze (Linda), Tabatha Gayle (Monica), Judy Hiller (Brenda), Brandon Jones (Peter), Ricki Lynée (Joyce), Kelly McCarty (Stacie), Kleo Mitrokostas (Jessica), Iraisa Ann Reilly (Mallory), and Will Sarratt (Van), with Kim Yancey Moore, Krista Grevas, and Olivia the Dog
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A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical will conduct technical rehearsals and launch it tour in Fall 2024 at the Providence Performing Arts Center. The tour will then officially launch later in Fall 2024.
Casting, tour dates, and additional information TBA.
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Off-Broadway’s Irish Rep has announced that the final 4 performances (Apr. 14-16) of Beckett’s Endgame, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, will be livestreamed here.
John Douglas Thompson (Hamm), Bill Irwin (Clov), Joe Grifasi (Nell), and Patrice Chevannes (Nagg).
Hamm is blind and chair-bound, living out the end days in a dingy room with his servant Clov and his parents (who live in trash cans). Clove is the only inhabitant capable of coming and going…yet he does not fo.
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Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s shadow/land, previously presented as an audio play, will return as a live production Apr. 20 – May 21 (opening May 4) at The Public Theater, directed by Candis C. Jones.
Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Ruth), Lizan Mitchell (Magalee), and Christine Shepard (Grand Marshal), with Lynette R Freeman, Perri Gaffney, and Joy-Marie Thomson.
This is the first installment of a 10-play cycle traversing the Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of disaster, evacuation, displacement, and urban renewal rippling in and beyond New Orleans. As Hurricane Katrina begins her ruin, tensions between duty & desire surface, a levee is brought to its knees & Ruth must wrestle with all that she’s ready to let go. The piece is a lyrical meditation on legacy, erotic fugitivity, and self-determination.