Today’s Highlights:
Straight Line Crazy, world premiere by David Hare, directed by Nicholas Hytner, featuring Ralph Fiennes, Alisha Bailey, Samuel Barnett, David Bromley, Al Coppola, Siobhán Cullen, Ian Kirkby, Alana Maria, Dani Moseley, Guy Paul, Helen Schlesinger, Mary Stillwaggon Stewart, and Danny Webb, opens at London’s Bridge Theatre.
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice UK tour, by Jim Cartwright, directed by Bronagh Lagan, featuring Christina Bianco (LV), Shobna Gulati (Mari Hoff), Ian Kelsey (Ray Say), Akshay Gulati (Billy), William Ilkley (Mr. Boo), Fiona Mulvaney (Sadie), and James Robert Moore (Phone Mam), with. Anna Hale, launches at Southampton’s Mayflower Studios.
To Steve with Love: Liz Callaway Celebrates Sondheim opens at NYC’s 54 Below.
National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene‘s Harmony, by Barry Manilow & Bruce Sussman, directed by Warren Carlyle, featuring 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, begins previews at NYC’s Museum of Jewish Heritage.
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Reviews for Good Night, Oscar at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre:
Chicago Tribune (Chris Jones): Through the lips of the mordant savant Oscar Levant — “Eeyore in a cheap suit” — the playwright Doug Wright subtly takes down today’s pious and censorious American theater, delivering a blistering and hilarious piece of retro writing filled with caustic witticisms, tasteless epigrams, pithy one-liners and satirical bon mots. In the four-star attraction Good Night, Oscar at the Goodman Theatre, Levant and Wright combine for a master class on the nature and value of satire. “Laughter’s not innocent,” says Levant as a guest on the “Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, dismissing the moralistic nerves of a 1950s NBC executive. “It always comes at a price to someone” … And what a star Wright and his fine director, Lisa Peterson, have found in Sean Hayes…
Chicago Sun Times (Steven Oxman): …Is humor about battling mental illness, while recognizing the seriousness of mental illness, still funny? Playwright Doug Wright, in his new play Good Night, Oscar, now playing in a Broadway-ready production at the Goodman Theatre, answers that question definitively. Yes, it is. But it’s also poignant… The play, about the one and only Oscar Levant—a great pianist, a great wit, a tortured man with obsessive-compulsive disorder and drug addictions—captures just the right balance of humor and pathos. It’s a contemplative, focused and well-plotted drama wrapped around endless witticisms—many of them Levant’s, plenty of them Wright’s—that make you think throughout that it’s really a comedy because it’s so darn funny… Impressively, Good Night, Oscar feels perennially relevant without ever forcing us out of its historical era.
Broadway World (Rachel Weinberg): Sean Hayes…gives a magnetic performance that reflects he man’s immense capacity for humor and his musical genius but also his deep insecurities… Hayes’s central performance is a magnificent character study. Hayes is every bit as compelling a stage performer as one might expect, and Good Night, Oscar affords him the opportunity to showcase his formidable talents in some familiar and surprising ways… Good Night, Oscar also probes the question of why American media was so reluctant to address those issues head on… Wright’s script succeeds in using Oscar and Jack’s willingness to embrace those traditionally taboo topics head on to probe why they have so long been eschewed in American popular culture…
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GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.” ~ Michael Caine
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Black Theatre Coalition presents its virtual gala, Building New Pathways, which will stream Sun. Mar. 27 at 7 PM ET, written by Jess Carson, and directed by Daniel Calderon, with music direction by Michael O. Mitchell. The event is free for all after registering here.
LaChanze, Wynton Marsalis, Kenneth Overton, Norm Lewis, Britton Smith, Christiani Pitts, Alex Newell, Aisha Jackson, T. Oliver Reid, Rashidra Scott, Brandon Michael Nase, and Vanessa Williams.
Building New Pathways is a 75-minute celebration of what Black artists have been able to accomplish over 154 years both on and offstage. The show will highlight the history of Black artists’ creativity, magnify the work of today’s Black artists, and most importantly, shed a light on the future of Broadway, the American theatre, and those leading the way.
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Complete casting has been announced for Dave Malloy’s Octet, to run Apr. 20 – May 29 (opening Apr. 27) at CA’s Berkeley Rep, directed by Annie Tippe, with music direction by Or Matias.
Adam Bashian, Kim Blanck, Alex Gibson, Justin Gregory Lopez, J.D. Mollison, Isabel Santiago, Margo Seibert, and Kuhoo Verma, with Dean Linnard, Roeen Nooran, Lili Thomas, and Nicole Weiss.
Eight internet-obsessed people meet in real life to share their stories and wrestle their demons, using nothing but a pitch pipe and the transcendent quality of their voices. The musical sings of connection, redemption, hope – and how we can be truly present with each other.
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Video: Judy Kuhn, Steven Pasquale, Ethan Slater, and more, talk about Stephen Sondheim while in the recording studio making the Off-Broadway cast recording of Assassins (which was released Mar. 18).
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Broadway in Hollywood has announced its 2022-23 season at both the Pantages and Dolby Theatres:
Jagged Little Pill (Sept. 13 – Oct. 2) at the Pantages Theatre.
To Kill a Mockingbird (Oct. 25 – Nov. 27) at the Pantages Theatre, starring Richard Thomas (Atticus Finch).
Annie (Nov. 29 – Dec. 18). at the Dolby Theatre. A non-union production.
Mean Girls (Jan. 4-29, 2023), at the Pantages Theatre.
SIX (Apr. 11 – June 11) at the Pantages Theatre.
Hairspray (May 2-21) at the Dolby Theatre. A non-union production
TINA – The Tina Turner Musical (June 13 – July 9) at the Pantages Theatre.
Beetlejuice (July 11-30) at the Pantages Theatre.
The Lion King (dates TBA) at the Pantages Theatre.
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Signature Theatre has announced the world premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God will run Apr. 12 – May 15 (opening May 2) at the Signature Center, directed by David Cromer.
Kyle Beltran and Will Brill.
Keith, a mortgage broker, and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker seeing to buy a plot of land that belonged to his family many decades ago, realize they share a “specific kind of sadness.” At this desk in the middle of America, labyrinthine loan talk opens into a discussion about the relentless chokehold of financial insecurity and a bond over the precariousness of parenthood. With humor and wrenching honesty, Hunter commingles two lives and deftly bridges disparate experiences of marginality.
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Ensemble Theatre Company‘s American Son, by Christopher Demos-Brown, will run Apr. 7-24 (opening Apr. 9) at Santa Barbara’s New Vic, directed by Jonathan Fox.
Tracey A. Leigh (Kendra), Jamison Jones (Scott), Alex Morris (Lieutenant John Stokes), and Toby Tropper (Officer Paul Larkin).
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Milwaukee Rep has announced its 2022-23 season in various venues:
Unforgettable: John-Mark McGaha Sings Nat King Cole (Sept. 9 – Nov. 6).
Ragtime (Sept. 20 – Oct. 30), directed by Mark Clements.
Wife of a Salesman (Sept. 27 – Nov. 6), world premiere by Eleanor Burgess.
When a 1950s housewife, from a certain classic American drama, tracks down the woman who is sleeping with her husband, the two discover that they have more in common than society would like them to believe. Important questions of marriage, duty and happiness rise to the surface in this frank expose of the ways in which they world has, and hasn’t, changed across generations.
Beehive: The 60s Musical (Nov. 11 – Jan. 15), by Larry Gallagher.
A Christmas Carol (Nov. 29 – Dec. 24), directed by Mark Clements.
The Nativity Variations (Dev. 15 – Dec. 11), world premiere by Catherine Trieschmann. In a small midwestern town, auteur theater director Jules and her experimental community theater troupe face their biggest and most ambitious challenge yet –staging the Christmas pageant at St. Ignatius Episcopal Church. As their adventurous vision for the greatest story every told hilariously evolves to include Shakespearian comedy and even foul-mouthed puppets, Jules – with a gentle nudge by Father Juan – is left to consider the purpose of her art and the true meaning of the holiday season.
Much Ado About Nothing (Jan. 10 – Feb. 12, 2023), directed by Laura Braza.
Dino! An Evening with Dean Martin (Jan. 20 – Mar. 19), by Armen Pandola.
The Heart Sellers (Feb. 7 – Mar. 19) world premiere by, by Lloyd Suh. The play gives voices to the Asian immigrant experience in the 1970s when the landmark Hart-Cellar Act granted thousands of professional workers a new path to citizenship. But for new Americans Jane and Luna, life in the USA with their workaholic husbands has left them feeling isolated and invisible. one Thanksgiving – over sips of wine and a questionable frozen turkey – they reminisce and dream of spreading their wings together in the land of opportunity: disco dancing, learning to drive, and even a visit to Disneyland
Seven Guitars (Mar. 7 – Apr. 2), a co-production with Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
The Greatest Love for Whitney (Mar. 24 – May 28), world premiere by Mark Clements. A tribute concert to Whitney Houston.
Rep Lab (Apr. 6-10), which will showcase Milwaukee Rep’s Emerging Professional Residents.
God of Carnage (Apr. 18 – May 14), by Yasmina Reza.
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Spring Awakening will run Apr. 23 – May 29 (opening Apr. 28) at Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre, directed & choreographed by Brenda Didier, with music direction by Justin Akira Kono.
Ariana Burks (Martha), McKinley Caret (Adult Women), Jack DeCesare (Melchior), Maya Lou Hlava (Wendla), Quinn Kelch (Moritz), Maddy Kelly (Thea), John Marshall Jr. (Hanschen), (Adult Men), Juwon Tyrel Perry (Georg), Kevin James Sievert (Otto), Kelan M. Smith (Ernst), and Tiffany T. Taylor (Ilse), with Isis Elizabeth, Desiree Gonalez, Ryan Hamman, Drew Mitchell, Michael Joseph Mitchell, Sydney Monet Swanson, Genevieve Thiers, and Anthony Whitaker.