Today’s Highlights:
My Fair Lady (Lincoln Center’s production), directed by Bartlett Sher, featuring Amara Okereke (Eliza Doolittle), Harry Haddon-Paton as(Henry Higgins), Vanessa Redgrave (Mrs. Higgins), Maureen Beattie (Mrs. Pearce), Sharif Affix (Freddie Eynesford-Hill), Stephen K. Amos (Alfred P. Doolittle) and Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Pickering), with Dammi Aregbeshola, Bernadette Bangura, Joseph Claus, Jordan Crouch, Jamie Cruttenden, Francessca Daniella-Baker, Barry Drummond, Bethany Huckle, Heather Jackson, Emma Johnson, Charlotte Kennedy, Sinead Kenny, Jenny Legg, Tom Liggins, Rebekah Lowings, Carl Patrick, Tom Ping, Dominique Planter, Joseph Poulton, John Stacey, Joshua Steel, Oliver Tester, Adam Vaughan, Annie Wensak, and Paul Westwood, opens at the London Coliseum.
Roundabout Theatre‘s Exception to the Rule, world premiere by Dave Harris, directed by Miranda Haymon, featuring MaYaa Boatend (Erika), Malik Childs (Tommy), Mister Fitzgerald (Abdul), toney Goins (Dayrin), Amdandla Jahaya (Mikayla), and Claudia Logan (Dasani), opens at Off-Broadway’s Steinberg Center.
Every Brilliant Thing, by Duncan McMillan & Jonny Donahoe, directed by directed by Tom Quaintance, featuring Jeffrey Meanza and Kathryn Hunter-Williams (rotating performances), opens at Virginia Stage Company.
Porchlight Revisits Passing Strange, directed by Donterrio, featuring Michael Maurice Ashfor (Explorer), Jos N Banks (Creator), Reneisha J Jenkins (Mother), MJ Rawls (Rebel), Nolan Robinson (Youth), Byron Willis (Narrator), and Jasmine Lacy Young (Lover), streams at 7 PM CT at Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre (also May 19).
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Reviews for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Golden Shield at NY City Center:
New York Times (Elizabeth Vincentelli): …It is a legal drama, a romance, a story of sibling estrangement, and a cautionary tale about technology and the cost of political activism. Golden Shield is a lot to chew on and somehow it is not filling… director May Adrales nimbly steers the production… At worst, which is most of the time, the Translator spells out the obvious, ruining the silences, allusions and, yes, lies that undergird many conversations, and by extension theater. It’s as if someone were filling in the blanks in a Pinter play… Golden Shield is more interested in histrionics than in how approximations can get close to the truth, or at least a truth.
Theatermania (Zachary Stewart): … King has written a gripping drama for the age of globalization, with characters bouncing between Beijing, Melbourne, and Palo Alto. She lucidly conveys complicated technical issues of international law and online infrastructure, using them as a basis to examine more timeless questions about ambition and our responsibility to other people (especially our own siblings). Director May Adrales delivers an appropriately fast-paced staging… The translator…not only translates from Chinese, but often conveys the subtext of English conversations, forging a relationship with the audience that we can never fully trust, but nevertheless come to rely on…
New York Stage Review (Jonathan Mandell): It feels churlish to complain about a playwright being too ambitious. But Anchuli Felicia King doesn’t make it easy to resist the temptation with her new play… This convoluted effort interweaving corporate intrigue, legal machinations and family drama becomes further burdened with its explorations of the vagaries of the art of translation. Throughout the play, an onstage character known only as “The Translator” (Fang Du) attempts to translate what the characters are saying to each other and also what they’re not saying. If only he could have made what’s actually going on more coherent…
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2021-22 Outer Critic Circle Awards. Click here for the complete list of winners.
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Chita Rivera Award nominations. Click here for the complete list of nominees.
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending May 15. Click here for the complete analysis.
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GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “There’s a fine line between the Method actor and a schizophrenic.” ~ Nicholas Cage
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Loy A. Webb’s The Light will run June 3-26 at Boston’s Lyric Stage Company, directed by Jacqui Parker.
Dominic Carter, Yewande Odetoyinbo, and Addaperle Evilene.
On the night of their engagement, long-simmering discord bubbles to the surface for Genesis, a Principal at a Chicago charter school and Rashad, her firefighter
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Pittsburgh CLO has announced its 2022 Summer season (casting & creative teams not reported).
Jersey Boys (June 7-12)
The Drowsy Chaperone (June 21-26)
Kinky Boots (July 5-10)
Godspell (July 12-17)
A Chorus Line (July 26-31)
Sister Act (Aug. 9-14)
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The Actors’ Equity Foundation has announced its 2022 award recipients. The Judges Panel included Joe Dziemianowicz; Adam Feldman, Harry Haun, Elysa Gardner, and Frank Scheck.
Richard Seff Award (for veteran actors): Betsy Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic) and Austin Pendleton (The Minutes)
Clarence Derwent Award (for most promising performance of the season): Justin Cooley (Kimberly Akimbo) and Kara Young (Clydes).
Callaway Award (for the best performances in a classical play): Carson Elrod (The Alchemist) and Roslyn Ruff (The Skin Of Our Teeth).
Bayfield Award (for most outstanding performance in a Shakespearean play): Amber Gray (Macbeth).
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New York City Center Encores has announced that its gala benefit production of Jason Robert Brown & Alfred Uhry’s Parade will run Nov. 1-6, directed by Michael Arden.
Ben Platt (Frank), Micaela Diamond (Lucille), and more TBA.
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Madhuri Shekar’s Queen, currently in previews, will open May 19 and continue through June 5 at New Haven’s Long Warf Theatre, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar.
Ben Livingston, Keshav Moodliar, Stephanie Janssen, and Avanthika Srinivasan.
The play follows PhD candidates Sanam and Ariel who have spent the better part of the last decade exhaustively researching vanishing bee populations across the globe. Just as these close friends are about to publish a career-defining paper, Sanam stumbles upon an error in their calculations, which could cause catastrophic damage to their reputations, careers, and friendship. Now, Sanam is confronted with an impossible choice: look the other way or stand by her principles and accept the consequences?
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Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre has announced its 2022-2023 season:
Those with 2 Clocks (Oct. 5-23), created & performed by Tall Order. This body-positive sketch comedy busts the patriarchy with bawdy, liberating laughter.
School Pictures (Nov. 1-20), created & performed by Milo Cramer, directed by Morgan Green. A broke and hapless tutor turns his real-life experiences into this charming and insightful one-man musical.
Kiss (Jan. 31 – Feb. 19, 2023), by Guillermo Calderón, directed by Fadi Skeiker. A group of American actors performing a Syrian soap opera are shocked to realize the limits of their own cultural understanding.
Eternal Life Part 1 (Apr. 11-30), world premiere by Nathan Alan Davis, directed by Morgan Green. Set in the near future, the play centers on an idealistic family … and the goose that just came with the house.
Twelfth Night (June 6-25), adapted & directed by Yury Urnov.
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& Madhuri Shekar’s Queen will continue through June 5 at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, then run June 10 – July 22 at Off Broadway’s A.R.T. (link TBA).
Ben Livingston, Keshav Moodliar, Stephanie Janssen, and Avanthika Srinivasan.
Queen follows PHD candidates Sanam and Ariel who have spent the better part of the last decade exhaustively researching vanishing bee populations across the globe. Just as these close friends are about to publish a career-defining paper, Sanam stumbles upon an error in their calculations, which could cause catastrophic damage to their reputations, careers, and friendship. Now, Sanam is confronted with an impossible choice: look the other way or stand by her principles and accept the consequences?
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Janelle Lynn Randall’s Wanna Be Evil: The Eartha Kitt Story will take place Mon. June 13 at 7 PM ET at Off-Broadway’s Theater 555, directed by Yvans Jourdain, with music direction by Darnell White.
Darrell Philip.
Orsen Welles called her “the most exciting woman in the world.” But in 1968, she was blacklisted after “making the First Lady cry.” The show chronicles the iconic Eartha Kitt from a destitute childhood to a storied career in the theatre and Hollywood.
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NY City Center Encores will present its gala production of Parade, to run Nov. 1-6, directed by Michael Arden.
Ben Platt (Leo Frank), Micaela Diamond (Lucille Frank), and more TBA.
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LA’s Odyssey Theatre has announced its Summer Concert Series:
Music at the Odyssey Celebrates Joni Mitchell (June 25), featuring Abby Litman, Moira Mack, and Ren Martinez, with music direction by Nate Lichtenberger.
An Evening of Cabaret (July 9 & 16), created by & featuring Tony Abatemarco.
Music at the Odyssey Celebrates Stephen Sondheim (Aug. 6), featuring Bella Hicks, Carson Higgins, and Max Sheldon.
Music at the Odyssey Celebrates Nina Simone (Aug. 27), featuring Clayton, India Carney, and Segun Oluwadele.
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LA’s 24 Hour Musicals will return Mon. May 23 at 8 PM PT at the Bourbon Room, directed by Mark T. Evans, with choreography by John Carrafa.
Rebecca Naomi Jones, Lisa Loeb, Mary Faber, Lindsey Kraft, J. Holtman, Brad Silnutzer, Joey Orton, Steve Yockey, and Rachel Axler.
Gordon Greenberg, Jaki Bradley, and Michael John Garcés.
Mary Faber, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Emily Kinney, Kether Donohue, Andrew Leeds, Angelique Cabral, Erica Chamblee, Gracie Gillam, Mary Chieffo, Mina Sundwall, Rena Strober, Shannon Purser, Timm Sharp, Lily Brooks O’Briant, Paravi, and John Arthur Hill.