Today’s Highlights:
Back to the Future national tour, directed by John Rando, featuring Don Stphenson (Doc Brown), Caden Brauch (Marty McFly), Burke Swanson (George McFly), Zan Berube (Lorraine Baines), Cartreze Tucker (Goldie Wilson/Marvin Berry, Ethan Rogers (Biff Tannen), and Luke Antony Neville (Principal Strickland), with Joshua Blackswan Abbott, Emily Applebaum, Tade Biesinger, Ina Black, Brittany Bohn, Luther Brooks IV, Alyssa Carol, Jenny Dalrymple, Lucas Hallauer, Laura Sky Herman, Will Jewett, Ben Lanham, Kiara Lee, Dwayne P. Mitchell, Zoe Brooke Reed, Fisher Lane Stewart, and Ross Thompson, opens at LA’s Pantages Theatre.
Barbra and Liza Live concert, starring Steven Brinberg (Barbra Streisand) and Rick Skye (Liza Minnelli), opens at London’s Charing Cross Theater.
Sojourners, by Mfoniso UdoFia, directed by Dawn M. Simmons, featuring Abigail C. Onwunali (Abasiama), Asha Basha Duniani (Moxie), Nomè SiDone (Ukpong), and Joshua Olumide (Disciple), with Aisha Akorede, Malik Mitchell, and Kiera Prusmack, opens at Boston’s Huntington Theatre.
Waiting for Godot, directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, featuring Lincoln Bonilla (Boy), Conor Lovett (Pozzo), Aasif Mandvi (Estragon), Jack McSherry (Boy), Adam Stein (Lucky) and Rainn Wilson (Vladimir, begins previews at LA’s Geffen Playhouse.
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Broadway Grosses for the week ending Nov. 3.
Click here for the complete analysis.
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Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas, a solo adaptation, will run Nov. 29 – Dec. 29 at Maryland’s Olney Theater.
Michael Russotto (playing all the characters).
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LA Opera‘s Romeo and Juliet, conducted by Domingo Hindoyan & Lina González-Granados, continues through Nov. 23 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Amina Edris (Juliet), Duke Kim (Romeo), Justin Austin (Mercutio), Craig Colclough (Lord Capulet), Justin Austin (Mercutio), Craig Colclugh (Lor Cabulet), Wei Wu (Friar Laurence), Yuntong Han (Tybalt), Vinicius Costa (Duke of Verona), Margaret Gawrysiak (Gertrude), Laura Krumm (Stephano), Laura Krumm Stephano), Nathan Bowles (Benvolio), and Ryan Wolfe (count Paris).
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Villain: DeBlanks BOOK CLUB, in support of Covenant House NY, will take place Mon. Nov. 25 at 9:30 PM at NYC’s Green Room.
Judy Gold, Jackie Hoffman, Brenda Braxton, Bianca Leigh, Amy Spanger, and Alli Mauzey.
For the upcoming improvisational comedy, the audience provides nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc., and the actors provide the laughs as they try to discover which of them is the killer. The series is billed as Clue meets adult Mad Libs.
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Death of Salesman will run Jan. 9-26, 2025 (opening Jan. 10) at Burbank’s Colony Theatre, directed by Mark Blanchard.
Joe Cortese, Francis Fisher, Cronin Cullen, Robert Smythe, Paul Ganus, Brian Guest, Jennifer Olsberg, Scottie Thompson, and Chris Ufland.
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Jeff & Jacob Roy’s The Z Team will run Nov. 8-23 (opening Nov. 10) at Theatre Row, directed by Jeff Whiting.
Allie Trimm, Ze’ev Barmor, Tyler Cruz, Darby McDonough, Jakob Martinez Cooper, Gabrielle Filloux, Joe Mucciolo, Drew Starlin, Kaelee Albritton, and Daniel Arana.
Jerry’s failing advertising company is struggling to keep up with its most important projects, so when his girlfriend “asks” him to create a commercial for her terrible new product (a yoga mat with a blender on it), he comes up with an innovative idea- to take the worst person from each department and assemble them to create the commercial. Hilarity ensues as the “Z Team” works to create an unforgettable commercial for the world’s worst product: The Bend and Blend.
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Marilyn Maye in concert will take place Tues. Dec. 3 at 8:30 PM at Hollywood’s Catalina Jazz Club.
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Blake Allen & Will Nunziata’s opera The Waves is in development, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf. A timeline has not been announced.
The experimental 1931 novel, an exemplar of the stream-of-consciousness style that Woolf pioneered, comprises a series of soliloquies given by six friends, narrating their lives and relationships from childhood to middle age. A presentation of the opera is planned for early 2025, with further details to be announced.
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Additional casting has been announced for HBO’s “The Guilded Age,” with the season premiere date TBA.
(Season 2): Kate Baldwin (Nancy Adams Bell, the older sister of John Adams, (played by Claybourne Elder), … Dylan Baker (Dr. Logan) … Michael Cumpsty (Lord Mildmay) … British nobleman) … John Ellison Conlee (Weston) … Bobby Steggert (John Singer Sargent) … Hannah Shealy (Charlotte Astor) … Phylicia Rashad … Jordan Donica … Brian Stokes Mitchell … and Victoria Clark.
The series takes place in turn-of-the-century New York and follows new money socialite Bertha Russell as she navigates high society.
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Arthur M. Jolly’s Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol will run Dec. 5-22 at North Hollywood’s Loft Ensemble, directed by Michael Houston.
Bita Arefnia, Thomas Ashworth, Lara Blanco, Cassandra Carmona, Jennifer DeRosa, Raymond Donehey, Kyle Elzey, Julieta Gerlein, Carlos Gomez, Jr., Barbera Ann Howard, Robert Jolly, Brieyonna Monét, Sarah Nilsen, Bree Pavey, Rosie Ryden, Matthew Scheel, and Christopher Leon Simms.
Mrs. Dilber (Scrooge’s maltreated housekeeper in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), meets Marley and the Spirits of Christmas before they haunt Scrooge and sets off on a past, present, and future adventure of her own in this subversive and hilarious reimagining of the holiday classic.
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“How Gavin Creel Changed Christian Borle’s Life for the Better”
Click here to read.
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Harlem Holidays, presented by & benefiting the Classical Theatre of Harlem, will take place Mon. Dec. 16 at 8 PM atHarlem’s Red Rooster, hosted by Kara Young. Proceeds will support The Classical Theatre of Harlem’s cultural programs.
Brandon Victor Dixon and more TBA.
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Estelle Parsons has departed the upcoming Irish Rep‘s production of The Dead, 1904. The role of Aunt Kate will now be played by Úna Clancy. The play has been adapted by Paul Muldoon & Jean Hanff Korelitz, and will run Nov. 20 – Jan. 25, 2025 at NYC’s The American Irish Rep Historical Society, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly.
Kate Baldwin (Gretta Conroy), and Christopher Innvar (Gabriel Conry), with Úna Clancy (Aunt Kate), and Mary Beth Peil (Aunt Julia), with Heather Bixler, Terry Donnelly, Karen Killeen, Michael Kuhn, Aedín Moloney, Michael Mellamphy, Jodie Sweeney, Gary Troy, Úna Clancy.
A holiday gathering on January 6, 1904, the Feast of the Epiphany, in the Dublin home of two elderly sisters, Kate and Julia Morkan, and their niece, Mary Jane. At the party are students, friends, a celebrated tenor, a lost alcoholic, and the couple, Gabriel and Gretta Conroy. Over the course of an evening, there are conversations, music, dancing, and dining. There are speeches and disagreements – polite and impolite – and when it is all over Gabriel learns something about his wife that changes his sense of who she is and who they are to each other, of what it actually means to be alive, and to be dead.
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Following Joey McIntyre’s departure from Adam Paxcal’s Drag: The Musical, he will be replaced by Adam Pascal in the role of Tom Hutchinson on Dec. 11 at New World Stages, directed and choreographed by Spencer Liff.