#(also ann harada i see you there!!)

[maraczeks]

admission rewatch thread pt 4

[thatsuhboldchoice]

SJB AS THE BAKER'S WIFE AND SEB AS THE BAKER THIS IS NOT A DRILL

[transfemgeorgecostanza]

wait I gotta know your Muppet Driwsy Chaperone cast

okay well actually its kinda hm dumb to cast the only human as the title character when, clearly, its made for Piggy. ON THE OTHER HAND Piggy as Janet is an interesting take on the character, I think so i alternate between either Ann Harada or Beth Leavel as the title character/only human, or Bob Martin reprising as Man in Chair OR David Hyde Pierce who’d also be great in that role.

Otherwise it would be

Kermit: Man in Chair or Husband character, forgot his name. 

alt.: Gonzo as Thing in Chair, or Husband

uhhh Piggy as Janet, otherwise it’s difficult to think of a female muppet for the part. (I mean I guess Annie Sue, but does she have enough personality to pull off the comedy?)

that female version of Waldorf or Statler as Mrs Tottendale

Scooter as her butler or whatever he is

Fozzie and Rowlf as the Gangsters

Uncle Deadly as Aldolpho

Louise Gold gets a newly designed Muppet for Trix, the Aviatrix

As you can see, I put zero thought into this before and struggled to think of pairings. lol. i just want a) a production of the drowsy chaperone starring ann harada, and b) a good muppet film again

[brickdubois]

My Review of Pacific Overtures

Well, John Doyle has left me all at sea with this Pacific Overtures. The show opens with a neo-brechtian prologue where Megan Masako Haley enters the stage and states at the rest of the cast, who are standing offstage at the end of the runway. They bow and George Takei announces via voiceover "Nippon, the floating kingdom..." The entire cast wears modern garb. As they sing "The Advantages of Floating In the Middle of the Sea" they use different fabrics to create adornments that represent... status? How connected to the ancient ways each character is? Heaven if I know. The show ends along the same lines, but whatever "frame" Doyle is using it is I cannot begin to comprehend. Perhaps Megan is in a museum and is looking at a picture of Japan from 1862 - and she wonders how Japan has come so far in less than 200 years? Your guess is as good as mine. To explain how Doyle has cut the show, think of it like this: a production of The Seagull that focus entirely on Konstantin and Nina. Any scenes without them are cut. Or maybe even a Follies that is centered around Sally, Ben, Buddy, and Phyllis with all other songs cut. So we'd have time for "Beautiful Girls", "In Buddy's Eyes", and "Could I Leave You?", but say goodbye to the montage, "I'm Still Here", and "One More Kiss". Gone are all the side stories that The Reciter... recites. "Chrysanthemum Tea", "March to the Treaty House", and "The Lion Dance" are cut. Doyle does not even attempt kabuki style, and as a result, the show seems lopsided and unfocused. Before "Poems", the show has been centered almost completely around Kayama and Manjiro. But there is about a half an hour ("Welcome to Kanagawa", "Someone In a Tree", and "Please Hello"Pacific Overtures previews where they disappear completely. With the entire script intact, this makes perfect sense. The show is not about these two people, it is about larger ideas and the show has delved away from them before. The Reciter interrupts them to tell stories, various other scenes with minor characters are played out, and the audience knows not to expect a perfect through-line of a story. But without these diversions, the show seems to forget about the two main characters and ignore them for an odd amount of time. Doyle seems to have missed the entire point of the show. Pacific Overtures is not about a samurai and a sailor and how their relationship changes through time. It is about the forced westernization of Japan and how an entire culture and way of life was destroyed along with it. Kayama and Manjiro change along with the country and their opposing views on the events are touching, but they are not the centerpiece. Pacific Overtures is perhaps the only musical about ideas rather than people, moreso than even Sunday In the Park With George. It is also a deeply moving musical about ideas, its power retained through its form. You would never get that from this production. The cast is good, with my major exception being Steven Eng. Neither his voice nor acting seemed in the same world as anyone else. Megan Masako Haley is wonderful in a thankless role (a cypher added for this production, as well as the briefly seen Tamate). Ann Harda was lovely, though out-of-place when surrounded by men (Megan's role seemed to be from the present, visiting the past, so it was odd that a woman was involved in the "traditional" cast of the show). George Takei seems to have lost a bet. He has virtually no lines and still manages to mess them up. He shows no warmth, and, considering the concept of this production, serves no purpose to the piece. He is there purely as a star to sell seats. Doyle has directed the cats to have sort of a "wink wink nudge nudge" attitude towards the audience about some of the lines and lyrics. It is awkward and feels disingenuous to the piece, Weidman, and Sondheim. The orchestra sounds lovely, and fill up the small space quite well. The actors are heavily mic'd, for some reason, and they still muddle their words. "Please Hello" was garbled, with most of the cast gasping to get the words out. The lyrics you could hear were mostly unintelligible, especially from the British and Dutch Admirals, and in the choral section that ends the song. Ann Harada seems to have gotten the key changed for her french section at the end, but for the choral end she is so uncomfortable in the register it was hard to hear any of her words. "Welcome to Kanagawa" was so unfunny it was hard to see why it was kept in. "Next" is cut to shreds and does not feel like a finale at all. But "Someone In a Tree" is gorgeous, moving, and all around thrilling. If any part of this production is worth it, it is the eight minutes they sing this fantastic song. Some of the best music and lyrics ever written, and the staging was simple and almost elegant (apart from some haphazardly thrown paper made to look like leaves). Just cups of tea, and history, and someone in a tree... Sondheim says, "Content Dictates Form". Doyle has thrown form away and is left with a confused, half-baked production that is unlikely to initiate new fans for the piece or please old ones. If recent productions of classic shows have been billed as Arthur Miller's The Crucible or Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie, there is no doubt how Classic Stage should bill this as. Call it John Doyle's Pacific Overtures, because it sure isn't John Weidman or Stephen Sondheim's.

[newyorktheater]

Lesbians on Broadway! Cynthia Nixon is set to direct a Broadway production of Jane Chambers’s 1980 play “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove,” about Lesbians on summer vacation. Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Tomlin and their respective spouses will produce. Cast, details to be announced. Meanwhile, a play about an iconic blues signer who was a lesbian, is currently running Off-Off Broadway. (See below)

When did “theater” become an insult? With the impeachment trial scheduled to begin in earnest this week, the one thing that the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, seem to agree on is that using the word “theater” is a good way to dismiss the other side, just as the term “theater criticism” is commonly used to knock journalists’ coverage of the 2020 election campaign.

Can we please stop using “theater criticism” — a craft practiced by professionals, requiring discipline, observational rigor, analysis, common sense and duty — as a byword for irresponsible writing? https://t.co/HEcwTexP1J

— Lily Janiak (@LilyJaniak) January 20, 2020

I GOT A BAD REVIEW FOR MAKING A PERFECT PLAY! (It happens) https://t.co/Bb6hIkqEQc

— Sean Daniels (@seandaniels) January 17, 2020

Broadway Week two-for-one tickets begins today

The Week in New York Theater Previews and Reviews

Ann Harada as Pile of Poo in Emojiland

My Name is Lucy Barton

Laura Linney as Lucy Barton offers a sometimes poignant, often tedious 90-minute monologue.

Rosalind Brown as Alberta Hunter

Leaving the Blues

“Leaving the Blues” dramatizes the life of the amazing jazz, blues and Broadway singer/songwriter Alberta Hunter. It is not a musical; it’s a play by Jewelle Gomez – a play that’s too long, with too many choices that need to be rethought. But it also offers a new perspective, what it was like to be a star – and a lesbian.

Ich Kann Nicht Anders

“You will hear an unbelievable true story,” one of the three actors from the Republic of Slovenia on a stage designed to look like a makeshift bunker, tells us at the beginning of the play entitled “Ich kann nicht anders,” “Some of you might find it boring, which will mean that you have chosen the wrong event for this evening. But the rest of you — and there will hopefully be quite a few — will find this intriguing, maybe even inspiring.” I was too uncertain about what was going on in the hour that followed to feel inspired, but I certainly wasn’t bored.

Modern Maori Quartet Two Worlds

Those theatergoers drawn to “Modern Maori Quartet: Two Worlds” for the authentic music and culture of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand might feel blindsided by what seems like a Las Vegas-like lounge act.

Under the Radar:

To The Moon This 15 minutes of Virtual Reality offering the sensation of looking at, walking on and flying over the moon — created by performance artist Laurie Anderson and new media artist Hsin-Chien Huang — is more of a playful hallucinogenic experience than a linear lunar journey; more Timothy Leary than Neil Armstrong.

Feos

They meet on a line for a movie. The man and the woman — each disfigured by childhood accidents — are both used to being stared at, and they are used to being alone. At the Under the Radar festival, inspired by the late Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti’s tender short story, “La noche de los feos” (The night of the ugly people), the Chilean theater troupe Teatro y Su Doble is presenting “Feos,” which combines puppetry and animation to tell the story of the encounter between these two shunned people, and their awkward, hesitant attempts at connecting — on the line, then in a cafe, eventually in bed.

The Week in New York Theater News

The fifth annual BroadwayCon (like ComicCon, but about Broadway), this coming weekend January 24-26.

Alex Newell will be the host of First Look at BroadwayCon on Friday, which will feature performances by the casts of new shows: Caroline, or Change, Company, Sing Street. SIX, Jagged Little Pill, Mrs. Doubtfire, Girl from the North Country, Emojiland, Between The Lines, as well as Hadestown.

Completed casts announced:

Flying Over Sunset

Erika Henningsen, Jeremy Kushnier, Emily Pynenburg, Michele Ragusa, Robert Sella, Laura Shoop, and Atticus Ware will join Carmen Cusack, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Tony Yazbeck in the LSD musical Flying Over Sunset, which opens April 16 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont.

Plaza Suite

Joining Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in the cast of Plaza Suite: ,Danny Bolero, Molly Ranson and Eric Weigand. Michael McGrath and Erin Dilly will be Broderick and Parker’s standbys.

The Bedwetter

Linda Lavin and Stephanie J. Block will be in the cast of Sarah Silverman’s Off Broadway musical The Bedwetter, running April 25 to June 14 at the Atlantic theater. Sami Bray, who appeared on Broadway in the 2017 production of 1984, and Zoe Glick (of Broadway’s Frozen) will share the role of Sarah, the 10-year-old title character inspired by Silverman.

Ciara Renée will take over the role of Elsa in “Frozen,” starring opposite McKenzie Kurtz, who will make her Broadway debut in the role of Anna. Renée comes to the role after starring as the Witch in “Big Fish” on Broadway and taking over as Leading Player in the revival of “Pippin.” She and Kurtz replace original cast members Caissie Levy and Patti Murin, who will depart the production on Feb. 16.

Park Avenue Armory and National Black Theatre have announced the 100 Years | 100 Women Initiative, with a symposium on February 15 and then 100 (short) works by 100 women on May 16 responding to the centennial of women’s suffrage

The Public cancels “Truth Has Changed”

The Public Theater abruptly shortened the run of a climate change activist’s provocative one-man show at Under The Radar, saying the creator, Josh Fox, had violated the theater’s code of conduct. Fox accused the Public’s staff of “verbal threats, coercion, angry tirades and physical intimidation” as well as “acts of aggression.”

Sick of seeing sidelined heroines, playwrights Kate Hamill and Lauren Gunderson are rewriting classics like ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Dracula’ to reinvent the female characters

Guggenheim Works & Process will present Lincoln Center Theater: Intimate Apparel by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage with Bartlett Sher on Sunday, February 9, 2020 at 7:30pm.

Full schedule of Works & Process this season

Shows that closed Sunday that I’ll miss

Greater Clements

Like all of Samuel Hunter’s plays that I’ve adored, this one chronicles Idaho, a state I’ve never visited, and American loss, a state we all seem to be in.

Oklahoma

Who can forget the talented & inclusive cast, including Ali Stroker as the fun-loving, oversexed Ado Annie, teasing and kissing and flirting — and swinging gleefully from a wheelchair.

Joaquina Kalukango and Paul Alexander Nolan (

Slave Play

If I felt differently about this play than many critics, the best thing to come out of it is the spotlight on @jeremyoharris , an artist of talent and smarts who is already helping to transform Broadway.

The photo is of artist Keith Haring in his studio at P.S. 122 during a residency in 1980. (He died of AIDS in 1990 at 31) @PerformSpaceNY is now naming its main space The Keith Haring Theater, & partnering w/ @KeithHaringFdn for an annual lecture series & fellowship in his name. pic.twitter.com/rSeMIquDB0

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) January 15, 2020

“Typically grossed between $300k and $500k, a tally at the lower end of Broadway’s ranks. But it wasn’t for a lack of attendees—just the opposite. “Slave Play” often played to weekly audiences of at least 90% capacity.”

PLAYS SHOULDN’T BE A LUXURY ITEM.https://t.co/08hAwtGXWP

— Former Broadway Playwright Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris) January 20, 2020

  Marking the publication of “The Letters of Cole Porter,” @AdamGopnik in @newyorker writes an appreciation of the “almost inhumanly prolific songwriter” who measured a Broadway show’s success “simply by the number of hit songs it produced.”https://t.co/ogI5ReWRHM pic.twitter.com/Gl841pgCXM

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) January 17, 2020

“Cole Porter was to straight sex in his ‘affair’ songs as his best friend, Irving Berlin, was to Christianity in writing White Christmas—the outsider’s triumph was to own the insider’s material.” Adam Gopnik on the open secret of Porter’s sexuality.

The ten most check-out books of all time from the New York Public Library Most have been adapted for the stage.

When Disability Isn’t a Special Need but a Special Skill

Jesse Green looks at two Under the Radar productions performed by people with disabilities

Hollywood Bets On a Future of Quick Clips and Tiny Screens

Entertainment startup Quibi has already won over industry A-listers with its vision for short-form mobile streaming. But will it catch on with viewers?

Rest in Peace

Peter Larkin, 93, designed sets for 45 Broadway productions (for which he won four Tonys) and worked as production designer on more than two dozen movies

“Theater” as political insult. Lesbians on Stage. Broadway Week. #Stageworthy News of the Week When did "theater" become an insult? With the impeachment trial scheduled to begin in earnest this week, the one thing that the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, seem to agree on is that using the word "theater" is a good way to dismiss the other side, just as the term "theater criticism" is commonly used to knock journalists' coverage of the 2020 election campaign.

[newyorktheater]

This is the last Christmas Eve New Yorkers will be spending with Christmas Eve, the character originated by Ann Harada, who originated the role in Avenue Q, because, after 15 years, Avenue Q will close in April. All those puppets, gone.

Today we look back at 2018 with 20 of my favorite human performances in shows that opened this year on New York stages, plus five of my favorite puppet performances.

  We look ahead with the Spring 2019 Broadway Preview Guide: A Season of Theater Geniuses Making Their Broadway Debuts

We look at the present too, with Holiday Theater Going, including the Christmas Week Broadway schedule. There are four Broadway shows with matinees on Christmas Eve, 14 with evening performances on Christmas Day, and 38 Broadway shows with performances the day after Christmas – indeed almost all have two performances that day, and one show has three!

Santa chorus line at Radio City

  The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine

Lynn Nottage’s play about a fashionable public relations executive’s Job-like descent into poverty and ascent into moral clarity, is the first in Signature’s season of Nottage’s comedies…But as the play progresses, and Undine regresses, “Fabulation” turns into something more clever and pointed than just broad comedy. The playwright does no less than subvert common assumptions about the characters that populate her play – some two dozen of them, portrayed by an impressively versatile eight-member cast.

Marisol Rosa-Shapiro as Pizza Rat

Up Close Festival

reminded me what there is to love about theater, and how I can fall in love with it anew. At first, though, I felt misled. The show is billed as “an immersive festival about New York for New Yorkers of all ages” and “modeled after the community organizing legacy of Jane Jacobs,” who was an important writer, urban theorist, and community activist of Greenwich Village. The New Ohio is located in the Village, and “Up Close” promised “reimagined real moments” from the neighborhood’s history.

But when a woman who identified herself as Ms. Pea (Summer Shapiro), led us from the theater lobby down a dark staircase to the room where the festival would take place, I discovered that the New Yorkers present represented all ages between roughly five and 10.

The Week in New York Theater News

The Play That Goes Wrong will close on Broadway January 6, after 27 previews and 745 performances — and move six blocks away the following month to New World Stages, re-opening February 20. Here’s my wrong review

Director Gregory Mosher quit the Roundabout production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons because he wanted to cast two supporting roles with actors of color, while Rebecca Miller (Arthur Miller’s daughter and the executor of his estate) thought his concept “not fully thought out.” Jack O’Brien has taken the helm.

Stephen Schwartz

Maria Irene Fornes

…Stephen Sondheim

The 2019 City Center Encores Off-Center season promises an exciting summer: Working: A Musical, based on Studs Terkel book, featuring songs by Stephen Schwartz, Mary Rodgers, James Taylor, Lin-Manuel Miranda and others, June 26 – 29 Promenade, by Maria Irene Fornés & Al Carmines, about two escaped prisoners mingling in the city July 10 & 11

Road Show by Sondheim and Weidman July 24 – 27

La MaMa 2019 season highlights include Generation NYZ, the latest in Ping Chong’s Undesirable Elements series, China Fringe Theater Festival in February, Stonewall 50 in June.

.@LabTheaterNYC will present its 19th annual Barn Series of FREE new play readings, @CherryLnTheatre Jan 11-20, eg 3 by playwright @CookieRiverside, and “Children in Cages” developed with @daphnerubinvega, @nycbatwife, et al to celebrate “next generation of Artivists” pic.twitter.com/0kiO4wzl3J

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

Speaking of @daphnerubinvega , who was glorious as the original Mimi in Rent (and is glorious still; my pic of her in her dressing room w/ a pic of her Mom). She will be host to a @RENTonFOX live viewing party Jan 27 @ParksideNYC , sponsored by @NYTW79, Rent’s original home. pic.twitter.com/bJTVJ6cOd7

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

Speaking of @RENTonFOX: Amazing cast. Left to right: @Tinashe as Mimi, @BrandonVDixon as Tom Collins, @VanessaHudgens as Maureen, @OHYESMARIO as Benjamin, @BrenninMusic as Roger, @Jordan_Fisher as Mark,@KierseyClemons as Joanne. (Not shown: @kealasettle! @AllOfValentina) pic.twitter.com/NUxvlg3ZGe

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

Is it wrong, though, for me to see an irony (to put it politely) in Fox being the network to broadcast “Rent”? Will Sean Hannity watch?

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

James Snyder will play Harry Potter with Diane Davis as Ginny Potter and Nicholas Podany as their son Albus Potter. Matt Mueller will play Ron Weasley with Jenny Jules as Hermione Granger and Nadia Brown as their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley. Playing Draco Malfoy will be Jonno Roberts with Bubba Weiler as his son Scorpius Malfoy.

Also joining the cast are Aaron Bartz, Will Carlyon, Kimberly Dodson, Patrick Du Laney, Sara Farb, Jonathan Gordon, Steve Haggard, Eva Kaminsky, Jack Koenig, Rachel Leslie, Sarita Amani Nash, Fiona Reid, Katherine Reis, Kevin Matthew Reyes, Antoinette Robinson, Stephen Spinella, Tom Patrick Stephens, Erica Sweany, and Karen Janes Woditsch, who are featured along with returning cast members Brian Thomas Abraham, Olivia Bond, Stephen Bradbury, James Brown III, Lauren Nicole Cipoletti, Zoë Feigelson, Jack Hatcher, Edward James Hyland, Joey LaBrasca, Landon Maas, James Romney, and Alex Weisman.

.@DaveedDiggs to star in “White Noise,” a new play by @SuzanLoriParks: when a racially motivated incident w/ cops leaves Leo shaken,he takes extreme measures Mar 5 -Ap 14, @PublicTheaterNY

MT @DaveedDiggs Suzan-Lori Parks has been one of my favorite playwrights since I was 18. pic.twitter.com/Xed8H8LntI

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2018

The end of an era! Concord Records has taken over 188-year-old Samuel French and created Concord Theatricals, (which also includes Rodgers and Hammerstein, Tams Witmark, and a joint venture with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company.)

When @HamiltonMusical opens in Puerto Rico Jan 8, starring @Lin_Manuel, it won’t be at @uprrp,but a more secure theater; producer @Jseller feared protests. Why protests? The students are protesting tuition hikes, closures, reprisals Background on protests:https://t.co/OudGFKwDnV

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 22, 2018

A complicated issue. It’s unfair to frame this as the poor vs. the arts. The vast majority of individual donations are to churches and schools But good read in @FT https://t.co/linDo97n9N

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

“There are diminishing resources (for the arts), and that’s not just money…The hope is…we can stop the decline…Individuals who have never acknowledged one another will need to communicate & connect” – retiring executive producer @BAM_Brooklyn Joseph Melillo, in @HowlRound pic.twitter.com/MhdXvYsFrB

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/reader-center/arts-criticism-explainer.html?mc_cid=06f26fe125&mc_eid=0d47c9f8a5

How well do you know these #Broadway shows that began #OffOffBroadway? Test your knowledge and RT with how many you correctly guessed!

Take quiz ➡️ https://t.co/ekqAmrZSdw pic.twitter.com/lYx4cR8rJ5

— TDF (@TDFNYC) December 22, 2018

REST IN PEACE

Galt MacDermot, 89, the composer of “Hair.”

Donald Moffat, 87, a veteran of 20 Broadway shows as well as 60 other stage plays, 70 Hollywood and television movies and at least 60 television productions.

Peter Masterson, 84, actor (five times on Broadway), director and co-writer of the Broadway musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

  Astronaut Bill Anders, orbiting the moon as part of the Apollo 8 mission, photographed “Earthwise” on Christmas Eve, 1968 — 50 years ago today.

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Broadway. New Casts for Harry Potter and Rent. A Summer of Sondheim,Fornés,Schwartz. #Stageworthy News of the Week This is the last Christmas Eve New Yorkers will be spending with Christmas Eve, the character originated by Ann Harada, who originated the role in Avenue Q, because, after 15 years, Avenue Q will close in April.