Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Date Set for Tony Nominations

Another milestone for the 2012 Tony nominations has been set. We already knew that the Tony Awards will take place on June 10th, that they will be broadcast from the Beacon Theatre, and that, to be eligible for a 2012 Tony, a show has to open on Broadway on or before April 26th, 2012. But NOW we know when we will find out the official list of nominees -- May 1st. The list of nominees will be read at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center. The Tony Awards are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Possible Subject for New Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical

Andrew Lloyd Webber has not had much love on Broadway for his new works. Though his older shows, including Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat all did well on Broadway (to say nothing about the 18 year long run of Cats and the 24-years-and-still-going Phantom of the Opera) and are frequently produced in community theaters across the country, his last three new shows (By Jeeves, Bombay Dreams, and The Woman in White) have only lasted a couple of months each in their Broadway debuts and were financial flops. And then there was Love Never Dies, the Phantom of the Opera sequel whose impending transfer from the West End to Broadway was much buzzed about but, ultimately, never materialized.

But that hasn't stopped him from writing new shows. One of the ideas he is now considering is a musical based on the Profumo affair that, according to Mark Shenton of Playbill.com, "famously rocked British politics in the early 60's when John Profumo, the UK's Minister of State for war, was revealed to have been having an affair with Christine Keeler, who was the reputed mistress of an alleged Russian spy. One of the central figures in the Profumo affair was Stephen Ward, an osteopath who had introduced Keeler to Profumo, and was charged with living off the profits of prostitution after the case."

Let's see where this one goes.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Howard Kissel Dead at 69

The New York Daily News' long time theater critic, Howard Kissel, has died at his New York home. He died on Friday after suffering complications from a liver transplant he received in 2010. According to the Associated Press, "Kissel was the chief theater critic at the Daily News for 20 years. Before that he was arts editor for Women's Wear Daily and W magazine. He authored a biography of theater producer David Merrick and a book on Stella Adler's acting techniques. Kissel also led both the New York Drama Critics Circle and the New York Film Critics Circle."

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Theodore Mann Dead at 87

Theodore Mann, who co-founded the Circle in the Square Theatre and, according to Robert Simonson of Playbill.com, "was one of the foremost figures in the birth of the Off-Broadway theater movement," died on February 24th after "a brief illness."

Simonson's article continues that, "In 1951, along with Panama-born director Jose Quintero and a few others, the young Mr. Mann created Circle in the Square in a small arena space just off Greenwich Village's Sheridan Square (hence the troupe's curious name). One year later, they staged a revival of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke, intending it as a vehicle for their friend, actress Geraldine Page. The play had disappointed on Broadway. Quintero's heralded new interpretation caused critics to reappraise the work. Though it wasn't the first production below 14th Street to gain public interest after World War II, many theatre historians regard the show as a benchmark in the birth of Off-Broadway."

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Fantasy Broadway

Playbill.com has posted an article which, given the popularity of things like fantasy football, has given me an intriguing idea. A revival of the 1977 Tony-winning musical Annie has been announced and it occurred to me that the "fantasy football" concept could be applied to the casting of, well, any show. So, let's start with Annie -- who would you guys love to see in any of the roles for this show? Am I the only one who thinks it would be a hoot to see Jane Lynch tackle the role of Miss Hannigan? Post your casting ideas in the comments section below.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

"The Lyons" to come to Broadway

The Lyons, a new play by Nicky Silver, will be coming to Broadway. The play has been playing off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre and will be coming to the Cort Theatre this spring. The press announcement has stated that Linda Lavin and Dick Latessa will move with the show, and that Michael Esper, Kate Jennings Grant, Brenda Pressley and Gregory Wooddell, who also appeared in the off-Broadway incarnation, are expected to transfer with the show, as well. The play, directed by Mark Brokaw, is scheduled to open on April 26th, just in time to be eligible for the 2012 Tony Awards.

According to Broadway.com, "The Lyons is about a family grappling with the impending death of its patriarch (Latessa). When Ben Lyons’ wife, Rita (Lavin), and their grown children gather to say goodbye, they learn that despite being a family, each of them is utterly isolated. Afraid of closeness and afraid of solitude, they are propelled into foreign territory - human connection."

Monday, February 20, 2012

This and That

There are a number of articles today to which I wanted to bring your attention, and I will be putting them all in this post. The first is an article from The New York Times about Margaret Edson, who wrote the play W;t, which is currently in revival on Broadway. The play is a drama about a professor's battle with cancer and is based on Edson's own experience in a hospital. The article talks about Edson's life now and why W;t is her only play -- her preference for "the theater of the classroom."

The second article is about the rise and fall in the number of roles for Asian actors on Broadway, with both Chinglish and Outside People having appeared on New York stages this year.

The last article is about Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's return to Broadway with Evita and his thoughts on having been "unemployed" for the past few months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/theater/margaret-edson-author-of-wit-loves-teaching.html?ref=theater

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118050461?refCatId=15

http://playbill.com/news/article/159887-The-Return-of-Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-The-Truth-Is-He-Never-Left-Us

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Spider-Man Settlement Finalized

Variety's Gordon Cox is reporting that a settlement has been reached in the ongoing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark lawsuit saga. The suit arose when Taymor alleged unpaid royalties by the producers, and the settlement results in Taymor receiving almost $10,000 per week in directing royalties, though a suit is still pending over alleged royalties due to Taymor over her writing contributions on the show. Of the two suits, Variety speculates that this suit was the more likely of the two to be resolved in Taymor's favor. This is because, "Although the storyline and book of the tuner were altered significantly after Taymor exited the production, major chunks of the show's original staging -- which presumably originated with Taymor -- remain."

Saturday, February 18, 2012

"The Bodyguard" Musical Coming to West End in Fall 2012

The previously announced musical adaptation of the 1992 Whitney Houston film The Bodyguard has confirmed that it will play at the Adelphi Theatre. It has also been confirmed that Heather Headley, a Tony-winner for the 2000 Broadway production of Aida and Grammy-winner for her 2010 R&B Gospel Album Audience of One, will be playing the Whitney Houston role. The production will be directed by Thea Sharrock.

According to Broadway.com, "The Bodyguard starred Houston as soul-singing film diva Marron, who hires a former U.S. Secret Service agent, Frank Farmer (played in the film by Kevin Costner) as her bodyguard for protection from an obsessed and violent fan." This is the film in which Houston performed her famous cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You."

Friday, February 17, 2012

August: Osage County Film Updates

News about the film adaptation of Tracy Letts' Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play seems to have dropped off the map a little bit lately, but there is news once more with the announcement of two of the film's stars. Oscar winner Julia Roberts will take on the role of eldest daughter Barbara, while two-time Oscar winner (and a Best Actress Oscar nominee this year for The Iron Lady) Meryl Streep will tackle the leading role of acerbic, drug addicted Violet. The film will be directed by John Wells from a script adapted by the playwright.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Carol Kane to Come to Main Stem

Broadway.com is reporting that Broadway vet Carol Kane and two-time Tony nominee Larry Bryggman will join previously announced stars Jim Parsons, Jessica Hecht and Charles Kimbrough in the upcoming Roundabout Theatre Company revival of Harvey at Studio 54. Directed by Scott Ellis, Harvey begins previews May 18 and opens officially on June 14.

Bryggman will star as Judge Omar Gaffney, who tries to have Elwood P. Dowd (Parsons) committed. Kane will play Betty Chumley, the wife of Dr. Chumley (Kimbrough). In addition to Bryggman and Kane, Harvey features Peter Benson as E.J. Lofgren, Morgan Spector as Lyman Sanderson, M.D., Holley Fain as Ruth Kelly, R.N., and Angela Paton as Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet, Rich Sommer as Duane Wilson and Tracee Chimo as Myrtle Mae Simmons.

Harvey centers around Elwood, a man who befriends an imaginary six-foot rabbit. When his sister Veta (Jessica Hecht) tries to have Elwood placed in a sanatorium, a comedy of errors ensues. As Elwood wanders out of the hospital unbothered, Vera is committed instead, sending everyone in town into a whirlwind of confusion and chaos as they try to find Elwood and his rabbit.

Bryggman garnered Tony nominations for Proof and Picnic. Kane has appeared on Broadway in Sly Fox, Wicked and The Effect of Gamma Rays on the Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Benson’s Broadway credits include Promises, Promises, The Pajama Game and Wonderful Town. Spector made his Broadway debut in A View From the Bridge and is currently appearing in Russian Transport off-Broadway. Fain has appeared on Broadway in Present Laughter and off-Broadway in Frank’s Home. Paton’s theater credits include The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Passion, and film and TV credits include Groundhog Day and Red Eye. Rich Sommer is best known as Harry Crane on Mad Men. Tracee Chimo’s off-Broadway credits include The Break of Noon and Bachelorette, and currently stars on MTV’s I Want My Pants Back.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Betty Buckley on Carrie

Broadway legend Betty Buckley, a Tony winner for her supporting performance in 1983's Cats, has certainly had her successes and her failures throughout her career, but none is so famous as the 1988 flop musical Carrie. That show has become something of a theatrical legend itself and is currently being revived off-Broadway this year, with Marin Mazzie in the role Ms. Buckley once played -- the role of Carrie's mother, which Piper Laurie famously played in the 1976 film. The New York Times spoke with Ms. Buckley about the revival, the problems with the original, and (of all things) American Idol. Click the link below to read her thoughts.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/betty-buckley-weighs-in-on-new-carrie-musical/?ref=theater

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Ricky Martin As Danciest Che Ever

Ricky Martin is coming back to Broadway this year in the first Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita -- a musical biography of Argentina's former first lady, Eva Peron. Broadway.com posted the following interview with Ricky Martin about the show and the dance and vocal challenges of the show.

Ricky Martin is heading back on the boards on March 12, leading the first Broadway revival of Andrew Llyod Webber’s Evita as Che.The international singer recently joined his Evita co-stars Elena Roger and Michael Cerveris for a high-fashion photoshoot for Vanity Fair, and dished about the challenges of returning to Broadway, and how his portrayal of the show's narrator will differ from that of the role’s original Broadway star Mandy Patinkin.

“It’s different from pop singing," Martin, who last appeared on Broadway in Les Miserables in 1996, said of the musical's demanding score. "It’s more classical and everything is more pronounced. The range vocally is pretty aggressive, which I love. It’s about challenges. I need to grow as an artist, and the character of Che is giving me the push that I need now. I’m ready.”

Evita’s choreographer Rob Ashford also hopes to capitalize on Martin’s famous dance abilities to make Martin's turn "the danciest Che ever." Recounting rehearsals with Ashford Martin said, “He told me, ‘Rick, I’m gonna bruise you.’ And I’m like, ‘Bring it on.’” Martin is most looking forward to performing the sultry Act Two song, “Waltz for Eva and Che” because the song marks "the first time [Roger and I] actually look in each other’s eyes,” Martin explained, “And not only that, we dance the waltz and we can add a little bit of tango to it. It’ll be a very special moment.”

Evita features a score by Webber and book and lyrics by Tim Rice. The show charts the rise and fall of the charismatic and glamorous young First Lady of Argentina, and includes songs such as “Buenos Aires,” “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” and “Don’t Cry for Me Agentina.” The revival, directed by Michael Grandage, officially opens at the Marquis Theatre on April 5.

Monday, February 13, 2012

And the Grammy Goes to ....

The Grammy Awards were held last night and, while I didn't stay up late enough to watch the show, there are a few notable results. Adele went home with six awards last night (Best Short Form Music Video, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year for "Rolling in the Deep", Album of the Year and Pop Album of the Year for 21, and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Someone Like You") and Bon Iver took home the award for Best New Artist. The most notable award for theater fans, however, is the award for Best Musical Theatre Album, which went to The Book of Mormon, which won over Anything Goes and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Lea Michele in Talks to Star in Spring Awakening Film

Lea Michele is in talks to reprise her stage role as Wendla in the previously announced film adaptation of the Tony-winning musical Spring Awakening. McG (Charlie's Angels, This Means War) is set to direct the film.

"We're talking to Lea Michele because she made the role of Wendla famous and we'll see if that works with the timing of her schedule," McG said. "I love Lea. When I first got turned onto the show she was in it, so it's her voice that echoes in my heart. I really think she's wonderful and we'll see where it takes us."

While no casting has been announced, McG plans to film the movie in eastern Europe and hopes it will feel "very similar to the [stage] production ... with a little Baz Luhrmann thrown in."

Featuring music by Duncan Shiek and lyrics and book by Steven Slater, Spring Awakening opened December 10, 2006 at Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theatre. The musical, which tells the story of a group of German teenagers exploring their sexual sides for the first time, earned eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The original cast also featured Jonathan Groff and John Gallagher Jr. The musical ran for 859 performances.

Michele currently plays Rachel Berry on TV's Glee and recently made her feature film debut in New Year's Eve. She has also appeared on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof, Ragtime and Les Miserables.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

2nd Round of Tony Eligibility Decided Upon by Nominating Committee

The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for a second time during the 2011-2012 theater season to consider the eligibility of 13 Broadway shows: Man and Boy, The Mountaintop, Relatively Speaking, Chinglish, Other Desert Cities, Godspell, Venus in Fur, Private Lives, Seminar, Bonnie & Clyde, Stick Fly, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever and Lysistrata Jones. The following decisions were announced:

Jennifer Lim and Gary Wilmes will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actress/Actor in a Leading Role in a Play categories respectively for their performances in Chinglish.

Judith Light and Thomas Sadoski will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actress/Actor in a Featured Role in a Play categories respectively for their performances in Other Desert Cities.

Hunter Parrish will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actor in Leading Role in a Musical category for his performance in Godspell.

Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actress/Actor in a Leading Role in a Play categories respectively for their performances in Venus in Fur.

Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actress/Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical categories respectively for their performances in Bonnie & Clyde.

Tobin Ost and Aaron Rhyne will be considered eligible jointly in the category of Best Scenic Design of a Musical for Bonnie & Clyde.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson will be considered eligible in the category of Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Stick Fly.

Peter Parnell will be considered eligible in the category of Best Book of a Musical for On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.

Patti Murin and Josh Segarra will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actress/Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical categories respectively for their performances in Lysistrata Jones.

All other decisions were consistent with the opening night credits. The Tony Awards Administration Committee, which released its first round of decisions on November 3, 2011, meets a total of four times throughout the season to decide the eligibility for the 2012 Tony Awards. The Tony Awards ceremony will air on CBS on June 10.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Porgy and Bess Extends on Broadway

The controversial Broadway revival of The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, starring Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, has been extended on Broadway. The production had originally been scheduled to run through July 8th, but will now run through September 30, 2012.

Stick Fly to Close on Broadway

The Broadway production of Stick Fly, which has had trouble finding it's audience, will be closing by month's end. Lydia R. Diamond's new play opened in December to lukewarm reviews even though it has some heavy names behind it, like producer Alicia Keys and star Dule Hill. The show has been bringing in only around 60% capacity and has rarely broken above $300,000 in weekly grosses. Closing day has been announced for February 26th.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

There's An App for That

Everyone who does theater knows the feeling. There just has to be a better way to rehearse shows and keep good records than old-fashioned note taking. While the traditional way has its benefits, it is time consuming and can take up thousands of pages. A couple of theater vets have come up with some creative solutions in the form of iPhone apps to help out the rehearsal process. Check out the article below to see the details of what they have in mind and what they have come up with.


http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118049702?refCatId=15

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Philip Seymour Hoffman Eyes John LeCarré

Broadway vet Philip Seymour Hoffman is gearing up for his Broadway performance in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, but he is looking ahead towards his film resume. Hoffman is in talks to star in a movie adaptation of John LeCarré's novel A Most Wanted Man according to Daniel Miller of The Hollywood Reporter. The film will be shot in Hamburg, Germany, and will be directed by Anton Corbijn.

Set in present-day Hamburg, Hoffman will star as the chief of a German spy operation attempting to discover the identity of a mysterious half-Chechen half-Russian man. The man, who has turned up in Hamburg’s Islamic community, is searching for the fortune of his late Russian father.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Kinky Boots to Get Chicago Try Out

The previously announced musical adaptation of the 2005 film Kinky Boots has been making headway in the news lately. The show, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and a score by pop icon Cyndi Lauper had its New York workshop January 19th and 20th in anticipation of a Broadway opening some time in the 2012-2013 season. The workshop starred Broadway vets Stark Sands and Billy porter and was produced by Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig, with choreography by Jerry Mitchell. The Chicago Tribune has reported that the next step in the show's development may be an out-of-town tryout there, though no official production dates have been announced.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Godspell and Sutton Foster to Appear on Project Runway

Broadway.com is reporting that the contestants on Project Runway All Stars are going to have to "make it work" for the cast of Godspell. The revival of Stephen Schwartz's legendary rock musical and Tony winner Sutton Foster will be featured on the February 16 Broadway-themed episode of Lifetime Television's designer reality competition

Project Runway contestants will compete for their "Broadway debut" when Schwartz challenges the designer to put together a costume to be worn in the Broadway production of Godspell. Foster, who currently appears in Anything Goes, will serve as a guest judge.

Directed by Daniel Goldstein and choreographed Christopher Gattelli, Godspell stars Hunter Parrish as Jesus, Wallace Smith as Judas in addition to Uzo Aduba, Nick Blaemire, Celisse Henderson, Morgan James, Telly Leung, Lindsay Mendez, George Salazar and Anna Maria Perez de Tagle. The revival, which opened on November 7, 2011, is currently running at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Creation of A Classic

The New York Public Library's digital curator, Doug Reside, has done something quite remarkable. He has culled through the 189 floppy disks (remember those?) that represent the creation of Jonathan Larson's 1996 Tony-winning musical Rent. The New York Times has reported on the story in the following article by Jennifer Schuessler, under the title "Tale of the Floppy Disks: How Jonathan Larson Created ‘Rent’".

At 6:44 pm on Feb. 4, 1992, a little-known composer and playwright named Jonathan Larson hit “save” for the first time on a Microsoft Word file containing the lyrics to a half dozen songs loosely tied together with fragments of a story that over the next four years would grow into the mega-hit musical “Rent.”
The legend of that show is well known: Larson’s sudden death of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 on the morning of the show’s Off Broadway opening; the rave reviews, followed by posthumous Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Larson; and a 12-year, 5,124-performance run on Broadway.
But now, almost exactly 20 years to the day after Larson made that initial “save” — or 10,520,000 minutes, as one of the musical’s best known songs might tabulate it — Doug Reside, the digital curator for performing arts at the New York Public Library, will give a public talk arguing that there is another way to tabulate Larson’s creativity: by minutely analyzing the bits and bytes he left behind left behind on 189 floppy disks.
Sorry, “Rent”-heads: Mr. Reside’s talk, to be delivered Friday at the library’s flagship building on Fifth Avenue, will contain no startling revelations or dramatic plot twists, he said in a recent interview. But it will, he insisted, underline the importance of computer forensics in an age when works of art are increasingly, as archivists put it, “born digital.” And when it comes to studying and preserving these fragile materials, he likes to quote “Rent” itself, saying there’s “no day but today.”
When Mr. Reside, a lifelong theater and computer geek as well as a trained medievalist, first encountered Larson’s disks at the Library of Congress (which had acquired Larson’s papers after his death), they had been cataloged but not studied. They were “really sitting in shoeboxes,” Mr. Reside recalled.
Mr. Reside’s first step, after drafting a study plan and getting the necessary permissions, was to make bit-for-bit copies of all the files. He then hunted down vintage software and tools like the Basilisk II emulator, which allowed him to see the files exactly as Larson had seen them, right down to the chunky fonts and irritating pop–up error messages.
“If you’re interested in the genesis of the text, it’s important to see not just the earlier versions but the mechanisms by which those earlier versions were created,” Mr. Reside said.
Larson was “a little advanced” technologically, Mr. Reside said, despite his ambivalence about the Big Brother-ish aspects of technology. (He wrote an unproduced musicalization of George Orwell’s “1984,” Mr. Reside noted, and some parts of “Rent” suggest concern with the way machines dehumanize relationships.)
Most notably, he was an avid early adopter of the digital composition software Performer, which made it easy to orchestrate — and repeatedly reorchestrate — his music himself.
If “Rent” had been composed 10 years earlier, before such software was available, “it might have been a radically different show,” Mr. Reside said.
In addition to some 40 unique drafts of the script and hundreds of related files, the disks also contain a rich record of Larson’s daily life: letters (but no e-mail: he apparently had no Internet connection), invoices, guest lists for his annual holiday “Peasant Feast,” schedules from his day job waiting tables at the Moondance Diner, calculations for how he was going to split the electric bill with his roommates.
“Larson did seem to use the computer as we do today, as a source of all his personal information,” Mr. Reside said. “But he was limited by how long it took to start up and how much space he had.” (In 1992, the typical PC had only about 2 percent of the processing power of today’s iPhones.)
The dozens of saved drafts suggest that Larson was mindful of documenting his creative process, Mr. Reside said. But some files also reveal interim changes Larson may not have realized were being recorded for posterity.
When viewed through a program called Text Wrangler, each Microsoft Word file shows the last 14 changes Larson made within the document, which appear at the end as an eye-glazing string of numbers specifying the location of each altered character. (Before a kindly soul at Microsoft provided the file formatting description, Mr. Reside had to decode all the number strings manually.)
To Mr. Reside, such an unexpected trove of time-stamped revisions suggests the potential richness of nonpaper manuscripts. “Born-digital materials allow access to these kinds of revisions, and the timing, much more than paper drafts would have,” he said.
To the casual observer, however, they also raise the possibility of total information overload. For example, Mr. Reside noted that with access to a writer’s Google Docs account, a researcher could conceivably track nearly every keystroke ever made within a document.
But the bigger worry for future scholars, Mr. Reside said, is gaining access to disks and hard drives before physical decay and rapidly obsolescing technology renders them inaccessible. Even in the Larson archive, which became available to scholars far sooner than it might have if Larson hadn’t died so young, there are seven disks Mr. Reside has been unable to read at all.
As it happens, however, Mr. Reside thinks he may have discovered Larson’s final textual fiddle, made sometime between 10:34 AM and 12:38 PM on Jan. 15, 1996, 10 days before his death.
The tweak — a line in the song “We’re Okay” was changed from “Steve, go home/No you cut the Styrofoam” to “Steve, You’re Great/No you cut the paper plate” — may seem trivial. But the fact that Larson saved it in a whole new file rather than just copying over the old one is telling, Mr. Reside argued.
“I can’t actually believe that was the last little thing he had to change, since it was so insignificant,” Mr. Reside said. “But he was very much a perfectionist about his work.”
“’How Do You Document Real Life: A Tale of ‘Rent,’ Jonathan Larson’s Floppy Disks and Digital Forensics,” Feb. 3, 12—1:15, Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Clybourne Park Saved

In more news about the on-again-off-again Broadway production of Clybourne Park, Broadway.com has released the following report.

After losing its lead producer Scott Rudin earlier this week, the Broadway production of Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Clybourne Park is on track to open at the Walter Kerr Theatre this spring. New lead producer Jordan Roth, president of Jujamcyn Theatres, which owns the theater, released a statement on the play's questionable future.

“It is a true privilege for all of us at Jujamcyn to bring such a fiercely provocative and wildly funny work to Broadway audiences," Roth said. "Clybourne Park is on. We’ll see you there!”

Rudin departed the production on January 31 after a disagreement with Norris, who after months of negotiations, abruptly decided to not sign on to star in Rudin's upcoming TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections.

Clybourne Park, which follows the racially-charged real estate transactions of one house in both 1959 and 2009, opened at off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010. The show has been mounted in London, where it won the Olivier Award for Best New Play, and had major productions in Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The planned Broadway production is currently running at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum through February 26, and previously announced a Broadway opening night of April 12.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Streetcar Named Desire Revival Sets Date

The previously announced revival of A Streetcar Named Desire has set its dates. The multiracial cast will include Blair Underwood, Nicole Ari Parker, Daphne Runib-Vega, and Wood Harris. The show, which had been circling Broadway for months, will officially land on Broadway on April 22nd, after a preview period beginning April 3rd, taking over the Broadhurst Theatre, where the musical adaptation of Rebecca would have opened before its financial woes took it out of commission.

Broadway Clybourne Park Cancelled

Producer Scott Rudin, lead producer on the previously announced Broadway transfer of Bruce Norris' play Clybourne Park, has cancelled the move from Los Angeles to the Walter Kerr Theatre. A spokesman for Boneau/Bryan-Brown, a Broadway publicity firm, has confirmed that "we are no longer involved with Clybourne Park."

According to Broadway.com (whose information comes from The Post), "the play cancellation stemmed from a disagreement between Rudin and playwright Bruce Norris, who began his career as an actor. Norris had been set to play the older brother in Rudin’s forthcoming HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections but abruptly pulled out, saying, 'I don’t like to do pilots.' Rudin responded by cancelling the Broadway transfer of Clybourne Park, now running at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles with its original seven-person cast."

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Taylor Swift Will No Longer Star in Les Misrables

Justin Ravits of USMagazine.com has reported that Taylor Swift, who had been announced to star as Eponine in the upcoming film version of the megahit Broadway musical Les Miserables, has been replaced by theater actress Samantha Barks. Barks previously played the role in the 25th anniversary concert of the show in London. Broadway impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who produced the original production, made the announcement Tuesday evening at the Manchester Palace, where Barks was a featuring performer in Olivier!.