The Broadway premieres of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive have been set for 2022 and 2021, respectively, with producers at the Manhattan Theatre Club expressing “hopes high that we will be able to return to live theatre.” The nonprofit MTC announced the target openings today, along with plans
Theater
The Right Girl, a new musical based on (and co-written by) the real-life story of former screenwriter Louisette Geiss and the sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein she says ended her film career, will be presented in a film version to a live audience for the first time next month. The production features music by 11-time
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the story of how the Brady Bunch might reclaim the now ubiquitous, Zoom-era Brady Bunch-style screen squares. With the help of the son and daughter of series creator Sherwood Schwartz, original Bradys Barry Williams and Christopher Knight and a cast of Broadway performers, a Maine theater company will present a benefit reading of
With Broadway’s shut down at least until June, some producers who had been hoping to open shows this spring are re-setting their sights on fall or even 2022, while others have announced no plans whatsoever. The latest to announce a new schedule is Lincoln Center Theater’s much anticipated production of Flying Over Sunset, a new
EXCLUSIVE: With Broadway dark at least until next summer, The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman has set a new opening night for 2022. The highly anticipated musical revival, costarring Sutton Foster, now will begin previews at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre on Monday, December 20, 2021, with Opening Night scheduled for Thursday, February 10, 2022. The
Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre will take its acclaimed production of Lauren Yee’s play with music Cambodian Rock Band on the road, marking the theater company’s first production to tour. The production, with songs by L.A. band Dengue Fever and directed by Chay Yew, was praised by critics upon its Signature opening earlier this year, and
The upcoming season of Encores! at New York’s City Center will include an adaptation by Pose‘s Billy Porter of The Life, a musical last seen in New York on Broadway in 1997. Porter’s adaptation, which he’ll direct, is one of two upcoming Encores! productions reviving rarely staged Broadway musicals centering on Black lives; also in
A COVID-19 vaccine would likely not be an immediate, complete solution to Broadway’s woes, suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci, who noted in an interview this week that it could take a year of reliable vaccine usage before theatergoers could safely attend shows without masks. Fauci issued the warning during a 30-minute Instagram Live chat with actress
Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre has indefinitely postponed its world premiere stage adaptation of the 2005 George Clooney-co-written film Good Night, and Good Luck, a project that had generated considerable interest on Broadway. Steppenwolf announced yesterday that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the theater company’s 2020-21 season will consist largely of streaming, virtual productions. Good Night, and
In a lawsuit that offers a glimpse of COVID-19’s economic threat to the Broadway industry, Jujamcyn Theaters, owner of five major Broadway venues, is suing its insurance companies after the insurers offered to pay a mere $250,000 of what Jujamcyn claims should be “tens of millions of dollars” in losses due to the coronavirus shutdown.
EXCLUSIVE: The Broadway production company behind the upcoming Michael Jackson musical MJ and the stage adaptation of the hit 2000 film Almost Famous has hired The Old Globe Theater’s Travis LeMont Ballenger as producer to help oversee both high-profile projects. Ballenger, most recently the Associate Artistic Director at the Globe in San Diego, also will
Sing Street, the sold-out Off Broadway musical that was set to begin performances at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre just as the COVID-19 shutdown hit, is now targeting an opening sometime between winter 2021 and winter 2022. The announcement was made Monday by producers Barbara Broccoli, Brian Carmody, Patrick Milling Smith, Michael Wilson, Orin Wolf and Frederick
The Phantom of the Opera might not have left the London theater scene for good after all, assures composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Responding to a newspaper column written by Phantom producer Cameron Mackintosh stating that both the London and UK touring productions are “permanently shut down” due to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic,
A new work by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage will join Second Stage Theater’s Broadway line-up for 2021, joining the company’s postponed revival of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out starring Patrick J. Adams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jesse Williams. The newly announced, as-yet-untitled production of Nottage’s new play will be directed by Kate
The Los Angeles production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton won’t be arriving at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre until next April, more than a year after its originally scheduled premiere. After repeated postponements due to the COVID-19 shutdown, producers have officially scotched the latest start-up target of September, canceling all performances currently on sale between September 8,
Actors’ Equity has approved the first two theaters to resume performances since the nationwide shuttering of playhouses in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. The theaters, a pair of regional venues in Massachusetts, have agreed to safety protocols that include testing for Equity members and those who come in contact with them. The Berkshire Theatre
The Broadway revival of the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical Caroline, or Change and the New York premiere of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles starring Debra Messing are the latest productions to announce postponements until 2021, and they’ll be joined on the Roundabout Theatre Company line-up with the Broadway debut of Alice Childress’ 1955 play Trouble in
As theaters start reopening, Fandango is looking to make the help moviegoers return to theaters confidently with a newly launched comprehensive program. Starting today, Fandango.com and Fandango mobile apps will begin rolling out new resources and product functionality, including social distance seating maps, a one-stop guide to safety policies provided by more than 1000 theater
A social media campaign encouraging shutdown New York City theaters to open their lobbies – and restrooms – to protesters is gaining traction among Manhattan’s Off Broadway venues and spaces in Brooklyn: The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, A.R.T./New York, IRT Theater and Irondale Center are among the first to put out the virtual welcome mats.
Few artists can say they’ve surmounted social-distancing obstacles as magically as Portuguese illusionist Helder Guimarães. The impact of social distancing on the performing arts needn’t be re-stated here: In one way or another, most installments of Deadline’s Coping With COVID-19 Crisis series have dealt with just that topic, as performers – or those aspiring to
A musical stage adaptation of NBC’s Smash is in development for Broadway, with Steven Spielberg, Robert Greenblatt and Neil Meron on board as lead producers. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who wrote more than 20 songs for the 2012-13 TV series, will write the musical’s score, with a book co-written by Bob Martin (The Prom,
EXCLUSIVE: New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre has announced an upcoming online run of four plays, becoming what could be Off Broadway’s first summer season created specifically for virtual viewing. Included in the line-up is the world premiere of Darren Murphy’s short play The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, with characters affected by the COVID-19
Some Like It Hot, a planned stage musical based on the great 1959 Billy Wilder comedy, has set its sights on a Fall 2021 Broadway opening, producers announced today. The staging would mark the musical’s world premiere: A previously announced pre-Broadway engagement in Chicago has been canceled. With a book by Matthew Lopez (The Inheritance),
Disney’s Frozen has become Broadway’s first long-running casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and industrywide shutdown. The production, which opened March 22, 2018 at the St. James Theatre, announced today that it will not return when Broadway reopens – whenever that might be. In the closure announcement, producers said the musical will not re-open “as a
MJ, the Michael Jackson stage musical headed for Broadway, will begin previews next March, an eight-month postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdown. The new dates were announced today by producers Lia Vollack Productions and The Michael Jackson Estate. The world premiere of MJ, featuring Jackson’s music, will begin previews on Monday, March 8, 2021,
On the day her new Off Broadway production Between the Lines was set to open, producer Daryl Roth has announced the musical based on the novel by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer will instead make its debut in Spring 2021. Most of the planned cast will stay on board for the pandemic-postponed production, including
Berkeley Rep’s world premiere of Swept Away, a stage production featuring the music of The Avett Brothers, written by Moulin Rouge!‘s John Logan and reteaming Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer and star John Gallagher Jr, has been postponed for a year to summer 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. With its high-profile creative team and
Roger Horchow, a Cincinnati-born entrepreneur who parlayed a luxury mail-order fortune into a Tony Award-winning streak as a producer on Broadway, died Saturday in Dallas of cancer. He was 91. The founder in 1971 of he Horchow Collection luxury mail-order catalog, Horchow sold the company to Neiman Marcus in 1988, and by 1992 had won
Cast members from Broadway’s Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Jagged Little Pill, Company, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Chicago, Diana, Mean Girls, Girl from the North Country, Six, and Mrs. Doubtfire will take part in Sunday’s Broadway Does Mother’s Day, a digital variety benefitting Broadway Cares’ COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund. The show is designed to replace
EXCLUSIVE: Despite recent, scattered press reports suggesting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was snubbing Broadway by shutting the industry out of his New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board, the state and the theater industry are working closely on how to re-start, Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, tells Deadline. “We are completely aligned