2024 Chita Rivera Award Nominations: Illinoise gets lots of love

Below is the complete list of the nominations for 2024 Chita Rivera Awards for dance and choreography, on Broadway, Off-Broadway and the movies, as announced this afternoon by Bebe Neuwirth. The awards will be presented  May 20 at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Check out my New York Theater Awards 2024: Calendar and Guide Continue reading 2024 Chita Rivera Award Nominations:…

View On WordPress

Drama Desk Award Nominations 2024

Nominations for the 68th annual Drama Desk Awards were announced by Kathleen Turner this morning. The awards, which honor achievement by professional theater artists on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, will be held June 10 at The Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Don’t know the difference between the Drama Desk and the Drama League and the Drama Critics Circle and the Outer…

View On WordPress

Broadway Finale: Great Gatsby, Mother Play, Illinoise, Uncle Vanya, Mary Jane, Patriots, The Heart of Rock and Roll. Awards Season Begins! Stageworthy News of the Week.

Three plays and four musicals opened on Broadway last week, the last of the 39 shows that opened during the 2023-2024 season. Awards season has already begun in earnest, with the nominations for two major theater awards announced last week (see below), two more later today (Drama Desk and Chita Rivera), and the Tony Award nominations announced tomorrow (which is a birthday gift for me) by Jesse…

View On WordPress

Mary Jane Broadway Review

Rachel McAdams might at first seem to be miscast in her first role on Broadway.  She portrays the title character in Amy Herzog’s deceptively casual play about the mother of a severely disabled son.  Alex’s birth two years earlier has completely upended Mary Jane’s life. Her husband abandoned her because of Alex, and taking care of her child is so time-consuming that she had to abandon her…

View On WordPress

Broadway Season Closer Quiz 2024

How well were you paying attention to the fourteen Broadway plays and musicals that opened in April, the last month of the 2023-2024 Broadway season? Take the quiz and find out. Continue reading Broadway Season Closer Quiz 2024

View On WordPress

The Great Gatsby Broadway Review

A musical about the Jazz Age with almost no jazz? A man of mystery who tells us everything in his first song? A critique of wealth whose main pleasure is how expensive it looks? These are lessons that high school students assigned to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel could learn by attending “The Great Gatsby” at the Broadway Theater – lessons in irony. The “Gatsby” on stage is not a reliable…

View On WordPress

Mother Play Broadway Review

Jessica Lange is unforgettable in Paula Vogel’s unforgiving portrait of the title character in “Mother Play,” her semiautobiographical new play opening tonight on Broadway — a role that is so demanding that it feels tantamount to actor abuse. The actress is called on to age forty years on stage, frequently and ferociously in a heightened state of emotion, whether drunkenly oversharing,…

View On WordPress

Uncle Vanya Broadway Review

As Vanya, Steve Carell, who’s been a low-level whiner for the first two Acts, suddenly gets so angry at his pompous-ass brother-in-law who’s been sponging off him for thirty years, that he pounces on top of the dinner table and slides the length of it on all fours.  Well,  I thought, that’s different. It was a rare moment of brash movement in the more usually sedate “Uncle Vanya” opening tonight…

View On WordPress

Illinoise Opens on Broadway

“Illinoise,” a stage interpretation of Sufjan Stevens’ acclaimed 2005 album “Illinois,” is opening on Broadway today just six weeks after it opened at the Park Avenue Armory, and my reaction to it then counts as ironic now. I said that regular New York theatergoers might need to adjust their expectations, for two reasons: 1.  It had already sold out its entire three-week run by the time my review…

View On WordPress

Outer Critics Circle Award 2024 Nominations

“Dead Outlaw” leads the nominations for the 73rd annual Outer Critics Circle Awards, announced this by Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez. (video below) The winners will be announced May 13, with a private ceremony taking place May 23 at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Don’t know the difference between the…

View On WordPress

The Heart of Rock and Roll

“Very poppy,” a character says to Bobby (Corey Cott), the Leading Man, just after he’s performed “Do You Believe in Love,” one of more than two dozen songs from the 1980s band Huey Lewis and the News in this new jukebox musical opening tonight on Broadway. I knew “poppy” was meant as an insult only because the character saying it is the Villain, Tucker (Billy Harrigan Tighe), Bobby’s rival, the…

View On WordPress

Patriots Broadway Review

Vladimir Putin was working as a taxi driver when he visited one of the richest and most powerful men in Russia to ask for a favor.  The previous month, Putin had lost his job as the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and he wanted help in getting back into politics. “I am interested in liberalizing Russia. For too long we have defined ourselves as enemies of the West. We need to become close to the…

View On WordPress

Drama League Award 2024 Nominations

Below are the nominations for the 90th annual Drama League Awards, announced this morning (video below) by Vanessa Williams and Bebe Neuwirth. The awards will be held at The Ziegfeld Ballroom on Friday, May 17, 2024 at 12:00PM Don’t know the difference between the awards of the Drama League and the Drama Desk and the New York Drama Critics Circle? Read my New York Theater Awards 2024 Calendar…

View On WordPress

Broadway: Cabaret, Hell's Kitchen, Stereophonic, Suffs, The Wiz. Stageworthy News of the Week

Four musicals and a play that has a lot of original music in it, opened on Broadway this past week, and two plays opened Off Broadway. By the end of the day Thursday, which marks the official end of the Broadway season, SEVEN more Broadway shows will have opened. The Week in New York Theater Reviews Continue reading Broadway: Cabaret, Hell’s Kitchen, Stereophonic, Suffs, The Wiz. Stageworthy…

View On WordPress

Orlando Review

Orlando (Taylor Mac) has already been living an unusual life as a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth’s court when he suddenly becomes a woman. “Let biologists and psychologists argue. It is enough for us to state the simple fact: Orlando was a man till the age of thirty, when she became a woman and has remained so ever since.” So say members of the chorus in “Orlando,”  a stage adaptation by Sarah…

View On WordPress

Cabaret Broadway Review

If so much of it weren’t so out of balance, this fourth Broadway revival of “Cabaret” would be impressive in its complete transformation of  Kander and Ebb’s great musical – physically, visually, and, in one respect, morally.  Much of the credit or blame  goes to Tom Scutt, who is the costume designer, scenic designer, and theater designer of the production, which was a hot ticket in London, and…

View On WordPress

Hell's Kitchen Opens on Broadway

Alicia Keys’ lively, tuneful musical “Hell’s Kitchen” opens tonight at Broadway’s Shubert Theater, with the same principal cast and creative team as its brief sold-out run Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, which ended in January. There have been a few changes in the transfer, but it’s similar enough for me to resurrect my review from November, adding new photographs from the Broadway…

View On WordPress