-
Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.– Tom Stoppard
-
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.
– Maggie Smith
Month: February 2015
On the Twentieth Century Derailed Saturday Night Back on Schedule for Sunday
James Moye as Buddy rehearsing the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Elf in November 2014.
It’s been announced that the Roundabout’s revival of On the Twentieth Century at the American Airlines Theatre will be back on track today. The show did not go on last night as one of the stars, Peter Gallagher, was unable to perform due to vocal problems. It’s been reported that Gallagher has been rehearsing and performing all week with a cold and that it finally got the best of him. To complicate things, the understudy was not yet ready to perform. That combination of factors meant that the performance had to be cancelled.
Brakes Put on Last Minute
Although some audience members were irritated that the cancellation of On the Twentieth Century was announced right about curtain time, Kristin Chenoweth, who came out to make the announcement with director Scott Ellis, made every effort to smooth things over.
After explaining the predicament, Chenoweth offered the sold out house a rendition of the Charlie Chaplin classic “Smile.” Then she asked the four actors who play the porters in On the Twentieth Century to come out and they performed the tap dance number “Life is Like a Train”. It was a huge audience pleaser.
Tough Sell
It’s not easy to cancel a performance on a Saturday night, which is the most attended performance time of the theatre week, but due to the fact that the show is still in previews Gallagher’s understudy, James Moye, was not fully rehearsed. This is not unusual to have this situation at this point in the production process, as the show is still being refined and changes continue to be made. Plus, along with learning Gallagher’s role, Moye, who is part of the ensemble, must know his ensemble duties in the show.
The Show Will Go On
The latest news from On the Twentieth Century is that Moye rehearsed last night after the cancellation and will be able to perform in Gallagher’s stead. Showtime is 2 pm. Gallagher is day-to-day.
Finding Neverland Preps for Broadway Opening and Pushes for West End Transfer
Finding Neverland pointing towards a West End production too?
Finding Neverland, with a score by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and a book by James Graham, will begin previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on March 15 and will open on April 15. But the new musical may have an even more important performance date before its preview and opening, as the Daily Mail reports that Barlow and stage and screen star Bryan Cranston will be hosting a preview of the show for West End theatre managers and owners on February 26.
A Push Towards London
The push towards London at this time is aggressive in that the show, which was performed at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA this past summer, is still working towards opening night on Broadway. Directed by ART Artistic Director Diane Paulus (Tony Award for Pippin and Hair), the musical has been generating some good buzz.
Finding Neverland is not unknown in England as it did make its world premiere at the Curve Theatre in Leicester in 2012. The ART version, which was the U.S. premiere, included a lot of reworking and rewriting. Refinement is ongoing.
The Musical
Finding Neverland is based on two sources- David Magee’s Academy Award-winning motion picture of the same name and Allan Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan. The musical finds British playwright J. M. Barrie much in the need for inspiration, and he discovers it through a chance meeting with a family. The meeting develops into a relationship that leads Barrie to write his best-known work, Peter Pan.
History of Finding Neverland
Although Finding Neverland made its premiere at the Curve Theatre in September 2012, Finding Neverland was to have first been produced in 2011 at the La Jolla Playhouse. But that premiere fell through. Rob Ashford directed the Curve Theatre production. At that time the show had an entirely different creative team that included Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics) and Knee as the book writer. The musical was focused on a 2013 West End transfer, but it was plagued by mixed reviews and problems that brewed and festered backstage. Producer Harvey Weinstein then decided to replace the creative team, and, thus far, the results seem to be much more positive.
Broadway Grosses for Week Ending 2/15/15 Reveal New Strength
Mirren made a big splash last weekend.
Helen Mirren in The Audience had a big first week, selling at 101.1%. That number is based on a short two-performance week. However, it’s expected that Mirren, who won an Olivier a few years ago for The Audience, will do big box office during her limited New York run.
Larry David’s comedy Fish in the Dark continued selling beyond capacity. The comedy realized a .5% increase over the week prior, filling the Cort Theatre at 101.6%, which was third for all shows on Broadway. The comedy earned $21,703 more than it did the week before.
Topping out the capacity stats was The Book of Mormon at 102.6%. The musical came in second in grosses, bringing in a total of $1,648,502. The Lion King was first in terms of gross, realizing $1,726,042, while filling 98.9% of its seats.
On the Twentieth Century
In its first weekend, the revival of On the Twentieth Century gave four performances and sold at 96.5% capacity. The madcap musical, which is produced by the Roundabout, stars Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher. It will be interesting to see if it does better than Honeymoon in Vegas and On the Town, both of which, until this past week, have seen sales slump.
Honeymoon and On the Town
Honeymoon in Vegas enjoyed the biggest gain in capacity of any show on Broadway. The musical sold at 64.9%, which marks a 13.6% jump from last week. Its gross receipts were at $491,146, which was an increase of $131,983 over last week.
The other show that witnessed a marked increase was On the Town. The 13.1% rise in capacity meant that the show sold at 49.3%, realizing $172,536 more in gross receipts, which totaled $552,450 for the week.
Other Box Office news
The Elephant Man was at 101.7%, up 1.5%, while Cabaret rose by 2.5%, coming in at 100.5%. The Elephant Man, which stars Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper (American Sniper), closes this week just before the statuettes are given out, and Cabaret, which stars Oscar nominee Emma Stone (Birdman), saw Stone play her final performances this week. It’s said that the nominations helped both productions get added attention and increased ticket sales.
Sales on the Rise
With 18 new productions opening in March and April, eventual improvement in the weather, and Tony buzz developing, we should expect to see ticket sales for Broadway shows continue to rise.
(Note: All figures from this report were provided by the Broadway League. )
Organ Donar
Artist: Danny Shanahan
Credit: Danny Shanahan The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Clinton The Musical Off-Broadway Premiere at New World Stages Announces Leads
Clinton The Musical casting for Off-Broadway premiere.
Clinton: the Musical, a satire that spoofs the eight years our 42nd president and his wife spent in the White House, will star Tom Galantich and Duke Lafoon as the president. Both Galantich and Lafoon possess a range of Broadway credits. Galantich has been in The Great White Way productions of Don’t Dress for Dinner, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Boys from Syracuse, Mamma Mia! and City of Angels. Lafoon has been in the Broadway productions of Casa Valentina, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Sister Act and Bye Bye Birdie.
Galantich and Lafoon will each portray a different side of Bill Clinton. Galantich will play WJ, who is the All-American, wholesome president, while Lafoon will portray Billy, who is the rapscallion, bad boy of the White House.
Other Cast Members
Clinton: The Musical has more than two actors. It’s a full-length, full cast show, which includes John Treacy Egan as Newt Gingrich, Veronica Kuehn as Monica Lewinsky, Kerry Butler as Hillary Clinton, and Judy Gold as Eleanor Roosevelt. Kuehn made her Broadway debut in Mamma Mia! and has been in Avenue Q Off-Broadway.
The Creators
A pair of Australian brothers wrote Clinton: The Musical. The score is by Paul Hodge and the book by Paul Hodge and Michael Hodge. The idea for the musical came to Paul Hodge when he was on a family outing. At that time, he was seeing a musical in his homeland about a politician. His dad said, after seeing the musical with his son, “Oh, it was good, but politicians don’t make good subjects for musicals. The only politician who would make a good subject for that would be Bill Clinton.” Paul Hodge thought that his dad was onto something.
The Musical
The satire exploits the wide range of scandals, hijinks, rumors, and controversies that defined the Clinton years, including Bill Clinton’s sax and sex appeal, moral reformers and FOB wannabes, and political one-upmanship and media miscues. The score includes 90s pop, standard musical theatre styles, and burlesque.
Important Dates
Clinton: The Musical will premiere at New World Stages on March 25 and will officially open on April 9. It’s a change for audiences to relive history in a unique manner, as fodder for satire in a musical comedy.
Broadway in Brief
- The Lyceum is the oldest, continuously operating Broadway theatre in New York City.
- Along with the Lyceum Theatre (both built in 1903), the New Amsterdam is the oldest surviving Broadway venue.
- The Lyric Theatre, (previously known as the Foxwoods Theatre, the Hilton Theatre, and the Ford Center for the Performing Arts) is the youngest. It opened on January 18, 1998.
- The Gershwin Theatre has the largest seating capacity of any Broadway theatre, with 1,933 seats.
- The Helen Hayes Theatre, originally known as the Little Theatre, is the smallest theatre on Broadway, with 597 seats.
- The Vivian Beaumont Theatre is the only Broadway Venue not in the Theatre District. It is located in the Lincoln Center complex on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a good twelve blocks north of the rest.
- The Broadway venue that has housed the most Tony-Award winners for Best Play and Best Musical is the Richard Rogers Theatre, with Ten awards.
The Audience with Helen Mirren Previews Tonight on Broadway
Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience.
Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience on Broadway has been much anticipated. Mirren starts previews tonight for the show, which will open on March 8 and run through June 28 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. The play, which is written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Daldry, offers a fascinating premise revolving around 60 years of private, weekly meeting between the queen and her prime ministers. Continue reading
Truth in Advertising
The street in front of The Olympic Theatre
Source: Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Vol. 1 No. 10 (Saturday, September 6, 1851), Boston, p. 152
In the year 1840, the following very clever advertisement was used to promote a production of 1940! or, Crummles in Search of Novelty. Continue reading
The Iceman Cometh: Nathan Lane as Hickey in O’Neill Classic
Lane, Dennehy and company at BAM.
In 2012, Robert Falls directed Eugene O’Neill’sThe Iceman Cometh with Nathan Lane, Brian Dennehy, and an amazing ensemble cast. The Goodman run was extended, as Falls managed to capture the various essences O’Neill’s down and out characters, the ebb and flow of their desperate lives turning slowly towards death, and the hope of hopelessness than surrounds this sometimes funny but always dark drama.
The Iceman Cometh is one of those plays that one only attempts when one is ready to scale the ultimate artistic challenge, and Falls and company not only took on the challenge in 2012, but also succeeded mightily. The production has been remounted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It began previews February 5 and opened February 12. Once again, Lane and company have received high praise from reviewers and have captured and held the attention of audiences in a production that runs more than four hours.
The Play
Lane, as Hickey, usually offers hope, but this visit is different.
Nathan Lane plays Theodore “Hickey” Hickman, a salesman who saunters into Harry Hope’s saloon and flophouse when he has a hankering and treats everyone to jokes, drinks, and a good time. It is a bar whose patrons include those who are down and out, washed up, and on the verge of destruction. Old men, prostitutes, former warriors, pimps, and more live their lives out at Hope’s, as they mix alcohol, smoke, and pipe dreams to create a powerful concoction designed to hide the realities of their dwindling existences.
This is not an easy play to watch, but just as we are attracted to the real life tragedies of others, audiences become transfixed on this collection of characters. That is if the play is expertly conceptualized, directed, designed, and acted. The reports are it is by Falls and company.
The Reviews
John Douglas is “riveting” as Joe Mott.
Lane, who recently finished his run in the comedy It’s Only a Play in order to appear inThe Iceman Cometh, has won great praise. The New York Times observes, “I should begin with a lusty bravo for Nathan Lane, who climbs the mighty Everest of the play’s most challenging role, the salesman Hickey who harbors a grim secret, with a restless energy that never fails to impress…As an acting feat, one might compare this to emerging from a bubble bath only to swan-dive into a frozen pond — daunting to contemplate, let alone accomplish.”
In reference to Dennehy as Larry Slade, USA notes, “…here, hunched and subdued, the 76-year-old actor embodies the frailty and disgust of a man who has given up on life but is afraid, more than he’ll admit, of death. Even during his silent passages, you can’t stop watching him, watching Hickey and the rest.”
Variety observes, as others have, that John Douglas “is downright riveting as Joe Mott, the former owner of a Negro gambling house who only needs a decent stake to step back into his old life — provided he can keep his towering rage in check.”
The NY Daily News says succinctly what is echoed in other reviews when it writes, “Stephen Ouimette is ultimately a heartbreaker as the bar’s owner. His name, thanks to sly authorial irony, is Harry Hope. There’ not much of that stuff for him and his customers. Hopeless would be a more fitting surname.”
The production as an entity has received plaudits from all. The word is this is the show to see if you want to see some of the best acting either on or off Broadway this theatrical season.
Limited Run
The Iceman Cometh is scheduled to run for one-month Off-Broadway at BAM, closing on March 15. The four-act play’s total running time is 4 hours and 45 minutes and offers audiences a harrowing and revelatory exploration of the lives of the downtrodden and beaten. It is O’Neill at his best.
Frozen Broadway Bound for 2017 as Alex Timbers May Direct
Frozen is slated for the Broadway stage.
Frozen, the hit Disney film musical, is eyeing Broadway for 2017. Disney Theatricals will produce the stage musical, which may be directed by the highly innovative Alex Timbers. The Daily Mail reports that dates are indefinite, but that the new stage musical will include songs from the film as well as new numbers.
Alex Timbers
Timbers has been a potent force on Broadway. His most recent effort to make it to The Great White way was the 2014 stage musical of the film Rocky, for which he received Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Best Director. In 2012, he was nominated for a Tony for his direction of the hit show Peter and the Starcatcher, and in 2011 he was nominated for a Tony for his book on Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson. He also directed that production. He directed the The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway, which enjoyed a strong run and was extended numerous times.
The Announcement
In a statement, President and Producer of Disney Theatrical Productions Thomas Schumacher announced some creative staffing for Frozen, noting “As has already been announced, Disney Theatrical is working on a stage adaptation of the animated film Frozen. It will come as no surprise that the EGOT-winning Broadway veteran Robert Lopez and the Oscar and Grammy winning Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who wrote the indelible songs for the film, will be working on the show and that Oscar winner Jennifer Lee, co-director and screenwriter of the film, will be working on the book of the stage version. No other staffing or dates have been announced.”
Further Word
We can expect more on the stage musical Frozen in the future. At this point, the Broadway date remains general with 2017 being the target and no formal announcements regarding casting have been made. Idina Menzel, who sang the popular song “Let It Go” in the film is presently playing the lead in the musical If/Then on Broadway. It’s not known when a decision will be made on who will direct the musical, but Timbers looks to be a strong candidate.
Roundabout Broadway Revival On the Twentieth Century Previews Tonight
On the Twentieth Century was to preview February 12th.
The Broadway revival of On the Twentieth Century, which was supposed to preview February 12, previews tonight. The Friday the 13th initial public performance, which is an odd one for those in the theatre, who are often quite superstitious, has been much anticipated due to the fact that two of Broadway’s most respected musical talents, Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher, are playing opposite one another.
The Musical
On the Twentieth Century, which won five Tonys when it was first produced on Broadway in 1978, featured John Cullum, Madeline Khan, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline. The musical won Tonys for Best Book and Best Score. It has a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman.
The show is a crazy screwball comedy in which a down and out Broadway producer named Oscar Jaffe (Gallagher) attempts to convince his former lover and muse, Lily Garland (Chenoweth), to commit to play Mary Magdalene in a nonexistent Broadway drama. Jaffe believes that such a deal can resurrect his career, which is in a shambles. Garland, who is now a big Hollywood star, plays hard to get. The plot becomes exceedingly complex as they ride the luxury train, the Twentieth Century, across the country. Jaffe has various impediments thwarting his efforts, including Garland’s jealous, young lover and an out-of-control religious fanatic. It is a wild comedy on rails.
The Principals
On the Twentieth Century, which is scheduled for a limited run ending July 5 and will officially open March 12, is directed by Scott Ellis and will play at the American Airlines Theatre. Chenoweth, who is a Tony and Emmy winner, and Gallagher, Who is a Tony nominee, are joined by Tony nominee Andy Karl, Mark Linn-Baker and Tony winners Michael McGrath and Mary Louise Wilson.
Break a leg to all involved in On the Twentieth Century!