The 55-year-old actor has been playing Emcee in Cabaret, which will now shut a month earlier than planned
Billy Porter is “recovering from a serious case of sepsis”, forcing the early closure of Broadway’s revival of Cabaret in which he played a leading role.
The show’s producers announced on Sunday that Porter “is recovering from a serious case of sepsis” that will prevent him from returning to the stage.
Continue reading...Adler was involved behind the scenes of storied Broadway productions before finding acting success in his 60s
Jerry Adler, who spent decades behind the scenes of storied Broadway productions before pivoting to acting in his 60s, has died aged 96.
Adler died on Saturday, according to a brief family announcement confirmed by the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York. Adler “passed peacefully in his sleep”, Paradigm Talent Agency’s Sarah Shulman said on behalf of his family. No immediate cause was given.
Continue reading...Tonight’s nominations are led by musicals Maybe Happy Ending, Death Becomes Her and Buena Vista Social Club
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical
Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Club – WINNER!
Julia Knitel, Dead Outlaw
Gracie Lawrence, Just in Time
Justina Machado, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical
Joy Woods, Gypsy
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play
Tala Ashe, English
Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day
Marjan Neshat, English
Fina Strazza, John Proctor is the Villain
Kara Young, Purpose – WINNER!
Over the course of an illustrious career, Strouse composed music for Broadway shows such as Bye Bye Birdie and Applause but was best known for Annie’s evergreen songs
The composer Charles Strouse, a three-time Tony award-winner whose hits included Annie, has died at the age of 96. His death at home in New York on Thursday was announced by his four children.
Over the course of a long and illustrious career, Strouse composed music for the Broadway shows Bye Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, Applause, Rags and Nick & Nora. But he was perhaps best known for his score for Annie which opened in New York in 1977 and ran for almost six years. The story of the plucky red-headed orphan featured evergreen songs (with lyrics by Martin Charnin) including Tomorrow, You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile and It’s the Hard-Knock Life, which was sampled by Jay-Z in a 1998 single. Annie received seven Tony awards, including best musical and best original score, and won the Grammy for best cast show album. It was adapted as a film in 1982.
Continue reading...At the annual celebration of Broadway, major acting winners included Jeremy Strong, Daniel Radcliffe and Sarah Paulson
The 77th annual Tony awards were dominated by major wins for shows Stereophonic, Merrily We Roll Along and The Outsiders as well as actors Jeremy Strong and Daniel Radcliffe.
Stereophonic, the most nominated play in Tonys history with 13 nods, picked up five awards including best play. It tells the story of a British-American rock band in the 1970s trying to make an album.
Continue reading...Hello, I’m Dolly, a stage show inspired by the superstar’s life, will include her classics and new songs
Dolly Parton is heading to Broadway with the musical Hello, I’m Dolly.
The star is writing new songs to go along with some of her past hits and co-writing a stage story inspired by her life – a stage show that she hopes to land on Broadway in 2026.
Continue reading...The actor will play the lead in a stage adaptation of his Oscar-nominated journalism drama from 2005
George Clooney is set to make his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of his 2005 journalism drama Good Night, and Good Luck.
The actor’s sophomore feature as director will be transformed into a play set to premiere in spring 2025. Clooney, who played Fred W Friendly in the original, will now take on the role of Edward R Murrow.
Continue reading...Acclaimed director Sam Gold will adapt the Shakespeare tragedy with new music from hitmaker and Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff
West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler and Heartstopper breakout Kit Connor are set to play Shakespeare’s tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet on Broadway.
Romeo + Juliet will premiere later this year from Tony award-winning director Sam Gold, who has previously taken on other Shakespeare plays such as Macbeth, Othello and King Lear.
Continue reading...Jodie Comer and Tom Stoppard led a big night for Brits, while J Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell triumphed in a ceremony affected by the writers’ strike
Leopoldstadt and Kimberly Akimbo won big at this year’s history-making Tony awards, with the writers strike affecting the format and content of the ceremony.
Tom Stoppard’s sprawling family drama Leopoldstadt was named best play, winning against Cost of Living and Fat Ham. Producer Sonia Friedman called it Stoppard’s “most personal masterwork”, and Stoppard said that throughout his career he has noticed “the theatre writer getting decreasingly devalued in the food chain”.
Continue reading...This year’s big winners including Jodie Comer, Suzan Lori-Parks and J Harrison Ghee
Best musical
& Juliet
Kimberly Akimbo – WINNER!
New York, New York
Shucked
Some Like It Hot
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topdog/Underdog
Corey Hawkins, Topdog/Underdog
Sean Hayes, Good Night, Oscar – WINNER!
Stephen McKinley Henderson, Between Riverside and Crazy
Wendell Pierce, Death of a Salesman
Actor was helped off stage from her one-woman show Prima Facie after city’s poor air quality prompted breathing issues
Jodie Comer stopped her one-woman show Prima Facie on Broadway because of breathing difficulties owing to New York’s air crisis.
According to eyewitnesses, the award-winning star of Killing Eve, tipped to win a Tony award this weekend, was 10 minutes late for the matinee performance. After three minutes of the show, she announced that she couldn’t proceed.
Continue reading...The actor will head up an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People once the hit HBO drama has ended
Jeremy Strong is going from a corporate boardroom on TV to a whistleblower on Broadway.
The actor who plays Kendall Roy in the HBO television series Succession has signed on to play a man who tries to expose water contamination in a Norwegian spa town in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People.
Continue reading...The musical will close on 4 June, after receiving mixed reviews from US critics and failing to receive a nomination at the Tony awards
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella is to close on Broadway just over 10 weeks after its official opening night. The show, which did not receive any nominations at this year’s Tony awards, has announced that “the ball must come to an end” and that it will bow out at New York’s Imperial theatre on 4 June. Ticket sales have dipped despite a low average price for a big Broadway musical ($54 for last week). It will have played 33 previews and 85 performances.
The musical is a retooled version of Cinderella, which ran for just under a year (including a Covid-related break in performances) and suffered heavy losses at London’s Gillian Lynne theatre. Lloyd Webber was criticised for the manner in which some current and future Cinderella cast members learned of its closure in 2022 via social media and for his suggestion, in a letter read out at its final night, that opening a new musical during the pandemic “might have been a costly mistake”. (He later issued a statement saying his words had been misunderstood and that he was proud of the show.)
Continue reading...Actor’s gesture draws gasps and cheers at charity auction, held after a performance of Jackman’s hit musical The Music Man
Nicole Kidman has surprised both Broadway audiences and Hugh Jackman by bidding US$100,000 (A$150,000, £83,000) for a hat signed by Jackman after a performance of her former co-star’s musical The Music Man.
During an auction for the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids after the performance on Saturday, Kidman made her presence known by shouting her bid of $100,000 for the hat, which led to gasps and cheers in the crowd, then a standing ovation.
Continue reading...Whodunnit running in the West End since 1952, interrupted only by Covid, will open in New York in 2023
The world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, is to finally make its Broadway debut. The announcement was made on Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of the London production of Agatha Christie’s whodunnit.
The only surviving piece of the original set from 1952, a mantelpiece clock, will be lent from London for the run in New York when it opens in 2023. The play will be co-produced by The Mousetrap’s UK producer, Adam Spiegel, and US producer Kevin McCollum, whose credits include Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights and the Broadway outings of the British am-dram spoof The Play That Goes Wrong and the musical Six.
Continue reading...Broadway’s longest-running musical never fully recovered from the pandemic shutdown and will close next February
The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway’s longest-running show, is scheduled to close in February 2023.
The musical – a fixture on Broadway since 1988, weathering recessions, war and cultural shifts – will play its final performance on Broadway on 18 February, a spokesperson said on Friday. The closure will come less than a month after its 35th anniversary. It will conclude with an eye-popping 13,925 performances.
Continue reading...The award-winning writer, whose hit musical originally opened on Broadway in the late 60s, died in New York City of cardiorespiratory arrest
James Rado, the award-winning co-creator of Hair, has died at the age of 90.
The writer, whose hit musical launched songs such as Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In, died peacefully in New York City surrounded by family. The cause of death was cardiorespiratory arrest, as confirmed by longtime friend, publicist Merle Frimark.
Continue reading...Broadway transfers of West End shows were out in front at this year’s celebration of the best of New York theatre
Broadway transfers of West End adaptations of The Lehman Trilogy and Company have dominated this year’s Tony awards, which were seen as a return to relative normal after Covid-impacted ceremonies.
It was a big night for British talent in New York, with the Broadway transfer of The Lehman Trilogy winning best play, best director and best actor in a play. “This play was written as a hymn to the city of New York but, like the Lehman brothers themselves, our show started thousands of miles away,” said playwright Ben Power, who adapted the show from Italian novelist and playwright Stefano Massini. His version made its debut at London’s National Theatre in 2018.
Continue reading...From Line of Duty to Mare of Easttown, a new generation of performers are breaking through. Meet the actors, models and presenters leading a revolution in representation
In the middle of last winter’s lockdown, while still adjusting to the news of their newborn son’s Down’s syndrome diagnosis, Matt and Charlotte Court spotted a casting ad from BBC Drama. It called for a baby to star in a Call the Midwife episode depicting the surprising yet joyful arrival of a child with Down’s syndrome in 60s London, when institutionalisation remained horribly common. The resulting shoot would prove a deeply cathartic experience for the young family. “Before that point, I had shut off certain doors for baby Nate in my mind through a lack of knowledge,” Matt remembers. “To then have that opportunity opened my eyes. If he can act one day, which is bloody difficult, then he’s got a fighting chance. He was reborn for us on that TV programme.”
It’s a fitting metaphor for the larger shift in Down’s syndrome visibility over the past few years. While Call the Midwife has featured a number of disability-focused plotlines in its nearly decade-long run – actor Daniel Laurie, who has Down’s syndrome, is a series regular – the history of the condition’s representation on screen is one largely defined by absence.
Continue reading...The American composer and lyricist, who has died aged 91, shaped the musical artform with his wise, witty and extravagantly clever work
Stephen Sondheim achieved such acclaim – for deepening the content and extending the lyrical ingenuity of musical theatre – that, from the age of 50, each major birthday was celebrated with tribute concerts in London, New York or both.
Watching the composer-lyricist of Sweeney Todd and Follies at such events – taking a bow, with his wry smile – it was impossible not to reflect on our luck in coinciding with the life of someone who would clearly stand in the history of the genre alongside such geniuses as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.
Continue reading...