Category Archives: Broadway

‘It’s the balm we need right now’: how Broadway fought its way back

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The long theatre shutdown in New York has taken its toll on the industry but a renewed and reinvigorated outlook towards diversity could have a major impact

When Ruben Santiago-Hudson walks on stage at the Manhattan Theatre Club on Tuesday night, the electric charge between actor and audience will spark back to life. Then the healing will begin.

“It is the balm that we all need right now, not just on stage, but in our city,” says Santiago-Hudson, writer, performer and director of Lackawanna Blues, one of a record seven works by Black playwrights opening on Broadway this autumn. “It’s a necessity, it’s in us as human beings. Theatre has always been the great gathering place – church and theatre.”

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‘My theatre went dark’: Amanda Kloots on loving and losing actor Nick Cordero

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The Broadway favourite, who died of complications from Covid last summer, is remembered by his wife and co-star

When you’re on Broadway and suddenly find out that your show is closing, you feel this wave of sadness. As a cast member, there was nothing you could have done to save it. You didn’t write the script; you didn’t call the shots. You just had to show up, and smile, and dance, and perform, and give it your all every day. Your cast has become like your family, the theatre like your home, and your dressing room like your own personal bedroom in that house, your space filled with photos, cards, and memories. After your last show, you have to take that all down, pack everything into a box, and walk out of the theatre as it goes dark.

Related: Nick Cordero: Broadway star dies aged 41 of coronavirus complications

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Olympia Dukakis obituary

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American stage and screen actor who won an Oscar for her role in the 1987 film Moonstruck

After more than two decades of distinguished work in the US theatre as an actor, director and teacher, and appearances in a dozen or so films, Olympia Dukakis, who has died aged 89, became hugely famous overnight by winning the best supporting actress Oscar in 1988 for her performance as Cher’s mother in the romantic film Moonstruck (1987).

The course of her career suggests that her ambitions never lay in the direction of Hollywood. Her theatrical credits read like the canon of classic and modern plays: she had roles in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, Pirandello, Brecht, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, on and off Broadway, as well as in various regional theatres across the country. In films, she took on several character roles, making an impression in scores of pictures for more than half a century.

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Cast unveiled for Broadway debut of TikTok musical Ratatouille

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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess will play Remy the rat in the crowd-created musical phenomenon

The star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock, Tituss Burgess, will play the role of Remy the rat in the highly anticipated Broadway debut of Ratatouille, dubbed “the TikTok musical”.

The cast of the unlikely musical phenomenon, which tells the story of a gastronomically blessed French rat, was announced on Monday.

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The Prom review – is Ryan Murphy’s musical the first film of the Biden era?

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Taste the treacle as Nicole Kidman’s Broadway liberals rebuke a rural high school – and learn a few things about themselves

Like High School Musical on some sort of absinthe/Xanax cocktail, The Prom is an outrageous work of steroidal show tune madness, directed by the dark master himself, Ryan “Glee” Murphy, who is to jazz-hands musical theatre what Nancy Meyers is to upscale romcom or Friedrich Nietzsche to classical philology.

Meryl Streep and James Corden play Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman, two fading Broadway stars in trouble after their latest show closes ignominiously; it is called Eleanor!, a misjudged musical version of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt with Dee Dee in the title role and Barry as Franklin D Roosevelt. Barry also has financial difficulties (“I had to declare bankruptcy after my self-produced Notes on a Scandal”). After unhelpful press notices turn their opening night party at Sardi’s into a wake, Dee Dee and Barry find themselves drowning their sorrows with chorus-line trooper Angie (Nicole Kidman) and unemployed-actor-turned-bartender Trent (played by The Book of Mormon’s Andrew Rannells). How on earth are they going to turn their careers around?

Then Angie sees a news story trending on Twitter: a gay teenager in Indiana has been prevented by her high school from bringing a girl as a date to the prom. The teen in question is Emma (a nice performance from Jo Ellen Pellman, like a young Elisabeth Moss), her secret girlfriend is Alyssa (Ariana DeBose) and it is Alyssa’s fiercely conservative mom (Kerry Washington) who is behind the ban. Our heroic foursome declare that they will sweep into hicksville with all their enlightened values and glamorous celebrity, and campaign against this homophobia, boosting their prestige in the biz. They gatecrash a tense school meeting, declaring dramatically: “We are liberals from Broadway!”

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Nick Cordero: Broadway star dies aged 41 of coronavirus complications

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Tony-nominated actor spent more than 90 days in hospital and had his right leg amputated

The Tony award-nominated Broadway actor Nick Cordero, who starred in hit musicals including Waitress, A Bronx Tale and Bullets Over Broadway, has died in Los Angeles from severe medical complications after contracting coronavirus. He was 41.

Cordero died on Sunday at Cedars-Sinai hospital after spending more than 90 days in the hospital, according to his wife, Amanda Kloots. “God has another angel in heaven now,” she posted on Instagram. “Nick was such a bright light. He was everyone’s friend, loved to listen, help and especially talk. He was an incredible actor and musician. He loved his family and loved being a father and husband.”

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Hamilton star accuses London blues bar of racial profiling

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Giles Terera claims Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar denied group of actors entry because they were black

A star of the hit musical Hamilton has accused a Soho bar of racial profiling, claiming that it denied a group of actors entry because they were black.

Giles Terera said the Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar had allowed 10 white people next to them to enter, but that the group of eight black actors were turned away.

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Heart of New York goes dark as fire causes blackout in Manhattan

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Power outage affects about 73,000 people and disrupts traffic, subway system, businesses and Broadway productions

Authorities scrambled to restore electricity to Manhattan following a power outage that knocked out Times Square’s towering electronic screens, darkened marquees in the theatre district and left businesses without electricity, elevators stuck and subway cars stalled.

The New York City Fire Department said a transformer fire on Saturday evening at West 64th Street and West End Avenue affected more than 73,000 customers along a 30-block stretch from Times Square to about 72nd Street and Broadway.

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