Urinetown

Slow Burn Theatre Co. Presents
Urinetown
Book by Mark Hollman
Music & Lyrics by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman
Jan 20 – Jan 29

Read More

25th Annual Putname County Spelling Bee

Lake Worth Playhouse Presents
25th Annual Putname County Spelling Bee
Music & Lyrics by Rachel Sheinkin
Book by William Finn
Jan 19 – Feb 5

Six young people in the throes of puberty, overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves, learn that winning isn't everything and that losing doesn't necessarily make you a loser.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a hilarious tale of overachievers' angst chronicling the experience of six adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. The show's Tony Award winning creative team has created the unlikeliest of hit musicals abou the unlikeliest of heroes: a quirky yet charming cast of outsiders for whom a spelling bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time.

Showtimes
Thurs. Jan 19: Dinner (6pm) and Preview Performance (8pm)
Thurs, Fri & Sat @ 8 PM
Sat & Sun @ 2 PM

Read More

Next To Normal

Actors Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre Presents
Next To Normal
Music by Tom Kitt
Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
January 18 - February 12, 2012

Read More

Blog Watch for the week of Jan. 9, 2012

Not a lot  to report from the blogosphere this week.  I was able to find some posts from two of my regular blogs as well as some local theatre information from the blogs of two of South Florida's Theatres.

Read More

The Past Week In Theatre History (Jan. 9 - 13)

The Past Week In Theatre History: January 9 -13

By Robert Viagas, David Gewirtzman, Sam Maher

Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley

1820 Birthday of Louisa Lane Drew, matriarch of the Drew and Barrymore acting dynasty that would eventually include John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and today's Drew Barrymore.

1878 Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952) is born today in Budapest. Among his many works he will write Liliom which will be adapted as the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.

1890 Playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) is born today in Bohemia. His 1920's play R.U.R. will introduce the word "robot" (from the Czech word for worker) and show robots for the first time in popular culture.

1899 Eva Le Gallienne born in London . Her determination and drive will lead her to a stage debut in Monna Vanna at the Queen's Theatre in London in 1914; her Broadway debut will take place one year later in the comedy Mrs. Boltay's Daughters. 1937 will see her play Hamlet with Uta Hagen as her Ophelia.

1904 Ray Bolger is born today. This triple threat will appear in numerous shows and in 1948 star in Where's Charley?, the musical version of Charley's Aunt. A yellow brick road will stretch out before him in Hollywood.

1905 U.S. premiere of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell, which goes on to a 129-performance run at the Garrick Theatre.

1911 Sigmund Romberg writes his first complete Broadway score for The Whirl of the World, which opens today at the Winter Garden. A brochure describes it thus: "An Isle of Gorgeousness, Fun and Music, Entirely Surrounded by Girls." The formula proves a winner, running 161 performances.

1925 Birthday of one of Broadway's all-time greatest leading ladies, Gwen Verdon (1925-2000). She was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actress or Featured Actress in a Musical six times, and won four times, including three years in a row, for Damn Yankees, New Girl in Town and Redhead in 1956, 1957 and 1958. She rose to stardom in a featured role in Cole Porter's Can-Can and later created the title role of Sweet Charity and originated the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago. A dancer all her life, she married choreographer Bob Fosse in 1960 with whom she had one daughter, Nicole.

1932 Leslie Howard stars and co-produces with Gilbert Miller, The Animal Kingdom. Philip Barry's comedy about a man whose wife has sapped his vitality will run a lively 23 weeks at the Broadhust Theatre.

1936 English actor-producer-playwrite Ian Robertson dies at the age of 76.

1937 Maxwell Anderson's verse play High Tor opens at the Martin Beck Theatre, starring Burgess Meredith. The production wins the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Show, and runs 171 performances.

1940 James Thurber makes his Broadway debut as a playright with The Male Animal, co-written with Eliott Nugent. Starring Gene Tierney, it runs 243 performances at the Cort Theatre.

1941 Irish nationalist, poet, and dramatist James Joyce dies in Zurich at age 59. Included among Joyce's many works is Exiles, which he wrote in 1918. In 1959 Zero Mostel will play Leopold Bloom in Ulysses in Nighttown, an adaptation of Joyce's Ulysses by Marjorie Barkentin. In 2000, a musical adaptation of Joyce's short story, The Dead, would come to Broadway's Belasco Theater.

1941 Two sweet little old ladies help nudge melancholy people off to a better world in the macabre comedy Arsenic and Old Lace which opens its 1444-performance run today at the Fulton Theatre. Jean Adair and Josephine Hull play the sisters and Boris Karloff plays their nephew.

1947 Ella Logan and Albert Sharpe look to the rainbow in Fred Saidy and Yip Harburg's Finian's Rainbow, about a leprechaun who turns human when his crock of gold is stolen and buried near Fort Knox. The show opens a 725-performance run tonight. David Wayne and Michael Kidd will go on to win the very first Tony Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Choreographer, respectively.

1947 Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes collaborate on an operatic adaptation of Elmer Rice's drama, Street Scene, also using that same title. It's a slice of life in a tenement tenement filled with striving immigrants. It runs 148 performances at the Adelphi Theatre, and wins Weill the very first Tony Award ever given for Best Composer.

1951 Claude Rains heads the cast of Darkness at Noon at the Alvin Theatre. Adapted by Sidney Kingsley from Arthur Koestler's novelabout the Stalinist purges will go on to win the Drama Critics' Circle Award.

1952 John Gielgud directs and stars in Much Ado About Nothing at London's Phoenix
Theatre. It will have a seven-month run.

1961 Zero Mostel gradually transforms from a man into a beast in Eugene Ionesco's absurdist classic, Rhinoceros, also featuring Eli Wallach and Morris Carnovsky. It will run 256 performances at the Longacre Theatre, and Mostel will win the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Play.

1962 Romulus, satirizing the end of the Roman Empire, will have a much shorter life than its subject, with just 69 performances to its calender. Gore Vidal adapted this Friedrich Duerrenmatt work. Cyril Ritchard stars.

1968 Some of first openly gay characters seen on the Broadway stage are played by Milo O'Shea and Eli Wallach in Charles Dyer's The Staircase, which runs 61 performances at the Biltmore Theatre.

1976 English actress Margaret Leighton dies today at the age of 53. She played a variety of classic roles and starred in the London production of The Philadelphia Story. In 1962, she won the Tony award for her portrayal of Hannah Jelkes in The Night of the Iguana.

1984 Brooks Atkinson, longtime drama critic for The New York Times, dies today. Atkinson was the first critic in recorded history to have a theatre named after him. Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theater has, in recent years, housed productions of Noises Off, Jane Eyre, On The
Waterfront, and She Loves Me.

1986 Terrence McNally's new farce, It's Only a Play, opens at the Manhattan Theater Club. It stars Joanna Gleason, David Garrison, Christine Baranski, and Paul Benedict.

1987 The Broadway Theatre box office begins to sell tickets for Les Miserables. During the first week, the show sets a new record by taking in a total of $1,721,098. Les Miserables begins previews at the Broadway Theatre on Feb. 28. It will eventually become the third-longest running show in Broadway history.

2000 Broadway's Belasco Theater welcomes the transfer of James Joyce's The Dead from Off Broadway. The show boasts a book by Richard Nelson (who won a Tony for it), music by Shaun Davey, and lyrics adapted by Shaun Davey and Richard Nelson. Featured in the cast are Christopher Walken, Blair Brown, Emily Skinner, Alice Ripley and Stephen Spinella.

2002 The Fantasticks, the world's longest-running musical, ends its landmark run at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York's Greenwich Village after more than 41 years. The final tally: 17,162 performances. The show will enjoy a revival in 2006.

2004 Obie-winning monologuist Spalding Gray, author of Swimming to Cambodia, Sex and Death to Age 14, Monster in a Box and Gray's Anatomy, disappears after leaving his home in the TriBeCa section of Manhattan. He is later ruled a suicide.

2006 The Phantom of the Opera plays its 7,486th performance, surpassing Cats to become the longest-running show in Broadway history.

2009 Tom O'Horgan, the Drama Desk Award-winning, Tony-nominated director who brought a downtown ethic to his Broadway projects, including the original Broadway productions of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, dies at age 84.

2011 Ellen Stewart, the powerhouse impresario who, as the founder of the downtown Manhattan theatre complex La MaMa, E.T.C. (short for Experimental Theatre Club), was one of the central figures in the creation of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, dies at age 91.

More of This Week’s Birthdays: Tex Ritter 1905. Ruth Taylor 1908. Jose Limon 1908. Patsy Kelly 1910. Luise Rainer 1910. Ruth Goetz 1912.  Polly Rowles 1914. Fernando Lamas 1915. David Brooks 1916. Robert Stack 1919. Roland Petit 1924. Brian Friel 1929. Ulu Grosbard 1929. Frances Sternhagen 1930. Charles Nelson Reilly 1931. Rip Taylor 1934. Bob Denver 1935. Sal Mineo 1939. Joel Zwick 1942. Andre De Shields 1946. Stanley Tucci 1960. Matthew Bourne 1960. Kevin Anderson 1960. Simon Russell Beale 1961.


This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that happen this week in theatre history, that post would be WAY longer than this one. To see more check out the "Today in Theatre History" blog posts on Playbill.com.

Read More

Show reviews for the week of Jan. 9

This weeks reviews are about a Rock Star Rabbi, Trailer Trash Show White, Marigolds, Wrestler Chad Diety and a Motherfu**er who wears a hat.

Read More

Current Productions for the week of January 9, 2012

August: Osage County
at The Waterfront Playhouse in Key West Until Jan 14
It’s August in Oklahoma.  You are cordially invited to one bitch of a family reunion.  A father is missing, a mother is in the grip of addiction, a marriage is unraveling, and lies are being exposed.  This raucous dark comedy transforms one family gathering into an evening filled with sex, secrets, and really inappropriate behavior.  August: Osage County is a can’t-miss, hilarious and stinging look at the American family.


Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical
at The Kravis Center Until Jan 15
This exuberant musical about a group of young Americans searching for peace and love in a turbulent time has struck a resonant chord with audiences young and old. HAIR features an extraordinary cast and unforgettable songs, including “Aquarius,” “Let the Sun Shine In,” "Good Morning, Starshine" and “Easy To Be Hard.”


Snow White Trash
at Infinite Abyss Productions Until Jan 28
Snow White Trash isn't your classic classy fairy tale. After the beautiful, innocent Snow White escapes death at the hands of the Evil Queen, she finds herself in a strange land surrounded by sexy good ole boys. Little does Snow know that her new friends have arranged her marriage to the incredibly hunky (and very gay) Prince, who can only inherit his father's fortune by marrying a "nice girl."


Boeing – Boeing
at Promethean Theatre Until Jan 29
Revived on Broadway in 2008, this 1960's French farce features self-styled Parisian lothario Bernard, who has international fiancees, each beautiful airline hostesses with frequent "layovers". He keeps "one up, one down and one pending" until unexpected schedule changes bring all three to Paris and Bernard's apartment at the same time.


Soul Doctor, The Shlomo Carlebach Musical
at The Parker Playhouse Until Jan 29
This Broadway-bound hit Musical is an odyssey through challenges and triumphs of the father of popular Jewish music, Shlomo Carlebach. Beloved and controversial, he ignited the spirit of millions with his soul-stirring melodies, storytelling, and boundless love. An All-Star Broadway Cast and 30 Carlebach hits, scored by the orchestrator of Elton John's AIDA! THE WHO'S TOMMY, SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE.


The Prisoner Of Second Avenue
at Broward Stage Door Theatre Until Jan 29
New York City is in the middle of the worst heat wave in decades, and a garbage strike is in full swing.   Mel Edison is being driven crazy by the two stewardesses who live next door and their all night parties.  Just when he thinks it couldn’t get any worse, he gets robbed, and his psychiatrist dies with $23,000.00 of his money.


The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds
at The Palm Beach Dramaworks Until Jan 29 
Winner of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize, the Obie Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as Best American Play of the season. The story revoloves a single mother whose life has gone awry and her two daughters: Ruth, a pretty but highly strung girl subject to convulsions; and Matilda, plain and almost pathologically shy with an intuitive gift for science who undertakes a gamma ray experiment with marigolds that wins a prize at her high school—and also brings on the shattering climax of the play.

The Producers
at The Tamarac Theatre of Performing Arts Until Jan 29

Max Bialystock, a theatrical producer, and his mousey accountant, Leo Bloom, scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop.  Complications arise when the show unexpectedly turns out to  be successful. The humor draws on ridiculous accents, caractures of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business inside-jokes.

Cabaret
at The Maltz Jupiter Theatre Until Jan 29
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Cabaret is set amid the decadence of 1929 Weimar Germany’s netherworld and follows the unlikely romance between writer Cliff Bradshaw, a writer who has traveled to Berlin in search of inspiration, and Sally Bowles, a cabaret performer at the Kit Kat Klub. 

Jersey Boys
at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts Until Jan 29
The 2006 Tony® Award-winning Best Musical about Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi. Four blue-collar kids that became one of the greatest successes in pop music history. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide -- all before they were 30!


The Motherfucker with the Hat 

at The Gable Stage Until Feb 5 
A high-octane, verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery.  Jackie and Veronica have been in love since the 8th grade.  But now, Jackie is on parole and living clean and sober under the guidance of his sponsor, Ralph D, while still living with and loving his volatile soul mate Veronica who is fiercely loving, but far from sober.  Still, their love is pure.  And true.  Nothing can come between them – except a hat.


The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity
at The Caldwell Theatre Company Until Feb 12
Fresh from its Pulitzer Prize nomination, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is the comedic look into the world of professional wrestling but told through a thoughtful examination of race relations, geopolitics, and personal introspection.


Divorce Party The Musical
at The Kravis Center Until Feb 19
Still reeling from her divorce, Linda is rescued by her three friends who have come to turn her despair into a weekend of hilarity. Using popular songs with clever new lyrics, the ladies sing and dance their way through the wildest divorce party ever.

Read More

Boeing – Boeing

Promethean Theatre Presents
Boeing – Boeing
Book by Marc Camoletti
Adapted by Beverley Cross
Jan 13 – Jan 29

Read More

Soul Doctor, The Shlomo Carlebach Musical

The Parker Playhouse Presents
Soul Doctor, The Shlomo Carlebach Musical
Jan 11 - Jan 29

Read More

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

The Caldwell Theatre Company Presents
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity
By Kristoffer Diaz
Jan 8 - Feb 12

Read More