Frank Rich News

"A Comedy of Tenors"-Ken Ludwig's uproarious follow-up to his Tony Award-winning smash hit sendup of the opera world, "Lend Me a Tenor"-will be the first play of the Hampton Theatre Company's 2018-2019 season, opening on October 25 at the Quogue Community Hall and running through November 10.

Tim Rice welcomes the re-imagining of CHESS, and uniquely encourages it. The lyricist has said he knows the musical that premiered in 1986 on the West End is problem-plagued. Continues to refer to CHESS as a work in progress, he suggests exploration and and alterations.

For the first time since 2009, Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts is producing live musical theater - nine performances of the award-winning musical revue The World Goes 'Round - featuring all local professional actors, singers, musicians and technical staff.

EgoPo Classic Theater announces their 2018-19 Season: Theater of South Africa, celebrating great dramatic works of South Africa and highlighting the remarkable transformation from apartheid to democracy. The season will begin with a South African version of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, as created and performed by Abrahamse and Meyer Productions from Cape Town, South Africa, in partnership with Drexel University's Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and their Performing Arts Department. EgoPo's mainstage season launches with A Human Being Died That Night, a gripping account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela; followed by Three Sisters Two by Reza de Wet, a Chekhov sequel confronting the fall of privileged class; and concluding with two plays in rotation repertory: "Master Harold"…and the Boys by Athol Fugard and Egoli by Matsemela Manaka (co-produced with Theatre in the X), shining a light on two vastly different experiences under apartheid.

Presented by a brand new Production group, 4 Leaf Music Productions, in Association with Golden Performing Arts Center, and based on a 1934 Kaufman and Hart play of the same name, this musical tells the story of three friends, Franklin, Charley, and Mary, and the progressive decadence of their bonds and their dreams. The story is told in reverse. When it begins, in 1980, they're in their 40's: Franklin, is a rich, successful, conceited and confused noted songwriter; Charley, the lyricist in the duo, has cut off ties with his partner after a nervous breakdown and Mary is a lonely alcoholic still secretly in love with Franklin from when they first met, years and years ago. As we move forward in the play but backwards in time, we see how their friendships disintegrate, along with their aspirations and Franklin's many whirlwind marriages. Rewinding through the '70s and '60s, we end up in 1957, when the three of them meet for the first time, on a rooftop in the city, all hopeful young talents per-chance gathering to watch Sputnik go by in the pre-dawn sky. The song they sing, 'Our Time' ('We're the movers, we're the shapers/ the names in tomorrow's papers'), is undercut by some very keen irony, since we've already seen how it all turns out, at the beginning.

REPRISE 2.0, led by Producing Artistic Director Marcia Seligson, presented in association with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Department of Theater (UCLA TFT) chaired by Brian Kite, performing at UCLA Freud Playhouse, announces casting for Grand Hotel performing October 24 to November 4, as well as a new 2-show FlexPass for $99, now on sale at Reprise2.org and by phone at 866-811-4111.

Follow the saga of a fictional, American media family whose wealth and power are matched only by their dysfunctional dynamic in HBO®'s newest provocative and bitingly funny drama, Succession?: The Complete First Season, available now via Digital Download and coming to Blu-ray and DVD on November 6.  

Act II Playhouse presents Neil Simon's Broadway comedy Biloxi Blues, on stage in Ambler from Aug. 28-Sept. 23.

REPRISE 2.0, led by Producing Artistic Director Marcia Seligson, in association with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Department of Theater (UCLA TFT) chaired by Brian Kite, announces Dawnn Lewis (This Is Us, Major Crimes and IZombie), Valerie Perri (LA Shubert Theatre Evita, Jerome Robbins' Broadway) Larry Cedar (Deadwood), Kelley Dorney (Annie at Hollywood Bowl) and Michael Starr (Bright Star national tour) for its production of The World Goes 'Round with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and conceived by Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman, and David Thompson. It will play September 5 through September 16 at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.  

Eric Abraham presents a Fugard Theatre production of Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet's powerful and searingly topical play - OLEANNA.

In his review of the debut of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 1981, New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote, 'As we all should have probably learned by now, to be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one's heart broken at regular intervals.'

Eugene O'Neill's ferocious American classic, The Iceman Cometh, starring Tony Award winner, two-time Academy Award winner, and 2018 Academy Award nominee Denzel Washington, concludes its limited engagement at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre today, July 1. The show, which earned eight Tony nominations earlier this year, opened on April 26 and has played 28 previews and 67 regular performances.

Following the show's recent premiere, HBO has renewed the drama series SUCCESSION for a second season, it was announced today by Casey Bloys, president, HBO Programming.

VIDEO: Check Out The Promo For All New SUCCESSION On HBO

Drama Series SUCCESSION Debuts 6/3 Exclusively on HBO

The Roy family – Logan Roy and his four children – controls one of the biggest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world. The HBO drama series SUCCESSION, which kicks off its ten-episode season SUNDAY, JUNE 3(10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), tracks their lives as they contemplate what the future will hold for them once their aging father begins to step back from the company.

The drama series SUCCESSION will kick off its ten-episode season SUNDAY, JUNE 3 (10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

SUCCESSION will kick off its ten-episode season SUNDAY, JUNE 3 (10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

Currently in previews at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (242 West 45th Street) is Eugene O'Neill's ferocious American classic, The Iceman Cometh, starring Tony Award winner, two-time Academy Award winner, and 2018 Academy Award nominee Denzel Washington. Opening night is set for Thursday, April 26 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.