Mike Nichols News

For two decades Friends In Deed has offered emotional and spiritual support for all those affected by life threatening illness, caregiving and grief. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Friends In Deed, Emmy Award winner Sarah Jessica Parker and Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick will host 'A Little Jurassic Treasure Hunt,' a once-in-a-lifetime event on Monday, October 3, 2011. At this special benefit event, guests will form teams to trace clues through the American Museum of Natural History in a specially devised hunt created by legendary composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Following a cocktail reception in The Museum's Hall of Mammals, the hunt will take place in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs and the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs before a dinner reception in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The dinner reception will feature performances of Mr. Sondheim's songs by Tony Award winner Barbara Cook and Tony nominee Raul Esparza.

Bay Area Cabaret continues its 2011-2012 season on October 22, 2011 with renowned veteran of stage, screen and film, Tony-nominated actor/singer Peter Gallagher in the West Coast premiere of his critically acclaimed cabaret show SONGS AND STORIES.

With four Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards, the Juilliard-trained Audra McDonald returns to performing live full-time this month following four seasons playing Dr. Naomi Bennett on ABC's hit television series Private Practice.

The MacDowell Colony, one of the nation's leading artist residency programs, will present its 52nd Edward MacDowell Medal to renowned playwright Edward Albee on Sunday, August 14th. Since 1960, The MacDowell Medal has been awarded annually to an individual artist who has made an outstanding contribution to his/her field. The award is rotated among the seven artistic disciplines practiced at MacDowell; this will be the third time the Medal has been awarded to a playwright. Albee joins an impressive list of past Medal recipients, including playwrights Thornton Wilder (1960) and Lillian Hellman (1976), visual artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1972), composer Leonard Bernstein (1987), architect I.M. Pei (1998), filmmaker Stan Brakhage (1989), interdisciplinary artist Merce Cunningham (2003), and writer Alice Munro (2006).

Deadline.com first reported last week, and now The New York Times has confirmed that THE SOCIAL NETWORK and upcoming SPIDER-MAN star Andrew Garfield has indeed joined the cast of the upcoming revival of Arthur Miller's Pultizer Prize-winning play DEATH OF A SALESMAN, to be directed by Mike Nichols. Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman will star as traveling salesman Willy Loman, Linda Edmond will play his wife, Linda, and Andrew Garfield will play Loman's son, Biff. Scott Rudin will produce the revival, set to open next March at the Barrymore Theatre.

Andrew Garfield has joined the cast of the upcoming revival of Arthur Miller's Pultizer Prize-winning play DEATH OF A SALESMAN, to be directed by Mike Nichols, according to Deadline. Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman will star as traveling salesman Willy Loman, Linda Edmond will play his wife, Linda, and Andrew Garfield will play Loman's son, Biff. Scott Rudin will produce the revival, set to open next March at the Barrymore Theatre.

Berkshire Playwrights Lab will present a staged reading of Matt Hoverman's 'The Glint' directed by Matthew Penn on Wednesday, August 10 at 7:30pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. The reading will feature actors Leslie Lyles, Kate MacCluggage, James Murtaugh, and Richard Poe. Admission is free, but reservations are suggested. For tickets, call 413.528.0100 or visit the Mahaiwe Box Office (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.).

Berkshire Playwrights Lab will present a staged reading of Matt Hoverman's 'The Glint' directed by Matthew Penn on Wednesday, August 10 at 7:30pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. The reading will feature actors Leslie Lyles, Kate MacCluggage, James Murtaugh, and Richard Poe. Admission is free, but reservations are suggested. For tickets, call 413.528.0100 or visit the Mahaiwe Box Office (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.).

If Mike Nichols and Elaine May ever had a routine about two theatre geeks discussing their favorite unsuccessful musicals, it probably would have resembled the kind of banter that goes on between Jennifer Tepper and Kevin Michael Murphy as creators/producers/hosts of the concert series, If It Only Even Runs A Minute.  Monday night's edition, their seventh, was my third visit to their collection of one-nighters where musical theatre well-knowns and not so well-knowns join music director/pianist Caleb Hoyer to sing selections from underappreciated and/or forgotten musicals between quick histories of each production by Tepper and Murphy.  Frequently, original cast members will be on hand to give first-person accounts of the bumpy roads to opening night.

The MacDowell Colony, one of the nation's leading artist residency programs, will present its 52nd Edward MacDowell Medal to renowned playwright Edward Albee on Sunday, August 14th. Since 1960, The MacDowell Medal has been awarded annually to an individual artist who has made an outstanding contribution to his/her field. The award is rotated among the seven artistic disciplines practiced at MacDowell; this will be the third time the Medal has been awarded to a playwright. Albee joins an impressive list of past Medal recipients, including playwrights Thornton Wilder (1960) and Lillian Hellman (1976), visual artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1972), composer Leonard Bernstein (1987), architect I.M. Pei (1998), filmmaker Stan Brakhage (1989), interdisciplinary artist Merce Cunningham (2003), and writer Alice Munro (2006).

Lynne Meadow and Barry Grove have announced that Tony and Emmy Award winner John Lithgow returns to Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere production of THE COLUMNIST by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn, directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan. In this new play, Lithgow plays noted newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop. This limited engagement will begin previews on Tuesday, April 3 and open Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Roundabout Theatre Company has announced the full cast joining star and three-time Tony Award winner Frank Langella as 'Gregor Antonescu' in Terence Rattigan's drama Man and Boy, directed by Maria Aitken.

A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck, Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner's one-act opera, received its world premiere at The Glimmerglass Festival Thursday, July 21.

Susan Anton is announced to join the cast of HAIRSPRAY at the Hollywood Bowl as Velma Von Tussle. The production reunites the original Broadway stars Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur; and includes Corbin Bleu, Drew Carey, Diana DeGarmo, Mo Gaffney, Nick Jonas, Darlene Love, Tara Macri, Michael McDonald and John Stamos. Anton co-starred as Velma Von Tussle in the Las Vegas production of the Broadway musical, Hairspray, opposite Harvey Fierstein. HAIRSPRAY is at the Hollywood Bowl for three performances only, August 5, 6, and 7.

Manhattan Theatre Club has just announced that Tony and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Nixon will return to MTC to star in the Broadway premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play WIT by Margaret Edson, directed by MTC's award-winning Artistic Director Lynne Meadow. The limited engagement of WIT will begin previews Thursday, January 5, 2012 and open Thursday, January 26, 2012 at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Goodman Theatre Artistic Director RoRobert Falls announced today that he will direct bert Falls The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O'Neill's epic portrait of hope and disillusionment, running April 22 - June 10, 2012 in the Albert Theatre. Falls' major revival features Tony Award-winning stage and screen stars Nathan Lane Nathan Lane as hardware salesman and pipe dreambuster Theodore 'Hickey' Hickman, and Brian Dennehy Brian Dennehy as one-time syndicalist-anarchist Larry Slade. Hailed by The New York Times as a 'ferocious American classic that has lost none of its power,' The Iceman Cometh marked Falls' and Dennehy's first O'Neill collaboration at the Goodman in 1990-a production which featured Dennehy in the role of Hickey.