BWW Emmy Review Recap: Look Back at Biggest Theatre to TV Transitions of the Year; THE WIZ, GREASE, LADY DAY

By: Sep. 13, 2016
Emmy Coverage 2016
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As we saw throughout the two nights of the Creative Arts Emmys, theatrical programming and theatre performers have done very well taking home trophies so far this year.

So, we wanted to take a look back at three of the biggest theatrical properties to come to television in the past year, as they prepare for the biggest awards to be announced on Sunday.

BroadwayWorld will have full theatrically-focused coverage of the Emmys throughout the week and on Sunday night.

THE WIZ!: LIVE on NBC

Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, David Alan Grier, Shanice Williams in THE WIZ LIVE!
Photo Credit: Virginia Sherwood | NBC

Thanks to Tony-winner Kenny Leon and a delightfully entertaining cast of characters, "Home" is most certainly where the heart is this holiday season. Coming into this year's NBC live musical, theatre fans nationwide were appropriately apprehensive, given the spotty results from THE SOUND OF MUSIC and PETER PAN. However, in THE WIZ LIVE!, we were finally given a production worthy of the show's beloved Broadway legacy. Executive Producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan still haven't solved the riddle of recreating a stage show's scope and grandeur on screen without an audience, but with a once-in-a-lifetime star, and one of the most acclaimed casts in recent memory, for the first time since this annual experiment began in 2013, there's truly a reason to rejoice!

Read the full review here | Full Review Roundup

GREASE: LIVE! on FOX

Aaron Tveit and Julianne Hough. Photo Credit: Kevin Estrada | FOX

Leave it to the network that reinvented television with AMERICAN IDOL and created SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE, one of the most artistically significant shows in recent memory, to figure out the proper balance in merging musical theatre and live television. FOX's GREASE: LIVE learned from three years of live, middling musicals on NBC (the satisfying WIZ LIVE! notwithstanding) and produced the best, most thrilling live TV musical in half a century.

Read the full review here | Full Review Roundup

LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL on HBO

Audra McDonald. Photo Credit: Michele K. Short | HBO

There is an undeniable electricity that the world's greatest bring to everything that they do. There is something nearly tangible, yet dizzyingly elusive about watching legends at their best; that is how I felt when six-time Tony-winner Audra McDonald became the troubled Jazz iconBillie Holiday in tonight's broadcast of LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL on HBO. Though the material itself doesn't always rise to the level of its star's genius, the transformative power of McDonald's talent transports you into a completely different time and place; namely March 1959 at the intimate Emerson's Bar and Grill in Philadelphia.

Read the full review here | Full Review Roundup

What was your favorite theatrical moment on television this year? Let me know on Twitter @BWWMatt.


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