Theater Journalists Patrick Pacheco, Jesse Green and Michael Musto Set for THEATER TALK Spring Season Preview, 2/8

It's Spring Fever on THEATER TALK when theater journalists Patrick Pacheco from the LA Times, Jesse Green from New York magazine, and Michael Musto from The Village Voice join series producer Susan Haskins for an overview of the upcoming Broadway and off-Broadway Spring season. THEATER TALK - Spring Season 2013 Preview will premiere at 1 a.m. on Friday, February 8 (2013; early Saturday morning) on Thirteen/PBS, followed in New York City on CUNY TV* Saturday at 8:30 PM, Sunday at 12:30 PM, and Monday at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM. After Feb. 11, it may be viewed online at http://www.cuny.tv/show/theatertalk/PR2001577.

After calling the Fall season "a race to the bottom" in which they recount a list of "old-fashioned big-scale flops" (Musto jokes that "Rebecca had one of the longer runs"), the panel surmises that the season-end awards competitions will not include any of the Fall shows. Looking ahead, they anticipate the new musicals Kinky Boots, Matilda, Hands on a Hardbody, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, Motown: The Musical, and the revival of Pippin. After addressing Broadway's ongoing infatuation with star names, they variously look forward to Bette Midler in I'll Eat You Last, Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy, Cicely Tyson in Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful with Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Vanessa Williams, Nathan Lane in Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance, and Holland Taylor in Ann, about Texas politician Ann Richards. They predict the Tony Awards competition will be most intense among the musical revivals, which include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Pippin, Annie, and Pump Boys and Dinettes. The panel addresses off-Broadway, anticipating Amy Herzog's Belleville, the revival of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, the new musical Far from Heaven, the pairing of Vanessa Redgrave and Jesse Eisenberg in the latter's The Revisionist, and Fiona Shaw in Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary.

THEATER TALK is the weekly series dedicated to the world of the stage. The program is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 60+ participating public television stations nationwide.

THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The TDF/TAP Plus Program, The CUNY TV Foundation and The Friends of THEATER TALK. *CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is carried in New York City's five boroughs - on Channel 75 on Time Warner and Cablevision, Channel 77 on RCN, and Channel 30 on Verizon FiOS.

Pictured: Patrick Pacheco, Michael Musto, and Jesse Green on Theater Talk this week.