Nicole Rosky - Page 367

The Muny continues its spectacular 98th season this week with The Music Man, starring Hunter Foster (Harold Hill), Elena Shaddow (Marian Paroo), Mark Linn-Baker (Mayor Shinn), Liz McCartney (Mrs. Paroo), Todd Buonopane (Marcellus) and more. BroadwayWorld is excited to bring you highlights from the show, which runs through July 11, below!

Ah, summertime in New York. Strolls through Central Park, Yankees games, sweaty subway platforms, and most excitingly... NYMF!!!! That's right, the newly renamed New York Musical Festival is at hand and you should be excited. New musicals are being born and workshopped throughout the summer and the future of musical theatre is being forged. This last week at Broadway Sessions, our audience got the chance to be the first folks to hear music from nine of NYMF's most exciting offerings from this years festival. Lisa and Leonardo, Normativity, Camp Rolling Hills, Dust Can't Kill Me, LUDO's Broken Bride, Midnight at the Never Get, Icon, One Child Born and Freedom Riders all offered up musical glimpses into their productions. Get your own sneak peek here and make sure you go to NYMF.org and see as many of these shows as you can this summer! After all, what is summer for?

The highly anticipated Broadway premiere of the original musical Dear Evan Hansen begins previews on Monday, November 14, 2016 and will officially open at the Belasco Theatre (111 West 44th Street) on Sunday, December 4, 2016. With a book by Obie Award-winner Steven Levenson, score by Tony Award nominees Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, and direction by 3-time Tony Award nomineeMichael Greif, Dear Evan Hansen had its world premiere at Arena Stage, Washington D.C., this past summer and recently concluded its record-breaking New York debut at Off-Broadway's Second Stage.

New Your City Center's Encores! Off-Center series is back and better than ever! The series will kick off the 2016 season with Runaways from July 6-9th. RUNAWAYS is set in 1977 when Liz Swados spent several months observing and interviewing child Runaways before shaping their stories, fears, and fantasies into a musical. A deeply unconventional work in its day, Runaways feels like the funkiest, most heartbreaking mixtape ever to come out of a 1970s boom box, packed with reggae anthems, hip-hop, soul-food lullabies, and spoken-word poetry. The Encores! Off-Center production will honor a theater visionary who was ferocious, inspiring, and left us far too soon.

Happy Birthday Claude-Michel Schonberg! Schonberg is best known for his collaborations with the lyricist Alain Boublil. Thier stage musical version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, which opened at the Palais de Sports in Paris in 1980, opened to acclaim in London in 1985 and on Broadway in 1987. In 1989, their success continued with the musical Miss Saigon, which starred Lea Salonga and Jonathan Pryce. Schonberg's next project with Boublil was The Pirate Queen, a musical about the 16th century Irish pirate, chieftain and adventuress Grace O'Malley, which opened on Broadway on April 5 2007.

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge joined the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall for a special backstage tour and you can catch a look at the costumes, shoes, dressing rooms and more below!

The comet is coming! Created by Dave Malloy (Preludes, Ghost Quartet) and directed by Rachel Chavkin(Small Mouth Sounds, Preludes) -- making their Broadway debuts -- NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 will blaze into Broadway's Imperial Theatre (249 West 45th Street) beginning on October 18, with opening night set for Monday, November 14, 2016.

Happy Fourth of July weekend, from Brandon Niederauer!  The 13-year old guitar prodigy currently starring in SCHOOL OF ROCK on Broadway, just shredded the Star Spangled Banner Jimi Hendrix-style, and you can check it out below.

Happy Birthday, Betty Buckley! Buckley made her Broadway debut in 1969, in the musical 1776. She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her role as Grizabella in the 1982 Broadway production of Cats. Other theatre credits include her Olivier nominated role as Norma Desmond in the musical Sunset Boulevard from 1994, in both London and New York, and her Tony nominated role in the 1997 musical Triumph of Love. In 2000, she received a Grammy nomination for The Diaries of Adam and Eve. In 2002, she was Grammy nominated for her album Stars and the Moon: Live at the Donmar.

Today in 1985, Singin' in the Rain opened at the George Gershwin Theatre, where it ran for 367 performances. Singin' in the Rain is a musical with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Arthur Freed, and music by Nacio Herb Brown. Adapted from the 1952 movie of the same name, the plot closely adheres to the original. Set in Hollywood in the waning days of the silent screen era, it focuses on romantic lead Don Lockwood, his sidekick Cosmo Brown, aspiring actress Kathy Selden, and Lockwood's leading lady Lina Lamont, whose less-than-dulcet vocal tones make her an unlikely candidate for stardom in talking pictures. Directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, the cast included Don Correia as Don, Mary D'Arcy as Kathy, Peter Slutsker as Cosmo, and Faye Grant as Lina.

Happy Birthday Terrence Mann! Mann's Broadway credits include the Beast in the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, Rum Tum Tugger in Cats, Inspector Javert in Les Miserables and Chauvelin in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He also has starred in additional Broadway productions including Lennon, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Getting Away With Murder, A Christmas Carol, Rags, Barnum, Jerome Robbins' Broadway and Jekyll & Hyde. He most recently starred in the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin.

Happy Birthday David Alan Grier! Grier began his professional career on Broadway as Jackie Robinson in The First, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and won the Theatre World Award. He then joined the cast of Dreamgirls before going on to star opposite Denzel Washington in A Soldier's Play, for which both actors reprised their roles in the film adaptation titled A Soldier's Story. Recently was seen in David Mamet's Race on Broadway and received his second Tony Award nomination. He most recently starred on Broadway in Porgy and Bess.

It was another exciting Wednesday today at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. At this afternoon's #Ham4Ham, Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog stopped by to give Lin-Manuel Miranda a piece of his mind. Check out the hilarious appearance below!

Little Shop of Horrors, the stage and screen musical that has circled the globe for over 30 years, consuming audiences with chills, thrills and laughter, arrived Monday night at Feinstein's/54Below. One unprecedented evening brought together performers from the original production through the Broadway revival for stories told, reminiscences shared, and songs sung.

Happy Birthday Emily Skinner! Emily Skinner was nominated for a Best Actress TONY Award for the Original Broadway Production of Side Show. Other Broadway credits include the original casts of Jekyll & Hyde, James Joyce's The Dead (with Christopher Walken) The Full Monty, Dinner at Eight (Outer Critics Circle nomination, Drama League Award). Most recently, she starred in the Broadway production of Billy Elliot.

The Muny presents 42nd Street, directed and choreographed by Denis Jones and music directed by Ben Whiteley.  BroadwayWorld has a first look at highlights of the show below!

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge traveled to Tampa to check out the exciting, new line-up of entertainment, and we're taking you behind the scenes below!

The great Alan Menken was on hand for the very special night, and he performed (for the first time in public) an epic medley of cut songs from the beloved musical. Below, we're excited to exclusively bring you some tunes that you've never heard before now!

Running September 9-18 at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall, Broadway's Eden Espinosa will lead Studio Tenn's EVITA. Check out a trailer for the production below!

Today in 1987, the FIRST Broadway revival of Dreamgirls opened at the Ambassador Theatre, where it ran for 177 performances. Dreamgirls features music by Henry Krieger and lyrics and book by Tom Eyen. Based upon the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Supremes, The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others, the musical follows the story of a young female singing trio from Chicago, Illinois called 'The Dreams', who become music superstars. The musical opened on December 20, 1981 at the Imperial Theatre, and was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical, and won six. It was later adapted into a motion picture from DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures in 2006. The 1987 cast featured Lillias White as 'Effie.'