Chita Rivera News

Cafe Carlyle has announced an extension for Broadway legend Chita Rivera's acclaimed, sold out Cafe debut with four encore performances, May 18-21.

The Voice Foundation's annual Voices of Summer Gala will take place on Friday, June 3rd at 6:00 p.m. at the Westin Philadelphia.

The North American tour of the new stage adaptation of THE WIZARD OF OZ will play the National Theatre for two weeks only, tonight, May 3, through May 15, 2016.

The Theatre World Awards, Inc. Board of Directors (Dale Badway, President) has announced the 2016 Theatre World Award Honorees for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance who will be celebrated at the 72nd Annual Theatre World Awards Ceremony on Monday evening, May 23, 2016 beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Circle in the Square Theatre (West 50th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue), home of the current 2015 Tony® Award-winning Best Musical, Fun Home.   

It was announced today by The Theatre World Awards Board of Directors, and The Dorothy Loudon Foundation, Broadway newcomer Nicholas Barasch, currently appearing in the Broadway revival of She Loves Me at Studio 54, will be honored with the 8th Annual Dorothy Loudon Award at the 72nd Annual Theatre World Awards Ceremony set for Monday evening, May 23, 2016 beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Circle in the Square Theatre (West 50th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue), home of the current 2015 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Fun Home.  The 2016 Theatre World winners will be announced shortly.

The Professional Dancers Society's (PDS) Gypsy Awards Luncheon, honoring singer, dancer and choreographer Paula Abdul, legendary entertainer Dick Van Dyke, and famed choreographers Kevin Carlisle and Carl Jablonski, took place on April 24, 2016 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. BroadwayWorld has photos from the event below!

Producer Daniel Nardicio - in association with Feinstein's at the Nikko - will present the eclectic and electric Tony Award-winning performer ALAN CUMMING at San Francisco's Castro Theatre on Thursday, June 30 at 8 p.m. Cumming's current national concert tour celebrates his acclaimed new album 'Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs' from Yellow Sound Label.

Wham! Pow! Boom! Up and away, it's Superman! Growing up in the 50s I couldn't wait for the next weekly adventure-filled installment of Supie and Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White and the Daily Planet on the small television screen. It was thrilling to see a man go into a telephone booth and change from street clothes into tights - even if they were baggy - and fly off - imagine! - to save the world from crime and destruction. It didn't matter that it was pure fantasy and that he he was only a comic book hero. Superman brought lots of excitement into our young lives. In 1966, the same musical composers who wrote the successful Broadway hit Bye Bye Birdie, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, penned It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman! The New Musical Comedy and in spite of the great reviews, it did not catch on with the public, so quickly fizzled. Now 50 years later, what a camp to look back and laugh at all the silliness and innocence of that era, for the Superman musical is loaded with clumsy, goofy, campy laughs. Now onstage in a rare revival ... It's Superman receives a terrifically entertaining production at the Grove Theatre in Upland.

In this episode: Waitress' Lorin Latarro- as choreographer of Broadway's "Waitress', Lorin is serving as her main course storytelling through movement that is organic and inventive. As an artist, her menu has included: Swing, Understudy, Ensemble, Dance Captain, and Associate Choreographer. For dessert, make sure you grab a slice of her girl power. 

Ninety percent of the way through her new 54 Below show, A Visit With Kander and Ebb, Donna McKechnie delivers the unquestioned highlight of this show, “I Walk Away” (The Visit), wherein the character Claire Zachanassian ruefully explains how she accrued her fortune through the deaths of successive husbands. Phrasing is superb, vocal confident, acting strong. Unfortunately, while the show's finale “Yes!” (70, Girls, 70) is appealing for vivacity and notable lack of pretense, nothing else comes close to this satisfying parenthesis.

When Tuesday night the formidable Chita Rivera opens her debut Cafe Carlyle show, An Evening of My Favorite Songs, with "I Won't Dance" (Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields/Jimmy McHugh), it's like watching a thoroughbred nose the racing gate. There's too little space on the small stage to do much more than shimmy, twirl, and display Bob Fosse-like arm moves; the performer exudes an urge to cut loose. At the ripe age of we-all-aspire-to-that-kind-of-unquenchable-joie-de-vivre, she shoots off sparks.

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: AMERICAN PSYCHO gets bloody on Broadway, opening tonight, and IN THE SECRET SEA opens at Theatre Row!

Broadway legend Chita Rivera made her Cafe Carlyle just last night with An Evening of My Favorite Songs, an engagement that was postponed earlier this year due to an injury. Now she's ready to take the stage for a two-week engagement, through April 30. BroadwayWorld brings you a look inside her first performance below!

Don't forget to watch the announcement live, exclusively here at BroadwayWorld at 11am!

Don't forget to watch the announcement live, right here at BroadwayWorld.com.  Check back at 11am to tune in!

In this episode: Broadway's Mary Ann Lamb. If you look up the word 'powerhouse' in the dictionary, you will find a picture of Mary Ann Lamb.  She lives her life fully onstage and off, and is a prime example of how you do one thing influences how you do another. She talks about the legends she's worked with, but in the eyes of the theatre community, she herself is a legend. 

Among this year's nominees for Outstanding Musical Production by a Large Theater are WAITRESS and NATASHA, PIERRE, AND THE  GREAT COMET OF 1812, both at American Repertory Theatre. Tony winner Jessie Mueller and Denee Benton also each received nods for their respective performances. 

 At its third annual Eight Over Eighty benefit gala last night, The New Jewish Home(formerly, Jewish Home Lifecare), one of the country's largest and most diversified nonprofit eldercare systems, honored eight trailblazing New Yorkers over 80. The event, at the Mandarin Oriental New York,attracted 440 guests and raised $1.2 million for The New Jewish Home's rehabilitation, skilled nursing, and home health care programs, which together serve 12,000 older New Yorkers each year. BroadwayWorld brings you coverage below!

The Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre has announced the two musicals that have been chosen for the SigWorks: Musical Theater Lab, a new developmental workshop for musical theater writers - SKIN & BONES by Ben Clark and Andrew Kramer and U.G.L.Y. by Darius Smith.

Paper Mill Playhouse has announced complete casting for Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's classic musical West Side Story, directed by Paper Mill Playhouse's Producing Artistic Director Mark S. Hoebee and Jerome Robbins' original choreography recreated by Alex Sanchez. West Side Story is based on a conception by Jerome Robbins and features a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.