Craig Lucas News

The full Chicago cast has been announced for the limited holiday engagement of beloved Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza, for ten performances only, December 14-29, 2019, at Lyric Opera House. The cast includes Renee Fleming and Rob Houchen, along with three-time Olivier Award winner Alex Jennings (Netflix's The Crown) and rising star Solea Pfeiffer (Almost Famous, Hamilton), as well as world-renowned soprano Marie McLaughlin, Broadway star Eric Sciotto (Something Rotten) and award-winning soprano Suzanne Kantorski. Additional casting includes West End talent Malcolm Sinclair, Rhona McGregor, Matthew Woodyatt and ensemble members Jordan Castle, Nicholas Duncan, Chlöe Hart, Molly Lynch, Tom Partridge and Monica Swayne.

The show's resplendent color palette, anchored by a stage floor covered in dappled brush strokes, pays homage to the French impressionist school of painting, notably that of Claude Monet. 

Kristin Chenoweth and Cheyenne Jackson recently stopped by LA Opera's The Light in the Piazza! The pair posed for a photo backstage with Dove Cameron, before Chenoweth took to Twitter to gush over the production.

Playwrights Horizons today announced that its beloved longtime Artistic Director, Tim Sanford, will step down from the position in July 2020.

L.A. Opera presents The Light in the Piazza!Renée Fleming and Emmy winner Dove Cameron star as Margaret and Clara Johnson, two American tourists in Italy. Their grand vacation plans take an unexpected detour when young Clara is swept off her feet by a local charmer. Brian Stokes Mitchell plays the role of Signor Naccarelli, the debonair father of a wealthy Florentine family.

Darlinghurst Theatre Company has announced its 2020 season. As we enter a new decade, our extraordinary line-up includes two world premieres and one Australian premiere, two musicals and festivals created by some of Australia's most talented theatre makers.

L.A. Opera presents The Light in the Piazza! Get a first look at the production in the photos!

L.A. Opera presents The Light in the Piazza! Get a sneak peek at the cast in action in the video!

Almost twenty years after she charmed hearts on the big screen, Amélie is taking to the stage in a bid to change lives and spread joy in the smallest of ways, with the biggest of hearts.

As BroadwayWorld reported last week, Renée Fleming will reprise her starring turn in The Light in the Piazza in the United States this fall. Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' six-time Tony Award-winning Broadway musical will be directed by the UK's multiple Oliver Award-winning Daniel Evans. The production will play previously announced runs at the L.A. Opera October 12-20, 2019 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago December 14-29, 2019.

Theatre Bay Area, one of the largest regional performing arts service organizations in North America, has announced the finalists of the 2019 TBA Awards. The sixth-annual TBA Awards Celebration will take place on Monday, Nov. 4 at the Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco).

Today's top stories: The Rose Tattoo begins previews tonight, and more!

Casting is complete for LA Opera's upcoming production of The Light in the Piazza. West End musical theater stars Rob Houchen, Liam Tamne and Celinde Schoenmaker, along with celebrated soprano Marie McLaughlin, join a formidable cast led by Renée Fleming, Dove Cameron and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Alex Jennings (Netflix's The Crown) and Solea Pfeiffer (Almost Famous, Hamilton) will join Renée Fleming in the limited Chicago presentation of The Light in the Piazza, for ten performances only, December 14-29, 2019, at Lyric Opera House (press opening Saturday, Dec. 14). Tickets start at $49 and are on sale now. The Chicago engagement follows the production's acclaimed run at the Royal Festival Hall in London this summer.

Renée Fleming will reprise her starring turn in The Light in the Piazza in the United States this fall. Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' six-time Tony Award-winning Broadway musical will be directed by the UK's multiple Oliver Award-winning Daniel Evans.

Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel's soaring romantic and tragic musical a?oeLight in the Piazzaa?? is not often tackled a?? thank the theater Gods. I'm not saying it's bad by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that I'd hate to see every small company, without the resources to handle it well, take it on. Fortunately, they've built in a few traps that may dissuade. First off, it's not your typical, rollicking musical with songs you'll be singing after. Second, there's all that Italian that your cast needs to learn and deliver authentically. And finally, it's some tough music. It needs to be done by insanely talented professionals who can handle these beautiful melodies that fly up into the rafters (often in Italian) as well as the heartfelt story. Enter Showtunes Theatre as they begin their 20th season, who routinely gather together the cream of the crop of Seattle artists for just a few weekends, books in hand, and you'll find yourself gifted with the mind-blowingly gorgeous evening that is their current production of a?oeLight in the Piazzaa??.

Actor and entertainer Pamela Shaw, traces her journey from an obedient and deferential childhood to the independent and irreverent personality she has become, in this humorous and captivating musical memoir. Through expanded musical numbers and dance, spiced up with witty narrative and film clips, Shaw gets naughtier than ever in her funny, provocative, musically eclectic new show, Naughty with a Band, which comes to Feinstein's at Vitello's in Studio City for One Night Only on September 17 at 8:00 p.m.; doors open for dinner at 6:30 p.m.

Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell will make his LA Opera debut in the company's upcoming production of The Light in the Piazza. 

Queer|Art, New York City's home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, is pleased to announce a special Fall season of Queer|Art|Film at IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue at West 3rd St.), September 16-December 2. Organized by guest curators Vivian Crockett, Camilo Godoy, and Carlos Mottaa?"the season, titled Chicas y Fantasmas, explores the shells we inhabit to move through the world. Presented by four contemporary Latinx artists, the season assembles a fierce ensemble of showgirls, cyborgs, glam rockers, and two Chicana teens who defy gendered expectations, ableist norms, and society's limitations to actualize their own self-constructed identities and shape a vision of the world in which they want to live. A full itinerary follows. All screenings begin at 8pm.

For the opener of its 20th Anniversary Season, Showtunes is bringing this legendary work home to the theatre where it began. Join them as The Light in the Piazza returns to Seattle in one of the biggest concerts ever, featuring the full, Broadway orchestration.