Edna Ferber News

Robert J. Eagle, Producing Artistic Director of Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston, announces the company's much-anticipated 49th consecutive summer season at the Robinson Theatre (617 Lexington St. Waltham, MA, 02452), to run June-August, 2017.

Bay City Players announces the cast for the comedy drama, Act One, by James Lapine, from the autobiography by Moss Hart.

As a musical theater librettist, lyricist and lifelong connoisseur of Broadway and Hollywood musicals, Frank Evans would have been extremely sad to learn about the passing of screen legend Debbie Reynolds on December 28. But given his sense of humor and ability for self-deprecation, Evans might have also gotten a perverse kick out of knowing he died on the same day as one of his film favorites. Franklin G. Evans, 70, died last Wednesday evening at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn, due to complications from multiple strokes that ravaged his brain over the last couple of months of 2016. Evans, who also suffered from Parkinson's-related dementia and diabetes, had spent the last year rehabilitating from a serious concussion sustained last December.

As challenging a work of theatrical artistry that you could possibly conceive of, Parade affords BUMT students a sublime opportunity in pursuit of excellence in a production that vociferously demands to be seen and experienced. It is one of the year's best musicals in a Nashville theatrical season that has boasted one after another significant stage triumphs, with two leading performances that are stunning in their complexity and passionate delivery.

It's hard to believe that Jonathan Larson's epic rock musical masterpiece, Rent, debuted on Broadway, making headlines around the world, winning the Pulitzer Prize and bringing a whole new generation of audiences to the theater 20 years ago. Larson who died just prior to the show's 1996 off-Broadway opening didn't live to see the acclaim with which his musical - based upon Puccini's La Boheme - was greeted, but if we believe in such things, we may rest assured that since his untimely demise he has watched over Rent's evolution, which includes the 20th Anniversary production now touring the country in an astounding revival which reaffirms its place among the very best of American musical theater.

Harry Enfield will play studio boss Herman Glogauer in Christopher Hart's adaptation of Kaufman and Hart's classic Hollywood comedy, Once in a Lifetime. Enfield is joined in the cast of Richard Jones' production by John Marquez as George and Claudie Blakley as May, with further casting still to be announced.

Artistic Director Joseph Haj just announced his inaugural mainstage season with The Guthrie Theater.

This limited season of Daniel Evans' five star Sheffield Crucible production of SHOW BOAT today commences its final four weeks, playing its last West End performance at the New London Theatre on Saturday on 27 August 2016.  

SHOW BOAT inaugurates a partnership between Fiddlehead Theatre and Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre. The lavish, spectacular production is co-directed by Meg Fofonoff and Stacey Stephens, features a 27-piece live orchestra, and a cast of 50 triple-threat performers. The costumes by Stephens are to die for and the musical numbers are triumphant. If only it had a little more heart.

Fiddlehead Theatre Company presents Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1927 masterpiece SHOW BOAT at the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre, 265 Tremont Street, Boston, from today, June 22-July 3, 2016.

Today in 1946, the second Broadway revival of Showboat opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre, and ran for 418 performances. Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, from 1880 to 1927. The show's dominant themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love.

Meg Fofonoff and Stacey Stephens, Producing Artistic Directors of Fiddlehead Theatre Company, announced today the cast of Show Boat, the company's first production in partnership with the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre, 265 Tremont Street, Boston. Show Boat will run for twelve performances from June 22-July 3, 2016. Co-Directed by Fofonoff and Stephens, Show Boat will feature a cast of 50 starring seasoned international and off-Broadway performers including Kim Corbett (West Side Story, Les Miserables) as Magnolia Hawks, Jeremiah James (The Fantasticks) as Gaylord Ravenal, Lindsay Roberts (The Gershwins' Porgy And Bess) as Queenie, and Brian Kinnard (Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story) as Joe. Show Boat is Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's epic of life on the Mississippi River with some of the most beautiful and influential music ever written for the stage including 'Ol'Man River,' 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man' and 'Bill.' Show Boat will be choreographed by Wendy Hall, with a 27-piece live orchestra under the direction of Charles Peltz.

This limited season of Daniel Evans' five star Sheffield Crucible production of Show Boat will now play its final West End performance on 27 August 2016. The production was previously announced to be booking to 7 January 2017.

What happens when a group of teenagers idolize a celebrity - a figure from popular culture whose charisma ensures he will live on forever despite his death at a young age - reunite some 20 years later to further venerate their crush and to recall his impact on their young lives? That's the question considered in Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the tragicomedy now onstage as the final production of ACT 1's 2015-16 season at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater.

Daniel Evans' Sheffield Crucible production of Show Boat has now transferred to the West End with opening night last night (Monday 25 April 2016) at the New London Theatre.    

Rebecca Trehearn, Julie in SHOW BOAT, performs 'Bill' from the show!

Daniel Evans' sell-out Sheffield Crucible production of Show Boat has transferred to the West End and is now in previews, with press night on Monday 25 April 2016.  Show Boat is booking at the New London Theatre to 7 January 2017.  BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Portland's Good Theater is closing, what has been a highly adventurous and challenging fourteenth season, with a triumphant production of Act One, James Lapine's play based on the autobiography of Moss Hart. This nostalgic, subtly comic, and warmly touching work tells the story of a young Hart, learning to navigate the complex currents of writing a Broadway show in the 1930s. Told by two narrators, Lapine's play brings to life not only the Hart-George S. Kaufmann partnership, but a host of other colorful historical characters who helped to shape this golden age of the stage.

San Francisco Opera today announced plans to return to KQED 9 for the sixth season of spectacular opera and musical theater works featuring a roster of internationally renowned singers, conductors, directors and designers, all recorded live in high-definition from the War Memorial Opera House.

The Dallas Opera is proud to present the final production of the company's ambitious 2015-2016 Season, composer Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's SHOW BOAT.  This groundbreaking 1927 masterpiece marks TDO's first ever presentation of a Great American Musical, providing a showcase for a host of stars from both the opera world and Broadway, as well as the company's first major artistic collaboration with Dallas Black Dance Theatre in the Winspear Opera House.