Emma Stratton News

Woody Allen's film is promising source material for a musical. This is what we got.

Bringing musical comedy back with a bang! Tickets are on sale now for the Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC)'s engagement of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, May 31 - June 5, 2016. In Providence, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY is a part of the Encore Series and is sponsored by Coastway Community Bank.

The national tour of the new musical comedy BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, written by Woody Allen and based on the screenplay by Allen and Douglas McGrath (Beautiful) for the 1994 film, will play in Memphis beginning Monday, May 16 and running through Sunday, May 22.

Emma Stratton is a Minnesota native who'd taking the stage as Helen Sinclair in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, the Midwest premiere of the musical based on the Woody Allen film. She answers 6 Questions but keeps the plug a secret in this interview.

?Broadway In Chicago has announced that individual tickets for the Chicago premiere of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, written by Woody Allen and based on the screenplay by Allen and Douglas McGrath (Beautiful) for the 1994 film, will go on sale on Friday, February 19.  The staged production of this worldwide smash-hit film will play the newly named The PrivateBank Theatre (18 W. Monroe) April 19 through May 1, 2016.

Let me start by saying that I've never seen the original movie of "Bullets Over Broadway" all the way through. I'm just not a Woody Allen fan. So a musical interpretation of it didn't exactly thrill me. So what about the current production turned me around? Was it the story? It's cute but nothing life changing. Was it the music? All the songs are minor adaptations of old standards from the 1920's and 30's so not really. No, it was the cast currently playing at the Paramount that took this fun show and amped it up to zany hilarity and made it an absolute delight.

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY's national tour tour shot over to the Fox Performing Arts Center (PAC) in Riverside for a single performance on January 27th, after a run at the Pantages. The top-notch cast delivered a hilarious night of theatre at the Fox, with fabulous dancing and singing.

While certainly far from a perfect show (both in staging and execution), the bus-and-truck version of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY - THE MUSICAL---the quirky and highly-amusing stage musical adaptation of the 1994 big screen comedy penned by Woody Allen and Douglas McGrath---is nonetheless a supremely fun and engaging stage iteration had me in stitches for much of its two hilarious acts, which have been enhanced by lots of silly, old-fashioned antics and an array of surprisingly top-notch musical/acting performances from a solid, mostly young cast. I can honestly say that this production---now finishing up its Los Angeles premiere performances at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood through January 24---is quite possibly the most enjoyable non-equity first national tour I've watched in a long, long time---a wonderful surprise considering such enterprises have a long, contentious history of enticing lots of industry controversy and skepticism even before the curtain goes up.

As Helen Sinclair (Emma Stratton) holds her hand over playwright David Shayne's (Michael Williams) mouth (picture above), fans of the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway are bound to chuckle as they remember the famously unforgettable line spoken by the movie's Helen Sinclair Oscar winner Dianne Weist, 'Don't speak!' Weist, Jennifer Tilly as Olive and Chaz Palminteri as Cheech stole the brilliant film, so when I heard a couple of years ago that they were rehashing this for a Broadway musical, my reaction was 'Sacrilege! Why? Don't tamper with perfection!' Well, they didn't listen to me, obviously, as the musical went forward, and for some sketchy reasons, was a flop on Broadway. Let me tell you, as reluctant as I was to see the musical now onstage at the Pantages through January 24, I am glad I did, for it is actually quite good, with mostly sparkling performances, ingenious choreography recreated from Susan Stroman's original, fabulous costumes by William Ivey Long...and it's faithful to the film. No one dared to touch Woody Allen's uncannily sharp plot, dialogue and laugh lines. Yes, it could have an original score, but what is accomplished with the old standards aiding in moving the story forward, kind of like in Mamma Mia, works damn well. It's fun, ear and eye-filling entertainment!

The Orpheum Theatre announced today that individual tickets for the Memphis premiere of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, written by Woody Allen and based on the screenplay by Allen and Douglas McGrath (Beautiful) for the 1994 film, will go on sale Friday, December 18 at 10:00 AM.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in New Jersey, Salt Lake City, Sydney, and more. Check out our top 10 spooky stories around our Broadway World below, which include the National Tour of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY in Nashville, BUYER & CELLAR in Salt Lake City, and Audra McDonald in Sydney, just to name a few.

Gimme a chorus line of gorgeous girls with gams up to here, a tap-dancing mob of darkly handsome wise guys, a serious lady of the theater whose teeth marks may be found all around a stage set - place them amid a whimsical and altogether unbelievable plot as thin as the best of the old-time movie musicals, complete with a score of tuneful hits from the jazz age, then throw 'em a laugh-out-loud funny script by Woody Allen - and I am in musical theater nirvana.

The national tour of the new musical comedy BULLETS OVER BROADWAY will make its Nashville premiere at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall during a limited, one-week engagement tonight, November 10-15, 2015.

Thus, we are happy to present the return of one our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come. Something's missing? That's an easy fix: just send us a message here, on Facebook, or by email at jeffreyellis37215@att.com.

Halloween's all done in, there are still three weeks ahead before we officially give thanks, and Christmas - and all its accompanying frenzy and frivolity - is about seven weeks away! So what's there to do for all the theatrical types jonesing for a trip to make believe? Plenty! Theater companies all over middle Tennessee are showing off their best and brightest, with a number of eagerly anticipated shows opening this weekend and/or continuing from their earlier opening nights and next Tuesday there's a sparkling new Broadway musical swinging through Music City to entertain you…

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Victoria Theatre Association welcomes the show-stopping Broadway musical BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, Nov. 3-8, 2015 at the Benjamin & Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center, as part of the 2015-2016 Premier Health Broadway Series.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.