Helen Hayes News

BroadwayWorld has a first look at the West End production of Dear Evan Hansen, now playing at the Noël Coward Theatre, currently booking to 2 May 2020.  

The Keegan Theatre announces its lineup for the 2019 holiday season, including its beloved holiday tradition, AN IRISH CAROL, written by Dublin native and Keegan company member Matthew J. Keenan opening on December 12, a Keegan PLAY-RAH-KA production for families, THE MAGICAL PI?'ATA, an original Mexican play with music featuring a book and lyrics by Karen Zacarías and music by Deborah Wicks LaPuma, opening on December 14, and the return of the beloved DC horn-and-percussion band The Harry Bells for a one-night-only holiday concert, Keegan's Greetings.

The hills are alive because Tally Sessions is taking over BroadwayWorld's Instagram Story at Asolo Repertory Theatre's The Sound of Music this Saturday, November 16th! Be sure to tune in throughout the day to get a peek behind the scenes of the iconic musical exactly 60 years after the original Broadway production opened!

Huntington Theatre Company has announced the cast and creative team for the Boston premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Sweat.  This a?oebreathtakingly timelya?? (The Wall Street Journal), Tony Award-nominated play by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage will be directed by Kimberly Senior (Disgraced on Broadway). Sweat begins performances at the Huntington Avenue Theatre (264 Huntington Avenue, Boston) on Friday, January 31, 2020 and runs through Sunday, February 23, 2020. The official press opening night is Wednesday, February 5, 2020. Tickets are now available.

BroadwayWorld is checking in with the cast to uncover some little known facts about the political giants they play onstage. Today, watch as David Garrison gives us a lesson on Richard Nixon and George Wallace.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announces that Michael Greif, who holds the distinction of being the only director to helm the original Broadway productions of two Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals (RENT and Next to Normal), will return to Next to Normal to direct for the Broadway Center Stage production.

Gingold Theatrical Group (David Staller, Artistic Director) will continue the 14th Season of Project Shaw, Art as Activism: A Theatrical Survival Guide, a special series of evenings of plays that embrace human rights and free speech. All of GTG's programming, inspired by the works of George Bernard Shaw, are designed to provoke peaceful discussion and activism.

The Tony Award-winning, record-breaking hit musical Chicago celebrates its 23rd Broadway anniversary tomorrow, Thursday, November 14th. The production is now playing at Broadway's Ambassador Theatre (219 W. 49th St.).

Audiences will get to 'Keep On Lovin' Broadway's Best Party - the 10th Anniversary Production of Rock of Ages as it transitions into an open-ended engagement at New World Stages (340 W 50th St). Tickets are now on sale through September 13, 2020 at Telecharge.com.

Memorial Hermann Broadway at the Hobby Center has announced the national tour of Come From Away, a Broadway musical about the true story of the small town that welcomed the world, will make its Houston debut at the Hobby Center for a limited engagement March 3 - 8, 2020. Come From Away tickets will go on sale Friday, November 15 at 10 AM.

On Saturday November 9, 2019, Factory 449, a Helen Hayes Award-winning theatre company in residence at Anacostia Arts Center, opens 'Agnes of God' by John Pielmeier. 

BroadwayWorld is checking in with the cast to uncover some little known facts about the political giants they play onstage. Today, watch as Nikkole Salter gives us a lesson on Coretta Scott King and Geraldine Whittington.

Michael Longoria has released a sultry music video for 'Kiss Me (Like They Do In The Movies)', an original song written by Michael Longoria and arranged by James Dobinson. The music video is directed by Matt Simpkins and stars Longoria and Anthony Crouchelli. 'Kiss Me (Like They Do In The Movies)' is the first single from Longoria's new studio album, Michael Longoria: Like They Do In The Movies, available now at www.BroadwayRecords.com, www.Amazon.com, in stores and across digital platforms. Michael Longoria: Like They Do In The Movies was released by Broadway Records on October 11, 2019 and reached #5 on the iTunes Vocal Albums Chart.

Genius and jealousy collide in Folger Theatre's production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. Richard Clifford (Mary Stuart and The School for Scandal at Folger Theatre), directs the Tony Award-winning “Best Play” set against the backdrop of the opulent salons and opera houses of 18th-century Vienna, examining the rivalry between court composer Antonio Salieri and the boorish but brilliant Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The production features Helen Hayes Award-winner Ian Merrill Peakes (Folger Theatre's Macbeth and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) as the tortured composer Salieri, who finds himself living in the shadow of his musical rival Mozart (Samuel Adams).

Tony Award-winner Stephanie J. Block makes her Café Carlyle debut, February 11 a?" 15. She has established herself as one of Broadway's most versatile leading ladies. Stephanie J. Block most recently starred in The Cher Show for which she won the 2019 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and received a Drama League Award nomination. Previously, Ms. Block starred in the Broadway revival of Falsettos (Tony Award nomination), Little Miss Sunshine (Drama Desk nomination), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Tony Award nomination), Anything Goes, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, 9 to 5: The Musical (Drama Desk nomination), Wicked, The Pirate Queen, and The Boy from Oz. She also starred in the first national touring company of Wicked as Elphaba (Helen Hayes Award; Carbonell Award).

The Washington Stage Guild continues its season of great writers with a vividly theatrical adaptation of one of Charles Dickens's novels, Hard Times. Dickens's tale of love, loss, and circus folk is set against the backdrop of Industrial Revolution England. This clever version, in which four actors play dozens of characters, has not been seen in Washington for over two decades!

Out of the Box Theatrics' Founding Artistic Director, Liz Flemming announced today that Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley will lead the cast of a limited NYC engagement of Sybillie Pearson (book), Richard Maltby, Jr. (lyrics) and David Shire's(music) heart-warming musical, BABY. Directed and choreographed by Ethan Paulini, the production will play a site-specific loft in midtown Manhattan (14 W 45th Street) Friday, December 6 through Saturday, December 14, 2019. Tickets are now on sale here.

The first clue that ANASTASIA was going to be different than what I expected was a note on the title page reading, “Inspired by the Twentieth Century Fox Motion Pictures.” Plural? A savvy journalist, I quickly asked Siri to bring up the imdb page for “Anastasia”. Turns out Fox made ANASTASIA twice, the 1997 animated off-brand Disney princess movie and a 1957 film that scored Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar and marked Helen Hayes' transition to the big screen. And it turns out the musical version has more in common with LES MISERABLES and RAGTIME than BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Gone is the hell-wizard Rasputin, his talking fruit bat sidekick, and the singing demon caterpillars. At intermission, I asked my third grade niece, Adalyn, how she was liking it. “It's awesome…it's real people, like no Beast or anything. No animals.” We decide that Disney staged musicals are great but more it's more impressive when you can achieve the magic without a story that departs from reality. ANASTASIA is historical fiction hypothetical. It poses a “what if…?” that a daughter of the last czar of Russia (The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna) escaped when the czar's family was executed in 1918. Rumors persisted for decades that Anastasia did, in fact, escape. In 2007, DNA testing confirmed the remains of all four Grand Duchesses were in the Imperial grave. In this version, Terrence McNalley's book follows Anastasia's rediscovery of her identity after surviving the attack on her family and sustaining some plot enabling amnesia. Renamed “Anya” she grows up and makes a life in post-Revolution Russia. Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress (in a staggeringly moving performance by Joy Franz) has fled to France and offered a cash reward for anyone escorting the rumored alive Anastasia to Paris. The wily duo Vlad (Edward Staudenmayer) and Dmitry (Jake Levy) pull a My Fair Lady style makeover on Anya to collect the Dowager's prize. They are pursued by Gleb (Jason Michael Evans). A Soviet officer drawn to Anya romantically but tasked with finding and eliminating the last Romanov. Anya's memory becomes somewhat coaxed back, but the Dowager has stopped seeing Anastasia claimants after too much heart-break from countless frauds. It sounds dark, but with high-tech digital scenery and inspired performances across the cast it is delightful. Stephen Flaherty (Music) and Lynn Ahrens (Lyrics), responsible for bringing us RAGTIME, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, LUCKY STIFF, as well as the Oscar nominated songs carried over from the animated film. ANASTASIA is a perfect context for this pair. “Stay, I Pray You” (my favorite song of the evening) is evocative of RAGTIME's “New Music”. The two songs literally race my heart in a strangely specific way. My real test of a National Tour at Gammage is how fast I get the music playing in my car on the way home. At ANASTASIA I was already finding, “Stay, I Pray You” walking through the parking lot. The rest of the score is similarly haunting. Lila Coogan, as Anya/Anastasia, powers through the score with nuance, clarity, and passion. Tari Kelly, as Countess Lily, and Stadenmayer (Vlad) were Adalyn's favorite performances and I have to agree. This incredibly gifted pair take the “triple threat” designation (singer, dancer, actor) and go quadruple with the addition of flawless comic timing. The choreography by Peggy Hickey is masterful. It somehow combines inventive and traditional throughout and the ten-minute slice of “Swan Lake” infused into “Quartet at the Ballet” is the highlight of the second act. It's a fun-size version that gets an under-represented art form onto the plate. This kind of trope often means the plot putting the plot on hold. But here, it is the connective tissue between Anya, Dmitry, the Dowager, and Gleb as they each bring us up to speed heading into the show's climax. Ultimately, the show's success comes from applying a higher artistic standard to the “previously-animated-film-now-theatrically-staged” genre. It cashes in on the name draw of the 1997 film then gives the viewer something much more enriched than what they think they are coming to see.

Goodspeed Musicals has announced this year's cast of A Connecticut Christmas Carol - the musical treat infused with Connecticut flavor by LJ Fecho and Michael O'Flaherty. Perfect for the holidays, A Connecticut Christmas Carol, the family-friendly take on the Dickens classic, will return to The Terris Theatre December 4 - 28, 2019. This production is supported in part by the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Masonicare at Chester Village and GKN Aerospace Services Structures Corporation.

BroadwayWorld is checking in with the cast to uncover some little known facts about the political giants they play onstage. Today, watch as Marc Kudisch gives us a lesson on Richard J,. Daley.