Joan Marcus News

Education Dramaturge Ted Sod sits down with actress Idina Menzel to discuss her character in 'Skintight' and what inspires her as an artist.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to his smash hit THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, entitled LOVE NEVER DIES is currently touring across the United States. The staging of the production is inspired by the reworked 2011 Australian premiere of the musical. To give Houston audiences an inside look into the show sure to leave them spellbound, we sat down with Sean Thompson who plays hero turned flawed husband and father, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny.

Pourfar shares the title role with six actresses and a doll in Tracy Letts' powerful play about a woman's life of quiet desperation.

Good morning BroadwayWorld! Today's top stories: The New York Musical Festival kicks off today, and more!

This is not shaping up to be a good year for Oscar Hammerstein II, American musical theatre's most important writer, who spent the first half of the 20th Century not only making significant strides to convert the genre from loosely assembled entertainments into respected and influential pieces of dramatic art, but was also a leading voice in promoting progressive values through his books and lyrics for such musicals as SHOW BOAT, SOUTH PACIFIC and THE KING AND I.

Earlier this week news broke that Glenda Jackson, fresh from her triumphant, Tony-winning run in Three Tall Women, will next don the crown as Shakespeare's tragic monarch King Lear. Broadway is making much ado about something and understandably so. New York stages haven't seen much gender-swapped or gender-blind casting of Shakespeare, but take a peek across the pond to find a revolution of sorts in the interpretation of the Bard's work.

The Tony-winning production of Once On This Island just welcomed Darlesia Cearcy, who replaces Lea Salonga as Erzulie, as well as Merle Dandridge, who returns to the production to play Papa Ge. Check out a first look at the duo in action below!

Until the 1980s, mainstream culture and advertising often cast women as sex objects, and framed their images to appeal to the male gaze. Historically, men in advertisements were represented as figures of authoritative masculinity (such as the Marlboro Man), but rarely sexualized.

ArtsEmerson has announced that Born for This - A New Musical will take the stage this summer for a limited engagement, June 15 - July 15 at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Downtown Boston. With original music and lyrics by six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning icon BeBe Winans book by Charles Randolph-Wright, BeBe Winans, and Lisa D'Amour, and direction by Charles-Randolph Wright (Motown the Musical), Born For This celebrates the incredible true story of BeBe Winans - a young man who follows his heart and finds his destiny.

As A Bronx Tale enters its final weeks of Broadway performances, the show welcomes Gerald Caesar, Frankie Leoni and Kimber Sprawl to the cast. Nick Cordero, Bradley Gibson, and Hudson Loverro have departed the show. Academy Award nominee Chazz Palminteri continues in the role of Sonny, now performing Tuesdays through Fridays and Sundays beginning next week.

No stranger to the Public Theater, Kyle Beltran, has performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Head of Passes, and The Fortress of Solitude, and now returns to the stage for Fire in Dreamland. Coming to audiences from playwright, Rinne Groff and directed by Marissa Wolf, this thought-provoking play examines uncovering possibility and new life in the face of destruction. Beltran plays Lance, a young man who is moving from youth into adulthood and dealing with all the challenges that come up along the way.

Broadway In Chicago has announced WAITRESS will play the Cadillac Palace Theatre (151 W. Randolph) for a limited three-week engagement July 3 - 22, 2018.

Singapore got a dose of Hakuna Matata as the international tour of The Lion King makes its stop and opened in the lion city on Friday (29 June). This is the second time The Lion King is in Singapore, the first was in 2011 where it became the longest-running musical in Singapore's theatrical entertainment history playing to over 300,000 people during its eight-month season at Marina Bay Sands.

Broadway's Once On This Island announced today that a new block of tickets are now on sale for the Tony Award winning production through September 2, 2019 at Circle in the Square Theatre (235 West 50th Street).

'We're all fully interested in navigating this brave new world with them,' says an exasperated character in Jordan Harrison's comedy of social politics, Log Cabin, 'but it sometimes seems like they want us to get it wrong... Like they're filling a quota of perceived transgressions.'

If you're surprised the Phantom is still playing Broadway and touring, you'll be more surprised that there's a sequel. This tale fails to resurrect that love that carries the original with a hard-to-believe story and much less spark.

Jason Robert Brown was just 25 years old when his SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD took the stage of Off-Broadway's intimate WPA Theatre. As he played piano and led the handful of musicians in director Daisy Prince's production, a quartet of actors who all had big things ahead of them (Brooks Ashmanskas, Andrea Burns, Jessica Molaskey and Billy Porter) revealed the vivid collection of complex and approachable emotions expressed by the extraordinarily relatable collection of characters created by this young man's music and lyrics.

The pre-Broadway engagement of THE CHER SHOW has made its way to Chicago in a blaze of colorful, over-the-top energy and replete with the artist's chart-topping hits. Three utterly talented women share the title role: Broadway veteran Stephanie J. Block as Star, Teal Wicks as Lady, and newcomer Micaela Diamond as Babe. Together, these actors deliver a powerhouse trio of performances worthy of Cher herself. Diehard Cher fans will be pleased to know that such iconic songs as 'I Got You, Babe,' 'If I Could Turn Back Time,' and, of course, 'Believe' are in more than capable hands.

It takes decades for tragic losses and separations to turn around to bliss in Steve Martin's BRIGHT STAR, but there's plenty of sparkling bluegrass music along that rocky mountain road.

Good morning BroadwayWorld! Today's top stories: get a first look at Encores! production of Songs For a New World, and more!