Joan Marcus News

I never thought I'd see the day where a bus and truck company would actually put their bus on stage. The national tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert is here to delight Austin audiences through May 12th, and there must be a RuPaul's Drag Race contestant somewhere out there who is completely out of glitter and sequins. This is one production that does everything it can to entertain and please the audience. Though it may be light on plot (at times It makes Mamma Mia look like Les Miserables), the lavishly flamboyant look and feel more than make up for any shortcomings. Priscilla is a campy, overblown, over the top, jeweled showgirl of a musical. Even Cher might suggest that the show could tone it down a bit. She'd be wrong. The zanier the show gets, the more the audience eats it up.

Christine Baranski, Kelli Barrett, Walter Bobbie, Jeremy Cohen, Dalton Harrod, Randy Skinner, Shonn Wiley, Karen Ziemba, New York City Ballet Principal dancer Joaquin De Luz and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Irina Dvorovenko will star in Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes, the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 New York City Center season

I left high school a year early to go to a small acting conservatory in California called PCPA, the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. It was a perfect training program for me, focused on acting, Shakespeare, voice and movement. It was a rigorous schedule, 10-6 every day except Monday and then rehearsal and performances at night. It was a challenge to find time to do homework. You could find me performing in 'The Miracle Worker' or 'Tommy' and meanwhile, offstage, I'd be trying to read 'Othello' and memorize 'A Lie of the Mind' for class the next day. It was a great place to train because there is a huge regional theatre intertwined with the conservatory, so we would take classes during the day and then act alongside our professors that night. It was an incredible way to see and honor everyone's unique process of crafting character, and begin to forge one's own process.

The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today that James Ponsoldt has officially signed on to write the big screen adaptation of the beloved musical PIPPIN.

Native Voices at the Autry, America's leading Native American theatre company, continues its tradition of excellence, developing plays by new and established Native American playwrights at its highly regarded PLAYWRIGHTS RETREAT AND FESTIVAL OF NEW PLAYS, and culminating in free staged public readings of three intriguing new works on Wednesday, May 29, 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, May 30, 7:30 p.m.; and Friday, May 31, 2013, 7:30 p.m., at the Autry National Center's Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles.

The company of the first North American tour of WICKED just welcomed Alison Luff as Elphaba and John Davidson as The Wizard during its engagement in Dallas, TX. WICKED will play the Music Hall at Fair Park through May 5. Check out photos of the new cast members in action below!

The Public Theater presents the world premiere of OLD-FASHIONED PROSTITUTES (A TRUE ROMANCE), currently in previews. Written, directed, and designed by Richard Foreman, who has been working with The Public Theater for more than 36 years, OLD-FASHIONED PROSTITUTES (A TRUE ROMANCE) and runs through Sunday, June 2, in The Public's Martinson Theater, with an official press opening on Tuesday, May 7. Check out photos of the cast in action below!

Christine Baranski, Kelli Barrett, Walter Bobbie, Jeremy Cohen, Dalton Harrod, Randy Skinner, Shonn Wiley, Karen Ziemba, New York City Ballet Principal dancer Joaquin De Luz and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Irina Dvorovenko will star in Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes, the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 New York City Center season. Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle. On Your Toes will have guest music direction by Encores! founding music director Rob Fisher and will play seven performances, from May 8 - 12 at New York City Center, W. 55th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues). The "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ballet, originally choreographed by George Balanchine, will be staged by Susan Pilarre, who served as a Ballet Mistress of the show's 1983 Broadway Revival.

For those who would enjoy David Mamet plays if there wasn't so much cursing and misogyny, I offer Lyle Kessler's very funny, testosterone-laced drama, Orphans.

Apparently, not all upper west side Jewish families spend Christmas Day going out for Chinese food and a movie.  Take the extended family of Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties, who spend two December 25ths, twenty years apart, in a perfunctory celebration of the holiday while complaining about the inability to find a plumber to come right over fix a leaky pipe (Even when offered a 'Nativity surcharge.') and referring to the season's continual playing of Bing Crosby singing 'White Christmas' as, 'a tiny acoustic rape every time you leave the apartment.'

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK: The gyspy robe gets passed again, Alan Cumming leads the Scottish play, and PIPPIN comes back to Braodway, and so much more!

Jake Silbermann makes his Broadway debut in the dual role of Scotty/Tim in Tony-winner Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties. The talented actor spoke with BWW about Greenberg's new hit play which not only actively engages the audience but challenges them to 'fill in the blanks.'

The only thing that'll keep you from dancing in aisles at The Public Theater's production of the enormously fun and exhilarating new musical, Here Lies Love, is the fact that there are no aisles.  In fact, there are no seats, save for a handful up in the balcony for this strictly standing room only show.

The longest-running show in Broadway history, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Harold Prince and produced by Cameron Mackintosh and The Really Useful Theatre Company, Inc., will welcome West End star and Platinum-selling Swedish recording star Peter Joback to the New York cast this summer. Mr. Joback will assume the title role for a limited engagement from Monday, April 29 through Saturday, August 24, 2012.

I suppose the problem with being the greatest Broadway comic actor of your generation is that once the label sticks you rarely get the opportunity to prove that you can also turn in great dramatic performances.  (Conversely, not since Garbo laughed has anyone been surprised to see a great dramatic actor excel in a comic part.)  In Douglas Carter Beane's ambitious, provocative and lovely protest drama/romantic comedy, The Nance, Nathan Lane finally gets to originate the kind of role that highlights what makes him a genuine stage star.  He sings, he says funny lines, he plays love scenes… but most of all he perceptively plays a strikingly original character in what will most likely be considered, up to this point, the best stage performance of his career.

Roundabout is racking up the nominations! Check back to see updates throughout the awards season.

Horton Foote's beloved classic, The Trip to Bountiful, starring Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Williams, Condola Rashad and Tom Wopat is currently in previews at The Stephen Sondheim Theatre . Directed by Michael Wilson, The Trip to Bountiful will play a 14-week limited engagement, opening Tuesday, April 23rd. BroadwayWorld brings you phtoos of the cast in action below!

The hit musical comedy Nice Work If You Can Get It welcomed Tony Award nominee Jessie Mueller, John Treacy Egan and Conrad John Schuck to the production on March 29th, in the roles of Billie Bendix, Chief Berry and Senator Max Evergreen. Check out photos of the actors in action below!

Texas Performing Arts and The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies present Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner in conversation with Evan Smith tonight, April 22, 2013 at 8 p.m. at Bass Concert Hall. Presented in partnership with The Department of Theatre and Dance and L Style G Style.

It was the best of musicals, it was the worst of musicals.  It was a score of wisdom, it was a book of foolishness.  It was the epoch of belief in the entertainment value of songs like 'Dancing In The Streets' and 'My Girl,' it was the epoch of incredulity in hearing lines like 'Your little Stevie is a wonder' and 'You built a legacy of love.'  We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.