Laurence Olivier News

Dress Circle posted news today that the 2013 West End revival of A Chorus Line is getting an original cast recording! The album is set for release on September 16th, 2013. Tracklisting to follow.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) joins the Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago to commemorate the Year of Italian Culture in America with the World's Stage presentation of Inner Voices, a co-production with Italy's first and best-established theater Piccolo Teatro di Milano, today, June 25-29, 2013 in CST's Courtyard Theater.

Producers today announced that the revival of A Chorus Line will close on Saturday August 31, following a critically acclaimed six month run at the London Palladium. Leigh Zimmerman (Sheila) won Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical and the production was nominated for Best Musical Revival at this year's Laurence Olivier Awards.

Art imitates life imitates art when Theatricum Botanicum artistic directorEllen Geer stars alongside her sister Melora Marshall, daughter Willow Geer and daughter-in-law Abby Craden in an uproarious comedy about a family of actors. Originally written as a thinly disguised parody of the Barrymores,George S. Kaufman andEdna Ferber's winsome spoof about a thespian dynasty is the perfect vehicle for Topanga's first theatrical family. Also in the cast are 'defacto' Theatricum family members Alan Blumenfeld, Tim Halligan, Aaron Hendry and Earnestine Phillips, and longtime company member Susan Angelo directs.The Royal Family opens today, June 22 at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, the centerpiece of the company's 40th Anniversary Summer Repertory Season.

'Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.' That was Winston Churchill's take on the game of golf, an opinion which might be shared by several top competitors at the recent US Open. Nevertheless, golf remains an obsession for many amateurs, and competition in inter-country club tourneys can be fierce. But nowhere is there a competition with more comedic punch than in Ken Ludwig's riotous farce, The Fox on the Fairway, beginning a 6-week run at Stage West on Friday, July 5. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast below!

Stage Entertainment have announced it will start a nationwide search for young boys to take on the title role in a Dutch production of Billy Elliot. A training program has been devised with the purpose to convince the English creatives that indeed there are sufficient boys of sufficient talent to guarantee a succesful run of the show in the Netherlands.

Art imitates life imitates art when Theatricum Botanicum artistic director Ellen Geer stars alongside her sister Melora Marshall, daughter Willow Geer and daughter-in-law Abby Craden in an uproarious comedy about a family of actors. Originally written as a thinly disguised parody of the Barrymores, George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's winsome spoof about a thespian dynasty is the perfect vehicle for Topanga's first theatrical family. Also in the cast are "defacto" Theatricum family members Alan Blumenfeld, Tim Halligan, Aaron Hendry and Earnestine Phillips, and longtime company member SusanAngelo directs. The Royal Family opens on Saturday, June 22 at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, the centerpiece of the company's 40th AnniversarySummer Repertory Season. Check out a first look below!

Fourteen gifted students from drama schools across the UK were today awarded £55,000 worth of bursaries by the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) in order to help them complete their training.

Following the best-selling musical James Joyce's The Dead and the critically-acclaimed drama A Walk in the Woods, Quotidian Theatre Companycloses their 15th anniversary season with the D.C. area premiere of The Birds - celebrated playwright Conor McPherson's unique, morally-challenging adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film. Quotidian's co-founder and artistic director Jack Sbarbori directs actors Jenny Donovan, Stephanie Mumford, Ted Schneider, and Matthew Vaky in the production, which runs July 12 - August 11, 2013 at The Writer's Center (4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD).

Billy Elliot the Musical is now booking at the Victoria Palace Theatre until 21 June 2014. Now in its ninth year, Billy Elliot the Musical was recently awarded its fifth Laurence Olivier Award - the BBC Radio 2 Audience Award voted for by the theatregoing public and has been seen by over 4 million people in the West End. Check out photos of the new cast in action below!

Southwark Playhouse announces its Autumn 2013 season, including: the UK Premiere of Beau Willimon's Farragut North; the first major revival in over 30 years of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and the Innocent; and the world premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Ajax. Details below!

National Theatre Live is pleased to announce that the June 13 live broadcast of Peter Morgan's Olivier Award-winning new play The Audience was seen by nearly 30,000 people in North America and nearly 80,000 people in the UK - the largest audience ever for a live broadcast from National Theatre Live. Due to the record-breaking response to the National Theatre Live broadcast of The Audience, many encore screenings have already been added, and more encores will be added throughout the summer internationally. In North America, there are currently 700 screenings scheduled throughout the summer, with additional encores to be added still; in the UK, nearly 800 screenings will take place - the largest number of screenings for a National Theatre Live broadcast in both North America and the UK ever. The Audience played its final performance at London's Gielgud Theatre on June 15, starring internationally acclaimed actress Helen Mirren as The Queen, directed by Stephen Daldry, and won two 2013 Olivier Awards for Best Actress (Helen Mirren) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Richard McCabe).

Leave it to Artistic Director Tony Simotes and Shakespeare & Company's irreverent 'master of wit' Kevin G. Coleman to bring audiences one the funniest plays Stoppard has put his pen to in the Company's 36th Performance Season with HEROES. Written by Gerald Sibleyras and translated by Tom Stoppard, the show, directed by Coleman, boasts a stalwart trio of actors including Jonathan Epstein, Malcolm Ingram and Robert Lohbauer in this auspicious comedy. Heroes runs now through September 1, in S&Co.'s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

There are only two seasons in the Philippines: the dry season and the wet season. Technically, it is the wet season in the country from June to August; nevertheless, the local theater scene remains bustling with activities during these "bring your umbrella" months. Below are our top-five picks for the Philippine Theater scene's third quarter:

No one mines an audience for laughter like Frank Ferrante; the actor/comedian who keeps a crowd in stitches, improvising on a whim. Back in Seattle after last summer's sold-out run at ACT, Frank re-ignites his hilarious tribute performance as Groucho Marx that is partly scripted, partly improvised, and completely ridiculous. Frank Ferrante reprises the critically acclaimed An Evening With Groucho, that amazed audiences and created a buzzing smash hit. Winner of the 1987 New York Theatre World Award, nominee for the Outer Critics Circle Award and Laurence Olivier Award, and well-known for his comic creation 'Caesar' with Teatro ZinZanni, Ferrante is always a sure-fire hit for new audiences and a must-see for comedy lovers.

Stage Entertainment have announced it will start a nationwide search for young boys to take on the title role in a Dutch production of Billy Elliot. A training program has been devised with the purpose to convince the English creatives that indeed there are sufficient boys of sufficient talent to guarantee a succesful run of the show in the Netherlands.

Alex Gaumond will join the company in the role of Miss Trunchbull and Kay Murphy will play Mrs Wormwood from 3 September 2013. Haley Flaherty will continue in the role of Miss Honey until 7 September 2014. Further casting will be announced soon.

Besides Velvet Channel, do you know who else is excited for the Tony Awards? Scroll down!

World-renowned playwright and Tony Award nominee Ken Ludwig (Crazy for You, Lend Me a Tenor) will be hosting an interactive discussion on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, followed by a book-signing of his new book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare at the Folger Shakespeare Library today, June 8 at 12pm.

Chris Ghaffari, in rehearsal for perhaps his biggest role, the romantic male lead in Shakespeare's pastoral comedy 'As you Like It,' unabashedly admits he is intrigued by the timeless fascination of the actor for the stage.