Matthew Curiano News

'People will say we're in love' with this wild western cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Oklahoma! Having directed last summer's hit Bye Bye Birdie Jenn Thompson returns to Goodspeed to take on the show that changed American musicals forever. For the first time at Goodspeed, this country classic will welcome city slickers, cowboys and everyone in between! So kick up your boots and join us for this lively and legendary musical which runs now through September 23 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn. The show opens tonight, August 2, and BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

When Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA! premiered on Broadway in 1943, audiences were introduced to a style of theatre that would soon become a staple of American pop culture - the book musical. The show, borrowing from its pioneer subject matter, itself became a pioneer in the theatrical world, redefining what audiences would come to expect from a Broadway production. It is a wonder, then, that it would take 74 years for Goodspeed Musicals to mount its first production, ever, of this groundbreaking show. And judging by the quality of the show taking the stage each night at the Goodspeed (the second show in its current season), it was definitely worth the wait.

'People will say we're in love' with this wild western cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Oklahoma! Having directed last summer's hit Bye Bye Birdie Jenn Thompson returns to Goodspeed to take on the show that changed American musicals forever. For the first time at Goodspeed, this country classic will welcome city slickers, cowboys and everyone in between! So kick up your boots and join us for this lively and legendary musical which runs now through September 23 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn. The show opens tonight, August 2, and BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

'People will say we're in love' with this wild western cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Oklahoma! Having directed last summer's hit Bye Bye Birdie Jenn Thompson returns to Goodspeed to take on the show that changed American musicals forever. For the first time at Goodspeed, this country classic will welcome city slickers, cowboys and everyone in between! So kick up your boots and join us for this lively and legendary musical which runs now through September 23 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn. The show opens tonight, August 2, and BroadwayWorld has highlights below!

'People will say we're in love' with this wild western cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Oklahoma! Having directed last summer's hit Bye Bye Birdie Jenn Thompson returns to The Goodspeed to take on the show that changed American musicals forever. For the first time at Goodspeed, this country classic will welcome city slickers, cowboys and everyone in between! So kick up your boots and join us for this lively and legendary musical which runs July 14-September 23 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn [Official Press Opening will be August 2, 2017].

'People will say we're in love' with this wild western cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Oklahoma! Having directed last summer's hit Bye Bye Birdie Jenn Thompson returns to The Goodspeed to take on the show that changed American musicals forever. For the first time at Goodspeed, this country classic will welcome city slickers, cowboys and everyone in between! So kick up your boots and join us for this lively and legendary musical which runs July 14-September 23 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn [Official Press Opening will be August 2, 2017].

The city-wide school tour of Irving Berlin's Land That I Love, featuring music & lyrics by Irving Berlin and book by four-time Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin (Aladdin, The Wedding Singer, Elf the Musical), has extended its performance schedule for the second time due to popular demand and strong audience response, with support from NYC Council Member Vincent Gentile.

The city-wide school tour of Irving Berlin's Land That I Love, featuring music & lyrics by Irving Berlin & book by 4-time Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin (Aladdin, The Wedding Singer, Elf the Musical), has extended its performance schedule into May due to popular demand & strong audience response from the first month of school tour performances across the city. Presented by leading NYC arts education nonprofit Inside Broadway (Executive Director, Michael Presser), Land That I Love is a special collaboration between Inside Broadway and the Irving Berlin Family & is specifically produced for New York City public schools. The tour began in January and will now be performed at over 60 NYC public schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens, with over 100 performances thru May 5 (in 2017, Inside Broadway will be serving over 50,000 New York City students with its programs).

In celebration of its landmark 35th anniversary season, leading NYC arts education nonprofit Inside Broadway is presenting a city-wide school tour and revival of their acclaimed musical production, Irving Berlin's Land That I Love.

Hottest Articles on BroadwayWorld.com from this weekend Sunday, August 14, 2016 - Sunday, August 14, 2016.

As the world continues to face dark times, members of the theatre community are choosing to respond to tragedy with art that spreads hope for the future. According to Matthew Curiano, when the cast of the Ogunquit Playhouse's production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame began rehearsing for the show, they 'found truly just how poignant, powerful, and undeniably relevant the story [they] were telling was.' As a result, several of the cast members joined together to film a video using the words of the song 'Someday,' sung by the characters Esmerelda and Phoebus in the second act of Hunchback, as a prayer for the future, and to honor the victims of the Orlando massacre at Pulse Nightclub, the police shooting in Dallas, and to Alton Sterling and Philander Castile, who were both killed by police.

The Ogunquit Playhouse in southern Maine has been setting the bar higher and higher with each new production under Bradford T. Kenney, artistic director. What used to be a quintessential ocean-side summer stock house now operates from May through November, often mounting New England, and occasionally national, regional premieres. Its current musical, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, is the company's most ambitious venture yet. Adapted from the 1996 Disney animated film which was based on the classic Victor Hugo novel "Notre Dame de Paris," the Ogunquit production boasts a towering vaulted set design, a 21-member cast of Broadway veterans, and a tremendous 32-member choir. This HUNCHBACK delivers soaring vocals as big as its epic themes.

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Pittsburgh, Sacramento, South Africa and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include SPRING AWAKENING in Pittsburgh, LEGALLY BLONDE at California Music Circus, and A VOICE I CANNOT SILENCE in South Africa, just to name a few.

The Washington DC area is truly lucky to get the last leg of the RAGTIME - THE MUSICAL National Tour this toasty weekend. Currently playing at the Wolf Trap Filene Center until Saturday, June 11, RAGTIME's director Marcia Milgrom Dodge has pieced together a powerful show full of emotion, beautiful imagery, and strong voices.

The rich versus the working class. Immigrant crises. Police clashing with rioting African-Americans. Women discovering their independence. Celebrities in your face. Is it 2016 or 1916, and how do you know?

Thursday April 14th, McCain Auditorium of Kansas State University hosted the National tour of Ragtime directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge and produced by Phoenix Entertainment.

Rhode Island audiences, prepare to be dazzled. RAGTIME is - deservedly - one of the most highly acclaimed musicals of the last two decades and the touring production now playing the Providence Performing Arts Center does the show's rich legacy proud.

At the beginning of Act II of Ragtime, Terrence McNally's masterful musical adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel, journeyman pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., decimated by the murder of his beloved Sarah, sings, 'Say goodbye to music / Say goodbye to light.' This sums up my feelings about Theater League's production of Ragtime, which arrived for a brief four-day stay at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Thursday night. The original 1998 Broadway production won a Tony Award for Best Score, but many patrons who packed the Fred Kavli Theatre on opening night were dismayed to discover that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's sumptuous, moving songs were being played from pre-recorded synthesized music tracks. Despite superb performances from the entire cast, Theater League's Ragtime suffers greatly from this omission, which was apparently a decision of Phoenix Entertainment, the independent theatrical producing and management enterprise in charge of producing the show.

**Results of the 2015 BroadwayWorld Regional Awards are being audited and posted. Check out the winners that have been announced in New Jersey, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Connecticut, Minneapolis, Wichita, Long Island, Raleigh, Madison, Central PA, West Virginia, Columbus, Chicago, Birmingham, Houston, Delaware, Miami, Portland, Boston, Dallas, Charlotte, Vermont, Seattle, Louisville, Denver, Baltimore, Nashville, Orlando, Boise, Maine, Cleveland, Phoenix, Austin, Philippines, Detroit, and Atlanta.  Don't see your region yet?  Stay tuned... more to come soon!

RAGTIME National Tour at North Carolina Theatre