New York Musical Theatre Festival News

A by-invitation-only industry reading of the new musical comedy The Jerusalem Syndrome will be held on November 16 and 19 at the TBG Theatre in Manhattan.

Do Not Miss Morton in a Cabaret Setting

The gladness of your heart is the greatest gift of all. The Huntington Theatre Company continues its 28th season - a season of American Stories - with A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration, a new uplifting holiday event by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz).

The romance of Florence comes to life on stage as Philadelphia Theatre Company continues its 2009-2010 season with the hit Broadway musical The Light in the Piazza with book by Craig Lucas and music and lyrics by Adam Guettel on November 13 - December 6. Directed by Joe Calarco, the ensemble cast features Whitney Bashor, Sherri Edelen, Joe Guzman, Ken Krugman, Kyra Miller, Fran Prisco, Matthew Scott, and Maureen Torsney-Weir.

The New York Musical Theater Festival will honor the winners of the NYMF 2009 Awards for Excellence as well as NY1 'On Stage' and Sh-K-Boom Records at the Sixth Anniversary Season Awards Gala taking place Sunday, November 22nd at The Edison Ballroom (240 West 47th Street). Two additional awards, presented by Daegu International Musical Festival and Stage Entertainment USA, will also be presented.

Village Theatre will produce MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS in Issaquah November 11, 2009-January 3, 2010 and in Everett January 8-31, 2009. Featuring an array of Seattle talent, both young and old, Village Theatre is excited to announce the full cast of this musical treasure.

Village Theatre will produce MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS in Issaquah November 11, 2009-January 3, 2010 and in Everett January 8-31, 2009. Featuring an array of Seattle talent, both young and old, Village Theatre is excited to announce the full cast of this heartwarming musical treasure.

Megan Hilty (9 to 5, Wicked) and 2009 Olivier Award Winner Lesli Margherita (Zorro) join multi-award winning composer and lyricist Ryan Scott Oliver to bring sexy schoolteachers, provocative rent-boys, obsessive homicidal teenagers, and fairy dust to rock out at Theatre at Boston Court on Dec. 4 (8pm) and Dec. 5 (4pm and 8pm).

A by-invitation-only industry reading of the new musical comedy The Jerusalem Syndrome will be held on November 16 and 19 at the TBG Theatre in Manhattan.

Welcome to 99 AND UNDER THE RADAR: A LOOK AT INDIE THEATER'S MOVERS AND SHAKERS, BroadwayWorld's new weekly series that showcases standout productions and production companies from the independent theater scene in New York City. Each week, independent producer Michael Roderick will be discussing the latest goings on in the theatrical wings, highlighting those with potentially bright futures. This Week's Topic: Getting to the 'Source' of the Indie Theatre Community.

The Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre continues the celebration of its 20th anniversary season with a series of cabaret evenings November 17 - 22 spotlighting the exciting Helen Hayes Award-winning actress/singer Natascia Diaz and the acclaimed Scottish singer Euan Morton, whose performances have been called 'sensational' by The New York Times.

It's a funny thing with musicals about women with psychiatric disorders; they seem to be more accessible when focused on the way loved ones try and achieve some kind of normalcy while dealing with the problem, rather than being about the disorder itself. Back in the autumn of '05, Off-Broadway's Transport Group premiered nor'mal:, Yvonne Adrian, Cheryl Stein and Tom Kochan exceptional musical about a family's attempt to stay functional while dealing with the teenage daughter's anorexia. Just a few weeks earlier the New York Musical Theatre Festival featured Feeling Electric, composer Tom Kitt and bookwriter/lyricist Brian Yorky's hard driving tale of a suburban mom being treated for clinical depression.

Although I hadn't read any of the first wave of reviews, by the time I was seated for my post-opening night press performance at the Hirschfeld it was pretty much common knowledge to the entire Broadway community that the new (and from the looks of her Playbill bio, the only) creation from bookwriter/composer/lyricist Jill Santoriello brought out gobs of that legendary New York theatre critic acid wit among the great majority of my colleagues.

As someone who gets a euphoric high from that strict-tempo ritard the orchestra takes toward the end of Fade Out-Fade In's overture, who considers the Broadway cast album of One Night Stand to be the perfect road trip CD and who more than once has been moved to get in front of a mirror and mime Nancy Dussault's performance of 'Love Is A Chance' while listening to Bajour, you might expect me to fit snugly into the target audience for [title of show], the musical where conversation between stars/authors Hunter Bell (bookwriter) and Jeff Bowen (composer/lyricist) is peppered with so many obscure (and some not so obscure) musical theatre references that you'd swear you just stumbled into a midnight cabaret act at Don't Tell Mama or The Duplex (a/k/a everyday martini talk at Marie's Crisis). Yes, after months of promotional YouTube videos promising it would happen, the Twenty-First Century's Montgomery and Stone have finally landed their ninety minute musical on Broadway, and to paraphrase what Gracie Allen said about Jumbo, if it continues running for as long as it hasn't been running it should be a great success.

As the 21st Century chugs along toward completing its first decade, perhaps Broadway's new role in American theatre with emerge as the place where talented composers and lyricists with interesting projects will premiere their less-inspired shows while their exciting, adventurous and better-written work continues to hide in the under-publicized shadows of Off- and Off-Off Broadway, festivals and the occasional cabaret appearance.  Just as Legally Blonde, the Broadway debut of composer/lyricists Lawrence O'Keefe (Bat Boy, Sarah, Plain and Tall) and Nell Benjamin (Pirates!, Sarah, Plain and Tall) doesn't match the quality of their Off-Broadway and regional work, last season composer Tom Kitt made his first main stem appearance with the catchy-tuned and enjoyable, but not especially notable, High Fidelity while musical theatre lovers in the know were anxiously awaiting a production of Feeling Electric, his substantially superior collaboration with bookwriter/lyricist Brian Yorkey, first seen at the 2005 New York Musical Theatre Festival.

You would think that Edith Wharton's fizzy little comic novel, The Glimpses Of The Moon, might have been a perfect property for Rodgers & Hart or Kern, Wodehouse & Bolton to musicalize when it was fresh off the presses in 1922.  But no, it took until 2008 for New Yorkers to get a glimpse, not to mention a pleasant earful, of a brand new frothy little musical charmer based on her book, courtesy of a couple of moderns, Tajlei Levis (book and lyrics) and John Mercurio (music).

Diversionary Theatre will produce the West Coast premiere of Paul Rudnick's big gay comedy, The New Century, as the third show of their 2009-2010 season. The New Century features the outrageous and poignant stories of a Jewish matron, a flamboyant aging homosexual and a Midwestern craftswoman, and is filled with snappy one-liners and a moment of gratuitous nudity. Diversionary's production will be directed by Igor Goldin, and feature Phil Johnson, Dana Hooley, Jacque Wilke, Noah Longton and Stacey Hardke. Goldin directed last summer's smash hit Yank! The show will run December 3-January 2, including performances over both the Christmas and New Year weekends.

New York Musical Theater Festival's Next Broadway Sensation 2008 winner Shawna Hamic makes her solo concert debut with Outside The Box at Joe's Pub on November 2 at 11:30pm.

Michael Blevins, most widely known for his portrayal of ‘Mark' in the screen version of the Broadway hit, 'A Chorus Line', will return to the stage after several years of working on the other side, directing and teaching.

The Group Theatre Too's new musical, Count To Ten, which just finished a successful run at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), received additional performances next week at the Hudson Guild Theater.