Oscar Hammerstein II News

Summertime is here, what with Memorial Day and all that it encompasses, and we can think of no better seasonal activity than taking in some local theater. No matter where you are in the Volunteer State, Tennessee theater companies are ready and willing to help transport you to a different world, another time and place where your life can be is transformed magically on a stage very near you!

The award-winning Equity professional East Lynne Theater Company presents the New Jersey premiere of "Rodgers' Romance" from June 15 - July 23.

Catalina Bar & Grill, 6725 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90028 will present Broadway, film and television star Neile Adams in NEILE ADAMS SINGS KANDER & EBB, featuring popular show tunes from "Chicago," "The Rink," "Flora the Red Menace," "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "The Act," "Steel Pier," "Funny Lady" "Woman of the Year" and "The Happy Time." The show will be presented on Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 8:30p.m.

Summertime is here, what with Memorial Day and all that it encompasses, and we can think of no better seasonal activity than taking in some local theater. No matter where you are in the Volunteer State, Tennessee theater companies are ready and willing to help transport you to a different world, another time and place where your life can be is transformed magically on a stage very near you!

The fourth time was the charm for Minda Larsen, winner of the 2015 MetroStar Competition: “I have an MFA in opera,” she joked during the debut of her show, My Southern Song, at the Metropolitan Room on May 21, “So it took four tries in six years to win that competition.” The remark is typical of the self-deprecating humor of the versatile singer from Jacksonville, FL, who spent time in Georgia and went to school in South Carolina. Itching all her life to get out of the South, now she longs to get back. Her new show (a four-date run that is her award for winning the MetroStar) captures that longing with love, laughter, and an occasional tear.

Oscar Hammerstein's Highland Farm, Inc. disputes an earlier report that the home where the lyricist wrote Broadway classics is for sale.

Last Saturday night at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented a celebration on what would have been Ray Charles' 85th Birthday. The program was led by Musical Director and trumpeter Kenny Rampton (who once toured with the Ray Charles band), and included 10 longtime members of the icon's orchestra, along with the most recent “Rayettes” (backup singers Renee Georges, Katrina Harper, and Angela Workman). “Ray Charles Robinson, the genius of soul, his music was beyond genre,” Rampton told the audience. “Anything Mr. C. did from country to blues to the National Anthem was all Ray Charles . . .'

?The award-winning Equity professional East Lynne Theater Company's 2016 season is underway, and includes ticket offers that are both flexible and affordable.

?Tickets go on sale for the brand new production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien on May 20 at 10AM. This lavish new production will make its Las Vegas premiere August 2 - 14 at The Smith Center as part of a North American tour.  Tickets can be purchased at www.TheSmithCenter.com. For more information, please visit www.TheSoundOfMusicOnTour.com.

Musical Theatre Guild, the winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in the theatre, has announced an exciting quartet of shows to celebrate its twenty-first season of Broadway in Concert musicals.  The MTG 2016-2017 season includes: PROMISES, PROMISES; THE SPITFIRE GRILL; HALLELUJAH, BABY! and STATE FAIR.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

The musical OKLAHOMA! runs from June 3rd through June 19th at the historic Fox Theatre in Redwood City (2215 Broadway Street, Redwood City, CA).

Meg Fofonoff and Stacey Stephens, Producing Artistic Directors of Fiddlehead Theatre Company, announced today the cast of Show Boat, the company's first production in partnership with the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre, 265 Tremont Street, Boston. Show Boat will run for twelve performances from June 22-July 3, 2016. Co-Directed by Fofonoff and Stephens, Show Boat will feature a cast of 50 starring seasoned international and off-Broadway performers including Kim Corbett (West Side Story, Les Miserables) as Magnolia Hawks, Jeremiah James (The Fantasticks) as Gaylord Ravenal, Lindsay Roberts (The Gershwins' Porgy And Bess) as Queenie, and Brian Kinnard (Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story) as Joe. Show Boat is Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's epic of life on the Mississippi River with some of the most beautiful and influential music ever written for the stage including 'Ol'Man River,' 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man' and 'Bill.' Show Boat will be choreographed by Wendy Hall, with a 27-piece live orchestra under the direction of Charles Peltz.

This limited season of Daniel Evans' five star Sheffield Crucible production of Show Boat will now play its final West End performance on 27 August 2016. The production was previously announced to be booking to 7 January 2017.

Bill Kenwright's production of one of the greatest family musicals of all time, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, will tour to Wolverhampton Grand Theatre from Tuesday 4 - Saturday 8 October 2016.

BBC1's The Voice star Lucy O'Byrne to play Maria and Coronation Street's Andrew Lancel to play Captain Von Trapp in 'The Sound of Music' at Birmingham Hippodrome this May.

I don't know when Ann Hampton Callaway started this chapter of her life, but she's emphatically in a new one. The artist savors every note, propelled headlong into her songs with uncommon exuberance. Signature authority extends not only to stellar scat but to enacting selected material. Accompanied by The Ted Rosenthal Trio (Ted Rosenthal, piano; Martin Wind, bass; Tim Horner, drums), Callaway shines luminous at Birdland (where I saw her latest show Wednesday night and which continues for two more shows Friday and Saturday night at 8:30 and 11 pm).

Bill Kenwright's production of one of the greatest family musicals of all time, The Sound of Music, recommences its UK tour on Wednesday 18 May at the Aylesbury Waterside Theatre.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston will open its 48th consecutive summer season with Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece CAROUSEL from June 9-19, 2016. 

Adorable, utterly romantic, and thoroughly winsome, this stage adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's CINDERELLA is, admittedly, a wonderful surprise---filled with dazzling stage ingenuity; a dreamy, sweeping classic score by two legendary titans of musical theater; a revised, 21st-Century-tinged new book by playwright Douglas Carter Beane; magical Tony Award-winning costumes from the great William Ivey Long that will have you wondering 'how'd they do that?' and, lastly, an ensemble cast of terrific actor-singers that will have you cheering its inevitable happy-ever-after. And, if you're anything like me, you too will be easily swept up by its visual and musical loveliness and its endearing, sweet love story.The Broadway musical's Equity National Tour---now in its last weeks---has finally winded itself back to So. Cal., this time for a two-week stay at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through May 1, 2016 (the tour then moves on from here to its final scheduled week-long stop at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre through May 8).