Prince Hal News

In what has become a delightful Portland holiday tradition, the Good Theater presented its annual musical revue, created and directed by Brian P. Allen, starring an incandescent Valerie Perri, together with Daniel Patrick Smith and a fine ensemble of Maine talent. The program, which featured twenty-nine musical theatre classics as well as lesser-known songs of the 1980s, was woven together by Allen with his comprehensive knowledge of the repertoire and his customary wit and performed with relish and commitment by the entire ensemble.

Riverside Theatre, led by Producing Artistic Director/CEO Allen D. Cornell and Managing Director/COO Jon R. Moses, present one of Broadway's great musicals, Evita. Sponsored by Bobbie Olsen and Riverside Theatre's Patron Producers Group, Evita performs on the Stark Stage from January 8-27, 2019.

Fred Barton's Broadway Band makes its long-awaited return to Feinstein's/54 Below and New York nightlife, with top-drawer guest singers, in a new evening of Broadway gems and Swing rarities, Friday, January 4 at 9:30PM. As always, Fred presents performers who know how to stop shows, and the songs that let them do it, arranged for the band in his trademark explosive style which has made him the orchestrator of choice for the New York Pops and orchestras around the country.

New York City Opera has announced that it will produce the world premiere of the award-winning jazz composer/pianist Ted Rosenthal's DEAR ERICH.  This new jazz opera, to be co-produced with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, will open Wednesday, January 9 and will play four performances only through Sunday, January 13 at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at 36 Battery Place, in lower Manhattan.

Deborah Grace Winer was certainly on the right track last night as she hosted her latest creative musical adventure 'New York: Big City Songbook' at the new Birdland Theater. Deborah is well known to New Yorkers for the imaginative and quality presentations she produced for the Lyrics & Lyricists Series at the 92Y, which she led for 9 seasons. It's difficult to construct a show for New Yorkers about New York, we've seen it all…haven't we? but this smart show with vocalists Klea Blackhurst, La Tanya Hall and Nicolas King (real New Yorkers because as Deborah pointed out they come from everywhere) offered a kaleidoscopic vision of life in the city.

Tomorrow, BBC Two will air Evita: The Making Of A Superstar. An all new clip has been released from the special, showing Elaine Paige back in the rehearsal room where she first began to learn the role that would make her a star.

FX today announced the additional cast that will appear in Fosse/Verdon, an eight episode limited series from award-winning producers Thomas Kail, Steven Levenson, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Joel Fields. Production on the series, now officially titled Fosse/Verdon, is currently underway in New York City ahead of its premiere on FX in Spring 2019.

The Stratford Festival lost one of its pioneers today. Douglas Rain died of natural causes early this morning at the age of 90 at St. Marys Memorial Hospital, just outside of Stratford, Ontario, the city in which he established his career, becoming one of the world's great classical actors.

The Fred Ebb Foundation in association with the Roundabout Theatre Company will present the fourteenth annual Fred Ebb Award for aspiring musical theatre songwriters to Will Reynolds and Eric Price. The award, named in honor of the late award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb, will be presented by Alan Cumming on Monday, November 26th from 6-8pm at a by-invitation-only ceremony in the Penthouse Lounge of The American Airlines Theater.

Ghostlight Records will celebrate the release of How We React and How We Recover, the new album from three-time Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown, with an exclusive in-store event at Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, November 28 at 7:00 PM. 

Why have so many songwriters been compelled to write about New York? What is it about this city that fuels an endless supply of stories? Deborah Grace Winer's new show NEW YORK: BIG CITY SONGBOOK offers a kaleidoscopic vision of life in the city, from the inspiring and romantic to the aggravating and the quirky. New York is a fabulous character, and Deborah has assembled a great cast of real New Yorkers (meaning they come from everywhere) to take us on this entertaining and exhilarating musical ride in search of what it really means to be a New Yorker.

Quentin Oliver Lee, the man behind the mask - the dynamic singer/actor leads the national company of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, now on tour throughout the United States - first stepped onstage in the iconic role during its Memphis run earlier this year and he freely admits that the experience left him eager to return to Tennessee to perform on the stage of Nashville's Andrew Jackson Hall.

What about the story keeps audiences coming back again and again to see The Phantom of the Opera? Is it the lushly romantic score composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber? Or could it be the costumes and scenery, so widely seen across the globe - and so easily identifiable as being from The Phantom - that they are considered iconic? Or could it be the mysteriously intriguing and sumptuously romantic Gaston Leroux story?

Australian icon, singer, songwriter and musical theatre star Tina Arena stars in the role of Eva Peron in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's EVITA in Sydney. EVITA, one of the most celebrated classical musicals of all time, in a new Australian production  playing at the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Sydney Opera House.

North Carolina Theatre, the region's premiere nonprofit professional theatre, is proud to announce the hiring of a familiar face as the theatre's new Artistic Director. Broadway casting director and Benson, NC native, Eric Woodall, will join the NC Theatre team in November. Eric will provide artistic direction for all programming, including mainstage shows, the theatre's Conservatory training, and new works development.

SMASH stars Krysta Rodriguez and Andy Mientus will reunite in the 'Hocus Pocus Focused" Halloween Bash! The Sanderson Sisters are back from the dead, and NO ONE wants to miss their return!

British actor, Stephen Bergman, returns to the stage for a staged reading of award-winning playwright, Maura Campbell's tale of ... Stephen Bergman!

GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS has announced the release of How We React and How We Recover, the new album from three-time Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown, on physical CD online and in stores today, Friday, September 28.

Folks Operetta is proud to announce its upcoming concert Forbidden Opera: Reclaiming the lost operas of the Second World War, directed by Folks Operetta Artistic Director Gerald Frantzen and written by Frantzen and Hersh Glagov, at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, 9603 Woods Dr. Skokie, IL.