If I Were You 1938 - Articles Page 3

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the greatest theatrical works (non-musical) from 1920-2020; see if your favorites made the list!

Theater suffered a huge loss this week when the playwright Terrence McNally died at 81, of complications of our current plague, the coronavirus. It was a sad irony since many of McNally's plays dealt with the effects of a previous plague, AIDS, in the 1980s.

How do we make a list of the 101 greatest show tunes from the past 100 years? Well, we did the near-impossible task.  Check out our full list here! 

Charleston Light Opera Guild is kicking off 2020 with their highly anticipated production of the classic The Sound of Music, set to debut on January 17th at The Clay Center in the Maier Performance Hall.

The 2019 theatrical season has afforded me the opportunity to see several fantastic plays and musicals, unfortunately, Ken Ludwig's SHERWOOD THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD does not rank among them. Yes, if you like slapstick, old jokes, and sword fights then it does provide a nice evening of entertainment and several moments of raucous humor. SHERWOOD THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, starring Hal Linden, at the New Theatre Restaurant runs through February 2, 2020.

The Legendary Chita Rivera keeps on moving in her extraordinary nightclub act at 54 Below.

La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts Producing Artistic Director BT McNicholl announces its most ambitious and a?oeSpectacular, Spectaculara?? season of special events ever! Revel in the unmistakable sounds of THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS and THE FOUR FRESHMEN and to the songs of country legend TRAVIS TRITT; sing along with MOULIN ROUGE and THE LITTLE MERMAID, and do the time warp with ROCKY HORROR's Dr. Frank-N-Furter!  

Audience members traverse memories, dreams, emotional and real battlefields, coming in contact with a multitude of characters from Dalton Trumbo's life and novel, as we re-visit Johnny's childhood loves, family members, war room generals, soldiers, nurses, and even major religious figures, each performed to perfection while maintaining the ability to guide and interact with audience members who are often asked to participate and/or share comments during each scene. Soon it becomes apparent in THE JOHNNY CYCLE that each character, whether intentional or not, has sent Johnny to his destiny as he desperately struggles to be heard, trapped between the living and the dead without a voice. Immersive theater at its best!

'Smoke on the Mountain' is a entertaining and uplifting show about a 1938 traveling family roadshow bringing gospel music, bluegrass and more. South City Theatre brings this touring performance from church to church for just a few weeks. Even if you are not a religious person, you will find this show to be fun and delightful in character work and music.

Although set in 1938, it's still so sadly relevant today.

Elizabethan comedy meets modern constructs of gender fluidity in Kokandy's top-notch production of HEAD OVER HEELS.

Palm Beach Dramaworks Producing Artistic Director William Hayes and GableStage Producing Artistic Director Joseph Adler are pleased to announce that their companies will be working together to co-produce the world premiere of Ordinary Americans, a play by Joseph McDonough based on actual events in the lives of Gertrude Berg and Philip Loeb, stars of television's groundbreaking sitcom,The Goldbergs, which premiered on CBS in 1949. As previously announced, Ordinary Americans will be staged at PBD from December 6 - 29, 2019. It will then move on to GableStage from January 18 - February 16, 2020. Hayes will direct, and South Florida favorite Elizabeth Dimon will star as Berg. The rest of the cast and artistic team will be announced at a later date.    

GableStage Producing Artistic Director Joseph Adler and Palm Beach Dramaworks Producing Artistic Director William Hayes are pleased to announce that their companies will be working together to co-produce the world premiere of Ordinary Americans, a play by Joseph McDonough based on actual events in the lives of Gertrude Berg and Philip Loeb, stars of television's groundbreaking sitcom, The Goldbergs, which premiered on CBS in 1949.

What makes a Broadway theatre? Technically any venue with 500 seats or more, located along Broadway in New York City's Theatre District is a Broadway theatre, and the art that is produced in these special places is widely considered the highest form of theatrical entertainment in the world. Today, forty-one theatres are technically Broadway houses, each with their own rich history. Below, we're giving you the scoop on the life of every one of them!

Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Merlin-these names spark the imagination and bring to mind images of knights, swords, castles, and magic. The tales of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the legendary Camelot are the subject of myriad novels, movies, TV shows, songs, plays, and musicals. From the 1938 tale The Sword the Stone (which was made into the animated film by Disney in 1963) to the 2008 TV series Merlin to the 2005 Broadway show Monty Python's Spamalot (based on the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail), for generations these stories have taken us on magical adventures. The 1960 musical Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe is based on the T.H. White novel The Once and Future King. Camelot comes to life at Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre May 9-June 22. Check out our interview with Matthew Blake Johnson, who can be seen on stage at Dutch Apple as Mordred in Camelot.

It only takes a moment to realize that composer/lyricist Jerry Herman, aided and abetted by book writer Michael Stewart (with an able assist from Thornton Wilder), knew exactly what he was doing when he created the classic Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!: put together a star vehicle for a quintessential theater diva, surround her with characters both irascible and lovable, then give them all a score that's delightfully hummable and danceable and a script that's appealingly daft, maybe even a little goofy.

When the Rodgers and Hart musical, 'I Married An Angel,' opened in May of 1938, choreography by way of Mr. George Balanchine, Brooks Atkinson, the critic of the New York Times, rained applause down: '...George Balanchine has designed his most gorgeous ballet patterns...the central part of the Angel is played by Vera Zorina, whose grace as a dancer is informed with imagination and awareness.

Multiple Grammy and Oscar winning artist, musician and producer T Bone Burnett gave a thought provoking keynote speech at SXSW today, warning of the current dangers of the dominance of digital monopolies like Google and Facebook, while championing the value of the independence of artists. See below for the full text of the speech.

At the elegant Soroya Theatre in Northridge, CA, Martha Graham's Dance Company, under Artistic Director Janet Eilber's seasoned guidance, performed a most incredible group of works.  Some were originally created approximately 80 years ago, by Martha Graham, a true icon in the Dance world.  The EVE Project, as this evening, March 2nd, 2019 was entitled, gave us a wide variety of themes within a theme, that being Women and their significance, their power, their passion and their strength.  It was polished to perfection, and each piece carried many meanings and concepts and was just so beautifully performed and articulated. The Martha Graham Dance Company is the oldest contemporary dance company in the United States, founded in 1926.  Since it's inception it has explored and encompassed political and humanitarian issues, as well as affairs of the heart and human interactions, while creating a prolific dance technique that is unequaled in it's scope.  Graham created a total of 181 ballets during her long career, and is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century, being named in 1998 as 'Dancer of the Century' in Time magazine, and labeled one of the female 'Icons of the Century' by People Magazine.

Bay Street Theater is pleased to announce the first show of the 2019 Mainstage Season will be the World Premiere of THE PROMPTER (May 28- June 16) a new comedy by Wade Dooley; directed by Scott Schwartz, Bay Street Theater's Artistic Director. The other two previously announced shows will be the World Premiere of SAFE SPACE, which will now run from June 25 - July 21. This new play is by Alan Fox and will be directed by three-time Tony Award Winner Jack O'Brien (All My Sons, Hairspray, The Coast of Utopia). The third show will be a bold new re-envisioning of Irving Berlin's classic musical ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, (July 30 - August 25) with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Herbert & Dorothy Fields. This production will be directed by Sarna Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George, Bay Street's Frost/Nixon). The casts and creative teams will be announced soon. Subscriptions are available by calling the Box Office at 631-725-9500 or online at www.baystreet.org.

Yehuda Hyman is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and playwright who's new play, The Mar Vista: In Search of My Mother's Love Life will be running at the Ford Foundation Studio Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center from March 5 through March 23, 2019. Yehuda Hyman spoke to BroadwayWorld about the process of developing the show over the last several years and the unique stories it portrays.

Crafting a musical theater hit is a lot like alchemy - the ancient study focused primarily on creating gold from baser elements - and oftentimes no matter the ingredients, directors never quite achieve the outcome for which they strive. But in the case of director/choreographer Everett Tarlton's production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (now onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre through March 7), he has crafted something so special that it essentially defines the theatrical gold standard.

Entering Musical Theater Heritage at Crown Center for BIG BANDS ARE BETTER, is like stepping out of a time machine and into the Copacabana of the 1930s and '40s. The scenery, costumes, and the musical arrangements by Brad Cox take the audience back to when Swing was king, a time known as the Big Band Era and a unique program that should not be missed.

Bay Street Theater is pleased to announce two of the three productions planned for the 2019 Mainstage Summer Season. The first will be the World Premiere of SAFE SPACE, which will run from May 28 - June 16. This new play is by Alan Fox and will be directed by three-time Tony Award Winner Jack O'Brien (The Hard Place, Hairspray, The Coast of Utopia).

The characters in The Addams Family were created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The characters traditionally include Gomez and Morticia Addams, their children Wednesday and Pugsley, close family members Uncle Fester and Grandmama, their butler Lurch, the disembodied hand Thing, and Gomez's Cousin Itt. The characters are a satirical inversion of the ideal American family: odd, wealthy, macabre and unaware that other people find them, at the very least, bizarre. They originally appeared as single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between their debut in 1938 and Charles Addams' death in 1988. They've been adapted to multiple forms of media: television, both live action and animated, and a series of films. The most recent adaptation is the musical THE ADDAMS FAMILY with a book by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, Music & Lyrics by Andrew Lippa.