A Man of the People - 1920 - Broadway Articles Page 16

Highlighting the old time blues and soul style of Bessie Smith AKA The Empress of The Blues, MOAN THEM BLUES provides a different style of theatrical entertainment. Essentially a one woman show starring Toni Ringgold, with her piano man sidekick Jawbone (played by Ke'Aier Mufasa Denson), the reminiscent blues of Bessie Smith is performed, while revealing deeper emotional connection to the material sung for the eager audience. Missing only cigarette smoke in the lounge, Frank Benge directs this show simply with a piano, a flask and tumbler and of course the traditional crowd work vintage vaudeville performances were known for. With a career beginning with a traveling vaudevillian performance troupe, Bessie Smith began to rise as a star in the early 1920's. Gaining a following in the Southern United States along with the east coast, Bessie quickly climbed monetarily to be the highest paid performer of her time and genre. With the show set towards the end of Bessie's career in the early 1930's, the rise of 'talkies' and the the great depression completely devastated performers and the music industry alike. Remembering the 'good ole days' of rising fame, men and the love of gin, Toni Ringgold performs Bessie's more memorable songs. The storytelling (written by Robert King Jr) in between the songs reveals more and more about her tumultuous life that has led her to the dim stage in The Sahara Lounge.

Raise your skirts and bob your hair, because the toe-tapping flapper frolic Thoroughly Modern Millie is ready to take the stage at Reston Community Players. Based on the 1967 Academy Award-winning film, Thoroughly Modern Millie will transport audiences back to the height of the Jazz Age in New York City in an era when women were first entering the workforce and rewriting the rules of love. Millie will perform at the Reston Community Center April 20-May 12.

According to a casting notice, the world premiere of The Royal Family of Broadway at Barrington Stage Company will be lead by Harriet Harris as Fanny, Will Swenson as Tony, and Kathy Fitzgerald as Kitty. The notice also listed Arnie Burton as Bert, Chip Zien as Oscar, Hayley Podschun as Gwen, AJ Shively as Perry, and Alan H. Green as Gil. The role of Julie has not yet been cast.

Lerner and Loewe created MY FAIR LADY from Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion". Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted the 1909 Ferenc Molnar play "Liliom" and transplanted the setting from Budapest to the coast of Maine in CAROUSEL. That's generally how musicals are birthed. Not so with THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, which makes its nascency the more intriguing and Broadway fanciful.

Today's Events; Sunday, March 25

Pacific Symphony, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, makes its Carnegie Hall debut in the concluding program of the venue's season-long celebration of the music of Philip Glass. The program explores the influence of Ravi Shankar and Indian aesthetics on Mr. Glass and features the New York premiere of his The Passion of Ramakrishna, a Pacific Symphony co-commission for chorus, soloists, and orchestra that was given its world premiere by Pacific Symphony in 2006. The Pacific Chorale, which sang in the world premiere, will join Pacific Symphony for the performance at Carnegie Hall. The program also includes "Meetings Along the Edge" from Glass/Shankar collaboration Passages and Shankar's Third Sitar Concerto, featuring the composer's daughter Anoushka Shankar as soloist. Philip Glass is Carnegie Hall's 2017-2018 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair.

Get ready to laugh - and laugh - and laugh some more as Castle Craig Players present THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, April 6-15 at their intimate cabaret venue.

While GOD OF VENGEANCE may currently be better known as the subject of the 2017 Tony Award nominated Paula Vogel play, Indecent, as anyone who attended Head Trick Theatre's production of the show at AS220's Black Box Theatre could attest, it is a fascinating piece of theatre in its own right.

In 1920, the Russian writer Isaac Babel reports on a Red Cavalry campaign in Poland. In 1936, Stalin's NKVD chief Nicolai Yezhov unleashes the Great Purge. In 1989, a mysterious KGB agent spying on a woman in Dresden falls in love. In 2010, an aircraft carrying most of the Polish government crashes near the Russian city of Smolensk…

Pacific Symphony, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, makes its Carnegie Hall debut in the concluding program of the venue's season-long celebration of the music of Philip Glass. The program explores the influence of Ravi Shankar and Indian aesthetics on Mr. Glass and features the New York premiere of his The Passion of Ramakrishna, a Pacific Symphony co-commission for chorus, soloists, and orchestra that was given its world premiere by Pacific Symphony in 2006. The Pacific Chorale, which sang in the world premiere, will join Pacific Symphony for the performance at Carnegie Hall. The program also includes "Meetings Along the Edge" from Glass/Shankar collaboration Passages and Shankar's Third Sitar Concerto, featuring the composer's daughter Anoushka Shankar as soloist. Philip Glass is Carnegie Hall's 2017-2018 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, O'Neill's classic is a surprisingly contemporary play that crackles with fierce physicality, humor, and drama. After a 20-year separation, a coal barge captain (Lyric Stage favorite Johnny Lee Davenport) is reunited with the daughter he unknowingly abandoned to a life of hardship. When Anna falls in love with a shipwrecked sailor, her father and her suitor come to recognize their own culpability in her plight, and all three struggle in their own way for salvation. Following his acclaimed production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Scott Edmiston takes a fresh look at one of America's greatest playwrights.

The Drowsy Chaperone makes its Theatre Memphis debut on the Lohrey Stage March 9-31, 2018. In this comedic call back to the Golden Age, a man appears on stage and puts on his favorite record: the cast recording of a fictitious 1928 musical. The recording 'comes to life' and you have the ingredients for a masterful madcap evening that lovingly pokes fun at the musical theatre genre. Lovers on the eve of their wedding, desperate, bumbling friends, not-so-bright characters, imposters, and more perform one toe-tapping, rousing musical number after another.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full cast and creative team for the world-premiere musical Snow Child, based on Eowyn Ivey's Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel. Infused with a score that combines Alaskan string band-traditions with contemporary musical theater, Snow Child follows a couple rebuilding their lives in the Alaskan wilderness when they meet a magical and mysterious snow child who transforms them.

The Drowsy Chaperone makes its Theatre Memphis debut on the Lohrey Stage March 9-31, 2018. In this comedic call back to the Golden Age, a man appears on stage and puts on his favorite record: the cast recording of a fictitious 1928 musical.  The recording "comes to life" and you have the ingredients for a masterful madcap evening that lovingly pokes fun at the musical theatre genre.  Lovers on the eve of their wedding, desperate, bumbling friends, not-so-bright characters, imposters, and more perform one toe-tapping, rousing musical number after another.

Artistic Director Edward Hall announces Hampstead Theatre's spring/summer season. The UK premiere of Rajiv Joseph's darkly comic post-truth play Describe the Night will be directed by Lisa Spirling. The world premiere of Jemma Kennedy's blisteringly entertaining Genesis Inc. will be directed by Laurie Sansom. The world premiere of Fiona Doyle's haunting and provocative new drama The Strange Death of John Doe will be directed by Artistic Director Edward Hall for Hampstead Downstairs. The production is a Hampstead Theatre commission and a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Under 30s can access Priority Booking for all shows via The Downstairs Club - Hampstead's free membership scheme to allow better access to the cheaper seats.

Lexus Broadway in Austin presented by Texas Performing Arts announced the seven-show 2018-2019 Season; including the anchor HAMILTONplaying its Austin engagement May 28 - June 16, 2019. The new season represents a wide range of Tony Award® winners and five Austin premieres for audiences to enjoy.

Today Wolverhampton Grand Theatre announced that Gill Jordan will join the cast of A GRAND MUSIC HALL for three performances on Monday 4 - Tuesday 5 June 2018.

After a successful ten-city tour of Russia in 2016, Migguel Anggelo returns this February as a cultural attache under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, singing opposite lauded multi-hyphenate actress-singer-writer-teacher on the rise, Grace McLean.

The heart-warming story of acceptance and friendship comes to life in Packemin Productions' staging of SHREK THE MUSICAL. 

New Heritage Theatre Festival Artistic Director Jenny Wales will mark her official return to her alma mater with a season that celebrates American stories, delivers entertaining and engaging professional theatre, and reflects on our uniquely challenging times.

THE PRICE by Arthur Miller premiered on Broadway in 1968 and was nominated for two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Scenic Design. It is a timeless piece regarding the choices we make and the consequences we eventually face. It is about family dynamics, the price of furniture and the price of one's decisions, taking place in a soon to be demolished family house where two brothers, estranged for decades, meet together to dispose of their late parents' property. The resulting confrontation leads them to examine the events and qualities of their very different lives and the price each of them has had to pay to have the lives they now lead.

On September 16, 1920, as hundreds of Wall Street workers headed out for lunch, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in front of Morgan Bank - the world's most powerful banking institution. The blast turned the nation's financial center into a bloody war zone and left 38 dead and hundreds more seriously injured. As financial institutions around the country went on high alert, many wondered if this was the strike against American capitalism that radical agitators had threatened for so long. A mostly forgotten act of terror that remains unsolved today, the bombing helped launch the career of a young J. Edgar Hoover and sparked a bitter national debate about how far the government should go to protect the nation from acts of political violence. Based on Beverly Gage's The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror, The Bombing of Wall Street is executive produced by Mark Samels, written and directed by Susan Bellows, and produced by Michael Rossi and Susan Bellows. The film premieres on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS.

Mikaela Bennett with NYFOS; photo by Karli Cadel On February 27 at 8:00 p.m., New York Festival of Song and Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center present a new program devised by Steven Blier, entitled, simply, PROTEST. A cast of young, diverse and brilliant singers that includes Mikaela Bennett who just wowed the world in Michael Gordon's opera Acquanetta at the Protoype Festival performs songs by a panorama of composers, from Marc Blitzstein and Joni Mitchell to Randy Newman and Mohammed Fairouz. (View the complete program below.)

After a smash run last fall, Playwrights Horizons will present MILES FOR MARY, a new play by The Mad Ones. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, MILES FOR MARY received critical acclaim during its fall 2016 run at The Bushwick Starr.