Big Deal 1961

Are you bound for the Philadelphia area this fall.  There’s so much to see and do that our readers will like to know about. 

To mark the 50th anniversary of its 1973 premiere on Broadway, the Axelrod Performing Arts Center will present the musical Raisin, starring Fredi Walker-Browne. See how to purchase tickets!

BAM (The Brooklyn Academy of Music) has announced the full company and creative team for the first New York revival in 50 years of Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. See how to purchase tickets!

Lake Como, Northern Italy, 1944. Partisan Sordi (Fellini’s THE WHITE SHIEK and I VITELLONI, etc.), on the run from the Germans, is sheltered, nursed and romanced in an abandoned mill by local innkeeper’s daughter Massari (L’AVVENTURA, MURMUR OF THE HEART, CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI), whisking her to Rome after the war to share his shabby flat.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has just announced the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman at the BAM Harvey Theater beginning February 4 and opening February 23, 2023.

Panic! Productions, along with Born To Perform Studios and BarCinBoo Productions, Inc. have announced that Barry Pearl will once again direct their late summer teen musical 13, this time at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center. This will be Pearl's third time working with Panic! Productions and also his third time directing the musical on the West Coast. I decided to speak with Barry about his connection to the teen musical and what inspired him to direct it for the third time, as well as how it may differ from his previous incarnations.

Dated and flawed as I consider it, Sweet Charity is something of a landmark in the world of the American musical, and this rendition is admirable. And then there are those three big songs. You will definitely experience good times, fun and some laughs.

West Side Story opens on July 8th at Theatro Sao Pedro. A masterpiece by Bernstein & Sondheim, direction by Charles Moeller and Brazilian version by Claudio Botelho, the musical direction is by Claudio Cruz, who leads the Orquestra do Theatro Sao Pedro. The production also has a cast headed by Giulia Nadruz (Maria) and Beto Sargentelli (Tony)

 Museum of the Moving Image has announced See It Big: Sondheim, a ten-film series devoted to the celebrated composer, lyricist, author, artist, and all-around innovator Stephen Sondheim. When Sondheim died last November, he didn’t just leave behind an extraordinary corpus of work—he had exited a world that his art had forever changed.

Tonight, NBC will air its sixth live musical production. Following in the footsteps of The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, The Wiz, Hairspray, and Jesus Christ Superstar, the peacock network will be presenting Annie. Based on Harold Gray's comic strip titled Little Orphan Annie, this musical tells the story of a little orphan with equal measures of pluck and positivity who charms everyone's hearts, despite a next-to-nothing start in New York City in the year 1933.

The criteria are that these shows have been nominated for Best Musical from the 3rd Tony Awards (the ceremony that started the Best Musical category) in 1949 to the nominations of what will now be the 74th Tony Awards in 2021. I will be determining their signs based upon their Broadway premiere date. With those rules in mind, here we go!

Next year, film aficionados can enjoy a yearlong journey spanning nine decades of cinema history, through a dozen of some of the movie industry’s greatest titles, as Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies present the seventh annual TCM Big Screen Classics series.

Spread the word, Upper Eastsiders -- all six seasons of “Gossip Girl” are coming to HBO Max on January 1st.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the 101 greatest protest songs from 1939-2020. See if your favorite songs or artists made the list!

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the 101 greatest Motown songs from 1960-1994. See if your favorite songs or artists made the list!

Theater has always been an outlet for creative minds to discuss the issues that plague our society, whether it's racism, income inequality, or the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community. Learn our picks for musicals and plays that deal with important social topics.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the best musical theatre characters from 1940-2020; see if your favorites are on our list of the best characters from Broadway musicals.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the best TV episodes from the 1950's to 2020; see if your favorites made the list!

The Beatles! Rihanna! Michael Jackson! Johnny Cash! Kanye West! The Rolling Stones! Aretha Franklin! Bob Dylan! Miles Davis! Nirvana! BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the greatest albums from the rock and rap era (1950-2020); see if your favorites made the grade!

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! 

Broadway is coming to the big screen! Thirteen movie musicals are currently in development and are set to delight audiences in the coming months and years, from long-awaited movie adaptations to remakes and sequels of fan favorites. With such a variety to look forward to, we're getting you prepared by giving you a peek at each of the movies officially announced to receive the silver screen treatment! Take a peek at all the excitement, and be sure to check back in as even more are announced!

On behalf of the Gisela Johnson and the Johnson family, we are informing you that Emmy winning comedic actor, Arte Johnson has passed at 1:45am, July 3rd, 2019.  There are no services planned.  His ashes will be taken to his home away from home in HI, were a private ceremony will be held.

IFC Center today announced an impressive and wide-ranging lineup for the third annual Split Screens Festival (www.splitscreensfestival.com) taking place Wednesday, May 29 through Monday, June 3, 2019, at the IFC Center in New York City. The festival consists of special events offering a variety of looks at history, identity and the mystery of existence itself, including panels on series that explore dystopian realities and alternate timelines, and screenings that transport us into any number of time periods and places, be it a late-1800s South Dakota town or the height of 1980s ballroom culture in New York City.

Today's subject disproves the theory that you can't be good at everything. Kevin Laughon is the Production Associate at Theater J, but his long career of working in the theatre has taken him on both sides of the footlights.

At Theater West End, you've entered the world of WEST SIDE STORY before even taking your seat. Getting there requires walking across the blue-collar, gang-ridden streets of 1950s New York in the Upper West Side. There's graffiti on the floor beneath you and the walls all around. T-shirts hang out to dry on clotheslines over your head. There's a basketball goal on the cage-wire fence the band sits behind. You might even be seated next to a fire hydrant or a traffic cone. It takes a moment to remember that this same space was home to Madison County's bridges just a couple months ago...