Big Deal

In ceremonies held Sunday at the Missouri History Museum, artist, theater creator, and social activist Joan Lipkin was presented with the Margo Jones Medal.

Tony Award winner Richard Maltby, Jr. discusses with Jennifer Ashley Tepper About Time, his new revue written with collaborator David Shire which, alongside Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever, completes the writing team’s trilogy. They also chat about friendship with Stephen Sondheim, how Off-Broadway has evolved since the 1960s, the role Yale University has played, and more.

Debutto in grande stile per la stagione estiva del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma nello splendido scenario delle Terme di Caracalla. Dopo il grandioso allestimento di due anni fa di Mass di Leonard Bernstein, il direttore artistico e regista Damiano Michieletto torna ad attingere al lavoro di questo incedibile maestro con un nuovo e re-immaginato allestimento del suo musical più popolare, West Side Story.

WEST SIDE STORY alle TERME DI CARACALLA NUOVO ALLESTIMENTO DEL TEATRO DELL'OPERA DI ROMA DEL CELEBRE MUSICAL DI LEONARD BERNSTEIN E STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Dopo la straordinaria accoglienza che pubblico e critica hanno riservato a 'West Side Story', l'ultimo gioiello firmato da Massimo Romeo Piparo, il Musical-Kolossal tornerà nuovamente al Teatro Sistina con ulteriori date a partire dal prossimo venerdì 6 giugno per poi proseguire nelle suggestive arene archeologiche italiane con il Tour che toccherà il “Teatro Antico” di Taormina,  lo “Sferisterio” di Macerata, il “Teatro Romano” di Verona,  le “Cave del Duca” a Lecce e l’”Arena Alberto Neri” a Catona, Reggio Calabria.

E' stata davvero straordinaria l'accoglienza che pubblico e critica hanno riservato a 'West Side Story', l'ultimo gioiello firmato da Massimo Romeo Piparo che proprio ieri ha terminato la sua programmazione al Teatro Sistina: il Musical-Kolossal che ha accompagnato gli spettatori nelle festività natalizie ha venduto 26mila biglietti in appena quattro settimane di repliche.

Grover Dale’s life story reads like the ultimate show bio. After all, there are few performers who can count the original Broadway production of West Side Story among their credits. Or say that Sir Noel Coward hand picked them to appear in one of his musicals. Dale goes through his career and shares memories and more.

Center Theatre Group, in collaboration with The Fire This Time Festival and Watts Village Theater Company, will present a second season of Not A Moment, But A Movement, an initiative created to amplify, center, and celebrate Black voices.

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.