Can-Can Revival

Chicago Opera Theater has revealed its 2026-2027 Season, featuring two Chicago premieres with expanded, including The Importance of Being Earnest, plus investments in new work and arts education.

While harmonizing to perfection, Katis rules the piano with the sensitivity necessary to realistically perform King’s songs of self-awareness and the longing to find your place in the world, while Clews’ finger-picking expertise on guitar adds a real sense of introspective musical magic to Taylor’s.

In most, if not all, other mountings of “Hairspray: The Broadway Musical,” Tracy Turnblad is tucked under her bedcovers when audiences first see the young heroine, ready to show off her high-teased bouffant and let loose with the first notes of the rousing opener, “Good Morning, Baltimore.”

Friendship is nearly always a side element in musicals. From the comic sidekick of the leading character to the backup pals who provide background vocals, friends are part of the fabric of many shows—but rarely are they the main event. 

New Village Arts (NVA) has announced it's production of Hairspray which will be in performances later this summer. As the largest production in NVA’s history, this staging is noted to raise the bar for what’s possible on the Ray Charles.

Bambi Linn, the last surviving cast member of the original Broadway cast of Oklahoma!, has turned 100-years-old. The now-retired American dancer, choreographer, and actress celebrated her 100th birthday on on April 26, 2026.

Classic Albums Live announced its 23rd season at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, featuring note-for-note performances of albums by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, U2, and Alanis Morissette.

La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts has unveiled its 2026/2027 season of shows! The season will feature a new productin of Little Shop of Horrors, Hairspray, and more.

San Francisco Playhouse will close its 2025-26 season with HAIRSPRAY, the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical directed by Artistic Director Bill English, featuring choreography by Phoenyx Rose.

The Public Theater has announced the second Judith Champion New Work Series, a collection of readings in which select playwrights present full-length new plays currently in development at The Public.

As Dionne Warwick took the stage at Groton Hill Music Center in Groton recently, before she had sung a single word, she was met by a rousing standing ovation. It was clear from the get-go that the capacity audience knew they were in the presence of a legend.

DERBY DINNER PLAYHOUSE will present the Broadway musical HAIRSPRAY, opening April 1, 2026, in Clarksville, Indiana. The production features a cast led by Katelyn Webb and includes iconic songs from the show.

OFC Creations Theatre Center in Rochester, NY, will present its 2026-2027 Broadway in Brighton Series featuring shows like HAIRSPRAY, MISS SAIGON, and the regional premiere of THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.

Jason Robert Brown shared a video of Stephen Sondheim singing 'Good Thing Going' from Merrily We Roll Along at a 2019 event.

What did our critic think of BOEING BOEING at Turner Theater?

Everyone's favorite plus-sized civil rights crusader is on stage again in Columbus.

The Public Theater has announced initial casting for the Free Shakespeare in the Park production of ROMEO & JULIET at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

Slow Burn Theatre Company will bring the ultimate feel-good musical to Fort Lauderdale this April with Hairspray, the eight-time Tony Award-winning smash hit, running Saturday, April 11 through Sunday, April 26.

 Act II Playhouse has announced its slate of 2026-2027 productions.  The season will kick off with “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” by Richard Hellesen. Learn more here!

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about the fictional small town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the Depression-era South grappling with violence and racial inequality, along with issues of class, courage, and compassion, is a classic of modern American literature and one of the best-selling books of all time.

Musical set in the late 1950s with a strong message for today

Casa Mañana Theatre is currently presenting HAIRSPRAY, running through March 8. Check out a first look at “I Can Hear the Bells” in the video below.

When I think of Steppenwolf, I often think of family members crying, screaming at one another, or some combination of the two. So the sparring between spouses Alice and Captain Edgar in August Strindberg’s 1900 play THE DANCE OF DEATH feels right at home. In a surprisingly funny and sharp version from accomplished Irish playwright Conor McPherson and direction from Steppenwolf ensemble member Yasen Peyankov, Kathryn Erbe and Jeff Perry go toe-to-toe as a troubled married couple about to celebrate their silver anniversary. 

Marcelino Sambé currently stars in the revival of Glen Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire at the Royal Ballet and Opera's Linbury Theatre and is supported by a very strong cast of Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball. And an even stronger presence in the soprano Alexandra Lowe.

Wildly surprising and deliciously savage, Yasmina Reza's machete-edged 2006 dark comedy GOD OF CARNAGE—here directed by Marco Barricelli and continues performances at OC's South Coast Repertory through March 21, 2026—has to be one of the most ferocious dissections of modern-day performative civility ever to grace the stage—an 80-minute, intermission-less pressure cooker that gleefully burns away the polite veneer of bourgeois adulthood to reveal the petulant, immature children actually lurking just beneath. Boosted by a foursome of terrific actors, the play endures as entertainingly voyeuristic in its unsettling relatability. SCR's outstanding production is a brilliantly observed theatrical skirmish—equal parts comedy of manners and psychological boxing match with no clear winners or losers.