Leave It to Me! - 2001 - Off-Broadway Articles Page 5

Get ready to warm up this June with a sizzling program of the best and boldest performers announced today, curated by international star and Australian icon Tina Arena AM.

I spoke with Tim Albrechtson, Bombshell's Producing Director, about their upcoming production of Bubble Boy. He shared everything from why this musical is such a great fit for Bombshell Theatre Co. to the little things he hopes audiences notice and take away from this hilarious show.

The season marks the 20th anniversary of the appointments of Music Director Dame Jane Glover and Principal Guest Conductor Nicholas Kraemer and includes the St. Matthew Passion, the monumental work the ensemble planned as the highlight of its 50th-anniversary celebration during the 2020-21 season.

When Clint Holmes walks out on any stage the space immediately transforms into one of those superstar entertainment venues in Las Vegas, (ground zero for some of the world’s most thrilling performers). That’s how it was in the Razz Room in Boca last night as the man who keeps better time than my Apple Watch and who can’t sing a note or make a gesture that isn’t dazzling and exciting gave a special gift to the Boca audience.

In 1944, MGM debuted a new family classic for the ages, the beloved movie musical, Meet Me In St. Louis. Starring Judy Garland, the film plays host to numerous classic songs including its title ditty, 'The Trolley Song,' and 'The Boy Next Door,' but out of all the gems that make up its score, no song has had more impact than, 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.' 

When everyone was experiencing devastation on 9/11/2001, the town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada was accepting passengers from 38 planes full of people who had been detoured from their various destinations. Come From Away tells this true story. The musical follows the five days the “Come From Aways” stayed in Gander as they try and contact their loved ones and deal with the heartbreaking news that was happening in the states.

Last season, Keen Company created Hear/Now: A Season of Audio Theater which reimagined the classic radio drama by commissioning new audio plays. Now, Keen reinvents the old-fashioned radio broadcast for the stage, featuring two newly commissioned world premiere plays by ​Keen ​Playwrights Lab alumni Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and Deb Margolin.

Jonathan Larson's posthumous success may be a unique story, but tick, tick... Boom! deals with a universal truth most artists must deal with sometime in their lives.

In the wake of Stephen Sondheim's passing, there has been an outpouring of grief from the Broadway community and beyond. Read them all here.

Bartlett Sher is a multi-award-winning director of productions including The Light in the Piazza and the recent revival of The King & I. Sher’s Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center production of My Fair Lady will transfer to the London Coliseum for a limited summer engagement in May 2022. We spoke with Sher about bringing the show to the West End.

In October 2001, Mamma Mia! opened on Broadway, just weeks after the horrific events of 9/11, and most pundits had little inkling that the show – a jukebox musical comprised of ABBA hits and the story of a young girl trying to divine the identity of her father from among three of her mother’s suitors some 21 years earlier – would go on to become the ninth longest running musical in the history of the New York theatrical enclave. But Mamma Mia! was exactly what the theater-going public needed in the aftermath of an epoch-shattering and historic event: an enormously entertaining, fast-paced show set to an eminently hummable, danceable score of songs that could whisk them away to another time and place.

General Entertainment Associates in association with the European Space Agency (ESA) have announced the U.K. and European touring dates for Space Station Earth, created by award-winning composer Ilan Eshkeri. 

Such a joyful musical! Get your tickets now!

Branch originally released The Spirit Room in August 2001, which sold two million copies in the U.S. The seminal album featured the infectious and heartfelt hits “Everywhere” and “All You Wanted,” and ushered in a new era of young women writing and performing their own songs.

Ballet Hispánico has announced receipt of a transformative $10 million gift from philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett. The largest single gift Ballet Hispánico has received, it will enable the trailblazing company to fortify its mission and legacy for years to come, ensuring the health and future of the organization.

Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC) will be presenting their virtual celebration CONNECTIONS benefiting their 2021 season June 12, 2021. CONNECTIONS will feature new or adapted works by playwrights: Luis Alfaro, Jon Robin Baitz, Father Greg Boyle, Bill Cain, Culture Clash, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Danai Gurira, Samuel D. Hunter, David Henry Hwang, Julia Izumi, James Morrison and his son Seamus Morrison, Jeanine Tesori and Charlayne Woodard. Performers include Brian Cox, Eileen Galindo, Tzi Ma, Rose Portillo, Samantha Quan, John C. Reilly, Israel López Reyes, Nikkole Salter, Jimmy Smits, and Phillipa Soo; as well as some of the playwrights performing their own pieces.

Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Renée Taylor (“The Nanny”) will be seen in the independent film TANGO SHALOM, directed by Gabriel Bologna, which will make its New York City debut as part of the Brklyn Film Festival.

Nine exciting Broadway productions will thrill Lincoln audiences in the 2021-2022 Glenn Korff Broadway series at the Lied Center, and Broadway legend Bernadette Peters will present an unforgettable one-night-only engagement. In all, the 2021-2022 season will feature more Broadway productions than any season since the Lied Center's founding!

The sun will come out tomorrow. That's because after over a year of waiting, New York officials have at last spread word that Broadway is indeed back. Which shows will return when? BroadwayWorld has gathered all of the latest news on the return of live theatre. Check back regularly for updates!

Leading up to the May 1st launch of his latest book (his seventh) Who’s Afraid of Michael Kearns?; multi-hyphenate Michael Kearns shares some behind-the-scenes of what revs up Michael Kearns. His Q&A, presented by Skylight Books, will be live Zoomed, along with a scene from BLOODBOUND performed by Maxwell Caulfield and Peter Frechette.

Elaina O’Connor and Lloyd Hopkins first played the roles of Elle Woods and Emmett Forrest in LEGALLY BLONDE in 2018. Now, four years later, they bring a broad range of experience back to the characters they know well. Not only have the actors come a long way, but they’ll be performing to a bigger audience in a larger theatre for a longer season.

There are just some people on this planet who naturally operate on a more creative level than the rest of us, and mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn is clearly one of those people. She is bringing her wildly inventive musical science show Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments to The Marsh on Saturday, March 6th.  Conceived and performed by Chinn with pianist Erika Switzer, Science Fair pairs luscious operatic vocals with light-hearted humor and science lectures. Chinn herself describes it as “a classical cabaret of science songs with science communication staging, including live experiments and slide shows, a little audience participation and a general sort of Bill Nye fun.” Science Fair will be available for livestream at 5:00pm PST on March 6th, followed by a post-performance Q&A with The Marsh Founder/Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman. Chinn will also appear two days prior to that on Stephanie’s MarshStream at 7:30pm on Thursday, March 4th to discuss this innovative work. For more information, visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. BroadwayWorld caught up with Chinn last week from her home in the Hudson Valley, where she had just moved from New York City only two days earlier. A Northern California native with degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music, Shinn has enjoyed an unusually eclectic career, with credits as varied as touring around the world in Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, playing Lady Thiang in The King & I on the West End, and performing with the experimental Wooster Group in New York. Given her resume, I had thought she might be fascinating to talk to, and she did not disappoint. I mean, what other opera singers do you know who do science in their spare time, just for fun? We talked about how Science Fair came to be, her passion for the creative process, and our evolving understanding around issues of racial and gender equity. In conversation, she is candid and accessible, brainy and funny, and always very, very thoughtful. Underlying everything is her enduring joy in pushing the boundaries of what it means to create musical art.

Two men meet at a funeral in Lolita Chakrabarti's intense and uncompromising new play, which proves a lively yet thoughtful piece on family and friendship and features her husband, Adrian Lester, in the cast.

Audible Inc. today announced Audible Theater’s slate of Spring 2021 releases, which will feature performances from Tony Award winners Laura Benanti (Nashville), Tony Shalhoub (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Santino Fontana (Frozen) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds), award-winning actress Diane Guerrero (Orange is the New Black), and more.

Come from Away is well worth seeing in 2021 and is something you won't regret.