My Daughter-in-law - 1900 - Broadway Articles Page 12

BroadwayWorld has learned that The Muny announced today 25 principal cast members for the first season of its second century. Complete company casting will be announced throughout April and May. The 101st season opens on a brand new, state-of-the-art stage with Muny favorite Guys and Dolls followed by the U.S. regional premiere of Kinky Boots. The season continues with 1776, Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, Footloose and a newly-reimagined Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon. Season 101 closes with the highly-anticipated Muny debut of Roald Dahl's Matilda.

3 EGG CREAMS returns to New York City after a year of sold-out performances throughout the metropolitan area. 3 EGG CREAMS begins performances on May 4 and will run through May 28 at The Cutting Room (44 East 32nd Street, NYC), tickets are $50 in advance, $60 at the door and can be purchased by visiting TheCuttingRoomNYC.com or by calling (212) 691-1900.

Dear Readers, in my capacity as a reviewer and as a musical theater geek at large, I've been privileged to witness more than a few out of town tryouts, those plucky wanna-be Broadway shows taking a shot in another city. Both here at home and abroad, I occasionally get a glimpse at greatness in the making, and yes, some at the 5th Avenue Theatre. I remember marveling at the glory of 'Memphis' and not being able to contain my enthusiasm or stay in my seat during the curtain call of 'Hairspray'. But not all are winners. (I'm looking at you, 'Princesses'.) So, each and every time the 5th Avenue announces their next great new musical, I'm a little trepidatious even when the show is from two of my favorite composers, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, not to mention directed and choregraphed by the indomitable Susan Stroman. So along came 'Little Dancer' which many whom I mentioned it to thought was an Elton John jukebox musical. (Wrong lyric, guys. That's 'Tiny Dancer'.) Then the show was changed to 'Marie', possibly owing to such confusion and finally to 'Marie, Dancing Still'. But whether they want to call it 'Little Dancer', or 'Marie, Dancing Still' or 'How Degas Got His Groove Back', what they have is a bona fide, must see, must cry throughout, accept no substitutes, hit in the making and a definite addition to my list of shows I was honored to catch early on.

Lauren Gunderson's play, Silent Sky, is based on the true story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Nearly 20 years before American women could vote, Henrietta Leavitt graduated from Radcliff College, took a job in Harvard's Observatory and, working from slides because women weren't allowed to touch the telescopes, she discovered the amount by which the star's brightness is dimmed by distance allows the star's distance from the earth to be calculated. Leavitt turned a two-dimensional picture of the sky into a three-dimensional one.

Since my days as a pothead are long gone (LOL)—did anyone ever watch 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY without a little help from a friend?--I came to the Boston Symphony's (BSO) concert at Carnegie Hall the other night more interested in hearing the excerpts from Richard Strauss's CAPRICCIO, including Renee Fleming in its final scene, than in the composer's ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA. As it turned out, both parts of the concert, under Music Director Andris Nelsons, had much to recommend.

It is a real treat that The John W. Engeman Theatre is currently mounting A Gentleman's Guide To Love & Murder. The top-notch cast is remarkable leaving the audience in stitches. The hit show plays the beautiful Northport venue through April 28th, and it is sure to be a must-see this season.

Hadestown begins preview performances tonight, March 22, at the Walter Kerr Theatre, ahead of a Wednesday, April 17 official opening night. Get to know the cast below as they begin Broadway performances!

Lauren Gunderson's play, Silent Sky, is based on the true story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The play opens in 1900, when Leavitt is working in the Harvard Observatory in the 'woman's room.' These women 'computers,' are tasked with measuring and cataloging stars. They work from photographic plates because women were not allowed to touch the telescopes. The astronomer for whom they work calculates projects in 'girl hours,' has no time for the women's probing theories and has no problem taking credit for their ideas.

Performance Space New York in collaboration with Arika and the Whitney Museum of American Art presents I wanna be with you everywhere, a gathering of, by, and for disabled artists and writers and anyone who wants to join in a series of programs that refuse policies of individuation and inclusion in favor of (and in the flavor of) whatever disability aesthetics has in bodymind. Organized by Arika, Amalle Dublon, Jerron Herman, Carolyn Lazard, Park McArthur, Alice Sheppard, and Constantina Zavitsanos, the festival features performances and readings by Eli Clare, John Lee Clark, Kayla Hamilton, Johanna Hedva, Jerron Herman, Cyr e Jarelle Johnson, Camisha L. Jones, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jordan Lord, NEVE, Akemi Nishida and Alice Sheppard.

From the 16th of March to the 9th of April 2019, the Nederlandse Reisopera (Dutch National Touring Opera) will be taking a new production of the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music around the country. This is an English-language version produced by an American artistic team. In this staging, Director Zack Winokur looks back to the film that the musical was originally based on, Ingmar Bergman's Smile of a Summer Night: 'What I found lacking in the musical, at least in the productions that I saw, was the bodily, sensual and erotic comedy which is at the heart of the film. Why are people continually trying to seduce each other and why are they continually failing? This work is about feelings that everyone deals with in daily life, which is comforting, alienating and disquieting at the same time.'

The Muny announced today that season tickets for their 2019 summer season will be available beginning at 9am Friday, March 8.

Broadwayworld.com had the pleasure of interviewing Chef Dieter about his career and Bar Boulud on the Upper West Side for our 'Chef Spotlight.'

The Kurt Weill Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Jesse Leong as the recipient of the Julius Rudel/Kurt Weill Conducting Fellowship. Established in 2015 to honor Rudel's extraordinary artistic achievements and dedication to the music of Kurt Weill, this award enables a young conductor in the early stages of a career to assist a master conductor in the preparation and performance of a work by Weill or Marc Blitzstein and expand his or her knowledge of their works. The fellowship carries a stipend of $10,000.

'You take a mackerel, grill it, drizzle a little lemon on it, serve it up with a huge glass of white zinfandel, and one doesn't feel quite like blowing one's brains out anymore, does one?' observes a husband when considering the prospect of another evening's dinner with his wife of nearly twenty-five years.

The idea of stunt casting, the practice of taking a big name and putting them in a role just to get butts in seats, has always terrified me. And I've seen it result anywhere from the sublime such as Neil Patrick Harris killing it as "Hedwig" to the shudder inducing Molly Ringwald completely out of her depth as the world's oldest taxi dancer in "Sweet Charity". And while the 5th Avenue's couple of stunt casts, specifically rock royalty Micky Thomas of Starship as club owner Dennis and Galen Disston of the Seattle rock band Pickwick as the romantic lead Drew, in their current production of "Rock of Ages" were nowhere near the latter, when it came to delivering a line or executing some choreography, you could definitely tell the musical theater folks from the rockers. However, when it came to wailing out some amazing rock songs, those stunt casts had no equal, so all told, it amounted for a pretty awesome show. But we'll get to specifics in a minute.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra today announced programming and artists for the 2019/20 Texas Instruments Classical Series, the Dallas Symphony Pops Series, Movies in Concert, family concerts and further innovative programming.

Theater Latte Da's well-cast production of Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is gorgeous to look at and sweet on the ear. Like many great musicals, it depends on the master narrative of romance, but in Sondheim's hands that narrative gets a wider treatment than usual: not only are some of the lovers well beyond their ingenue years, but the characters are also by turns cynical, nostalgic, randy, anguished, manipulative, ecstatic, and resigned.

Jada Scott, a fifth-grade student at Homer Pittard Campus School, will present an astronomy talk based on her first book, 'Talking Planets: The Night Problem,' from 11 a.m.-noon Feb. 9 (Saturday) at Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, 1900 Davidson St. in Nashville, Tennessee. Her talk will occur immediately after the 'Mr. Bond and the Science Guys.'

Creators Jennifer Schwed and Doug Bradshaw teamed up with composer Charlie Barnett to produce a musical that is sweet, earnest, smart, and sensitive. It may be a lofty goal to hope that '19: The Musical' achieves 'Hamilton'-like heights, but, much like the women it portrays, it's certainly up to the task and should not be underestimated.

The Muny announced today the directors, choreographers and music directors for its 2019 season, which opens on June 10 with Guys and Dolls.

The Muny announced today the directors, choreographers and music directors for its 2019 season, which opens on June 10 with Guys and Dolls.

The Johnny Mercer Foundation (JMF) and the American Music Theatre Project (AMTP) at Northwestern University will once again seek out the nation's most talented young songwriters and writing teams for the 14th annual Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project. The free, weeklong songwriting workshop will take place June 23 to 29, 2019 on Northwestern's Evanston campus.

Classic Stage Company devotes the beginning of 2019 to the timeless emotional and social resonance of August Strindberg, with new productions of two acclaimed adaptations-Yael Farber's Mies Julie and Conor McPherson's new version of The Dance of Death-presented in repertory.

You may say, Dear Readers, that it's impossible to have a bad production of the Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse, and Martin Charnin classic "Annie". Throw some precocious kids on stage, belt out those recognizable tunes and you're gold. Well, I beg to differ as I've seen my share of "Annie" productions that missed the point, or the heart or maybe just didn't quite have the kids to pull it off well. (You know what they say, never work with kids or animals and this show has BOTH!) Well the current production at the 5th Avenue not only has the perfect tone for this boisterously fun old time musical, but they know exactly where the heart is in the show and in the audience and which buttons to push on both. Not to mention those precocious kids all seem to be consummate professionals with killer voices. So much so I'm suspecting they were actually just short adults. Maybe?