edjames

Closing date March 31... ‘Anastasia’ Musical to Close on Broadway on March 31 The stage adaptation of “Anastasia” will end its Broadway run on March 31, the producers said Tuesday. The musical, powered by the popularity of the animated 1997 film, is about a Russian girl who may or may not be the daughter of a czar. The show began performances on Broadway in March of 2017; at the time of its closing it will have played 808 regular and 34 preview performances. The show was capitalized for up to $15 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; it has not recouped its capitalization costs. The show has an unusually ambitious touring schedule, especially for a musical that was not a huge success on Broadway, where it was greeted with several negative reviews. It is now on tour in the United States and running in Madrid and Stuttgart, Germany; there are runs planned in Holland, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Australia and Brazil.

Broadway’s ‘The Band’s Visit’ Sets Closing Date; The Musical Won 10 Tony Awards Broadway’s The Band’s Visit, winner of 10 Tony Awards last year, a commercial success and widely praised by critics, will play its final performance on Sunday, April 7, its producers said today. “In a polarized and harsh world of politics and division, the success of The Band’s Visit has filled my heart with so much warmth, and I am so grateful to the theatercommunity who has lifted our show to these heights,” lead producer Orin Wolf said (read his full statement below). A national tour of the musical will launch June 25 in Providence, RI, followed by Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, NC; Chicago; Minneapolis; Baltimore; San Francisco; and Las Vegas, with more cities to be announced. When the Broadway production closes April 7, it will have played 589 regular performances and 36 previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The production began October 7, 2017, and by the following September had recouped its $8.75 million capitalization.

I thought Drew's "boozy" days were long over after her childhood experiences but either she's learned to control her intake or has fallen off the wagon. In any event, it seems she had a good time and acted appropriately. Drew Barrymore seen ‘boozing through the night’ at gay bar Drew Barrymore — in town shooting rom-com “The Stand-In” — was “boozing through the night” at a famed gay bar. The “50 First Dates” star was spotted in the piano room at the Upper East Side’s Townhouse Thursday, “boozing through the night with her gay pals,” said a spy. “She was casual and pretty unnoticed, till the pianist recognized her voice,” we’re told. “She was very friendly and giggling with her friends.” A source tells us the spot is “known for young gay men [going] to find a sophisticated sugar daddy” and, of course, for Broadway tunes. Reps didn’t get back to us.

NyPost has the to say abut the new miniseries beginning April 9th on FX: ‘Fosse/Verdon’ has a Broadway heartbreak beat THE love story of mercurial Broadway choreographer and Oscar winning director Bob Fosse and his wife, four-time Tony winner Gwen Verdon, will dance onto TV screens April 9. Their romance, told in the FX miniseries “Fosse/Verdon,” is the stuff of Broadway legend. Verdon was the most celebrated dancer of her time, winning four Tony Awards in six years, and Fosse helped her win them — shaping her performances in productions such as “Damn Yankees” and “Sweet Charity.” They married in 1960 and had a daughter, Nicole, born in 1963. “Fosse/Verdon” boasts Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) — also nominated for 2018’s “Vice” — as Fosse and four-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams as Verdon. As “Fosse/Verdon” opens, Fosse is looking for a job but he’s a tough sell in Hollywood. His 1969 film “Sweet Charity,” starring Shirley MacLaine in the role Verdon created on Broadway, was a $20 million flop, a dated curio in the year of groundbreaking films (“Easy Rider” and Best Picture Oscar winner “Midnight Cowboy”). Fosse wants to direct the big-screen version of “Cabaret” so badly he circumvents executive producer Cy Feuer (Paul Reiser, who’s unrecognizable) and petitions the head of the studio. He gets the job. Left alone in Munich, where the film was partly produced, Fosse puts his special touches on the film — firing the actors hired as extras and finding their replacements in a German brothel — much to the consternation of Feuer, who arrives to supervise him and wonders why the set is so dark. “Uh…we’re supposed to be in a nightclub,” says Fosse. Fearing another fiasco, Feuer turns to Verdon, who suggests that audiences don’t want escapist musicals anymore: “They want to see something true.” As played by the redheaded Williams, Verdon is not only Fosse’s muse; she’s an ideal collaborator, flying to Germany to be his sounding board. She even rifles through her own closet for some of the pieces Liza Minnelli (Kelli Barrett, who can hold those Liza notes on the title tune) wears in the role of Sally Bowles and valiantly goes back to New York to fetch a gorilla’s head costume for one scene. When she knocks on her husband’s hotel room door to deliver the goods, Fosse is hesitant to answer. He’s in bed with the German translator hired for the film. It’s one of his many marital indiscretions; Verdon, who separated from Fosse in 1971, never divorced him. “Fosse/Verdon” shows us how the director came up with the innovative, sexy choreography and camera work for “Cabaret,” which went on to win a staggering eight Academy Awards, including one for Fosse as Best Director. Based on a biography by Sam Wasson, the eight-episode series also introduces us to the artists who made up the Fosse/Verdon inner circle — playwright/screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Norbert Leo Butz), Neil Simon (Nate Corddry) and theater producer and director Hal Prince (Evan Handler). The series is a boldly romantic departure for FX, which has been relying on Ryan Murphy for nearly a decade to supply award-winning programs such as “American Horror Story,” “The People v. O.J. Simpson” and most recently “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.”

Full concert details, including $2500 ticket price: Lin-Manuel Miranda to Lead One-Night ‘Camelot’ Benefit Concert Lin-Manuel Miranda is going to be king for a day. The acclaimed creator of “Hamilton” has agreed to lead a one-night concert performance of “Camelot” to benefit Lincoln Center Theater, the nonprofit’s leadership said Thursday. Mr. Miranda will play the legendary King Arthur in the concert — a role originally played on Broadway by Richard Burton and on film by Richard Harris. The best seats will cost a pretty penny: Benefit tickets, which include dinner with the cast, start at $2,500, and are available now. Starting Feb. 19 at 10AM there will also be performance-only tickets available, for $95 and $195, as well as online lottery seats for $30. The beneficiary, Lincoln Center Theater, is one of the city’s most prestigious nonprofits, presenting work in its Broadway house (the Vivian Beaumont) as well as Off Broadway.

NYPost was no kinder... What failed ‘Rent: Live’ should teach TV: Cast Broadway talent By Robert Rorke January 28, 2019 | 12:13pm Fox’s not-so-live broadcast of “Rent” Sunday night made a good case for calling it quits when it comes to the age of the live television musical. Nielsen reports that just 3.42 million viewers tuned in, making “Rent” the least-watched of all the networks’ live musicals. In depressing contrast to NBC’s triumphant, Emmy-winning production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” last year, this non-event proved that if you’re going to do a Broadway show, you should cast it with Broadway names. We had Brennin Hunt from “The X Factor” in the lead role of Roger and Valentina from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” handling the tricky role of Angel. It was obvious from her first number that she could not sing and was already out of breath. Hunt — who broke his foot during Saturday’s dress rehearsal, necessitating the use of a film of Saturday night’s dress rehearsal in place of a truly live production, except for a bit of Act 2 — sounded more hoarse as the show went on. Fox’s idea of a musical is “American Idol” and the network filled the studio with a multitude of cheering fans who gave each number an apoplectic reception, even when the singers were off-key or overshadowed by the band. But you know how things go in LA: Everyone’s a genius. Maybe Fox should have had Ryan Seacrest come on at the end of each number to instruct the audience to vote for their favorites via an 800 number. But surely some things were good, right? Vanessa Hudgens and Kiersey Clemons (kinda screechy) had a great number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” that was staged on a bed. The reliable Brandon Victor Dixon delivered a powerfully emotional “I’ll Cover You.” Best of all, the original cast assembled at the finale to deliver their version — the only version — of playwright Jonathan Larson’s signature song, “Seasons of Love.” Seeing familiar faces such as Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin and Idina Menzel up there threw the bloated three hours that went before into stark relief. They were the real thing. The rest of “Rent” was mostly like amateur hour. “The Sound of Music Live” generated a lot of headlines when NBC ambitiously staged the musical at the Grumman Studios in Bethpage, Long Island, in 2013 — particularly for its controversial casting of Carrie Underwood in Julie Andrews’ role and for its phenomenal rating, some 18 million viewers. Because repetition is the name of the game in TV, the musicals continued to come. We had “Peter Pan” and when people complained that the musical choices were dated, “Grease” and “Hairspray.” Not one of these has equaled the popularity of “The Sound of Music” and results have been uneven, with publicity stunts such as casting complete unknowns in lead roles or suspect casting (62-year-old Harvey Fierstein playing high school student Tracy Turnblad’s mother, not grandmother, in “Hairspray”). The inadequacies of Fox’s production of “Rent” suggest that the heyday of the live TV musical is probably behind us. NBC wisely postponed its production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” for which likely star Jennifer Lopez is too old to play the lead role of Rosie (it was Janet Leigh in the 1963 movie and Chita Rivera on Broadway). A live TV production of “Hair” is scheduled for May 2019, but just contemplating how NBC will sanitize the onstage nudity seen in the Broadway production is enough to make one say, “Stop now.” Please.

Disappointing reviews! Shame... ‘Rent Live’ Review: How Do You Measure a Show You Were Never Meant to See? A longstanding superstition holds that saying the title of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” while inside a theater — unless you are rehearsing or performing the play itself — will bring about a terrible curse. The notion is based on an unfounded legend, but it makes you wonder what people were saying in the studio where “Rent: Live” was rehearsing the past few weeks. On Sunday, not long before the 8 p.m. curtain for the musical’s live broadcast on Fox, the network announced that Brennin Hunt, the actor playing Roger, seriously injured his footwhile performing during the previous day’s dress rehearsal. Unlike on Broadway (and in most professional theater productions), the show did not have understudies for its leads. The solution? Much of what viewers would see would be Saturday’s recorded performance, the cast noted in a statement during an early commercial break. The final 15 minutes or so were live; Hunt was at a table, his foot in a cast and propped on a chair. (Hashtags like #RentNotLive and #RentKindaLive trended during the broadcast.) It feels a bit weird to critique what was almost entirely a recorded dress rehearsal. How do you measure three hours of chaotic visuals and middling audio most of us were never meant to see and hear? Mostly in disappointment, I guess, though this is what Fox gave us. “Rent,” Jonathan Larson’s musical about a ragtag bunch of young squatters who self-righteously equate their refusal to pay their landlord to sticking it to The Man, debuted at New York Theater Workshop in 1996 and went on to become a Broadway juggernaut. But it’s a curious choice for a major network production. It’s not family friendly in the way that “The Sound of Music” or “The Wiz” are, or “Grease” sort of is. It’s a show so of its time (garage rock filtered through a Broadway sensibility!) that it can be easy to play down the impact it had as a daring, wildly progressive musical prominently featuring characters of color, queer romance and people living with (and dying from) AIDS, at a time when the disease and its victims were rarely front and center in pop culture. Few moments from “Rent: Live” evoked what made the show so special. The sound mixing was rough — characters’ voices were sometimes too soft, too loud or just too muddled to comprehend. It didn’t help that the overzealous crowd, perhaps primed from years of “American Idol” and the like, chimed in to “woo” and cheer whenever an actor belted a long note — which, if you aren’t familiar with “Rent,” occurs a lot. In the case of “Today 4 U,” a musical showcase for the larger-than-life optimist Angel (Valentina, a star of “RuPaul’s Drag Race”), the audience was so hyped it drowned out much of her vocals. Also too muddled to comprehend: the frantic, overwrought camerawork. “Rent: Live” was directed by Michael Greif, who oversaw the original Broadway production, and Alex Rudzinski, but they both seemed to be channeling Baz Luhrmann. The cameras swooped around the sprawling stage erratically, without any ostensible purpose other than to distinguish this from feeling like a theater production. During “ ,” a simple melody sung by the chorus in a round, the focus shifted dizzily from one character to another, effectively dulling the moment’s emotional resonance. As with network TV’s other recent live musicals, the cast was a mix of stage and screen performers, along with a couple of pop stars. The results were all over the place: The R&B singers Tinashe and Mario, playing Mimi and Benny, did fine, but they weren’t standouts. Jordan Fisher’s Mark was lithe and fun to watch while dancing, particularly during “La Vie Boheme.” The highlights included Vanessa Hudgens as the flighty performance artist and activist Maureen and Kiersey Clemons as her uptight lawyer girlfriend, Joanne, performing “ .” It’s a fun duet brimming with flirtations and frustrations, a favorite song of countless high school theater nerds (like me) and karaoke enthusiasts — and Hudgens and Clemons nailed it in the dress rehearsal, convincingly playing the feverish couple at a crossroads while hitting those notes. As Collins, the Broadway actor Brandon Victor Dixon (who played Judas in last spring’s live TV broadcast of “Jesus Christ Superstar”) also gave a towering performance during the number “I’ll Cover You (Reprise).” He brought soul and the pangs of grief and loss into every lyric, and when the chorus joined in, it was haunting. Around 10:45 p.m., the would-be live show finally became live. Unfortunately, the last few songs of “Rent” are some of the musical’s most unremarkable, as the story hurtles awkwardly toward its jarring ending. Yet in those moments, as the characters comforted one another during the final song and cast members from the original Broadway production, including Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs and Anthony Rapp, appeared onstage for “Seasons of Love,” I regretted that these hard-working performers didn’t get to put on the show that they had signed up for (even if the fully live “Rent” probably would have suffered from the same maddening camera whiplash and bad sound). Yes, it was disappointing. But clearly there was love in this production, too.

NYTimes re-reviewed the new cast today and deemed it very worthy. Review: ‘My Fair Lady,’ Illuminated With New Stars Theater’s calling card is that it’s live, but there’s plenty of counter-evidence. Big musicals are often Exhibit A, with their massive machinery, thin books, prerecorded segments and timed-to-the-second routines. Don’t pause with emotion or put your foot amiss lest you fall behind the click track or get run over by a kick line. All the more satisfying, then, when a musical not only lives in the moment but also changes and grows over time. Such is the case with the revival of “My Fair Lady” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater — still evolving with new stars after 10 months and $50 million in sales. Upon its opening last April, it was already a plush and thrilling production, befitting Lincoln Center Theater’s tradition of treating classic musicals as both spectacle and living text. While honoring Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 original, the director Bartlett Sher had reframed the story of Henry Higgins, the phonetician who sculpts the bedraggled flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lady; it became instead the story of Eliza Doolittle, a determined flower girl who, with the bully Henry Higgins as her chisel, sculpts herself. It is still that story, in outline. But with four replacement principals now fully in place — Laura Benanti as Eliza; Danny Burstein as her father; Christian Dante White as her enthusiastic suitor; and Rosemary Harris as Higgins’s mother — the emphasis has changed in ways that are no less illuminating for being incremental. Ms. Benanti, who says she has dreamed of playing Eliza since childhood, has used the years well to develop an interpretation that makes equal sense of the flower girl and the lady. In each case, she is self-possessed; it is merely the expression of that self-possession that changes. Outside Covent Garden, selling her violets, she is saucy and calculating: She catches Higgins in a lie and quietly memorizes his address. When he compares her voice to that of a bilious pigeon, she responds — not “quite overwhelmed,” as the script suggests — by expertly imitating the bird in question. Imitation is key to how this Eliza learns; it is not through Higgins’s drumming vowels into her ear but through observation and mimicry of people who are kind to her. And you can see her working to maintain her hard-won knowledge; even while singing “I Could Have Danced All Night,” she tries out her new vowels: “I’ll never knooooow what made it sooooo exciting,” she rhapsodizes, exaggerating her embouchure. I mean no disrespect to Lauren Ambrose, who originated the role in this revival, to say that Ms. Benanti is a more effortless vocalist; she dispatches her very difficult and wide-ranging songs with glee, whereas in Ms. Ambrose’s performance, getting through them sometimes seemed like a metaphor for the character’s struggle. Both ideas make for vivid theater, though the focus changes. Ms. Ambrose emphasized the way society limits a poor woman’s development and opportunity; Ms. Benanti emphasizes the way a gift, and the means to exploit it, can lead to liberation. The show is lighter as a result, which is not to say it’s less compelling. Ms. Benanti’s scenes with Harry Hadden-Paton, remaining from the original cast as Higgins, are very finely observed, filled with the kind of new detail an extended run encourages. That’s even more evident with the other principal holdover, Allan Corduner, as Higgins’s pal Pickering. Together the two men have developed a delightful meta-narrative from glances and gestures that connect the dots of an underwritten relationship. [What’s new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter] If the newcomers, other than Eliza, do not have as much opportunity to deliver distinctively original impressions, they make pointed adjustments along the margins. Mr. Burstein, following Norbert Leo Butz as the dustman with the soul of a philosopher, drives home the character’s rhetorical intelligence; I heard, perhaps for the first time, the speech rhythms (“I put it to you, and I leave it to you”) that so impress Higgins. And as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Mr. White brings a full-throated tenor (his “On the Street Where You Live” is terrific) that complements a giddy, almost unbridled enthusiasm. This makes for less of a comment on effete society, as Jordan Donica’s hilariously twitty take on the character suggested, than a satire on the deracination of love. But it is the recasting of the smallest principal role that makes the most touching difference, and like ev erything connected to Ms. Harris’s stage presence, her success as Mrs. Higgins cannot be pinned down. Of course, one is so delighted to see her, at 91, some 67 years after her Broadway debut, carrying on with such aplomb. But it’s more than that. Ms. Harris has found a way into a role that has resisted most previous exploration, and then carried it off with exquisite taste. With little fuss and fewer words, she sketches a woman whose independence and complacency help explain her son’s more toxic versions of each. When Higgins, distraught over Eliza’s departure, cries, “What am I to do?” she answers sweetly but without undue sympathy, “Do without, I suppose.” She’s not about to waste her time trying to change someone who does not want to be changed. Wanted and unwanted change are exactly what “My Fair Lady,” like “Pygmalion” before it, is about. I mean change in individuals, of course, but also, as this blooming revival and its success make clear, in society. As such, its portrait of bullies and resistance may never wear thin. At least not this year.

Shows to watch for this spring: True West - revival of the Sam Shepard play Starring Ethan Hawke, opened Jan 24 at the American Airlines theater. Be More Chill - previews begin Feb 13 at the Lyceum theater. New musical from off-Broadway, blending contemporary and retro sci-fi about the voices in our head. Kiss Me Kate - Previews begin Feb 14 at Studio 54, starring Kelli O'Hara and Will Chase. A musical version of Taming of the Shrew with Cole Porter's music! Ain't Too Proud to Beg - previews begin Feb 28 at the Imperial theater. Brings to life the untold story of the historic Motown quintet, The Temptations. Fabulous soundtrack! King Lear - Previews begin Feb 28 - Glenda Jackson returns Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus - Previews begin Mar 5 at the Booth theater. Nathan Lane, Andrea Martin, and Kristine Nielsen star in a new comedy which take place after the conclusion of Shakespeare's Andronicus as the servants clear away the bodies. Burn This - Previews begin Mar 15 at the Hudson theater. Adam Driver and Kerri Russel in a revival of Lanford Wilson's classic about 2 strangers brought together by death who have an explosive affair. Oklahoma! - Previews begin Mar 19 at Circle In the Square - reimagined Rodgers and Hammerstein classic transfers to Broadway from a very successful off-off-broadway venue. Hadestown - Previews begin Mar 22 at the Walter Kerr - off-Broadway to London to Broadway, a musical retelling of Euridyce's myth in which Orpheus travels to the underworld to bring back his lost love. Hilary and Clinton - Previews begin Mar 16 at the John Golden theater - Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow return to Broadway as the political couple in a play directed by Joe Mantello exploring gender roles, the politics of marriage as Hillaryy fights to salvage her bid for POTUS. Beetlejuice _ Previews begin Mar 28 - musical version of the hit 1988 movie Tootsie - Previews begin Mar 29 at the Marriott Marquis theater another musical version of a hit movie. Music by David Yazbek starring Santino Fontana. Ink - Previews begin Apr 2 at the Friedman theater - a new play about a young Rupert Murdoch All My Sons - Previews begin Apr 4 at the American Airlines theater, Annette Benning and Tracey Lets star in this Arthur Miller revival

Saw it last night and it exceeded all my expectations. Wonderful cast, including Jeff Daniels. 2 hours and 35 minutes of gripping drama set in the racist South. A black man wrongfully accused of violent rape and despite n evidence and a lying witness, he is sentenced to death. the book was great, the movie was great, and now a wonderful theatrical production. Sure to be a Tony winner! If I had any criticism, I could have done without the constantly shifting set moving back and forth and in and out. otherwise, close to perfection.

Spielberg is filming his version and now acclaimed director Ivo Van Hove is casting his version for Broadway. ‘West Side Story’ revival will be more like ‘West Side Gory’ By Michael Riedel Ivo van Hove certainly divides audiences and critics. Champions love the Belgian director’s stylized, ferocious whirling dervish productions. Detractors bristle at all the special effects, gadgets and gizmos. Some gasped at the flying witches in 2016’s “The Crucible.” Others thought: Why is he getting all Peter Pan-ny on us? But while most of van Hove’s avant-garde contemporaries are confined to BAM or the Park Avenue Armory, he’s become a Broadway baby — and box office gold. His revivals of “A View from the Bridge” and “The Crucible” made tidy profits, while “Network,” which stars Bryan Cranston and a herd of Steadicams, is grossing more than $1 million a week. And now he’s about to tackle what could be his riskiest venture to date: a revival of the beloved musical “West Side Story.” Musical theater fans are protective of the classics. Remember the outcry that greeted Sam Mendes’ Brechtian “Gypsy,” with Bernadette Peters, in 2003? Or the gleeful skewering of David Leveaux’s Chekhovian “Fiddler on the Roof” in 2004, with nary a Jewish actor in its shtetl? Van Hove’s “West Side Story” is one of the most eagerly awaited productions of the 2019-2020 season. The chat boards are sure to explode seconds after the first preview, on Dec. 10. – But I can give you a sneak peek. Van Hove this week staged a lab (unaffected by the Equity strike) that knocked out those lucky enough to see it. This is not — repeat, not — the Jerome Robbins version. For the first time ever, the Robbins estate is permitting new choreography. Van Hove is collaborating with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose contemporary ballets are in demand all over the world. What they’ve done, sources say, is strip all trappings of the 1950s from the 1957 musical. A source describes De Keersmaeker’s dances as “violent, intensely physical, aggressive.” The intensity was such that the backers who saw it believed the Sharks and the Jets really could kill each other. Casting is underway — van Hove and De Keersmaeker are conducting a nationwide search for “contemporary” dancers. No Broadway shtick, please! It will be fun to compare van Hove’s “West Side Story” to Steven Spielberg’s movie. That director recently cast his Tony and Maria: Ansel Elgort (“Baby Driver”) and Rachel Zegler, a 17-year-old from New Jersey who posts YouTube videos of herself singing in her bathroom. They’re both adorable, but a little traditional.

Broadway divas, debuts and dramas for 2019 By Michael Riedel January 3, 2019 | 7:45pm Ring out the old, ring in the new: Here’s my countdown to the 10 personalities, shows and backstage dramas I’m looking forward to in 2019. 10. Glenda Jackson delivered an unforgettable performance last year as the tough old lady in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” This spring, she’ll be back as tough old King Lear. She played the role to great acclaim in London two years ago, but this is a new production from director Sam Gold. I hope some pompous interviewer asks her about a line in “Lear” so she can savage him the way she did one critic, who told her he’d written an essay about Shakespeare for an academic journal. “You’re the people I avoid like the plague!” she snarled. 9. The first play I ever saw was Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” I was in seventh grade and never quite recovered from the gunshot at the end. The villain of the play is not the father, who made the faulty airplane parts during World War II. It’s the mother, who tries to bury the truth. Annette Bening tackles this juicy role in a revival, directed by Jack O’Brien. Add Tracy Letts (as the father), and you’ve got the makings of a riveting show. 8. Donna Summer flamed out as a jukebox bio musical, and “The Cher Show” got mixed reviews. But the buzz is strong for “Ain’t Too Proud,” the show about the Temptations. Everybody’s calling it the next “Jersey Boys.” Slick direction by Des McAnuff and some smooth choreography from Sergio Trujillo should make for a fun night out. 7. Word-of-mouth was strong for “Beetlejuice” after a round of backers’ auditions, but last year’s out-of-town tryout drew adjectives like “overcaffeinated” and “charmless” from Washington Post critic Peter Marks. But sources tell me that the creators, led by director Alex Timbers, are doing a major rewrite before the show opens here in April. We shall see . . . 6. Even if “Beetlejuice” gets squashed, Timbers will bounce back quickly with “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” in July. Critics adored the show in Boston, where it ran last summer. The money comes from the same people who sunk $35 million into “King Kong.” This time, they’re going to get it back. 5. Hard to top Dustin Hoffman’s performance as Michael Dorsey, the prickly actor who dons a wig and high heels in the movie “Tootsie.” But by all accounts, Santino Fontana has done it in the musical, which opens in April. Writer Robert Horn shifted the action from TV soaps to Broadway, and David Yazbek supplied the catchy songs. 4. Finally, a juicy Tony race for Best Musical. The contenders are “Tootsie,” “Hadestown” and “Ain’t Too Proud.” But nobody should rule out “The Prom,” a smart, fun show that’s pleasing Tony voters. The superb cast — Angie Schworer and Christopher Sieber among them — should walk away with plenty of nominations. 3. The best British import this season will be “Ink,” James Graham’s play about a brash young newspaper publisher named Rupert Murdoch. This is “The Front Page,” but even tougher. 2. Here’s a duo from comedy heaven: Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin will team up in “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus,” playing servants who clean up the carnage after Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy. It’s a brilliant premise executed by two pros. 1. And now, the most anticipated event of 2019: “Hugh Jackman. The Man. The Music. The Show.” The best entertainer of our generation kicks off a worldwide tour with three shows at Madison Square Garden in June. I’m there — even if I have to be in the nosebleed seats!! (IMO..MSG, seriously? Will he sell out or fizzle out?)

Gay porn star Michael Lucas to retire Gay porn magnate Michael Lucas has announced he plans to retire in 2020 — and threatens to expose celeb clients from his former escorting days. “Porn stars come and go, but the best ones stay in our memories [and] on our hard drives for a long time until they fade away,” Lucas’ rep told Page Six in a statement. “Successfully dominating the gay adult-film industry for 25 plus years and starring in over 300 films, Michael is planning to retire the devil between his legs in 2020 but still continue to direct and produce films.” Lucas founded his New York City-based company, Lucas Entertainment, in 1998. He has contributed to the Advocate and HuffPost as a columnist, and his rep says he’s writing a tell-all. “Michael is also in search of a co-author to publish a juicy autobiography that will include a steamy chapter about a few top Hollywood celebs who paid him to have sex with them when he was an escort in the late ’90s,” he said. The porn star is waiting for its release to dish names. Update – Michael Lucas contacted Page Six after this article was first published and denied that he ever threatened to release a tell-all book. His PR reps responded that he agreed to run the story before it was published. Then he said... What a porn pickle! On Wednesday a publicist for renowned porn star Michael Lucas’s told us that Lucas is retiring — and that he’s planning on writing a memoir that would expose celebrities that he slept with in the 90s when he was working as an escort. But after the story was published, a horrified Lucas got in touch to claim in response that his over overzealous publicist wasn’t telling the truth. “The story that ran today and attributed to me by my former publicist is absolutely false,” Lucas said in an email, “What is true is that I’m planning to retire in 2020. What is absolutely false is that I would ever write or consider writing a ‘tell all’ book and naming names of my clients.” He added, “I consider that relationship sacred and I would never violate their confidence or my integrity. Period. I have nothing but the greatest respect and gratitude for the people who trusted me with their most intimate secrets and I will take those secrets to the grave.” Lucas told us he has fired the rep over the debacle, and threatened legal action against his now-former PR firm, Project Publicity. But the firm insists Lucas agreed to their pitch. “He verbally agreed to the pitch … He’ll agree to run an item in the press that he knows will get people talking and then pull back and play the victim. He irritates so many people with his drama,” the spokesperson said.

Thanks guys! After reading the replies, I realized I am an Amazon Prime member (I do an awful lot of ordering from Amazon!), so I was able to watch the series on my MacPro. While not the most comfortable experience watching on the 17" monitor, the quality was excellent and I managed to watch the series. I liked it very much. I'm a Big Ben Whitshaw fan. Interesting to see UK actor, Alex Jennings in this production. He's a very prolific actor and appears, not only in Victoria but also The Crown. He is the only performer to have won Olivier awards in the drama, musical and comedy categories. Oh BTW, when I say I pay A LOT for my cable TV package, I'm talking almost $250 a month, here in NYC! No, other options are not available in my building. I cannot justify spending extra for programming I will only watch occasionally. One of my New Year's resolutions this year is to to visit the Spectrum office and discuss what I can cut out, or economize on. Happy New Year's guys!

Thank you. I am aware. that it is on Amazon Prime and Netflix, however, I already pay an exorbitant cable TV price and my budget does not allow me to pay for streaming services that I won't use, especially for one or two programs. Until then, I prefer to get a DVD from eBay or Amazon and share it with my senior friends who also do not use streaming services. Happy New Year!

Dying to see this series, HOWEVER, no DVD release here in the USA! (yet...) Available on DVD in the UK, Australia, etc, but for Region 2 players! Please, let's not get into a discussion of multi-region DVD players, etc. BBC will not sell or ship to the USA. Most distressing, but I'll live through it. Will hold up hope that sometime in 2019 it will be released here.

NYPost says: Mockingbird’ is still relevant 60 years later on Broadway By Joe Dziemianowicz December 14, 2018 Not long into this new “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a young girl considers what she’s just heard in a courtroom. “All rise,” says Scout, marveling at the weight of the words while imagining if people always went high instead of low. It’s a beautiful scene in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation, which opened Thursday night after settling a legal battle with Harper Lee’s estate over changes to the source material. Nearly 60 years after its Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, the story is remarkably relevant, emotionally rich — and a bit manipulative. Sorkin (“A Few Good Men,” “The West Wing”) takes a non-linear, theatrical approach in this telling, but events and lines from both the novel and the 1962 Oscar-winning Gregory Peck film are intact. Quick recap: In 1930s small-town Alabama, upright Atticus (Jeff Daniels) defends Tom Robinson (Gbenga Akinnagbe), a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman (Erin Wilhelmi). The trial is still seen through the eyes of the widowed Atticus’ children, here played by adults: inquisitive tomboy Scout (Celia Keenan-Bolger), rebellious big brother Jem (Will Pullen) and their needy friend Dill (Gideon Glick). Grown-ups playing youngsters can grate, but the conceit clicks, thanks to fine acting and the fact that the story is veiled in memory. Sorkin also enlarged the role of Atticus’ black housekeeper, Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson). More of a social conscience than a mere cook, she challenges Atticus’ tolerance for the bigotry around them, rocketing the story to the Black Lives Matter era. Too bad the courtroom gallery of black spectators, so pivotal in the book and film, is all but erased: It showed that Tom’s case was far bigger than he was. Bartlett Sher, the ace behind the Tony-winning “The King and I” revival and “Oslo,” directs strong performances, especially from Keenan-Bolger, whose Scout lights up the stage with warmth. Daniels turns in the finely tuned, down-to-earth performance we’ve come to expect from him: It’s a very Jeff Daniels kind of portrait. Yet his courtroom scenes course with raw emotion and scenes at home pack genuine sweetness. And if he doesn’t quite make Atticus Finch his own, the way Peck did, well, who could? Less successful is the busy staging, with actors often pushing around scenery as the story moves from porch to courthouse, jailhouse and back again, and a sitcom-y judge who seems to have strayed from “The Andy Griffith Show.” Parking a guitarist and organist on either side of the stage, underscoring the action, is more distracting than affecting. Then again, we don’t need music: “To Kill a Mockingbird” already sings its own sad song.

I did a quick review of past recent threads and couldn't find a thread about this play. It's a hot ticket and seats are hard to find. No doubt premium seating is available, for a steep price. I have a ticket, for January, but may undergo foot surgery which would prevent me from getting to the theater! One of my friends will undoubtedly benefit greatly from my disability and center orch seat. Anyway, back on topic, the play opened this week to favorable reviews... NYTimes says: As this is a trial, let’s have a verdict: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which opened at the Shubert Theater on Thursday, is not guilty. Evidence shows that it does not deface the Harper Lee novel on which it is based, as the Lee estate at one point contended. And far from devaluing the property as a moneymaking machine, it has created an honorable stream of income that should pour into the estate’s coffers for years to come. But as any reader of the novel knows, to say something is not guilty is not the same as saying it’s innocent. And this adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” — written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Jeff Daniels — is hardly innocent. How could it be? Every ounce of glossy know-how available at the highest echelons of the commercial theater has been applied to ensure its success, both on Lee’s terms and on what it supposes are ours. It is, for one thing, gorgeously atmospheric, from the weathered barn-red siding that serves as the show curtain (the set design is by Miriam Buether) to Adam Guettel’s mournful guitar and pump organ music, which sounds like hymns decomposing before your ear. Mr. Sher has made sure that every movement, every perfectly cast face, every stage picture and costume tells the story so precisely that it would do so even without words. Ah, but the words. As Mr. Sorkin has explained pre-emptively, he faced a dilemma in approaching the material. He could not alter the plot significantly lest he alienate audiences who grew up treasuring the 1960 novel or . “To Kill a Mockingbird” still had to be the story of the widower lawyer Atticus Finch (Mr. Daniels) bravely standing up to racism in small-town Alabama in the mid-1930s. Defending Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, he could not suddenly introduce DNA evidence to win the case. On the other hand, if Mr. Sorkin did not make major changes, the play would be both structurally and politically insupportable in 2018. The leisurely pace of Lee’s narrative wouldn’t work onstage, as the previously authorized adaptation proved in its dull fidelity. That’s because Lee took her time getting to the trial, which doesn’t even begin until halfway through the book. For 150 pages she immerses readers in the charming, perplexing, ominous daily life of Maycomb as seen and narrated by Atticus’s daughter, Scout. Mr. Sorkin does away with that structure, introducing the trial almost immediately and returning to it at regular intervals. In between, he backfills the information and characters the novel frontloaded, but just on a need-to-know basis. The narration — now split among Scout (Celia Keenan-Bolger); her brother, Jem (Will Pullen); and their friend Dill (Gideon Glick) — no longer suggests long hazy childhood summers spent squashing redbugs and pondering why the world is evil so much as a Junior League police procedural. This is very effective; Mr. Sorkin apparently trusted that the actors, working with Mr. Sher, would fill in the blanks, and they do. (Having adults play the kids is especially helpful, and Ms. Keenan-Bolger is terrific.) Also effective, exhilarating even, are the interventions by which Mr. Sorkin set out to correct — or, let’s say, extrapolate — the novel’s politics for our time. He had to do something. In a novel, we accept the worldview of the narrator, however limited or objectionable. Scout, who is barely 6 at the start of the story, can use words in print that would make her instantly unsympathetic onstage. We also accept that a first-person portrait of a white child’s moral awakening to racism will primarily focus on how it affects the white people around her. But onstage, a work about racial injustice in which its principal black characters have no agency would be intolerable, so Mr. Sorkin makes a series of adjustments. With Scout’s point of view subordinated, we see Atticus through our own eyes instead of hers, making him the firm center of the story. This gives Mr. Sorkin room to expand the roles of the two main black characters Atticus deals with: his client Tom (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and his housekeeper, Calpurnia. In Tom’s case, the expansion is subtle, largely a matter of giving him the dignity of voicing his own predicament. “I was guilty as soon as I was accused,” he says — adapting a line that was Scout’s in the book. Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) gets a bigger remake. Bossy toward the children but deferential toward white adults in Lee’s account, she serves in the play as Atticus’s foil and needling conscience. Mocking his argument that Maycomb needs more time to overcome racism, she says, “How much time would Maycomb like?” Their tart but loving squabbles remind Scout of hers with Jem: They behave, she realizes, like brother and sister. That’s a startling and somewhat sentimentalized notion, but Ms. Jackson and Mr. Daniels, inerrant in their dryness, pull it off. Mr. Daniels’s unfussy mastery is useful throughout, especially in toning down some of Mr. Sorkin’s showier attempts to punch up the story. Only by underplaying Atticus’s “West Wing”-style summation in court — “We have to heal this wound or we will never stop bleeding!” — does Mr. Daniels avoid the appearance of speaking to television cameras from the future. But Mr. Sorkin wants a total hero and gets one. When Bob Ewell, the father of the woman supposedly raped, shows up on the Finches’ porch to make threats, Atticus does some kind of flip-and-fold maneuver on him, leaving him groaning in pain. We accept this not only because it’s satisfying but because Mr. Sorkin’s Ewell (Frederick Weller at his most feral) is not merely a violent drunk and a racist but a foaming-at-the-mouth monstrosity. For good measure, he’s now an anti-Semite, too, which on Broadway feels like pandering. Still, most of these adjustments succeed in themselves. And the material taken largely unchanged from Lee is, naturally, successful as well. The trial, presided over by the hilarious Dakin Matthews as Judge Taylor, is riveting, especially when Tom’s accuser, Mayella Ewell, takes the stand. As played by Erin Wilhelmi, holding herself like a bent pipe cleaner in a print dress, she is a living illustration of pathos transmuted into rage. It’s what happens in the gap between the old and new storytelling styles, as Mr. Sorkin tries to kill two mockingbirds with one stone, that gives me pause. His play, with its emphasis on the trial, is about justice, and is thus a bright-line tragedy. The novel is about something much murkier: accommodation. Atticus — who was based to some extent on Lee’s father — despises racism as a form of incivility but insists that any man, even Bob Ewell, can be understood if you walk in his shoes or crawl around in his skin. It’s hardly a comedy but is nevertheless hopeful to the extent that it clears some space for a future. These are two worthy ideas, if contradictory. In light of racial injustice, accommodation seems to be a white luxury; in light of accommodation, justice seems hopelessly naïve. Perhaps what this beautiful, elegiac version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” most movingl asks is: Can we ever have both?

Huge hit off-off-off-Broadway, now moving to Circle In The Square. Acclaimed ‘Oklahoma!’ Revival Is Coming to Broadway An intimately staged and darkly revisionist revival of “Oklahoma!”that enjoyed a critically acclaimed and sold-out Off Broadway run will transfer to Broadway this season. The production, which originated in 2015 at Bard College’s SummerScape festival and then was staged this fall at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, will begin previews on March 19 and open on April 7 at Circle in the Square, which is the only theater-in-the-round on Broadway. Set in Indian Territory in the early 20th century, just before Oklahoma became a state, the influential Rodgers and Hammerstein musical depicts a love triangle unfolding against the backdrop of a transforming nation. The new production, at once joyful and menacing, is directed by the experimental theater veteran Daniel Fish and features countrified arrangements of the classic score performed by a small onstage band. It features enough contemporary innovation, including a reconceived ending and video interludes, to make it a challenging commercial venture. But it was a hot ticket Off Broadway, and a stream of celebrities made their way to the Brooklyn waterfront to see what the fuss was about, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Frances McDormand, Isaac Mizrahi and Stephen Sondheim. “This is a revelatory time on Broadway for urgent, emotional, truthful offerings, and I think this show deserves to be part of that pack,” said Eva Price, the lead producer. “It is the most relevant revival I’ve seen since I’ve been going to the theater, with an intense timeliness in the way it’s been revised and reimagined.” he revival, which is scheduled to run until Labor Day, will be the sixth "Oklahoma!” on Broadway. The original production opened in 1943 and ran for five years; the most recent was in 2002. The new cast has not been finalized, but the St. Ann’s production starred Rebecca Naomi Jones as Laurey, Damon Daunno as Curly, Mary Testa as Aunt Eller and Patrick Vaill as Jud Fry. “Oklahoma!” is only the second musical revival announced for this season. The other is “Kiss Me, Kate,” which Roundabout Theater Company is opening at Studio 54 in March.

NYTimes reports: Faye Dunaway Is Slated to Play Katharine Hepburn on Broadway Faye Dunaway will play Katharine Hepburn in a one-person show planned for Broadway next summer, the show’s producer announced on Thursday. According to the announcement, Ms. Dunaway will star in a revised version of Matthew Lombardo’s “Tea at Five,” to be directed by John Tillinger. The play had its debut at Hartford Stage in 2002, starring Kate Mulgrew, and later moved Off Broadway. No theater or opening date was included in the plan, which was announced by Ben Feldman, whose other Broadway producing creditsinclude revivals of “M. Butterfly” and “Pippin.” Mr. Lombardo’s two Broadway productions — “High,” starring Kathleen Turner, and “Looped,” with Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead — had short-lived runs. More long-running was a legal dispute over “Who’s Holiday!,” his raunchy stage sequel to “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” by Dr. Seuss. Last year a judge ruled in Mr. Lombardo’s favor, arguing that his work was a parody and didn’t violate copyright, allowing an Off Broadway run. Ms. Dunaway, an Oscar winner for “Network,” last appeared on Broadway in “The Curse of the Aching Heart” in 1982. (The stage adaptation of “Network,” with Tatiana Maslany in the role made famous by Ms. Dunaway, is scheduled to open on Broadway Thursday night.)

Saw the Saturday matinee. A terrific play with stand out performances. At times gripping, sad at others. Both Tyne and Tim do a terrific job playing siblings caught in the middle of domestic tension (Tyne) and borderline depression and psychotic breakdown (Tim). 1 hour and 45 minutes, no intermission. Limited run, Ends Dec 22. Recommended!

NYPost was kinder... ‘The Cher Show’ will leave you feeling moonstruck If I could turn back time, I’d rewind to my night at “The Cher Show” for another happy high. Think I’m kidding? Snap out of it! Granted, the jukebox musical that opened on Broadway Monday night has some clumsy and dopey dialogue. The story — a 50-50 mix of narration (yawn) and not-quite-skin-deep dramatization — tracing the pop goddess’s personal and professional ups and downs won’t surprise those with even a passing knowledge of Cher. Or access to Wikipedia. Still, it’s thrilling watching the 72-year-old diva’s rags-to-riches-and-back-again life woven by wall-to-wall hits — “Bang Bang,” “The Beat Goes On,” “Half-Breed” and “Believe,” among them. Stephanie J. Block gives the season its first must-see star turn as one of the show’s three Chers. She nails the singer’s signature vibrato, twang and distinctive O’s in her vocals, along with her gutsy, glitzy, no-BS attitude. Teal Wicks and Micaela Diamond are very fine as, respectively, the singer’s middle and youngest alter egos. Even so, that three-women-playing-one-thing is getting old: It was done, though a lot less cleverly, in “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” where that singer’s three selves rise up and down from the stage like whack-a-moles. Between director Jason Moore’s flashy, fleshy, fluid staging and choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s high-energy and ridiculously sexy dances — wait till you see the steamy “Dark Lady” — the production is light on its feet, too. It’s also a looker, thanks to gleaming sets, dynamic lights and traffic-stopping costumes by Cher’s longtime collaborator Bob Mackie, played here by Michael Berresse. Since you can’t tell Cher’s story without the other men in — and out of — her life, we also see her personal Svengali, Sonny Bono (Jarrod Spector); second husband, Gregg Allman (Matthew Hydzik); and Rob Camilletti (Michael Campayno), aka “Bagel Boy.” All have a chance to shine, as does Emily Skinner as Georgia Holt, Cher’s tough-talking mom. The giant sparkly “C” — for Cher, duh! — hangs center stage. “The Cher Show” merits a bright, shiny, bedazzling “B.”

And the critics said; NYTimes: Review: In ‘The Cher Show,’ I Got You, Babe. And You. And You. There’s a fine line between tacky and spectacular. In creating costumes for Cher over the years — costumes that often tell the story of a shy woman emerging triumphant from a chrysalis — the designer Bob Mackie has kept on the right side of the line by making sure the level of craft supports the extravagance of the gesture. Sadly that’s not the case with “The Cher Show,” the maddening mishmash of a new musical that opened on Monday at the Neil Simon Theater. Except for the dozens of eye-popping outfits Mr. Mackie gorgeously recreates for the occasion, it’s all gesture, no craft: dramatically threadbare and surprisingly unrevealing. That’s too bad because, reading between the paillettes, you get the feeling that the 72-year-old singer-actress-survivor is a good egg: self-mocking, plain speaking and a hoot. Whether that’s enough to build a Broadway musical on is another question, one “The Cher Show,” striving to be agreeable, never gets close to answering. Rather, its energies are waylaid in trying to solve the puzzle of its own concept, of which weird vestiges remain after a tryout in Chicago. The plan was to explore Cher’s life in the form of a television variety show like the ones she starred in — with or without her first husband, Sonny Bono — between 1971 and 1977. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me, but there’s no way to know. In its current state, you can’t distinguish scenes meant to borrow comedy-hour elements from those meant to be taken at face value. Cher’s difficult marriage to the Nashville-born rock musician Gregg Allman is covered in a ludicrous saloon sketch interspersed with bad jokes. Cher to Allman: “Are you from Tennessee, ’cause you’re the only 10 I see.” And back story is handled with the subtlety of a backhoe. You can almost hear a groan on the laugh track when, later in the show, Cher asks Sonny’s ghost, “Are you really dead?” Complicating matters is the decision to confine such an unconventional figure as Cher in the straitjacket of the biographical jukebox musical — particularly the tripartite diva subgenus most recently botched by “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.” We need not rehearse the traps inherent in the genre, except to say that “The Cher Show” falls into all of them. It wastes so much time hammering its biographical bullet points and tunestack into place, despite logic or chronology, that it never seems to notice the unintelligible result. Anyway, unless you are Edward Albee, that three-ages-of-woman gimmick is subtractive, not additive. In giving us a kaleidoscope of Cher avatars called Babe, Lady and Star, the book writer Rick Elice, who also scripted “Jersey Boys,” creates three one-note characters from what might have been a single rich one. Babe, the “sweetheart” spirit of Cher in her teens and early 20s (Micaela Diamond), and Lady, the “smart-mouth” Cher of the next few years (Teal Wicks), are especially flat, as is usually true of innocents being crushed by forces they don’t yet understand. It’s only with Star — the “bad-ass,” mature Cher — that we get a character who rewards our attention. She also rewards the efforts of the fine singing actress Stephanie J. Block; once Ms. Block takes over it feels as if Star has swallowed Babe and Lady whole. Not only does she ace Cher’s vocal inflections and physical mannerisms, including the half-mast eyes, the arm akimbo and the dancing-from-the-hair-up hauteur, but she somehow integrates them into a portrait of a woman at odds with the very dream that sustained her. The dream, of course, was stardom, and “The Cher Show” does not seem to know what it thinks about that. Growing up poor, outcast and painfully shy, little Cherilyn Sarkisian nevertheless clung to her mother’s mantra: “The song will make you strong.” We see no evidence of this, especially during the years when most of her songs were written by Sonny, the annoying pipsqueak who also cut her out of the ownership of their mutual endeavors. The effort of husbands, directors and network executives to control and profit from Cher is a powerful and timely subject that the book keeps raising then dropping, or turning into jokes. (It’s perhaps worth noting that Cher is one of the show’s above-the-title producers.) Though Jarrod Spector gets Sonny’s Napoleon complex just right, he also gives him an adenoidal honk so exaggerated as to render him cute and harmless. Even so, the book hedges. “Are we making Sonny seem too horrible?” Babe asks. “’Cause I don’t wanna do that.” Why not? Must a musical intended for popular consumption defang the anger of its powerful subject and, in doing so, whitewash her most interesting problems? A scene in which Cher, who’s dyslexic, struggles to read an audition script for a Broadway play is well handled by Ms. Block, but omits the fact that the resulting production was an infamous flop. Nor is a word said about her initial difficulty accepting her son Chaz’s coming out as trans — a conflict that might have given some dramatic shape to the Star years. As depicted here, those years consist of little but fare At least the musical numbers are gleefully staged; the director Jason Moore and the choreographer Christopher Gattelli keep the super-buff ensemble whirling constantly on pop pastel sets under sparkly lights. The songs are beautifully arranged by Daryl Waters and sung better by the three lead women (and by Emily Skinner, in the thankless role of Cher’s mother) than Cher usually did. In any case, they will surely satisfy die-hard fans. For occasional admirers, though, they will more likely mystify, having only the most notional connection to the story. Cher’s 1989 comeback hit, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” is grabbed as the opening solely because of its title; her entire movie career is crammed into a version of “The Beat Goes On” with new lyrics like “There’s Mike Nichols standing at the door!” This is where the jukebox problem and the star-splitting problem converge with the craft problem. With too many character arcs and agendas to serve — three Chers, several careers, 35 songs or parts thereof — the show’s creators can serve none well. And yet despite its total ham-handedness, “The Cher Show” is not as unpleasant as slicker jukebox musicals that valorize thugs or bulldoze the audience. Yes, it argues way too hard for Cher’s significance — a significance it would be better off merely assuming and then complicating. And yes, it gets whiny just when you want it to get fierce. But it’s not cynical. It even has moments in which, like Cher herself, it’s strong enough to tease its own conventions. At one point, Star crows to Babe and Lady, “It’s so much easier to talk to myself when I’m all here.” The solid laugh Ms. Block gets from that line should have been a clue. However gorgeously attired, a biomusical divided against itself cannot stand.

Just announced, Torch Song to close. Tour to be announced. Shame, shame, shame. Broadway’s ‘Torch Song’ to Close in January “Torch Song,” the slimmed-down revival of Harvey Fierstein’s 1980s trilogy, is ending its run on Broadway on Jan. 6. The play, about a drag performer looking for love and family, is a classic of gay theater, and in 1988 was adapted into a film featuring Matthew Broderick and Anne Bancroft, as well as Mr. Fierstein. The revival, starring Michael Urie and featuring Mercedes Ruehl, was praised by critics, but failed to catch on with ticket buyers during a year rich with important gay plays (including starry revivals of “Angels in America” and “The Boys in the Band”). Last week it grossed $220,459, which is 34 percent of its potential, and about one-third of the theater’s seats went unsold. The early closing is a disappointment for the show’s producers and for Second Stage, the nonprofit that developed the revival and is now its landlord. Second Stage had initially hoped that the play would run for a year; by the time the commercial production began, it was being billed as a 20-week run. Instead, it will close after 13 weeks (26 previews and 77 regular performances). The play was capitalized for up to $3.4 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; it has not recouped that investment.

I saw the show on Monday night. I entertained some out-of-town relatives and it was a perfect NYC Holiday tradition. Foxy is correct. The show never gets old. The light effects encompass the entire auditorium lighting up the Art Deco gem of a theater. It's fun and entertaining and the Rockettes are terrific. My cousin's wife had a dream as a young girl studying dance to one day become a Rockette, so seeing them was one of her bucket list items. We had a great time. Highly recommended.