The New Broadway Season

[foxy]

A savvy friend called The Bands Visit the new Hamilton.

 

www.thebandsvisitmusical.com

 

Anyone else have some buzz on some new "must see" shows?

[Cooper]

M. Butterfly staring Clive Owen opens Oct 7th

 

https://www.google.com/amp/people.com/theater/clive-owen-m-butterfly-broadway-exclusive/amp/

[foxy]

I saw the original production in 1988 with bd wong and John Lithgow. I had no idea about the plot.

 

Spoiler alert!!!

 

bd was totally convincing as a woman and when he took his clothes off was really hot.

I didn't think the movie was very good.

Looking forward to this new production even though I know where it's going.

[bostonman]

I think "the new Hamilton," in terms of box office response at least, is going to be Frozen, which will start previews in the dead of winter, 2/22/18. It's in tryouts now in Denver. Unless things don't go well there, I assume it's going to be "let it go" time on Broadway for quite a while, lol.

 

I have a former student in the ensemble. She has already done Kinky Boots in NYC and on tour, and this will be her 2nd big Broadway gig. I was joking with her that if the show does well, she'll have a job for life if she wants it.

[RyanDean]

Another buzzy show is the revival of the much-loved Once on This Island

http://www.onceonthisisland.com/

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

Another buzzy show is the revival of the much-loved Once on This Island

http://www.onceonthisisland.com/

 

I must confess that as much as I like to profess loving musicals, I know nothing of this show, so I am surprised by all of the giddiness I hear about the pending revival. What did I miss the first time around?

[Cooper]

And speaking of a revival we're all familiar with: "My Fair Lady" will begin previews on March 22, 2018:

 

MY FAIR LADY

Lincoln Center Theater will present the return of My Fair Lady to Broadway under the direction of Bartlett Sher. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Pygmalion-inspired musical will mark Sher’s third musical revival to play the Vivian Beaumont Theater, following South Pacific and The King and I. LCT will present the revival in association with Nederlander Presentations Inc. The production will feature designs by Sher’s frequent collaborators: costume designer Catherine Zuber, lighting designer Donald Holder, and set designer Michael Yeargan.

 

My Fair Lady will begin March 22, 2018 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, where it will open April 19.

[+ Cash4Trash]

Harry Potter And The Cursed Child opens Spring 2018. Probably will sell a few tickets for like the next 10 years.

https://www.harrypottertheplay.com/us/

[foxy]

King Kong the musical. Seriously ????

I'll believe this when I see it. Or don't. But maybe.

Premiered in Melbourne in 2013 so I guess it's been cooking for a while.

It wasn't Beauty that killed the beast, it was the critics.

Maybe....

 

 

Discount seats will be available I suspect. Although on further investigation it seems it's being called a comedy (?) and some overseas reviews have been somewhat positive.

[Cooper]

Seems the new Broadway season has children & family shows in mind. Here's another musical aimed to entertain a younger audience. Previews start Nov. 6, 2017

 

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

The new musical based on the hit Nickelodeon cartoon series will arrive in New York following a spring 2016 world-premiere engagement in Chicago (then titled The SpongeBob Musical). Several members of the Chicago cast will transfer with the production, including newcomer Ethan Slater, who will make his Broadway debut in the title role, Lilli Cooper as Sandy Cheeks, Danny Skinner as Patrick, and Gavin Lee as Squidward. In the musical, SpongeBob and the denizens of Bikini Bottom must rally to save their undersea world from total annihilation. The score features original songs from a mix of classic and contemporary artists, including Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, and the late David Bowie.

 

SpongeBob Squarepants will begin Broadway previews November 6 at the Palace Theatre, with an official opening night set for December 4.

[bostonman]

King Kong the musical. Seriously ????

I'll believe this when I see it. Or don't. But maybe.

Premiered in Melbourne in 2013 so I guess it's been cooking for a while.

It wasn't Beauty that killed the beast, it was the critics.

Maybe....

 

 

Discount seats will be available I suspect. Although on further investigation it seems it's being called a comedy (?) and some overseas reviews have been somewhat positive.

 

From what I know, the material itself (music, lyrics, book) was extremely empty calorie - the plot wasn't clear, the songs didn't do much to advance the story, etc. Sounds like the show was written to be spectacle more than theatre. But we'll see what (hopefully) they've worked on in the last few years to improve it...

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

King Kong should have died in Australia... It was painful to watch. Equally as painful was Love Never Dies. Thank god that's not going to clog up Broadway anytime soon.

 

Once On This Island is an early composition from Ahrens & Flaherty: Their music and lyrics are incredible. There's an initial simplicity to the songs, but if you've done the show or have a copy of the vocal book, it's incredibly layered music. 'Forever Yours' is (imo) one of the most beautiful duets in musical theater. It's traditionally done with an all-black cast and the storyline reflects that, class struggle and the desire for a better life. It's not the typical glitzy Broadway musical, but an intimate, emotionally stripped-down show. That they've booked Circle in the Square for this production makes me happy... It's the perfect space.

 

Sher doing My Fair Lady is exciting. His previous collabs with LCT have been perfection. I still marvel at how brilliant The King and I was. The names that have been thrown around for Higgins and Eliza are interesting.

 

I'm seeing Frozen next week in Denver, but based on the chatter so far, Disney has a lot of work to do. It's even been suggested that they will do what they did with Aida: Close it, re-tool and send out a 2.0 version for out of town previews. I've only seen bootlegs of the production, but it's never a good sign when the theme park show version of the film is more dazzling than the going-to Broadway version.

[bostonman]

Once On This Island is an early composition from Ahrens & Flaherty: Their music and lyrics are incredible. There's an initial simplicity to the songs, but if you've done the show or have a copy of the vocal book, it's incredibly layered music. 'Forever Yours' is (imo) one of the most beautiful duets in musical theater. It's traditionally done with an all-black cast and the storyline reflects that, class struggle and the desire for a better life. It's not the typical glitzy Broadway musical, but an intimate, emotionally stripped-down show. That they've booked Circle in the Square for this production makes me happy... It's the perfect space.

 

Absolutely agreed. Beautiful score, beautiful, bittersweet story. The music is wonderfully inflected with a Caribbean feel. This was Aherns and Flaherty's 2nd show, and they wouldn't really have a major hit until their 4th show, Ragtime, but those of us first hearing Once On This Island back in 1990 knew that this was a team to pay attention to. (I wasn't until after that that I got to hear their first show, Lucky Stiff, which is a truly wonderful and hysterical piece.) Their Anastasia, based on the film for which they also wrote the score, is running now.

[edjames]

I have a ticket for September, but Prince Of Broadway opens next week and friends who have seen it liked it very much. It's been up on TDF several times.

http://princeofbway.com

 

SAMUEL J FRIEDMAN THEATRE

Prince of Broadway

 

http://d2npu017ljjude.cloudfront.net/images/poster-178275/w230/222222/89867-9.jpeg

 

‘Prince of Broadway’: a window into when entertainment aimed at adults

By John Podhoretz

August 23, 2017 | 7:10pm

Thursday evening, a native New Yorker named Harold Prince will attend the opening night of his 46th Broadway show — a mere 63 years after the debut of his maiden effort as a producer, “The Pajama Game.” Prince is the co-director of “Prince of Broadway,” a plotless compendium of numbers chosen from the 46 productions he has mounted over the course of an astounding career spanning seven decades.

 

It’s a Broadway’s-greatest-hits album come to life, from “Show Boat” to “West Side Story” to “Fiddler on the Roof” to “Cabaret” to “Company” to “Follies” to “Sweeney Todd” to “Evita” to “Phantom of the Opera,” with wildly talented performers who swing for the fences with every song and dance.

 

But “Prince of Broadway” is also something more. It’s a plangent reminder of a time when New York was the cultural center of the country in which Broadway functioned as the nucleus — the source of glamor and style and the wellspring of the talent that would turn American pop culture into a world-changing force.

 

Most great Hollywood actors from the 1930s to the 1980s rose from Broadway. Practically every memorable tune from the American songbook was written by someone who had made his or her bones writing for the theater. Fashions were set by Broadway costuming.

 

What was key about Broadway was the role it played in establishing mainstream cultural taste — not too high to be forbiddingly avant-garde but in no way low, cheap or disreputable.

 

Prince did not write or choreograph any of the material on display in “Prince of Broadway.” Some of the shows highlighted are ones he produced, meaning that he raised the money and served as the production’s CEO. Some are from shows he directed, meaning that he had creative control.

 

What this means is “Prince of Broadway” is a record of Prince’s tastes — and his determination to present productions of the highest quality. His best shows were not only marked by the brilliance of their creative material (as in his long and fruitful collaboration with Stephen Sondheim) but by the jaw-dropping quality of the legendary sets for “Company” and “Sweeney Todd” and the no-cost-spared showmanship of “Follies” and “Phantom.”

 

The brilliance on display in “Prince of Broadway” made it clear to me how we no longer look to the top talent in our cultural life for examples of taste. We look to them for thrills and excitement, to get our pulses racing and grab our eyeballs, which is an entirely different thing.

 

“Prince of Broadway” also recalls a sadly long-gone era when the most talented people in entertainment were dedicated to the making of popular art of appeal not to teenage boys but to grown men and women. Broadway was entertainment for adults. Kids could attend, but the fare was not aimed at them.

 

During the first act, a narrator who plays Prince reports on the reception of his 1965 musical “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman!” The narrator says the show got the best reviews of Prince’s career. Prince called the box office the morning after opening night to find that not a single ticket had been sold.

 

Why did it close after just 129 performances? Prince doesn’t say, but I will: Grown-up ticket buyers in 1965 didn’t want to see a musical about a comic-book character, even if it was great. Because they were grown-ups.

 

Now flash forward 40 years. If the notoriously injurious “Spider-Man” musical had even been minimally watchable, it would today be rivaling “Wicked” for ticket sales. And the basis of the extraordinary success of “Wicked” — which will likely become the highest-grossing theatrical presentation in history over the next decade — is not that it wows adult audiences but that it is catnip for girls under the age of 18.

 

The thing about good entertainment for adults is that it does not exclude the young — rather, it can show the young that there are wonders into which they can grow and that will help them to grow. “Prince of Broadway” doesn’t have a plot, but it has a story — a story about a go-getting striver whose relentless striving provided the rest of us with glories untold.

 

It is, like the best of America, aspirational.

 

 

[hornytwells]

King Kong should have died in Australia... It was painful to watch. Equally as painful was Love Never Dies. Thank god that's not going to clog up Broadway anytime soon.

 

Once On This Island is an early composition from Ahrens & Flaherty: Their music and lyrics are incredible. There's an initial simplicity to the songs, but if you've done the show or have a copy of the vocal book, it's incredibly layered music. 'Forever Yours' is (imo) one of the most beautiful duets in musical theater. It's traditionally done with an all-black cast and the storyline reflects that, class struggle and the desire for a better life. It's not the typical glitzy Broadway musical, but an intimate, emotionally stripped-down show. That they've booked Circle in the Square for this production makes me happy... It's the perfect space.

 

Sher doing My Fair Lady is exciting. His previous collabs with LCT have been perfection. I still marvel at how brilliant The King and I was. The names that have been thrown around for Higgins and Eliza are interesting.

 

I'm seeing Frozen next week in Denver, but based on the chatter so far, Disney has a lot of work to do. It's even been suggested that they will do what they did with Aida: Close it, re-tool and send out a 2.0 version for out of town previews. I've only seen bootlegs of the production, but it's never a good sign when the theme park show version of the film is more dazzling than the going-to Broadway version.

Don't speak too soon!! Love never Dies (or Paint never Dries as it was not entirely affectionately named when it opened in London) is about to start touring US with the intention of bringing it to Broadway

My initial excitement about My Fair Lady has been tempered by the news that lauren Ambrose will play Eliza-and based on what I have heard of her singing before I think its a terrible vocal mismatch. Colin firth and Raph Fiennes both turned down Higgins.....not sure who is eventually going to be cast......

[bostonman]

The main caveat with Prince Of Broadway seems to be that one would expect something that shows Prince's work more specifically - a la Fosse or Jerome Robbins' Broadway. But this is essentially just a revue of songs from the shows he's done - and not the original stagings/arrangements/etc. So it's a much looser tribute to Prince than one might expect. However, I've heard good things about the performers, particularly Tony Yazbeck and Bryonha Marie Parham.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I have a ticket for September, but Prince Of Broadway opens next week and friends who have seen it liked it very much. It's been up on TDF several times.

 

 

It's terrible! Oddly paced and songs going to performers without the gravitas were my two main issues with it.

 

When they recast Ramin Karimloo and Nancy Opel (moving from Japan to Broadway), they took a big chunk of show-appropriate talent out of the show. Yazbeck is the only performer in the whole shindig- with apologies to the incredible Karen Ziemba- who feels like they fit the songs they're performing.

 

I'm much more interested in the proposed 2012 cast that never happened (money, naturally):

 

Sebastian Arcelus

Sierra Boggess

Daniel Breaker

Josh Grisetti

Shuler Hensley

Richard Kind

Amanda Kloots-Larsen

LaChanze

Linda Lavin

Caroline O'Connor

David Pittu

Emily Skinner

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

The main caveat with Prince Of Broadway seems to be that one would expect something that shows Prince's work more specifically - a la Fosse or Jerome Robbins' Broadway. But this is essentially just a revue of songs from the shows he's done - and not the original stagings/arrangements/etc. So it's a much looser tribute to Prince than one might expect. However, I've heard good things about the performers, particularly Tony Yazbeck and Bryonha Marie Parham.

 

Fosse, orignal cast, was superb. They were being watched like hawks by Reinking, so it felt fresh, sharp and sexy. By the time it was filmed for home video release, the counts were off, dancers were marking a lot and the whole show looked like something Bob would have screamed at. It was a bummer.

 

I never saw JR's Broadway, but would have loved to. I'm friendly with Debbie Gravitte and hearing her sing 'Mr. Monotony' today is still pretty awesome. Her stories about Robbins are really fascinating.

[foxy]

Years ago I saw a revival of West Side Story at Lincoln Center with a friend. During intermission we saw Hal Prince standing by himself looking really, really pissed off. I wondered to my friend why he looked so angry. My friend said "because no one recognizes him".

[Cooper]

Bruce Springsteen will be making his debut on Broadway this Autumn in his show, "Springsteen on Broadway".

 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY" SOLO RUN AT NEW YORK’S WALTER KERR THEATRE SET FOR FALL 2017

Bruce Springsteen will make his Broadway debut this fall with “Springsteen on Broadway,” a solo show at the Walter Kerr Theatre (219 West 48th Street). Performances for "Springsteen on Broadway" begin Tuesday, October 3, with an official opening on Thursday, October 12. Springsteen will perform five shows a week through November 26th.

 

Tickets for “Springsteen on Broadway” will go on sale August 30.

[foxy]

I like Bruce Springsteen and would like to see the show. So I found this. Take deep breath and read. Sounds like a fun challenge.

 

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2017/08/springsteen_on_broadway_2017_tickets_verified_fan.html

[RyanDean]

I'm going to try to get Springsteen tickets. We shall see.

[+ WilliamM]

I have seen Springsteen solo in large arenas (2005) and with the E Street Band in small college gyms (1974). He is wonderful in any venue. So if people can not see him on Broadway, there will be many other chances.

[Cooper]

Denzel Washington will star on Broadway in The Iceman Cometh.

Denzel Washington will return to Broadway this spring in a new production of Eugene O'Neill's drama The Iceman Cometh.

 

George C. Wolfe will direct the play at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, with previews beginning March 22, 2018. Opening night is set for April 26. Additional information is still to be announced.

 

The play is set at Harry Hope's saloon, where drunks and dreamers are celebrating the arrival of Hickey, whose presence always ensures a good time. When Hickey finally arrives with a new outlook on life, his attempts to help his old friends lead to a devastating series of events.

[edjames]

Sept 26-Nov 19

Torch Song starring Michael Urie @ Second Stage.

 

TORCH SONG

 

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2017 7:30PM

THE TONY KISER THEATER

By Harvey Fierstein

Directed by Moisés Kaufman

With Mercedes Ruehl & Michael Urie

 

It’s 1979 in New York City and Arnold Beckoff is on a quest for love, purpose and family. He’s fierce in drag and fearless in crisis, and he won’t stop until he achieves the life he desires as a doting husband and a Jewish mother. Now, Arnold is back…and he’s here to sing you a torch song. The Tony Award®-winning play that forever changed the trajectory of Broadway returns for a new generation.