Kansas City Repertory Theatre closes its mainstage season with Sweeney Todd, which officially opens March 30 for a run through April 15.
Tally Sessions (Broadway’s War Paint, Falsettos) stars in the title role opposite Ellen Harvey (Broadway’s The Phantom of the Opera, Present Laughter) as Mrs. Lovett.
KC Rep Artistic Director Eric Rosen directs the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical that also features Chris McCarrell (The Lightning Thief) as Anthony, Emily Shackelford (Lucky Duck) as Johanna, Tim Scott as Pirelli, Christian Whelan as Judge Turpin, and Jordan Haas as Tobias. The ensemble includes Lauren Braton, Joseph Carr, Colleen Grate, Melinda MacDonald, Bradley Thomas, and John-Michael Zuerlein.
The creative team includes music director Anthony Edwards, scenic designer Jack Magaw, costume designer Linda Roethke, lighting designer Amanda Zieve, and sound designer Bart Basbender.
Theatre titans Audra McDonald and Imelda Staunton are among the artists named 2018 honorary members of the Royal Academy of Music.
Both McDonald and Staunton were also recently nominated for Olivier Awards; McDonald is nominated for her turn in the title role of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (a performance that won McDonald her sixth Tony Award in 2014), while four-time Olivier winner Staunton is nominated for her performances in both Follies and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Hugh Laurie, known for his eight-year run playing the title role on TV’s House, was also named an honorary member of the Academy.
Stephen Ashfield, currently Elder McKinley in Broadway’s The Book of Mormon, was named a Fellow of the Academy, a designation reserved for former Academy students who have gone on to distinguish themselves within their profession. Ashfield came to Broadway after playing the same role in Book of Mormon‘s London production, having previously appeared in West End productions of Taboo, Fame, Legally Blonde, and Jersey Boys.
This year’s newly-inducted Associates of the Royal Academy of Music—also for former Academy students—included West End veterans Christine Allado (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds in Hamilton), Bob Broad (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie), Kate Marlais (resident composer to producer Cameron Mackintosh), Laura Tebbutt (Fruma Sarah in a recent Fiddler on the Roof revival), and Alex Young (Follies at The National Theatre).
The Royal Academy of Music, the oldest conservatory in the U.K., publishes an annual list of honorees that include both alumni and people who are not former students. Levels of honor for alumni include Fellow and Associate, while distinguished musicians who are not former students of the Academy can be named Honorary Members, Honorary Associates, and Honorary Fellows. The Academy also can nominate honorees for an Honorary Doctorate degree from the University of London. Past recipients of this top honor include Pierre Boulez, Elton John, and Stephen Sondheim.
For a complete list of this year’s honorees, click here.
NBC has revealed a new promo for its Easter Sunday broadcast of Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, which airs from Brooklyn April 1 at 8 PM ET.
Oscar and Grammy winner John Legend will star as Jesus with Waitress’ Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene, Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas, Alice Cooper as King Herod, Ben Daniels as Pontius Pilate, Norm Lewis as Caiaphas, Jason Tam as Peter, Jin Ha as Annas, and Erik Gronwall as Simon Zealotes.
In the video above, Legend gives Superstar fans a sneak peek of his version of “Gethsemane” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice score.
The David Leveaux-helmed concert will be staged in front of an audience at Williamsburg’s Marcy Armory. Alex Rudzinski, who earned an Emmy for his work on Fox’s Grease and an additional nod for NBC’s Hairspray, returns to the live musical format as television director.
Lloyd Webber and Rice executive produce the live event along with Marc Platt, Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, Legend, Mike Jackson, Ty Stiklorius, and television director Alex Rudzinski.
Jesus Christ Superstar premiered on Broadway in 1971 and was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Original Score for Lloyd Webber and Rice. The show was subsequently revived in 1977, 2000, and 2012.
Look Back at the Original Broadway Production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway
The two-act musical is the first Frozen adaptation to expand upon the original 2013 animated hit. The film’s co-director and screenwriter Jennifer Lee returned to pen the book, while the Oscar-winning, husband-and-wife songwriting team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez have written a dozen new songs to join the movie’s familiar numbers.
Flip through photos of the opening night below:
Go Inside the Opening Night for Frozen on Broadway
Frozen features choreography by Rob Ashford, sets and costumes by Christopher Oram, lighting design by Natasha Katz, sound design by Peter Hylenski, video design by Finn Ross, puppet design by Micahel Curry, hair design by David Brian Brown, makeup by Anne Ford-Coates, and special effects by Jeremy Chernick.
In the fourth release of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s #Hamiltondrop series, the Hamilton creator offered fans a blend of two of the most recent Tony-winning Best Musicals.
The mash-up arrangement of Hamilton’s “Story of Tonight” and Dear Evan Hansen’s “You Will Be Found” drops at midnight (local time) March 19. The recording features vocals by both Miranda and fellow Tony winner Ben Platt, who originated the title role in Dear Evan Hansen. Listen to their duet “Found Tonight” via Spotify below.
The #Hamildrop series offers new Hamilton-inspired content every month through December. Last month, Weird Al Yankovic released “The Hamilton Polka” March 2 (though Miranda called it a “February 30” release, making “Found Tonight” the official March drop).
The monthly project launched in December with the Decemberists musicalizing cut lyrics from the 2016 Tony-winning Best Musical, which would have been sung by a Benjamin Franklin character.
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s epic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar is the fifth in line to receive the live television musical event treatment, but this latest mounting by NBC presents a fresh approach to a form that’s only a few years old.
“Musically, we’re going to stick pretty close to the original … but visually we want to update it and refresh it,” says star John Legend in the video above. “The set design and costume design are all meant to connect the present to the past a little more.”
Unlike The Sounds of Music Live’s Los Angeles soundstage or Grease Live’s Hollywood lot, Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert will be staged in Brooklyn’s Marcy Armory as a rock concert staging—as the title implies.
While Broadway fans know Superstar as a fully staged musical, the concert staging actually returns to the original sensibility of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s work and original 1970 concept album. (In fact, after the album dropped, concert stagings of the musical popped up across the U.S. prior to its bow as a Broadway musical in 1971.)
So who do you get to star in a rock concert? Rock stars, of course.
Alice Cooper, Brandon Victor Dixon, Sara Bareilles, and John Legend Peter Kramer/NBC
Alice Cooper is King Herrod. Ten-time Grammy winner (and 28-time nominee) John Legend and six-time Grammy nominee Sara Bareilles headline the performance as Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene, respectively. While best known as singer-songwriters, both artists have embraced their theatre roots as of late—Bareilles writing and starring in Waitress on Broadway, Legend producing Jitney, and both writing songs for SpongeBob SquarePants The Broadway Musical—and now dive head first to leading the massive undertaking.
“The scale of the show is really big and fairly immersive,” says two-time Tony nominee Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Judas in this rendition and brings a bit of the seasoned Broadway outlook to the cast. “That [audience] energy affects the performances very dynamically, as well.”
Indeed, Superstar feels like the most ambitious of the live events to date. While Grease Live first introduced the concept of a live audience, Superstar ups the ante and will host a crowd of 1,500. On top of that, it’s the first of these live musicals to include the live band onstage—32 musicians, to be exact. All of the production elements match the arena scale. But that’s Bareilles’ comfort zone.
“Being a concert performer, the audience is why you showed up,” she tells Playbill. “It will be nice to actually help distrct from the idea that there are cameras at all [and] just play to the crowd and hopefully it will transcend.”
Director David Leveaux and television director Alex Rudzinski are working hard to ensure that is the case. Leveaux wants to create an arresting experience—in person and at home: “Sunday night you’ll be able to sit together and experience the thrill of John Legend, Sara Bareilles, and Alice Cooper and these magnificent sets and costumes and the bells and whistles of all the pyrotechnics.”
Look Back at the Original Broadway Production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway
The Broadway production of Escape to Margaritaville, featuring the songs of Jimmy Buffett, officially opened at the Marquis Theatre March 15. The open-ended New York engagement follows a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse and a subsequent tour that played Houston, New Orleans, and Chicago.
Featuring a book by Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley, Escape to Margaritaville uses Buffett’s familiar catalog and new songs to tell the story of a relaxed island paradise and its inhabitants—including a carefree bartender and a visiting, career-minded scientist who challenges his worldview.
Flip through photos of the opening night below:
Check Out the Opening Night For Jimmy Buffett Musical Escape to Margaritaville on Broadway
Leading the cast is Paul Alexander Nolan as island bartender-singer Tully. He reprises his role from the tour alongside fellow principal cast members Alison Luff as Rachel, Lisa Howard as Tammy, Eric Petersen as Brick, Rema Webb as Marley, Don Sparks as J.D., and Andre Ward as Jamal.
Escape to Margaritaville features choreography by Kelly Devine, sets by Walt Spangler, costumes by Paul Tazewell, lighting design by Howell Binkley, sound design by Brian Ronan, and orchestrations by Michael Utley.
The Broadway production of Escape to Margaritaville, featuring the songs of Jimmy Buffett, officially opens at the Marquis Theatre March 15. The open-ended New York engagement follows a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse and a subsequent tour that played Houston, New Orleans, and Chicago.
Jimmy Buffett and Paul Alexander Nolan Marc J. Franklin
Feature a book by Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley, Escape to Margaritaville uses Buffett’s familiar catalog and new songs to tell the story of a relaxed island paradise and its inhabitants—including a carefree bartender and a visiting, career-minded scientist who challenges his worldview.
Leading the cast is Paul Alexander Nolan as island bartender-singer Tully. He reprises his role from the tour alongside fellow principal cast members Alison Luff as Rachel, Lisa Howard as Tammy, Eric Petersen as Brick, Rema Webb as Marley, Don Sparks as J.D., and Andre Ward as Jamal.
Follow Playbill on Facebook to watch the cast and creative team greet Playbill live from the opening-night celebration, beginning at approximately 10 PM.
Rounding out the company are Matt Allen, Tessa Alves, Sara Andreas, Tiffany Adeline Cole, Marjorie Failoni, Samantha Farrow, Steven Good, Angela Grovey, Albert Guerzon, Keely Hutton, Justin Keats, Mike Millan, Justin Mortelliti, Ryann Redmond, Jennifer Rias, Julius Anthony Rubio, Nick Sanchez, Ian Michael Stuart, and Brett Thiele.
The production, directed by Tony winner Christopher Ashley, offers a digital lottery and in-person general rush. Winners of the Broadway Direct-run lottery will have one hour to pay for up to two tickets (priced at $40 each), which will be available for pickup as the house opens. The general rush is available for day-of seats, subject to availability when the box office opens.
The Original Broadway Cast Recording, released February 16 (coinciding with the first preview), is now available for both physical and digital purchase.
Escape to Margaritaville features choreography by Kelly Devine, sets by Walt Spangler, costumes by Paul Tazewell, lighting design by Howell Binkley, sound design by Brian Ronan, and orchestrations by Michael Utley.
