ProducersKenny Wax,Wendy Andy Barnes,George StilesandKevin McCollumannounced tonight that the new musical SIXbyToby Marlow andLucy Mosswill return to Chicago for a sixteen week limited engagement at Broadway In Chicago’s Broadway Playhouse starting July 8, 2020 through October 25, 2020. The hit musical, which had its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, concluded its extended run on Sunday, August 4, 2019 and heads to Broadway in February of 2020. Casting and ticket information will be announced at a later date.
We just met with the company and they told us that they’d do just about anything for love, but they won’t do that Find out where they draw the line below
Either end of the spectrum of life—childhood and old age—come to New York City stages this fall, and both will be courtesy of Small Mouth Sounds playwright Bess Wohl.
She’ll make her Broadway debut in December with the Leigh Silverman–helmed Grand Horizons, about a couple of 50 years whose family is sent reeling when one wants out, but first comes the child-centric Make Believe, currently running Off-Broadway at Second Stage, directed by Michael Greif.
“My daughter was about four when she said to me, ‘When you die, can I have your iPhone?’” Wohl says with a laugh. “Kids are so dark and complicated and observing so much more than we give them credit for. And at the same time have no idea what’s going on.”
That’s both a theme of the play and also an explanation of why Wohl wrote the first act specifically for child actors. Seeing a prolonged trend of older performers playing younger, Wohl consciously set out to write something that could only be brought to life by children; the second act sees those same characters, now adults, revisiting their childhood home.
“When [an audience] sees children onstage, they’re very primed to laugh at the kids because they are funny and adorable,” she says. “But I also think it’s important, once everyone gets that out of their system, to allow the children to have real stakes and real terror and real drama to them.”
In Make Believe, the Conlee children—ages five to 10—play house in their attic playroom in the aftermath of parental disappearance; decades later, they’re still struggling for answers.
“I think I was inspired by the children in A Doll’s House, how you see them run through a few times but you don’t really meet them,” Wohl says. “So I thought, years ago, ‘Maybe I should write a sequel to ADoll’s House.’ And then that became not a great idea for obvious reasons!”
Instead Wohl wrote a play about a mother leaving, told from the children’s point of view and set in the 1980s, the world of Wohl’s own childhood.
“In the play, that idea of kids being totally perceptive and totally lost is something I’m trying to explore in the adult characters,” she says. “What the play is attempting to explain is that nothing is solved when you grow up.”
Broadway is mourning the loss of Harold Prince, the 21-time Tony-winning producer and director who is credited with shaping the face of modern musical theatre. Luckily, the artist’s legacy lives on. As we remember this Broadway trailblazer, here are some documentaries and movies that immortalized the genius of Hal Prince.
Harold Prince
Harold Prince: The Director’s Life This documentary, directed by Lonny Price, offers a retrospective of Prince’s entire career, complete with archival clips from his productions and interviews with the artists with whom he worked. PBS will be re-airing the documentary on August 2 at 10 PM ET, and it will also be available to stream at PBS.org through August 14.
Gwen Verdon in Damn Yankees. The New York Public Library
The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees Prince made his name on Broadway—and won his first Tony Award—producing both of these musicals for the stage, and he was an associate producer on their film adaptations. Both films are near carbon copies of the works’ stage productions, with several cast members recreating their performances for the big screen.
Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles Among Prince’s final sole Broadway producing credits was Fiddler on the Roof, the Bock and Harnick musical that would go on to become one of the most beloved and produced musicals in the canon. This new documentary digs into the work’s origin story, with interviews from Prince, Harnick, Austin Pendleton, and more. The film will be in select theatres beginning August 23.
Original Cast Album: Company Stephen Sondheim and Prince worked together on an unprecedented string of six groundbreaking musicals in the 1970s and early 1980s, changing the face of musical theatre on Broadway in the process. This documentary from D.A. Pennebaker lets us be a fly on the wall at the recording session for the original cast album of Company, Sondheim and Prince’s first musical as a composer-lyricist and director team in 1970. The film is an invaluable peek at the beginning of a genre-defining collaboration.
Angela Lansbury and George Hearn in Sweeney ToddMartha Swope
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Almost none of Prince’s stage productions were filmed live for commercial release, but a fortunate exception is Sweeney Todd, Sondheim and Prince’s 1979 musical that blurred the lines between Broadway and opera and won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical. Captured on the production’s post-Broadway national tour, this film features several original Broadway cast members reprising their performances, including Angela Lansbury (who won a Tony Award for her Mrs. Lovett), Ken Jennings (Tobias), and Edmund Lyndeck (Judge Turpin).
Lonny Price, Ann Morrison, and Jim Walton Right photo, Martha Swope, left picture, Bruce David Klein
Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened… Merrily We Roll Along would end Prince and Sondheim’s partnership; after a disappointingly brief run of just 16 performances on Broadway, the two wouldn’t collaborate again until Prince directed Bounce (now Road Show) in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Though Merrily wasn’t a financial success, it remains a cult favorite among many theatre fans. This documentary, directed by one of the production’s original stars, Lonny Price, features interviews with Prince, Sondheim, and cast members.
