Josh Groban’s Movie Night continues today at 8pm with ‘AwakeLive’. Josh will be chatting with fans and adding his own commentary liveDirectly after Movie Night, the full audio from ‘Awake Live’ will be available on your favorite streaming service.
The original Broadway cast of Significant Other—Gideon Glick, Barbara Barrie, John Behlmann, Sas Goldberg, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Lindsay Mendez, and Luke Smith—will reunite at 8 PM ET May 14 to benefit The Actors Fund with a live reading of Joshua Harmon’s play. The stream will be free, but will not be made available after it ends. Viewers can watch on the Actors Fund YouTube Channel, and Broadway’s Best Shows’ YouTube and Facebook channels. Before tuning in, revisit Playbill’s 2017 interview with Harmon and director Trip Cullman.
Playwright Joshua Harmon adds a quick note just under the character descriptions in his script for Significant Other: “The scenes of this play should bleed into each other. Because love bleeds. Ugh.”
Significant Other is a play about love— discovering it, losing it, and the possibility of never finding it—and a gay, Jewish, late-20something named Jordan Berman, who is desperate to experience it. He tries, but love just seems to avoid him, while his three closest friends and their ideal partners, and get married. For Jordan, it’s all happening too fast.
Significant Other premiered Off-Broadway to critical acclaim in 2015, and has now transferred to the Booth Theatre. Reprising their roles are Gideon Glick as Jordan, Barbara Barrie, John Behlmann, Sas Goldberg, Lindsay Mendez, and Luke Smith. New to the company is Rebecca Naomi Jones.
“When I first read the play, I was reeling from a horrific breakup. I was in this place of acute despair and numbing anxiety. ‘What if I never find someone else and that was it?’” recalls director Trip Cullman. “I remember relating so intensely to the expressions of loneliness that Jordan has.”
Make no mistake: Significant Other is a comedy. But a lot of the laughs come at the expense of the characters’ happiness, none more so than Jordan’s.
Harmon says that he never intended for Significant Other to be a comedy. “I honestly thought that I’d written the saddest play,” he says. “I don’t write thinking about the comedy. I am genuinely always surprised when something winds up being funny.”
Cullman recognized the comedy upon first reading, and, knowing it would translate to the stage, focused instead on bringing out the anguish “throbbing underneath.”
“Throughout the play, there is a very melancholic vein that I wanted to make sure we didn’t ever lose sight of,” says the director. He relished the opportunity to expose Jordan’s vulnerability—something most people work hard to conceal. “I think it’s beautiful to be able to show truly private behavior onstage. To me that feels really intimate… You don’t really see that often.”
Harmon insists that Significant Other—with which both he and Cullman are making their Broadway debuts—is not based on his own life. In its initial stages, it was a series of scenes in which Jordan talks to his therapist. He also says the play is just as much about friendship as it is about romantic relationships. “It’s a play about a person that is desperate for love, but it’s also very much a play about friendship and loneliness,” says Harmon. “How does it feel to see your friends moving on in a different direction, and you’re not there yet?”
For Cullman, the friendships in Significant Other mirrored those in his real life—yet another reason he was so drawn to the play.
“For most of my life, girls and women have been my closest friends and I’d just never seen or read a play that so brilliantly captured the nuances and intricacies of friendship between a gay man and his female friends,” says Cullman. “A lot of people who saw the show said to me afterward that it was uncanny how it felt like their own story was being told onstage.”
And at the end, we may just feel a little less alone and a little better about this whole love thing. Then again, maybe we won’t.
1907 Writer-playwright Daphne du Maurier is born to actors Gerald and Muriel du Maurier. Daphne later adapts her novel Rebecca into a play.
1919 St. John Ervine‘s drama depicting life in Ireland, John Ferguson, is the Theatre Guild’s first success. Augustin Duncan stages and plays the lead. It runs 177 performances at Broadway’s Garrick Theatre.
1924 Composer Louis Hirsch dies in New York City. He composed music for three of the Ziegfeld Follies and The Honeymoon Express, among others. He was 37 years old.
1954 The Pajama Game opens on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. Jerry Ross and Richard Adler‘s score includes “Hey There,” “Hernando’s Hideaway,” and “Steam Heat.” George Abbott and Jerome Robbins direct, and Bob Fosse choreographs. It runs 1,063 performances, and wins five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
1964 English actor Diana Wynyard dies in London at age 58. She made her professional debut in London in 1925. In 1932, she debuted on Broadway in The Devil Passes. She was the first wife of film director Carol Reed.
1973 Christopher Plummer noses his way into the Palace Theatre via a musical version of Cyrano. The Michael J. Lewis–Anthony Burgess show wins Plummer a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.
1999 John Rando directs Erin Dilly and Clea Lewis in Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight. Three couples find themselves in relationship turmoil at 3 AM in Peter Ackerman‘s comedy at Off-Broadway’s Promenade Theatre.
2006 Joan Diener, the actor who lustily played Aldonza/Dulcinea in the original Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, dies of cancer at age 76.
2011 Pam Gems, who found stage plays in the lives of persons as diverse as French chanteuse Edith Piaf and English painter Stanley Spencer, dies at age 85. Her plays included Queen Christina, Piaf, Stanley, and Marlene.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Sir Arthur Sullivan 1842. Maxine Sullivan 1911. Bea Arthur 1922. Theodore Mann 1924. Zohra Lampert 1937. Harvey Keitel 1939. Zoe Wanamaker 1949. Hunter Parrish 1987.
Watch highlights from the 2011 Broadway revival of Godspell, starring Hunter Parrish as Jesus:
In the latest installment, the great Megan Hilty performs ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ in the 2012 production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Today May 11 in live streaming Join the BroadwayWorld Book club, JRB and Georgia Stitt visit Stars in the House and so much more
In an alternative timeline, the Metropolitan Opera would have concluded its 2019–2020 season at its Lincoln Center home May 9. Instead, the New York City institution shut its doors in March, portending an early end to its programming and furloughs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Its digital Nightly Met Stream series, however, continues, even past its scheduled season.
The ninth week of programming offers recent and classic broadcasts of Met productions, including two memorable title performances from the ’80s: Jessye Norman in Ariadne auf Naxos (opposite Kathleen Battle) and Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Laammermoor. More contemporary stagings on the lineup include Jonas Kaufmann in Werther and Michael Mayer’s Las Vegas-set Rigoletto.
Also continuing is the Met’s Free Student Streams series, with Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore available 5 PM Wednesday through 5 PM Friday. Additional related events will take place throughout the week, including an Educator Showcase via Zoom, virtual office hours via Facebook Live, and an artist chat pre-performance. For more information, visit MetOpera.org.
Each title will be available for free from the company’s homepage starting at 7:30 PM and will remain there for the following 23 hours. All of the performances are among the recordings cataloged in the Met’s On Demand subscription service.
See below for the full lineup for the week of May 11.
May 11: Massenet’s Werther
Conducted by Alain Altinoglu, starring Lisette Oropesa, Sophie Koch, Jonas Kaufmann, and David Bižić. (Originally broadcast March 15, 2014.)
May 12: Thomas Adès’s The Tempest
Conducted by Thomas Adès, starring Audrey Luna, Isabel Leonard, Alek Shrader, Alan Oke, and Simon Keenlyside. (Originally broadcast November 10, 2012.)
May 13: R. Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos
Conducted by James Levine, starring Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, and Tatiana Troyanos. (Originally broadcast March 12, 1988.)
May 14: Britten’s Peter Grimes
Conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles, starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Anthony Michaels-Moore. (Originally broadcast March 15, 2008.)
May 15: Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
Conducted by Richard Bonynge, starring Joan Sutherland, Alfredo Kraus, Pablo Elvira, and Paul Plishka. (Originally broadcast November 13, 1982.)
May 16: Verdi’s Rigoletto
Conducted by Michele Mariotti, starring Diana Damrau, Oksana Volkova, Piotr Beczała, and Željko Lučić. (Originally broadcast February 16, 2013.)
May 17: Verdi’s Nabucco
Conducted by James Levine, starring Liudmyla Monastyrska, Jamie Barton, Russell Thomas, Plácido Domingo, and Dmitry Belosselskiy. (Originally broadcast January 7, 2017.)
The theatre community comes together May 10 to celebrate Mothers Day with a star-studded virtual benefit. With proceeds going to Broadway Cares’ COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund, the one-time event features guest appearances and performances, as well as sketches from 15 Broadway shows including Moulin Rouge!, Ain’t Too Proud, Sing Street, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and Jagged Little Pill.
The lineup of performers includes Bernadette Peters, Alexis Michelle, Vanessa Williams, Annaleigh Ashford, Betsy Wolfe, LaChanze, Denée Benton, Liz Callaway, James Monroe Iglehart, Jenn Colella, Lilli and Eddie Cooper, Lea DeLaria, Victor Garber, Leah C. Gardiner, Ann Harada, Jennifer Holliday, Harvey Fierstein, Mandy Gonzalez, and Laura Benanti.
The casts from the following shows will also make appearances: Beetlejuice, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Chilld, Company, Chicago, Diana, Mean Girls, Girl from the North Country, Six, and Mrs. Doubtfire.
Produced by Megan Loughran and Stanley Bahorek, Broadway Does Mother’s Day streams at 3 PM ET at BroadwayDoesMothersDay.com.
The lineup also features Linda Benanti, Miguel Cervantes, Linda Cho, Robyn Hurder, Sheryl Kaller, Ryan Kasprzak, Kylie Kuioka, Michael McElroy, Bonnie Milligan, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Anisha Nagarajan, Manu Narayanm, Greg Anthony Rassen, Amanda Spooner, Lexi Underwood, Jason Williams, NaTasha Yvette Williams, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Jill Abramovitz, Kate Baldwin, Jenni Barber, Betty Buckley, Carolee Carmello, Victoria Clark, Chuck Cooper, Claybourne Elder, Eden Espinosa, Beanie Feldstein, Celia Rose Gooding, Molly Griggs, Judy Kaye, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Raymond J. Lee, Lesli Margherita, Ellyn Marie Marsh,
BC/EFA’s emergency fund provides urgent health care and immediate financial assistance to theatre and entertainment professionals impacted by the pandemic. Donations can be made via this link.
The writing team for Broadway Does Mother’s Day is made up of Comedy Central’s Hannah Friedman, Megan Loughran (F Theory), Jessica Poter (Modern Family), Jill Twiss (Last Week Tonight), Kate Wetherhead (Submissions Only), and Jed Resnick (Avenue Q).
The show is directed by Ashley Rodbro (Hamilton, Moulin Rouge!), features music supervision by Andy Einhorn (Hello, Dolly!), and is produced by Stephanie Cowan, Erica Rotstein, Heather Shields, and Paul Wontorek alongside general manager Kyle Bonder and in association with Jessica Ryan and Broadway Unlocked. Casting is by Jason Styres and Andrea Zee.
On this day in 2006, Disney’s Tarzan swung onto Broadway starring Josh Strickland and Jenn Gambatese
