She’s going to the ball Check out this new clip from the upcoming Cinderella movie musical starring Camila Cabello andBilly Porterbelow. The film was originally scheduled to hit theaters in June of 2021. It will now be released on September 3rd on Amazon Prime Video.
The Broadway company of Chicago, which resumes performances at the Ambassador Theatre September 14, strutted their stuff on the August 25 broadcast of ABC’s Good Morning America.
Bianca Marroquín led the company in the John Kander and Fred Ebb classic “All That Jazz” live in Times Square. Watch the performance below.
As previously announced, when performances resume on Broadway, the cast will be led by Ana Villafañe (On Your Feet!) as Roxie Hart, Marroquín (a longtime Roxie in the revival) as Velma Kelly, and Tony winner Lillias White (The Life, How to Succeed…) as Matron Mama Morton with Raymond Bokhour as Amos Hart and Ryan Lowe as Mary Sunshine.
Ensemble members include David Bushman, Jennifer Dunne, Jessica Ernest, Jeff Gorti, Arian Keddell, Mary Claire King, Barrett Martin, Sharon Moore, Drew Nellessen, Celina Nightengale, Brian O’Brien, Denny Paschall, Angel Reda, Jermaine R. Rembert, Michael Scirrotto, Christine C. Smith, and Brian Spitulnik.
The revival of Chicago began life as one of the three annual Encores! presentations offered by City Center. The musical opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in November 1996, where it remained through February 1997. The musical transferred to the Shubert Theatre, and played that house through January 26, 2003. The revival reopened at the Ambassador Theatre January 29 that year.
It is now the second-longest running show in Broadway history (after The Phantom of the Opera).
READ: How the Chicago Costumes Have Evolved Over 25 Years
With a book by the late Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Ebb, Chicago features direction by Walter Bobbie, choreography by the late Ann Reinking, set design by John Lee Beatty, costume design by William Ivey Long, lighting design Ken Billington, and sound design by Scott Lehrer.
The current production, produced by Barry and Fran Weissler, won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical in 1997 as well as awards for actors Bebe Neuwirth and James Naughton, director Bobbie, lighting designer Billington, and Reinking. The original production was directed and choreographed by the late Bob Fosse.
READ: Broadway Will Require COVID Vaccines for Audiences
Joining the Broadway cast for a limited engagement will beTony Award nominee Tom Hewitt. Hewitt will play the role of Hades until originalBroadway cast member and Tony Award nominee Patrick Page, who is in productionfor a new film project, returns on Tuesday, November 2.
1986 A revival of The Royal Shakespeare Company‘s acclaimed eight-and-a-half-hour production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby opens on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre, once again directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird.
1989 Willard White becomes the first Black actor to play Othello for the Royal Shakespeare Company when it opens at The Other Place. A tin shed in Stratford, the venue served as one of the group’s most intimate and experimental venues. Joining White on stage was Ian McKellen as an especially dastardly Iago.
2001 Rex Smith and Rachel York begin their stint at Los Angeles’ Shubert Theatre in an extended-stay production of Kiss Me, Kate, based on the 1999 Tony-winning revival.
2008 The Phantom of the Opera puts down his mask for four performances at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway while technicians invade his lair and upgrade the sound system. Producers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh take the unusual step of temporarily closing down the longest-running show in Broadway history “to bring the production’s sound design technology into the 21st century.”
2016 The Flea presents Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women, directed by Anne Cecelia Haney.
2017 Prince of Broadway, a musical retrospective that charts the life and legendary career of director-producer Harold Prince, opens on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Prince and Susan Stroman co-direct a cast that includes Chuck Cooper, Emily Skinner, Tony Yazbeck, and Karen Ziemba. The production features biographical material and songs from many of the shows that earned Prince a record 21 Tony Awards, including The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Evita, Sweeney Todd, and The Phantom of the Opera.
2018 The New York premiere of Mark Chrisler’s drama Worse Than Tigers begins at the New Ohio Theatre. The production, directed by Emmy nominee Jaclyn Biskup, stars Braeson Herold and Shannon Marie Sullivan.
2019 Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me plays its final performance on Broadway. The Tony-nominated production had extended its run at the Hayes twice. Schreck received Tony nods for Best Play and Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. The play was also a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the 2019 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Today’s Birthdays: Max Beerbohm (1872–1956), Frank Craven (1881–1945), Nedda Harrigan Logan (1899–1989), Durward Kirby (1912–2000), Stephen Fry (b. 1957), Martine Allard (b. 1970), Jessica Boevers (b. 1972), Taylor Mac (b. 1973), Amy Spanger (b. 1971).
Announced in the show’s lead roles were Ana Villafae as Roxie Hart, Bianca Marroqun as Velma Kelly, and Tony Award-winner Lillias White as Matron ‘Mama’ Morton.
Arianna Rosario is taking over our Instagram today, August 22 to take our followers behind the scenes at The Muny’s production of On Your Feet, the fourth show of the theatre’s 103rd season.
1922 Theoni V. Aldredge, one of Broadway’s foremost costume designers of the late 20th century, is born in Greece. Her dozens of Broadway projects include A Chorus Line, Annie, Ballroom, 42nd Street, Barnum, Dreamgirls, and La Cage aux Folles.
1983 Cicely Tyson stars with Peter Gallagher as a tutor in rural Wales in a revival of Emlyn Williams‘ The Corn Is Green at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
1989 A.R. Gurney‘s Love Letters opens at the Promenade Theatre Off-Broadway. The play is written as a series of love letters between one Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and one Melissa Gardner from the time of their childhood up to her death. Due to the simplicity in the staging of the piece (two actors sitting at tables reading letters back and forth), the cast changes from one set of stars to another, week by week. This first week, John Rubinstein is Andrew and Stockard Channing is Melissa. Other pairings during the initial run are George Segal and Dana Ivey, Treat Williams and Kate Nelligan, Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern, and Jason Robards and Elaine Stritch. The production transfers to Broadway’s Edison Theatre on October 31, 1989, with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards Jr. starring in the 96-performance run.
1989 A British Military Entertainment troupe circa the late 1940s parks Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre Company for a 64-performance run of Privates on Parade. The cast includes Jim Dale and Donna Murphy.
1996 Al Pacino directs himself in Eugene O’Neill‘s Hughie at the Circle in the Square Theatre. The production runs for 56 sold-out performances.
2011 Simon Russell Beale returns to the New York stage in the U.S. premiere of Simon Stephens‘ Bluebird, in which he plays a London cabbie listening to the woes of his eclectic passengers. Presented by the Atlantic Theater Company at its intimate Atlantic Stage 2, the cast also includes Michael Countryman, Charlotte Parry, John Sharian, Kate Blumberg, Mary McCann, Tobias Segal, and Todd Weeks.
2021 Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over becomes the first play to open on Broadway since COVID-19 shutdown most live theatre worldwide in March 2020. Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood, and Gabriel Ebert star in this riff on Waiting For Godot that centers on two Black men killing time on a street corner until a white man enters their space.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Daniel Frohman (1851-1940). Dorothy Parker (1893-1967). Michael Langham (1919-2011). James Kirkwood (1924-1989). Diana Sands (1934-1973). Valerie Harper (1939-2019). Regina Taylor (b. 1960). Amra-Faye Wright (b. 1960). James Corden (b. 1978). Laura Dreyfuss (b. 1988).
1923 The play Red Light Annie opens at the Morosco Theatre (which closed in 1981 and was demolished a year later). Written by Norman Houston and Sam Forrest, the play features Ann Martin, Edward Ellis, and more.
1944 Robert Wright and George Forrest put words to classical themes by Edvard Grieg to create the operetta Song of Norway, based on Grieg’s life. It runs 860 performances at the Imperial Theatre, helped by George Balanchine‘s choreography, and the success of the song “Strange Music.”
1983 The Jerry Herman–Harvey Fierstein musical La Cage Aux Folles opens at Broadway’s Palace Theatre. George Hearn and Gene Barry star in the adaptation of the classic French play and film about a middle-aged homosexual couple who are forced to hide their sexual orientation in order to meet the fiancée of one of the men’s sons, and her family. In pure musical comedy fashion, mayhem pursues. In a time when homosexuality had yet to become the basis of a big Broadway musical, La Cage proved to be a raging success, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, and racking up 1,761 performances. Over the course of the run other actors to play either Albin or George include Larry Kert, Jamie Ross, Walter Charles, and Keith Michell. A 1996 non-musical film version of the same story called The Birdcage stars Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Calista Flockhart, and Nathan Lane.
1986 Major Broadway talent converges on the musical Rags, an original musical about immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side, which opens a disappointing four-performance run. Music is by Charles Strouse, lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz (returning to Broadway for the first time since Working), and libretto is by Joseph Stein. Opera star Teresa Stratas leads a cast that includes Larry Kert, Judy Kuhn, Dick Latessa, and Lonny Price.
1990 A revival of Moss Hart‘s Light Up the Sky opens Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre Company. Elaine Bromka, Charles Keating, and Betsy Joslyn are featured in the cast under the direction of Larry Carpenter. A week following the opening, Jason Alexander replaces cast member Bruce Weitz.
1999 Off-Off-Broadway’s Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre begins its 2000 season with On the Razzle, Tom Stoppard‘s take on Viennese playwright Johann Nestroy‘s Einen Jux will er sich machen. The play is the same source that inspired Thornton Wilder‘s The Matchmaker, which in turn inspired Jerry Herman’s Hello, Dolly! Cocteau Rep is no stranger to Stoppard works, as they have previously produced Travesties, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Rough Crossing.
2001 Signature Theatre‘s “environmental” staging of the musical Grand Hotel—spilling from the stage to the seating and out into the lobby—begins previews in Arlington, Virginia.
2002 Master dancer-choreographer Savion Glover and director George C. Wolfe‘s song-and-dance revue Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk begins a revival tour with original cast members Glover and Lynette DuPree at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre Company. After the Atlanta run ends September 29, a new national tour kicks off, stopping in major U.S. cities including Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles; as well as short runs on college campuses throughout the U.S.
2016 Finding Neverland closes at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre after 33 previews and 565 regular performances. The show earned two Drama Desk nominations for leading actor Matthew Morrison and featured actor Carolee Carmello. The closing cast stars Tony nominee Tony Yazbeck (who replaced Morrison), and original cast members Laura Michelle Kelly and Carmello.
Today’s Birthdays: Jack Weston (1924–1996). Carolyn Leigh (1926–1983). Melvin Van Peebles (b. 1932). Mart Crowley (1935-2020). Loretta Devine (b. 1949). Kim Cattrall (b. 1956). Evan Pappas (b. 1958). Robin De Jesús (b. 1984).
