Harry Potter and the Cursed Child casts a spell over San Francisco as it begins performances October 23 at the Curran Theatre ahead of a December 1 official opening.
The two-part play is the eighth official installment in J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series—the only one to be performed on stage. The work is penned by Jack Thorne, based on a story by Rowling, Thorne, and director John Tiffany. The open-ended engagement begins after a five-month transformation of the Curran Theatre, similar to that of the Lyric Theatre production on Broadway.
Leading the company are John Skelley as Harry Potter, Yanna McIntosh as Hermione Granger, David Abeles as Ron Weasley, Angela Reed as Ginny Potter, Benjamin Papac as Albus Potter, Folami Williams as Rose Granger-Weasley, Lucas Hall as Draco Malfoy, and Jon Steiger as Scorpius Malfoy.
Skelley, Abeles, and Reed have all appeared in the Broadway production of the play, which earned six Tony awards in 2018.
Joining the principal cast are Theo Allyn, William Bednar-Carter, Natalia Bingham, Ebony Blake, Melanie Brezill, Shannon Cochran, Elijah Cooper, Irving Dyson Jr., Kita Grayson, Logan James Hall, Abbi Hawk, Corey Hedy, Tyler Patrick Hennessy, Kyle Hines, Nathan Hosner, Nicholas Hyland, Charles Janasz, Katherine Leask, Joel Leffert, Andrew Long, Lily Mojekwu, Emily Juliette Murphy, Steve O’Connell, Erik Evan Olson, Christian Pedersen, Julian Rozzell, Jr., Natalie Adele Schroeder, Tuck Sweeney, Geoffrey Wade, Lauren Zakrin, and Brittany Zeinstra
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premiered in the West End in 2016 before going on to open at Broadway’s Lyric Theatre in 2018. An Australian production began in February this year, and productions are slated to bow in Hamburg (marking the first non-English language mounting) and Toronto in 2020.
Meet the Cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in San Francisco
This season Broadway welcomes a major cultural theatrical and musical milestone with American Utopia, a new theatrical experience from avant garde rocker, David Byrne.
I’m in Cincinnati today! I first have a master class in the afternoon where I help people get their audition technique up to snuff. Here’s a quick overview of how I teach!
Then I’m doing Deconstructing Broadway… twice! The 7 PM show is sold out and there are around 20 tickets left for the 9 PM, so get thee to EnsembleCincinnati.org for tickets!
Bill Berloni and Sandy at the Outer Critics Circle Awards
Anyhoo, I began last week with the fantastic Best In Shows, which is the annual event for The Humane Society. The whole thing is helmed by Bill and Dorothy Berloni. If you don’t know Bill’s story, here it is in a nutshell: He was a teenaged intern at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1976. Randomly, he was asked to find a dog and train it to be Sandy for their musical, Annie, which was being done for the first time. Well, Bill went into town to an animal shelter and found a very scared doggie, but one who seemed sweet and looked like Sandy in the “Annie” comic strips. He asked them if he could take the doggie back to Goodspeed, and they told him the adoption cost would be $8. Bill only had $2. He promised them he’d come back the next day and they told him he better hurry because the dog was scheduled to be “put to sleep.” Bill was from a farm and didn’t know that animal shelters routinely put down dogs to make room for new doggies. He was horrified.
He ran back to Goodspeed, borrowed money from his roommate, and went back to the shelter way before it opened. Finally, someone arrived, Bill gave them the money and took this big, scared doggie back to the theatre. With food and love, he figured out how to train Sandy and soon this dog who had been at death’s door was starring in a musical, opposite Andrea McArdle eight times a week!
One trick Bill did was clapping when Sandy did something good. That way, Sandy liked applause! If not, he would have been terrified when he eventually made his Broadway debut in Annie and 1,200 people loudly applauded him.
Since then, Bill has trained the animals you’ve seen in Broadway shows…dogs, cats, rats (in The Woman in White), and lately he’s been doing a lot of film work. And all of the animals he trains are rescues! He and the Humane Society were so wonderful to Chrissy whom we adopted from Aruba after one of our cruises. Chrissy had to be de-wormed and Bill handled all of her medical issues at The Humane Society. Then, James and I had to be out-of-town for a little and Bill thought it was better if Chrissy stayed at the shelter, rather than come to our house and not have us around for a while. All in all, Chrissy stayed at the Humane Society for three weeks and got such great care and love! And now she’s a happy member of the family (see photo).
The benefit itself was amazing! So many highlights! We had songs that related to animals like: I thought the lyrics to “What Would I Do” from Falsettoland was so appropriate for those who had lost a pet (“What would I do if I had not loved you? How would I know what love is?”). Max Von Essen and Nick Adams, who just starred on the Falsettos tour, did a beautiful job.
Then I had recent Michigan graduate Griffin Binnicker (who was in the Connecticut Repertory Theater production of Disaster!) talk about his childhood and his vigilante mother. Turns out, after a greyhound does a good amount of dog races and doesn’t run as fast, they are often put down. Well, his mother was not having it. She would drive to dog tracks, little Griffin would wait in the car, and his Mom would “take” the dogs and save them from their unfair fate. His family would foster until the dog was adopted and Griffin thinks they rescued around 300 dogs! Brava Mama Binniker! He and Justin Showell (who also graduated Michigan and just got cast in Hamilton) duetted next to Maria, who is up for adoption from The Humane Society.
And one of the hugest ovations was for Evan Ruggiero. I wrote about him last year when I did the benefit for “Shane’s Inspiration,” the organization that makes playgrounds accessible for all children. Evan sang and tap danced up a storm in the Humane Society benefit…even though he lost his leg to cancer! Watch!
So many great people are performing like Will Swenson (he made his Broadway debut in the original!), Romona Keller, and Karen Olivo.
Here’s Eden talking about the concert and then ending the segment by singing “I Will Never Leave You” from Sideshow with Bonnie Milligan, which they both sang at the Humane Society Benefit!
I also had Natalie Walker on the show. She’s doing two shows with Bonnie Milligan at 54 Below on Oct 30–31. Natalie is really smart and hilarious. I’m obsessed with how she deconstructs hacky Hollywood screenwriting.
Natalie told us all the hilarious/devastating story about how she went to the theatre camp, Stage Door Manor, and when she began NYU, she found out there was a book about Stage Door Manor called, Theater Geek, and she was the villain! I asked what name she was given in the book and she said, “Natalie Walker!”
That’s right, there was no changing of the name to protect the b*tchy! She flat out admits she was a nightmare, but explains that she was drunk with the deliciousness of being a “star” in the camp during the summer after being the opposite while at school during the year. As she explains it, when you go to school in the south and you’re deemed super-weird for loving theatre, but suddenly, in the summer, your ability to know all the various “Bobby’s” in the opening number to Company changes your status to “sexy,” it’s understandable that you might go a little crazy. Go see Natalie and Bonnie!
And finally, I just saw the new Forbidden Broadway. I love that show so much! Ever since I first started listening to the original while in high school. Go see it at The Triad with this super-talented cast, and here’s a little deconstruction of mine featuring one of the previous casts and brilliant lyrics of Forbidden Broadway.
Long before Broadway’s saturation with jukebox musicals and song catalog shows, Ben Bagley, a producer of modestly-financed Off-Broadway revues, added to what was then musical theatre’s long title trend HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESSWITHOUT REALLY TRYING, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM… and created a charming revue titled THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENTIRE WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF COLE PORTER.
Theatre has been known to transport audiences to new places, but theatre also has the ability to inspire fright. From suspenseful classics like Macbeth to comedic carnage like Beetlejuice, Playbill readers share their favorite spooky Broadway shows full of magic or mayhem in time for Halloween.
Flip through the gallery below to see the fan favorite shows below:
Patsy & Loretta, about the friendship between country music legends Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, premieres on Lifetime October 19 at 8 PM; check local listings.
The original movie, directed by Nashville’s Callie Khouri and executive-produced by Neil Meron, stars Tony nominee Megan Hilty and Tony winner Jessie Mueller.
Patsy & Loretta explores the friendship between the two up through Cline’s untimely death in 1963.
Joining Broadway favorites Hilty (Noises Off, Wicked) and Mueller (Beautiful, Waitress) on screen as their husbands are Joe Tippet (Waitress) and Kyle Schmid (History Channel’s Six, Netflix’s The I-Land). Schmid plays Charlie Dick, Cline’s second husband, while Tippet appears as Doolittle “Mooney” Lynn opposite Mueller.
Hilty’s additional stage credits include 9 to 5, in which she played Doralee, portrayed on screen by another country legend: Dolly Parton. On screen, she is known for her performance as Ivy Lynn in Smash, produced by Meron with the late Craig Zadan.
Mueller won the Tony in 2014 for taking on the role of music superstar Carole King in Beautiful. She has since appeared on Broadway in Waitress and Carousel, earning subsequent Tony nods for both. She made her feature film debut in The Post.
A First Look at Megan Hilty and Jessie Mueller in Patsy and Loretta
