Thomas Sadoski to Star Opposite Edie Falco in TOMMY on CBS
Thomas Sadoski is set to star in a series-regular role oppositeEdie Falcoin theupcoming CBS midseason drama seriesTommyin a recasting, according to Deadline.
Lin-Manuel Miranda to Guest in Julio Torres’ Upcoming Comedy Special
While visiting The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, comedian and Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres revealed that Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda will guest star as the voice of the cactus in his stand-up special, My Favorite Shapes, August 10 on HBO.
“I DM’d him being like, ‘Can you just be this cactus? It feels like it should be you,‘” Torres told host Fallon.
This isn’t the first time Torres and Miranda have worked together. When Miranda hosted SNL in 2016, Torres wrote the sketch “Diego Calls His Mom”—a favorite of Miranda’s.
READ: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 5 Best Broadway Moments from SNL
Proud of this piece by the great @juliothesquare. #Marshmallowsalad #SNLinManuel https://t.co/5cAE7As8H0
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) October 9, 2016
Torres also starred in the HBO series Los Espookys alongside Fred Armisen. Watch his full interview in the video above.
Lin-Manuel Miranda Portrait Joins the Walls of Sardi’s
Frances Barber Stars in New Pet Shop Boys Musical Musik Beginning August 5
Frances Barber, who starred in the first Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven almost two decades ago, can be seen in a new solo show by the musical duo beginning August 5 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Writer Jonathan Harvey (Beautiful Thing, Babies) and Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have again joined forces to create Musik, a solo show with a book by Harvey and six songs by Tennant and Lowe—four of which were written especially for this production.
Barber reprises her role as Billie Trix from 2001’s Closer to Heaven. Performances are scheduled through August 24 at Assembly Rooms (Bijou venue), 54 George Street, Edinburgh. Visit AssemblyFestival.com.
As previously reported, the 60-minute solo show will subsequently transfer to London’s Leicester Square Theatre, running September 3–7. For ticket information, click here.
Pet Shop Boys said in an earlier statement, “When we wrote Closer to Heaven almost 20 years ago, we loved the compelling outrageousness of the character Bille Trix as written by Jonathan and performed by Frances Barber. We have all discussed for many years the idea of creating her own one-woman show which would give us the chance to write more songs for her as she looks back on her incredible career. We’re thrilled that this show is finally happening.”
Harvey added, “It has been such a treat reconnecting and working with Chris and Neil on this, 20 years after our first foray into musical theatre writing. In Musik, Billie, dried up, drug-addled icon, and rock star, tells us about her life and sings her biggest hits. I can’t wait to see Frances Barber inhabit her again as she did so hilariously and so touchingly all those years ago.”
See What Is Scheduled to Perform in London
Barber’s extensive credits include the films Prick Up Your Ears, We Think the World of You, Dead Fish, and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. In the West End, she recently played Mrs. Cheveley in An Ideal Husband.
Musik is produced by Cahoots Theatre Company.
SIX to Return to Chicago in Summer 2020
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.
BWW TV: What Won’t the BAT OUT OF HELL Cast Do for Love?
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
Why Small Mouth Sounds Playwright Bess Wohl Wrote Her Next Play Specifically for Child Actors
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 A Doll’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.”