Jackie Burns Releases Debut Single ‘Any Less Alone’
‘Any Less Alone’ was written by Burns, a Broadway veteran best known for starring as Elphaba in Wicked, as well as Aaron Kellim and Eric Holmes.
CHICKEN & BISCUITS Opens Tonight on Broadway; Meet the Cast!
CHICKEN BISCUITS, the new comedy written by Douglas Lyons and directed by Zhailon Levingston, officially opens tonight, October 10, at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over Closes October 10 at August Wilson Theatre
Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over closes October 10 after beginning previews August 4 and opening August 22 at the August Wilson Theatre. It was just the second show to hold performances on Broadway since the COVID-19 pandemic kept theatres dark for nearly 15 months—and the first original work.
The entire Off-Broadway cast reunited for the production: Tony nominee Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood, and Tony winner Gabriel Ebert. The staging marked the Broadway debuts of Nwandu, Smallwood, and director Danya Taymor.
Inspired by both Waiting for Godot and the Exodus saga, Pass Over follows Moses and Kitch, two young Black men who dream of an existence beyond their street corner. After premiering at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the play opened Off-Broadway in 2018 as part of Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 programming. A few months prior, a film version of the Chicago staging, directed by Spike Lee, debuted at Sundance Film Festival. It is now available to stream as an Amazon Prime original.
Nwandu modified the play between its iterations. “Though much about Pass Over remains a lament over the lives of Black people stolen too soon, I am happy to confirm that my team and I, along with our producers, are presenting a new version that centers the health, hope, and joy of our audiences, especially Black people,” the playwright said in an earlier statement. “We are reuniting to envision this play again, to tell a version of the story on Broadway where Moses and Kitch both survive their encounter with white oppression.”
READ: 10 Moments That Made Pass Over Possible
Returning creative team members included scenic designer Wilson Chin, costume designer Sarafina Bush, lighting designer Marcus Doshi, and sound designer Justin Ellington. Casting is by Erica A. Hart, Camille Hickman, and Daniel Swee.
Pass Over was produced on Broadway by Matt Ross, Jujamcyn Theaters, Lincoln Center Theater, Concord Theatricals, Renee Montgomery, Blair Underwood, Madeleine Foster Bersin, Imagine Equal Entertainment, Cornice Productions, Madison Wells Live, Shelly Mitchell, Tyler Mount & Maddie Reese, Olympus Theatricals & FireMused Productions, Sierra Lancaster, Vasthy Mompoint, Ayanna Prescod, Nina Marie Ward, and Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu.
For more information, visit LCT.org.
A Look at Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over on Broadway
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theatre History: October 9
1893 Arthur Wing Pinero courts scandal with his play The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, about a man who brings misery to all with a second marriage. Mrs. Patrick Campbell plays the title character in the London debut.
1900 Alastair Sim is born. The British actor works extensively on the London stage and in film, where he creates a memorable Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.
1922 The Broadway opening of R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), a science-fiction drama by Czech playwright Karel Capek, that introduces the word “robot” to the English language. It’s derived from the word for “worker” in Czech.
1929 June Moon, Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman‘s comedy about the pop songwriting business, opens at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway. It runs 273 performances, despite opening within days of Wall Street’s “Black Friday.”
1940 Rock musician John Lennon of The Beatles is born. He contributes a sketch to the revue Oh! Calcutta!, which goes on to run 5,959 performances on Broadway. In 2005, his life and songs are celebrated in the Broadway musical Lennon.
1946 The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill‘s towering drama about the pipe dreams of a group of barflies, debuts on Broadway, with James Barton as Hickey. It runs 136 performances, but is not regarded as a major work until a posthumous Off-Broadway production in the 1950s with Jason Robards establishes its reputation.
1947 High Button Shoes, Stephen Longstreet‘s semi-autobiographical musical based on his book, The Sisters Liked Them Handsome, opens on Broadway at the Century Theatre. The music and lyrics are provided by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. The show gets mixed reviews and runs 727 performances. Choreographer Jerome Robbins‘ famous ballet scene wins him a Tony Award. The cast includes Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray, who sing, “Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me?” The musical opens in London the following year, where it runs for nine months.
1963 Two one-act plays in one bill by Peter Shaffer, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, open on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre. The plays, which deal with shyness, love, and infidelity, star Brian Bedford, Geraldine McEwan, and Moray Watson, who also appeared in the 1962 London production. Shaffer goes on to write the hit plays Equus and Amadeus.
1967 Tom Stoppard makes a splash in his Broadway debut, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet entirely from the point of view of two of the most minor characters. Brian Murray and John Wood play the two would-be assassins who try to figure out what’s going on around them before they themselves are killed. It wins the Tony Award as Best Play.
1972 Dude, Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot‘s musical follow-up to megahit Hair, opens on Broadway—and falls flat on its face, getting roasted by critics and running just 16 performances.
1997 With one musical theatre piece, New York Rock, already under her belt, musician-artist Yoko Ono returns to the theatre world in a collaboration with writer/director Ron Destro. Hiroshima, an epic play with music about Japanese families hit by the 1945 atomic bomb, opens at New York’s Theatre For The New City.
2003 It took 43 years, but playwrights Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee join forces in New York once again as Beckett/Albee—an evening of three selections by Sam and one by Ed—officially opens at the Century Center for the Performing Arts. Albee made his first major splash when his Zoo Story was paired with Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in 1960.
2004 Christopher Reeve, the actor whose work on soaps and on stage (A Matter of Gravity, Fifth of July) was eclipsed when he played the Man of Steel in the motion picture Superman, and its sequels before becoming paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, dies of heart failure at age 52.
2013 The world premiere of Tori Amos and Samuel Adamson’s musical The Light Princess opens at the National Theatre in London. Directed by Marianne Elliott, it stars Rosalie Craig as a princess who, when she finds herself unable to cry over her mother’s death, becomes so light with grief that she floats.
2014 Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Megan Mullally, and Rupert Grint eagerly await the reviews in Terrence McNally‘s comedy It’s Only A Play, a spoof on what it takes to make a show a hit, opening at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Although originally announced as a limited 18-week engagement, the production extends multiple times, running until June of the following year.
2019 The world premiere of The Wrong Man, a new musical by multi-platinum songwriter Ross Golan, officially opens Off-Broadway. Directed by Thomas Kail, the musical stars Joshua Henry as a man wrongly accused of murder in Reno, Nevada, and features Ciara Renée, Ryan Vasquez, Anoop Desai, Tilly Evans-Krueger, Malik Kitchen, Libby Lloyd, Amber Pickens, Kyle Robinson, Debbie Christine Tjong, and Julius Williams.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Fyvush Finkel (1922-2016). John Lennon (1940-1980). Tony Shalhoub (b. 1953). John O’Hurley (b. 1954). Scott Bakula (b. 1954). Marin Mazzie (1960-2018). Chris O’Dowd (b. 1979). Colin Donnell (b. 1982).
VIDEO: Graciela Daniele Accepts Her Special Tony Award For Lifetime Achievement In The Theatre
Tony Award nominated director and choreographerGraciela Danielewasthe 2020 recipient of the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.
Kalyn West, Courtney Balan, Kaden Kearney, More to Lead The Prom Tour
It’s time to dance—again! The national tour of The Prom will officially launch at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio with performances running November 2–21.
Starring in the musical will be Kaden Kearney (who uses they/them pronouns) as Emma, Kalyn West as Alyssa Greene, Courtney Balan as Dee Dee Allen, Patrick Wetzel as Barry Glickman, Emily Borromeo as Angie Dickinson, Bud Weber as Trent Oliver, Sinclair Mitchell as Mr. Hawkins, Ashanti J’Aria as Mrs. Greene, and Shavey Brown as Sheldon Saperstein. Both West and Balan were a part of the original Broadway cast.
Rounding out the ensemble are Jordan Alexander, Gabrielle Beckford, Ashley Bruce, Olivia Rose Cece, Maurice Dawkins, Jordan De Leon, Shawn Alynda Fisher, James Caleb Grice, Megan Grosso, Chloe Rae Kehm, Braden Allen King, Brandon J. Large, Christopher McCrewell, Adriana Negron, Lexie Plath, Brittany Nicole Williams, Thad Turner Wilson, and Josh Zacher.
Featuring a book by Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin and a score by Beguelin and Matthew Sklar, and based on an original concept by Jack Viertel, the musical tells the story of an Indiana high schooler barred from bringing a girlfriend to the prom—and the group of eccentric Broadway folk who infiltrate the town in an earnest, misguided attempt to fight the injustice.
Following Cleveland, the tour will make over 20 stops around America, including The Broward Center for the Performing Arts (December 14–19) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; The Kennedy Center (January 4–16, 2022) in Washington, D.C.; Cadillac Palace Theatre (April 19–24) in Chicago, Illinois; and Centre Theatre Group (August 9–September 11) in Los Angeles, California.
The production features scenic design by Scott Pask, costume design by Ann Roth and Matthew Pachtman, lighting design by Natasha Katz, sound design by Brian Ronan, wig and hair design by Josh Marquette, make-up design by Milagros Medina-Cerdeira, orchestrations by Larry Hochman, music supervision by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, and casting by The Telsey Office.
The producing team for The Prom includes Bill Damaschke, Dori Berinstein, Jack Lane, NETworks Presentations, Natasha Davison, Merry & Jim Mosbacher, Terry Schnuck, Liz Armstrong, Elizabeth L. Green, Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra & Stephen Della Pietra, Seth A. Goldstein, Jane Dubin, Smedes-Stern-Palitz, Fahs Productions, Joe Grandy, Don and Nancy Ross, Three Belles and A Bob, Instone Productions, Fakler-Silver, ArmentTackel, Cliff Hopkins, Larry and Elizabeth Lenke Christopher Ketner, The John Gore Organization, Nancy and Ken Kranzberg, Independent Presenters Network, Mark Lonlow and JoAnne Astrow, Iris Smith, WallaceATxRandomProductions, Garris-Morris-Masie Productions, Judith Manocherian, The Shubert Organization, Karen DeVerna and Jeremiah J. Harris, Fox Theatricals, Adrienne Blackman and Heidi & Stephen Distante.
For more information visit: ThePromMusical.com.