The Humanswas adapted from the Tony winning play of the same name. Its writtendirected by Stephen Karam, who helmed the play as well. The cast includes Beanie Feldstein, Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, June Squibb and Jayne Houdyshell. Its a tense, intimate and occasionally funny drama with a haunting undertone throughout.
Broadway’s Kelli O’Hara performed a rendition of ‘You’llNever Walk Alone’ at New York’s 911 memorial service yesterday. The traditional ceremony took place at ground zero twenty years after the tragic terrorist attack.
1866 The Broadway musical is born. The Black Crook, a musical extravaganza featuring a melodramatic plot and scantily-dressed ballerinas who serve as chorus girls, opens at Niblo’s Garden, . Tickets range from five cents to $1.50. It is the first Broadway show to run for more than a year. In 1954, a musical called The Girl in Pink Tights, which is based on the story of the show’s creation, opens on Broadway. Many other influences created the musical as it is known today, but Black Crook remains the consensus earliest model.
1927 Sigmund Romberg‘s operetta My Maryland, based on the Clyde Fitch play Barbara Frietchie, opens a 312-performance run at Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre, featuring Evelyn Herbert.
1951 The Holiday Theatre returns to the legitimate fold for the first time since 1927 with the opening of the American-Yiddish revue Bagels and Yox. The theatre, previously called the Central Theatre, had been used as a burlesque and movie house in the intervening years.
1960 The old Mansfield Theatre is rechristened with its current name, the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. A show produced by David Merrick, Vintage ’60, is the first to open there.
2000 Britain’s Improbable Theatre bring their spontaneous theatrical performance piece, Lifegame, to Off-Broadway’s Jane Street Theatre. The improvisational work, in which a civilian is interviewed on stage about his or her life and then is witness to an instant interpretation of their milestone events by an acting troupe, was a hit in England and southern California before reaching New York stage. The event was created by improvisational theatre artist Keith Johnstone and offers a new character and a fresh life story eight times a week. Though the Off-Broadway run is brief, it inspires a TV series of the same name on the TNN cable network the following year.
2001 All Broadway and Off-Broadway shows remain dark, the day after terrorist attacks destroy the World Trade Center and travel into and around Manhattan is disrupted.
2002 The Ragtime team of Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and Terrence McNally collaborate again for the Off-Broadway musical A Man of No Importance at Lincoln Center Theater‘s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Starring Roger Rees as bus conductor Alfie Byrne, it runs through the end of the year.
2010 The New York City premiere of Me, Myself & I, Edward Albee‘s play touching on some of his favorite ideas—parenting, children, identity, reality—opens at Playwrights Horizons. The play is directed by Emily Mann, who staged the 2008 world premiere at the McCarter Theatre, and stars Elizabeth Ashley, Zachary Booth, Brian Murray, Natalia Payne, Stephen Payne, and Preston Sadleir.
2011 The Kennedy Center‘s critically acclaimed production of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Follies, opens at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre. The cast is headed by Bernadette Peters as Sally, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Danny Burstein as Buddy, Ron Raines as Benjamin, and Elaine Paige as Carlotta.
2015 It’s the last dance for the “Dancing Queen”: Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus‘ musical Mamma Mia! plays its 5,773rd and final performance on Broadway.
2018 Jen Silverman’s play Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties opens at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Directed by Mike Donahue, the MCC production stars Dana Delany, Lea DeLaria, IAdina Verson, Ana Villafañe, and Chaunté Wayans as five women—all named Bettie—who collide at the intersection of rage, love, and the theatre, provoking them all to take a look in the mirror and be brave enough to face the person they didn’t know they could be.
Today’s Birthdays: Maurice Chevalier (1888-1972). Harvey Schmidt (1929-2018). Ian Holm (1931-2020). Peter Scolari (b. 1955). Tony Sheldon (b. 1955). Hans Zimmer (b. 1957). Gregg Edelman (b. 1958). Will Chase (b. 1970). Jennifer Hudson (b. 1981). Will Blum (b. 1984).
1912 Jane Cowl becomes a star while performing in Within the Law by Bayard Veiller. The play is about a woman wrongfully accused of theft. It is also the premiere production at the new Eltinge Theatre on 42nd Street.
1918 A report comes out commending the new army camp musical by Irving Berlin, Yip, Yip, Yaphank. The musical, which opened at the Century Theatre on August 19, showcases 350 Camp Upton soldiers and Berlin himself. The report applauds Berlin’s show because it makes a soldier’s life seem not so bad. One of the themes of the musical is that “the soldier’s life is after all a happy one.” The show features among other things, soldiers in drag wearing blackface singing “Mandy,” while Berlin himself sings “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” Berlin’s classic song, “God Bless America,” was originally written for Yaphank but dropped because he felt it too “sticky” for the production. The song does not surface again until 1938, when Kate Smith introduces it on the radio.
1940 After missing him for a decade, the Broadway stage once again sees Al Jolson. He co-stars with Martha Raye in Hold on to Your Hats at the Shubert Theatre.
1959 The now landmark statue of song and dance man George M. Cohan is unveiled in Times Square, opposite the Palace Theatre.
2001 On a sunny Tuesday morning, terrorists fly two commercial airliners into New York City’s World Trade Center “Twin Towers,” and a third into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., causing mass death, destruction, and chaos in both cities. All theatrical performances are canceled for the next two days around the U.S. In ensuing years, the event inspires numerous plays, including The Guys, Omnium Gatherum, Portraits, and Recent Tragic Events.
2002 On the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, many Broadway and Off-Broadway shows cancel or reschedule performances, leaving their theatres dark for the day.
2004 Fred Ebb, the lyricist half of the Broadway composing team of Kander and Ebb, which produced classic musicals such as Cabaret and Chicago, dies at age 71.
2006 Joseph Hayes, a playwright, novelist, and producer who won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Play for his suspenseful melodrama The Desperate Hours, dies in St. Augustine, Florida, at age 88.
2009 Larry Gelbart, the two-time Tony Award-winning librettist who was also a playwright and a screenwriter for TV and movies, dies at the age of 81. Viewed as a master of situation comedy and one-liners, Gelbart won Tonys for Best Book of a Musical for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which he co-wrote with Burt Shevelove, and City of Angels. He also developed the Robert Altman movie M*A*S*H into the hit TV series, co-wrote the screenplay to the Hollywood comedy Tootsie, and wrote the Broadway plays Sly Fox (based on Ben Jonson‘s Volpone) and Mastergate.
2011 Sweet and Sad, the world-premiere drama by Richard Nelson set on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, has a timely opening night Off-Broadway at the Public Theater. Nelson revisits the Apple family (first seen in his 2010 play That Hopey Changey Thing) as they reflect on America a decade after the events of 9/11.
2011 The Select (The Sun Also Rises), Elevator Repair Service’s dramatic look at Ernest Hemingway‘s post-war classic, opens Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop. ERS founder John Collins directs the three-hour and fifteen-minute ensemble work that pares the novel down to much of Hemingway’s dialogue.
2014 The Broadway premiere of Kenneth Lonergan‘s 1996 drama This Is Our Youth, starring Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, and Tavi Gevinson, opens at the Cort Theatre.
Today’s Birthdays: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Georges Metaxa (1899-1950). Henderson Forsythe (1917-2006). Alan Bergman (b. 1925). Lee Richardson (1926-1999). Gerome Ragni (1935-1991). Jennifer Tipton (b. 1937). Reed Birney (b. 1954). Adriane Lenox (b. 1956). Harry Connick Jr. (b. 1967).
It has been revealed that the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is set to be released on May 26, 2023. The cast of the live action ‘Little Mermaid’ includes Halle Bailey, Daveed Diggs, Javier Bardem, Jacob Tremblay, Melissa McCarthy, Awkwafina, and Jonah Hauer-King.
Read on for more theatre headlines you may have missed in today’s news.
2021 Relentless Award Will Honor Musical Theatre
The American Playwriting Foundation has merged with Building for the Arts, the non-profit organization that runs Theatre Row and Music and the Brain. The merger will provide a physical space for APF at Theatre Row, as well as enrich the programming of both organizations. The Relentless Award, an annual playwriting award created by APF in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman, will now be presented under the auspices of Building for the Arts. This year’s Relentless Award will honor composer Adam Schlesinger, a Tony and Oscar-nominated songwriter who passed away from COVID-19 last spring. The Relentless Award Selection Committee places special emphasis on works that are fearless in their choice of subject matter. The winner of the Musical Relentless Award will be selected by a panel of judges composed of artists who have collaborated with Schlesinger, including Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Sam Hollander, Stephin Merrit, and David Javerbaum.
Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award Winners Named
The Ziegfeld Club, Inc., in partnership with New York Stage and Film, has named November Christine (Mirror, Mirror, Legacy the Musical), Carmel Dean (Renascence), and Madeline Myers (Double Helix, Flatbush Avenue) as the 2021 recipients of the sixth annual Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. The annual grant is presented to emerging female musical theatre composer, and includes a year of mentorship in addition to the cash prize. “In a break from past practice, we decided this year to recognize the achievements of the three finalists from last year’s award process,” said Ziegfeld Club Executive Director Laurie Sanderson. “Our decision to confer this year’s award on three composers reflects the tremendous depth of talent among the community of female composers and lyricists.” Past recipients of the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award include composer/lyricists Shaina Taub, Masi Asare, and Anna K. Jacobs. For more information, visit TheZiegfeldClubInc.com.
Plus, get a look at Tony nominee Celia Rose Gooding in the “Meet The Cast Of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” introduction video above. The Jagged Little Pill star’s casting was announced earlier this year, but here we find out that she will be playing Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek prequel from Paramount+. Nichelle Nichols originated the role of Lt. Uhura for the original series and played her in six of the franchise’s films. As Gooding says in the intro, “legacy.”