The 16th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards are just around the corner and there’s news to report. Producer Danielle Rudess tells me the evening (June 3 in Peekskill) will be hosted by Westchester’s Broadway star, John Treacy Egan of Larchmont, who is currently in the final weeks playing Chief… Read More →
For 11 seasons, David Hyde Pierce played Dr. Niles Crane, the persnickety perfectionist younger brother of Kelsey Grammer’s Dr. Frasier Crane on TV’s “Frasier.” It’s how many people still see him. You can see Pierce on April 14 at the old Nyack High School on Midland Avenue, where he’ll chat… Read More →
From ‘A Funny Thing…’ to ‘Zombie Prom,’ a slate awaits The cast of “Urinetown” at White Plains High School strikes a pose in a break from rehearsals. White Plains kicks off the musical season with the satirical comedy Feb. 1, 2 and 3. Photo by Tania Savayan/The Journal News As… Read More →
Longtime Rocklander returns to Broadway after a decade away Ellen Burstyn likes to keep sharp. “I exercise my memory at every opportunity,” says the newly-minted 80-year-old, calling from her car on a ride from her Rockland home to Broadway’s American Airlines Theater for another performance of William Inge’s “Picnic,” directed… Read More →
Harrison’s Sophia Gennusa will share role Just announced today that the much-anticipated Broadway production of “Matilda” will alternate the demanding lead role among four young actresses, one of whom is from Westchester. Sophia Gennusa, 9, from Harrison, is a veteran of Purchase College’s famed “Nutcracker.” (That’s her, inset, when she… Read More →
Broadway’s John Treacy Egan directs Tony-winner On Friday, the newly expanded Westchester Sandbox Theatre—with more seats and a bigger lobby—opens the Tony-winning best musical “Avenue Q,” where Muppets live alongside humans, the rent is affordable and Gary Coleman will fix your plumbing.
Toast of West End seeks Broadway lede “I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” —“Matilda” by Roald Dahl The producers of Broadway’s “Matilda the Musical” are looking for four young actresses to play the title role.
Writer has three shows opening this fall Thomas Meehan’s fall sounds like it could be the start of a great joke: An orphan, an elf and a little tramp meet on Broadway … The words of the 83-year-old Suffern native and three-time Tony-winner (“Annie,” “The Producers,” “Hairspray”) will ring across… Read More →
‘Today’ host spent years on musical about radio evangelist (Carolee Carmello in “Scandalous.”) “If you put Oprah with Madonna and Lady Gaga, you still wouldn’t have what Aimee was for her time,” says Kathie Lee Gifford, speaking about the subject of the Broadway musical the “Today” show host has written.
Broadway’s cheerleading musical opens Wednesday Photo by Michael Meseke: The creative team behind Broadway’s “Bring It On: The Musical” includes, from left: Lin-Manuel Miranda (music and lyrics), Alex Lacamoire (music supervisor), Andy Blankenbuehler (director, choreographer), Jeff Whitty (book), Tom Kitt (music, arrangements, orchestrations), and Amanda Green (lyrics). Tom Kitt couldn’t… Read More →
Well, as of this morning, it’s official: Alan Menken, who has three shows running on Broadway — “Sister Act,” “Newsies” and “Leap of Faith” (which opens tonight) — will be at Stepinac High School on May 15 at an event to aid the school’s musical programs. To welcome Menken, a… Read More →
Meet Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the men behind “Peter and the Starcatcher” As a kid, Dave Barry saw his share of Broadway shows. “The great thing about growing up in Armonk was that you lived in this little town where you knew everybody, but you were 30 miles from… Read More →
The new Broadway musical “Once,” directed by John Tiffany and opening Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, is one of those shows in which the cast is also the band. Based on the Oscar-winning 2006 film of the same name — about an Irish busker (simply “Guy”) and his… Read More →
New Rochelle’s Kara DioGuardi is best known for her two seasons judging “American Idol.” Earlier this month, she made her Broadway debut as the headline-grabbing merry murderess Roxie Hart in the long-running Broadway revival of Kander & Ebb’s “Chicago.” We chatted the morning after her first performance. PK: How did… Read More →
While the fall holds the promise of new shows, there are more than a dozen shows already up and running on Broadway. Here’s a look: “Anything Goes” — Cole Porter’s shipboard story with Sutton Foster, Joel Grey. Sondheim. “Billy Elliott” — Amid a miners’ strike, a working-class boy learns to… Read More →
If you have tickets for a Broadway performance that happens to coincide with, say, a category 2 hurricane hammering the Eastern seaboard, is that enough to keep you away? We all love to hear stories about people who braved blizzards and found themselves in the most intimate of theatrical experiences,... Read More →
Dear fellow theatergoers at WONDERLAND last night: Three things to think about before your next excursion to the theater: 1) bringing an infant to a Broadway show is not a good idea, particularly one with a bad cough who cries through the first act. 2) if you feel the need… Read More →
If Broadway leading ladies are your thing, Westchester is the place to be this weekend, as two stars of that firmament — Kelli O’Hara and Sutton Foster — fall to earth in the Lower Hudson Valley for cabaret performances. On Dec. 11, three-time Tony nominee O’Hara (“The Light in the… Read More →
Sutton Foster has made a career originating characters in Broadway musicals: Millie in “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Jo in “Little Women,” Inga in “Young Frankenstein,” Janet in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” Fiona in “Shrek.” Next month, she’ll step into some well-worn shoes, preparing to play Reno Sweeney — a part owned by… Read More →
OK, all of these people have been going to see previews of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and reviewing it like it’s the final product, which is bogus. Thanks to Coco, you can see the real thing and judge for yourself:
Will Ferrell may have created Buddy in the 2003 film, “Elf,” but it’s Sebastian Arcelus who has to fill those curly-toed shoes eight shows a week in “Elf, the Musical,” onstage at Broadway’s Al Hirschfeld Theatre through Jan. 2. Finding Buddy has been the task of Arcelus and the creative… Read More →
Bedford’s Dori Berinstein is a Tony-winning producer (“Thoroughly Modern Millie”) who also made an award-winning documentary film about Broadway (“ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway”). “I love trivia and I love Broadway,” she says. Who better, then, to create “The Broadway Challenge,” a new app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod… Read More →
Like St. Matthew’s gospel upon which it is based, Stephen Schwartz’s musical “Godspell” is subject to interpretation. There are parables to tell and songs to sing, yes, but the actors, directors and creative team are encouraged to put their own spin on the show. It’s a musical of its moment…. Read More →
It’s a long way from Pleasantville to Detroit and Durham, N.C., but not too far for two Pleasantville natives, about to kick off performances in national tours of “West Side Story” and “Billy Elliot.” Broadway veteran Ali Ewoldt, 28, plays Maria in “West Side Story” when it opens Thursday at… Read More →
Composer David Yazbek trusts his “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” collaborator Jeffrey Lane, but the New City resident wasn’t convinced Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 film “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” would make a good Broadway musical. Now one of the fall’s most-anticipated shows, directed by Bartlett Sher (“South Pacific”), “Women… Read More →
For weeks now, Tom Meehan’s immediate focus has been on a Little Tramp in California. Next, it will be on an oversized elf on Broadway A Suffern native and Tony-winner (“Annie,” “The Producers,” “Hairspray”) Meehan ended his summer in La Jolla, Calif., readying “Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin,” a… Read More →
These shows are open now on Broadway: “A Little Night Music” — Sondheim’s musical about a weekend in the country. Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th. “American Idiot” — The Green Day album, now a Green Day musical. St. James, 246 W. 44th. “Billy Elliot: The Musical” — About a boy who… Read More →
The fall on Broadway will see 19 openings. Here’s a look at what to expect and when, in chronological order by opening night. (Mark Rylance, center, and David Hyde Pierce, right, lead the cast of “La Bete,” transferring from London to the Music Box for an Oct. 14 opening. Photo… Read More →
Kyle Beltran remembers it like it was yesterday, even though it was nearly 10 years ago. He was 15 and he and his parents were meeting a family friend, actor Michael Boatman, for a post-show dinner at the Broadway haunt Angus McIndoe. “It was packed with people coming from their… Read More →
In “Next to Normal,” Jennifer Damiano earned a Tony nomination as Natalie, a disillusioned teen who can’t step out of the shadow that her brother’s long-ago death cast on their mother’s mind. At one point, Natalie sings: “Superboy and the Invisible Girl. Son of Steel and Daughter of Air. He’s… Read More →
