By: Paulanne Simmons
Broadway Con Celebrating their 10th Consecutive Year
February 12, 2025. Whether you want to make your friends jealous with a selfie taken with your favorite celebrity, learn more about the playwriting process or get your hands on a signed Playbill, BroadwayCon2025 was where you should have been the second weekend in February. Often there were so many activities going on at one time it was hard to choose. For this Broadway fan here are the highlights.
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Great picks from Broadway Babe include Hugh Jackman, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, and Carol Burnett & Julie Andrews together in concert.
October 28, 2024: Broadway Babe, Randie Levine-Miller, has some great picks for viewing at home during the chilly weather. They include a look at the life and times of Hugh Jackman via the SAG/AFTRA Foundation; Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald in concert 25 years ago; a star-studded tribute to Oscar Hammerstein; as well as Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews in concert at Lincoln Center over 50 years ago! Some wonderful nostalgic finds.
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By: David Sheward
October 27, 2024: Two upcoming Broadway shows, Smash and Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, have announced specific details on dates, theaters and cast members. Smash, the musical based on the NBC-TV series, will begin previews at the Imperial Theater on March 11, 2025 prior to an April 10 opening. Robyn Hurder (A Beautiful Noise, Moulin Rogue) and Caroline Bowman will head the company as Ivy and Karen, two actresses vying for the lead in a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Bowman will leave the company of Sunset Boulevard where she is standby for Norma Desmond. The cast will also feature Brooks Ashmanskas (The Prom) as Nigel, Krysta Rodriguez (Spring Awakening) as Tracy, John Behlmann (Shucked) as Jerry, Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) as Susan, Jacqueline B. Arnold (Moulin Rouge) as Anita, Bella Coppola (Six) as Chloe, and Casey Garvin (Some Like It Hot) as Charlie. Rodriguez is the only cast member to have also appeared in the NBC series as a recurring character, although in a different role. Nielsen did have a guest shot in one episode.
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By: David Sheward
October 19, 2024: The spring Broadway season is getting more crowded. Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, The Whale) will star in Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain, a new play re-examining Arthur Miller’s The Crucible about the Salem witchcraft trials. The play takes place in a Georgia public high school. Previews begin March 20, 2025 with an opening set for April 14 at the Booth Theater. Tony winner Danya Taymor (The Outsiders) directs. Additional casting will be announced. Sink previously appeared on Broadway as a child in Annie and The Audience.
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By: Alix Cohen
October 11, 2024: A great many politically themed plays have been produced these last few years. The best of them enmesh protagonists’ struggles, offer insight to specific viewpoints and ask questions. People of the Book adds to these qualities with distinct originality.
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Snook as Dorian Gray; Mincemeat Confirmed
By: David Sheward
October 3, 2024: Emmy and Olivier Award winner Sarah Snook (Succession) will make her Broadway debut playing 26 characters in the dazzling production of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The breathtaking stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel is adapted and directed by Kip Williams, the Artistic Director of Sydney Theatre Company, where the production originated. The Picture of Dorian Gray will open at a Shubert theatre in March for a strictly limited engagement. Snook won an Olivier Award for her performance playing 26 characters including the titular Dorian Gray whose portrait ages while he remains eternally young, leading a debauched, immoral existence.
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By: David Sheward
October 1, 2024: According to Broadway Journal, the British musical Operation Mincemeat is eying a Broadway transfer to the Golden Theater once the Tony-winning Stereophonic ends its run there on Jan. 12, 2025. Rumors of a transatlantic jump have been whispered since Mincemeat opened to raves in the West End in May of 2023 and subsequently won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.
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By: Alix Cohen
October 1, 2024: Last February, I reviewed The Christine Jorgensen Show, a highly recommended, two-hander with music that made its debut at 59E59 Theaters. The piece has been slightly rewritten and revived at HERE for an upcoming run. Wondering at its backstory, I spoke to those most involved.
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By: Alix Cohen
I saw a Marvelous Movie
September 23, 2024: Sir Noël Peirce Coward (1899 –1973) was an extraordinarily multifaceted talent, excelling as actor, director, vocalist (Frank Sinatra said, “If you want to hear how a song should be sung, go see Mr. Noël Coward”), songwriter (he could neither write nor read music), and playwright. Not only was he jack of all these trades but, despite occasional failures, their master. The artist was equally well known, in some circles more well known, for wit, brio, sophistication and personal style. He was arguably a charming painter, indisputably a patriot, and discreetly gay.
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Burstein in Gypsy, Buena Vista
By: David Sheward
September 19, 2024: Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle winner Danny Burstein (Moulin Rouge, Fiddler on the Roof, Follies) will star as Herbie alongside six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald in the upcoming revival of Gypsy. Previews begin Nov. 21 at the Majestic Theater for this sixth Broadway production of the musical based on the memoirs of legendary strip-tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee. This show opens Dec. 19. Previous Herbies include Jack Klugman, Karl Malden, Rex Robbins, Jonathan Hadary, John Dossett, and Boyd Gaines.
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Elf; Real Women; McKean in Glengarry; New LCT Leaders
By: David Sheward
September 12, 2024: A new production of Elf the Musical will hit Broadway just in time for the holidays. Following two runs in London’s West End in 2022 and 2023, the new Elf will begin previews at the Marquis Theater on Nov. 9 with an official opening or unwrapping on Nov. 17 for a limited run through Jan. 4, 2025. Tony nominee Grey Henson (Mean Girls, Shucked) will star as Buddy the Elf who journeys from the North Pole to find his family in NYC.
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John Mulaney in All In; Purpose; Othello
By: David Sheward
September 9, 2024: Comedian-actor John Mulaney will return to Broadway in All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich beginning performances at the Hudson Theater Dec. 11 for a limited run of ten weeks. Mulaney last appeared on Broadway in the two-character comedy piece Oh, Hello! opposite Nick Kroll. Tony winner Alex Timbers who directed Oh, Hello!, will stage All In.
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September Picks from Broadway Babe feature Patti LuPone, Karen Akers, Donna McKechnie, & Rare rehearsal footage from 1959’s Gypsy.
September 9, 2024: Broadway Babe, Randie Levine-Miller, has some entertaining finds, including concerts with Broadway legend, Patti LuPone; as well as Cabaret star, Karen Akers; an up close and personal and in her own words Playbill online episode with Tony award-winning star, Donna McKechnie; and historic footage from the historic Broadway, musical, “Gypsy”.
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By: Alix Cohen
September 4, 2024: Through the door of a vintage Coke machine on Eighth Aenue between 18th and 19th Streets, down cellar stairs (hold on), one enters Adélaïde’s Salon, an apparently open secret for intimate, clubby entertainment.
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By: Alix Cohen
September 2, 2024: First used simply to play cards – there’s actually a tarot game – decks were hand painted and prized all over Europe from the fifteen hundreds. Three centuries later riding a popular wave of occultism, they became tools for cartomancy/ divination. The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot is the most widely recognized and commonly used.
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