Tag: Off Broadway (11-20 of 22)

Oct 13 2012 08:00 AM ET

This Week on Stage: A new 'Cyrano,' Tom Hanks, and a 'Game of Thrones' Khaleesi

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

Winter is coming to Broadway. And so is Emilia Clarke, the Khaleesi from HBO’s Game of Thrones, who will play Holly Golightly in a new adaptation of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out), opening this spring.

In addition, Tom Hanks confirmed that he’ll make his long-overdue Broadway debut this season as the late tabloid columnist Mike McAlary in Lucky Guy, a new play by Nora Ephron (who died of leukemia in June).

Also booked for the Great White Way this spring: Eric Coble’s new comedy The Velocity of Autumn, starring Estelle Parsons as an 80-year-old who locks herself into her Brooklyn brownstone with a pile of Molotov cocktails to resist her family’s attempt to move her into a nursing home. (The 84-year-old actress, now appearing in the musical Nice Work If You Can Get Is, has been a firecracker on stage for years — I can’t wait to see her armed with the real thing.)

Of course, the biggest star heading to the stage may be a certain classic primate with sights on Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in June: This week, producers announced plans for a very large-scale King Kong musical, with a book by Craig Lucas (Light in the Piazza) and a rock score featuring tunes from Sarah McLachlan, Justice, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, and the Avalanches’ Guy Garvey. After the jump, check out EW’s take on the week’s biggest new openings in New York and Los Angeles. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 6 2012 09:00 AM ET

This Week on Stage: Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon in 'Grace'

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

The theater season has just begun, but it’s already claimed its first Broadway casualty. Producers scuttled plans for a musical version of the Daphne du Maurier novel Rebecca, which was to open this fall, but failed to secure all of its $12 million budget amid reports of phantom investors, sabotage, and fateful producer inexperience. Not all of the drama was backstage, however, with several high-profile productions making their debuts with (mostly) mixed critical response:

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Aug 27 2012 12:00 PM ET

Fall Theater Preview: 10 Shows We're Dying to See

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Image Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com

Let’s face it: There are a whole lot of new stage productions opening in New York City this fall. Some shows boast legendary veterans like Al Pacino (left) and Sigourney Weaver. Others promise young stars like Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal. For still others, the title alone (a 50th anniversary revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, anyone?) may be the biggest draw. Here are the 10 that have us most eager to line up for tickets.

Annie
(Broadway) This tale of the world’s most optimistic orphan girl searching for a family is one of our greatest musicals. Its music is iconic (“It’s a Hard Knock Life,” “Tomorrow”), and the rags-to-riches story of its endearing protagonist (played by newcomer Lilla Crawford) has been warming hearts since it debuted in 1977 and won seven Tonys. In the hands of director James Lapine, who boasts three Tonys of his own, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be a hit. (Previews start Oct. 3; show opens Nov. 8)

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Jun 13 2012 05:00 PM ET

Woody Harrelson-written play 'Bullet for Adolf' gets U.S. premiere

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Image Credit: Paul Morigi/WireImage.com

There’s good news for actor and District 12 victor Woody Harrelson: the formers Cheers star will direct Bullet for Adolf, a new comedy play that he wrote with Frankie Hyman, for its off Broadway premiere this summer.

The “hysterical, rapid-fire” show will bow at New World Stages on July 8 for an eight week engagement. A press release offers this synopsis of the production: “During the summer of 1983, in the sweltering heat of Houston, an unlikely friendship is formed when a couple of mid-western rubes with uncertain futures meet up with a slick New Yorker on the run from his past. The disappearance of a WWII artifact sets off a chain of events that proves that nothing changes the present like a blast from the past.”

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Jun 9 2012 09:00 AM ET

This Week on Stage: We've got Tony on our minds!

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Are you ready for the Tonys?! With Broadway’s most important night only a day away, we’ve got Tony on the brain. The competition at the Neil Patrick Harris-hosted ceremony is fierce, but EW has a mighty useful guide to help you get up to speed on this year’s nominees for Best Play, Best Musical, Best Revival of a Play and Best Revival of a Musical. Our stage critics Thom Geier and Melissa Rose Bernardo offered their predictions for the winners, but as we know, anything can happen at the Tonys. Be sure to join Thom and editor Laura Hertzfeld as they live-blog the event on EW.com starting at 8 p.m. EST, while Melissa and I bring you coverage from the red carpet and inside the Beacon Theatre!

Earlier this week, EW lounged with Liza Minnelli, chatted up last year’s Tony winner Nikki M. James, and went backstage at The Book of Mormon‘s second annual Fan Day (which also marked star Josh Gad’s last show). We also brought you the news about Broadway’s billion-dollar boom, Julie Taymor’s courtroom drama, and Hugh Jackman’s prodigal return to the Tonys. And we triple-dog-dare you not to get excited that a musical version of A Christmas Story is headed to Broadway later this year. As for this week’s new openings, they all happened Off Broadway: READ FULL STORY »

May 25 2012 10:00 AM ET

This Week on Stage: An actor breaks a leg, old Jews tell jokes, and a 'Cock' fight wows Off Broadway

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

That old actor’s adage “Break a leg” is not supposed to be taken literally. But that message apparently didn’t make it to Michael McKean, the Laverne & Shirley and This is Spinal Tap alum now starring in the hit Broadway revival Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. The actor was hospitalized Tuesday with a broken leg after being struck by a car in New York City; James Lecesne will be playing his role as a presidential campaign manager for the foreseeable future.

Otherwise, it was relatively quiet on the theater scene, though L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse announced that Brooke Shields and Richard Chamberlain would be starring in its world premiere (non-musical) stage adaptation of The Exorcist, which opens July 11. The week’s big openings all happened Off Broadway. Here’s what EW’s critics thought:

Cock Adam Markovitz found this London transfer (pictured above), about a man in a charged love triangle with a longtime boyfriend and a woman he just met, to be “a lean and sharp piece of theater.” EW grade: B+ READ FULL STORY »

Apr 19 2012 12:55 PM ET

Jake Gyllenhaal will make his American stage debut this summer

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Jake Gyllenhaal has played a time-manipulating teen, a serial killer obsessive, and a lovelorn gay cowboy — but he’s never played a role on the American stage. That will change in August, when Gyllenhaal makes his Off Broadway debut in a new Roundabout Theatre Company production.

The play, Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, stars Gyllenhaal as Terry, a foul-mouthed drifter who forms a close bond with his overweight niece, Anna. The production is set to begin previews on August 24 and open officially on September 20 at the Laura Pels Theatre. Gyllenhaal’s costars have not yet been announced. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 19 2012 03:25 PM ET

Mike Daisey urges focus on the 'bigger story' of global manufacturing

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Mike Daisey has released a statement on his official blog urging critics to focus on the bigger story of the nature of Apple’s Chinese manufacturing, rather than his admission that he fabricated important parts of his one-man show.

“If you think this story is bigger than that story, something is wrong with your priorities,” writes Daisey, whose The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs addresses working conditions of Apple employees in Chinese sweatshops. The off-Broadway production was the focus of a segment on Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, which has since been retracted after word circulated that the show was in fact a mix of fact and fiction. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 19 2012 09:20 AM ET

Mike Daisey restructures show after 'This American Life' controversy

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Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer who admitted that he made up parts of his one-man show about Apple products being made in Chinese sweatshops, has cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater, where the monologue is being performed, said Saturday that Daisey has “eliminated anything he doesn’t feel he can stand behind” from the show and added a section at the beginning in which he addresses the questions raised by critics. Eustis called the prologue “the best possible frame we could give the audience for the controversy” and said Daisey agreed to make the changes himself, which are “his and his alone.”

“Mike is a great storyteller, not a journalist. I wish he had been clearer about that distinction in the making of this piece,” Eustis said after seeing Saturday’s matinee performance. “If we had understood the rules Mike was using to make the show, we would have framed it differently from the outset.” READ FULL STORY »

Mar 17 2012 01:50 PM ET

This Week on Stage: Mike Daisey controversy, Andrew Garfield and Phillip Seymour Hoffman take on Arthur Miller

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Image Credit: Brigitte Lacombe

The season is revving up, there’s only 85 days left until the Tonys, and one of the most anticipated plays of the spring, Death of a Salesman, just opened—but the stage news that had everyone talking this week was the revelation that monologist Mike Daisey had fabricated parts of his off-Broadway hit The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Yet, there were also good things going on: David Strathairn joined Jessica Chastain in next season’s The Heiress, Universal hired Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes to adapt another big screen Gypsy, and Val Kilmer announced he will play Mark Twain in his own one-man show, Citizen Twain, in L.A. at the end of the month. I also chatted with Broadway stalwart and cult actor David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors), who’s currently appearing in the stage adaptation of Once.

Meanwhile, EW’s Thom Geier took in the grade A performances of Andrew Garfield and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the Mike Nichols-directed Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman. “Nichols coaxes memorable performances from every actor,” says Geier, adding, “while this Salesman owes much to tradition, it pulses with energy and urgency…Miller’s play has seldom seemed so vital.” And EW.com’s Laura Hertzfeld reviewed the touring production of American Idiot. “Despite a cast of solid singers and musicians, the L.A. version lacks the spontaneity of the original 2009 New York production,” she writes. “But the touring company holds its own and sticks to the script, carrying us through 90 minutes of rock ballads, strobe lights, and worn-through T-shirts.” She gives the musical a B-.

For more stage news and reviews, check out EW.com’s Stage hub.

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