Image Credit: Ari Mintz
Off-Broadway’s been a busy bee. While the Great White Way readies itself for Sunday’s Tony Awards, New York’s smaller venues hosted a series of openings this week, including the four reviewed by our critics. Check out the highlights below, and comeback Sunday for our live blog of the 2011 Tonys, which air at 8 p.m. on CBS. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus (top), Paul Kolnik
Here’s the easiest prediction we can make about this year’s Tony Awards, which will be presented June 12 at NYC’s Beacon Theatre: Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark will be a recurring punchline for returning host Neil Patrick Harris. The CBS broadcast will also manage to include a number from this still-to-officially-open show, featuring composers Bono and the Edge as well as on-stage Spidey Reeve Carney. Predicting the actual awards isn’t nearly as easy. But in a lot of the major categories, there seem to be some very strong front-runners. Expect The Book of Mormon (pictured left, top) to sweep most of the musical categories, and the British import War Horse (pictured left, bottom) to pick up a fair share of the dramatic awards. Fellow EW critic Melissa Rose Bernardo and I here offer our predictions in all the Tony categories (you’ll see our names after each of our picks). Disagree? Please let us know who you think will win — or should win — in the comments section. (For more Stage coverage, go to EW.com’s Stage hub.)
Best Musical
The Book of Mormon (Melissa, Thom)
Catch Me if You Can
The Scottsboro Boys
Sister Act
The irreverent hit from South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker is a sure thing.
Best Play
Good People (Melissa)
Jerusalem
The Motherf—er With the Hat
War Horse (Thom)
There’s a bit of a horse race in this category, with the equine drama War Horse considered the front-runner for its impressive physical production (if not its rather conventional plotting and dialogue). But some voters seem to be rallying around the smart American scripts of David Lindsay Abaire’s Good People and Stephen Adly Guigis’ The Motherf—er With the Hat. If there’s an upset, look for Good People to win by a nose. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
It was supposed to be a quiet week post-Tony nominations. Nope! Tony producers confirmed Neil Patrick Harris would be hosting the awards on June 12. Daniel Radcliffe told an audience at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y that he was shocked by the public hoopla surrounding his Tony snub. Meryl Streep confirmed she will play the title role in a reading of Alan Alda’s Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie at Lincoln Center on June 1st (the cast also includes Amy Adams, Allison Janney, and Liev Schreiber). Larry Kramer and Barbra Streisand traded barbs over who really held up the film version of The Normal Heart. And Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark returned to Broadway, rebooted and retooled, for more previews (the official opening date is now June 14). In other news, War Horse and The Book of Mormon announced their national tours, which launch next year. Wonderland announced its early closing (final curtain: Sunday, May 14). And the Tony-nominated Motherf—er With The Hat extended its run by three weeks, with a new close date set for July 17.
In the meantime, our critics saw three productions: the Shaw adaptation A Minister’s Wife, the L.A. anthology about marriage equality Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, and Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
The final week of Tony eligibility brought with it five major openings, four big-named Broadway debuts, and one major misfire. Our critics saw them all — read below for the highlights. (And don’t forget to return to PopWatch on Tuesday, May 3, following the Tony nominations, for our on-the-scene commentary and reactions.)
The Normal Heart: Larry Kramer’s 1985 drama about the early years of the AIDS crisis is emotional but imperfect, according to EW stage editor Thom Geier. He gives the revival a B+, and praises lead Joe Mantello and the strong supporting cast — including Lee Pace, Jim Parsons, and Ellen Barkin in their Broadway debuts — but adds, “there is too much speechifying by characters who are too easily interchangeable.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
Broadway revved up for the Tonys this week with four high profile openings — and, sadly, one major close. Matthew Lombardo’s High, featuring Kathleen Turner as a recovering alcoholic-turned-nun, played one official performance Tuesday night before producers announced that it would have its final curtain call this Sunday. As for the other three shows — film-to-stage transfer Sister Act, Lewis Carroll update Wonderland, and London import Jerusalem — we saw, and reviewed, them all. Here are the highlights: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Paul Kolnik
The Tonys are only two months away, and though there’s still no official word on who will host the show, we did learn this week that past winners Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose will announce the nominations on May 3. Also in the news: The 2009 revival of Hair will return to Broadway for a summer run in July and the long-rumored Samuel L. Jackson-led New York production of the Martin Luther King Jr. drama The Mountaintop will start previews in September — but will not co-star Halle Berry, as anticipated.
Meanwhile, as awards season revs up, our critics saw three big Broadway openings, one off-Broadway stunner, and a triumphant NYC transplant in Los Angeles. Highlights below. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
The boards made very few creaks this week. La Cage aux Folles producers revealed the sad news that the musical will close on May 1 after 433 performances and 15 previews. Billy Elliot celebrated its 1,000th show. The four-night-only star-studded (think: Stephen Colbert, Neil Patrick Harris, Patti LuPone, Christina Hendricks, Jon Cryer, and more) New York Philharmonic production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company began at Lincoln Center. And our reviewers saw Marisa Tomei return to off-Broadway in a ho-hum revival beneath her talents and Tony winners Sutton Foster and Joel Grey tap the light fantastic in Anything Goes (known now as The Play that Made Mandi Bierly Cry). Check out the highlights from our reviews below. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Ari Mintz
The final days of March proved busy for the stage world. Bret Michaels filed suit against the Tonys and CBS for the head injury he suffered during a Rock of Ages-inspired performance at the 2009 awards show. Stephen King and John Mellencamp’s musical collaboration, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, got an Atlanta premiere date in April 2012. Brothers & Sisters’ Luke Macfarlane joined Broadway’s The Normal Heart; Jon Hamm and girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt signed up to star in the L.A. production of Three Sisters; and Brooke Shields announced she’ll step in for the departing Bebe Neuwirth as The Addams Family’s Morticia in June.
And with only 27 days left before the cutoff for Tony eligibility, this week also marked the start of a month-long glut of big Broadway openings. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
It finally happened this week: Ending speculation that Julie Taymor would be booted off Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, producers announced on Tuesday that she’s being relieved of her day-to-day directorial duties on the troubled musical. They also revealed that Bono and The Edge are penning new songs, The Boy From Oz director Philip William McKinley is joining the creative team, and Spider-Man comic book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa will retool the book. As expected, the play won’t make its scheduled March 15 opening, which will be rescheduled for early summer.
In non-Spidey news, The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons and Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace joined the cast of The Normal Heart. (The show sill mark the first time on Broadway for both actors). READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus Oscar winner and Tony nominee Frances McDormand returned to the Great White Way this week with the opening of David Lindsay-Abaire’s new south Boston-set Good People. As a single, unemployed mother who reaches out to her prosperous high school sweetheart (Tate Donovan) for help, McDormand relays “a potent mix of prickly aggression and bruised feeling withdrawal” according to stage editor Thom Geier. The drama, which earned an A- from Geier, is “remarkable and timely” under “Daniel Sullivan’s crisp direction…but the standout is McDormand in a role of great complexity and subtlety…[she] captures all of Margaret’s contradictions with sensitivity and depth.” READ FULL STORY »
