Image: Bleecker Street, Photo: David Apuzzo/Mainframe Pictures, The Criterion Collection, Vivien Killilea (Getty Images for TCM), Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures UK (Getty Images), Apple, Melinda Sue Gordon (Universal Pictures), Graphic: The A.V. ClubI.S.S. review: Ariana DeBose’s sci-fi outing fails...
- 1/20/2024
- avclub.com
Clockwise l to r: Some Like It Hot (Marc J. Franklin), Waitress (Josh Lehrer), Spamalot (Joan Marcus), Legally Blonde (Paul Kolnik)Graphic: The A.V. Club
It’s nothing new for Broadway creatives to look to Hollywood for inspiration, but the trend has gotten a little out of hand in recent years.
It’s nothing new for Broadway creatives to look to Hollywood for inspiration, but the trend has gotten a little out of hand in recent years.
- 1/15/2024
- by Cindy White
- avclub.com
In the second act of Hell’s Kitchen, Alicia Keys’s autobiographical passion project over a decade in the making, absent father Davis (Brandon Victor Dixon) sits down at a piano and asks his wary teenage daughter, Ali (Maleah Joi Moon), if she remembers the song he wrote for her that they always used to sing together. He starts to play, and the song is “If I Ain’t Got You,” the second single from Keys’s second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys.
Ali tentatively joins him, the electricity of Keys’s surging melody and yearning lyrics coursing across the stage and supercharging the father and daughter’s fractured relationship. As staged by Michael Greif, it’s a lovely picture, with Davis at the piano far back and Ali at the edge of the stage looking away from him and toward the audience. Sparks fly, briefly, but despite...
Ali tentatively joins him, the electricity of Keys’s surging melody and yearning lyrics coursing across the stage and supercharging the father and daughter’s fractured relationship. As staged by Michael Greif, it’s a lovely picture, with Davis at the piano far back and Ali at the edge of the stage looking away from him and toward the audience. Sparks fly, briefly, but despite...
- 11/20/2023
- by Dan Rubins
- Slant Magazine
No matter where fate propels Oliver Twist—from the workhouse to the funeral home to the hideout of a master pickpocket—the orphan maintains a fierce sense of who he is, plus a willingness to stand up for himself and, yes, even ask for more in his pursuit of a loving home. And Benjamin Pajak, the actor who plays him, is on a similarly dogged quest: a nearly one-kid glorious mission to rescue the New York City Center’s lumpy revival of Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Oliver Twist.
If it felt like hyperbole to praise the 10-year-old playing Winthrop Paroo in the revival of The Music Man as the most electrifying performer on stage, there’s no need to pull punches now that he’s taken on a title role. Indeed, Pajak, now 12 years old, is a marvel in Oliver! For one, his...
If it felt like hyperbole to praise the 10-year-old playing Winthrop Paroo in the revival of The Music Man as the most electrifying performer on stage, there’s no need to pull punches now that he’s taken on a title role. Indeed, Pajak, now 12 years old, is a marvel in Oliver! For one, his...
- 5/6/2023
- by Dan Rubins
- Slant Magazine
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s classic tragedy of the American Dream gone sour, is revitalized and given room to encompass the Black experience in director Miranda Cromwell’s intriguing production opening at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway tonight. Boasting flat-out terrific performances – Wendell Pierce as Willie Loman and the amazing Sharon D Clarke as his wife Linda – this Death of a Salesman doesn’t so much reinvent Miller’s masterpiece as open its doors to perspectives that enrich the material.
The script is unchanged – and surprisingly accommodating to the fresh point of view – with Cromwell and composer Femi Temowo lacing the show with markers of mid-20th Century Black life – the sounds and movement of jazz, blues and gospel, most notably – infusing the production with a legacy and identity all its own.
The wrenching, beaten-down performance of Pierce and Clarke’s...
The script is unchanged – and surprisingly accommodating to the fresh point of view – with Cromwell and composer Femi Temowo lacing the show with markers of mid-20th Century Black life – the sounds and movement of jazz, blues and gospel, most notably – infusing the production with a legacy and identity all its own.
The wrenching, beaten-down performance of Pierce and Clarke’s...
- 10/10/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Near the start of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of the musical 1776, a cast made entirely of actors who identify as female, transgender and nonbinary, with multiple representations of race and ethnicity, step into the gold-buckled shoes, literally, of the men who would come to be called the founding fathers. We can only imagine how things might turn out differently, both for the musical and in some alternate real-life universe.
In some ways, not much changes. Members of the Continental Congress still bicker, fight and ever so slowly hash out the details of what will become the Declaration of Independence. Slavery will remain enshrined in both the document and the new nation, and the musical’s rousing Sherman Edwards score is as vibrant and pleasing as ever.
What’s different, of course, are the voices singing those songs and hashing those historical details, and in that, at least,...
In some ways, not much changes. Members of the Continental Congress still bicker, fight and ever so slowly hash out the details of what will become the Declaration of Independence. Slavery will remain enshrined in both the document and the new nation, and the musical’s rousing Sherman Edwards score is as vibrant and pleasing as ever.
What’s different, of course, are the voices singing those songs and hashing those historical details, and in that, at least,...
- 10/7/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Image Source: Jeremy Daniel
Reneé Rapp isn't a regular 19-year-old, she's a cool 19-year-old. The North Carolina native currently stars as Regina George on Broadway's Mean Girls, but it wasn't that long ago that she was a high schooler herself. Before playing the queen of the Plastics, Rapp gained critical acclaim for her performance at the 2018 Jimmy Awards, an award show that recognizes musical theatre performances by high school students. Shortly after her high school graduation, she didn't waste any time chasing her Broadway dreams.
While Rapp admitted it was "a little bit scary" auditioning in front of legends like Tina Fey and Tony-nominated director Casey Nicholaw for Mean Girls, she did feel like she had an extra edge since she was recently in high school herself. "It was nice to audition right after I had graduated because I had a little bit more perspective on some things that...
Reneé Rapp isn't a regular 19-year-old, she's a cool 19-year-old. The North Carolina native currently stars as Regina George on Broadway's Mean Girls, but it wasn't that long ago that she was a high schooler herself. Before playing the queen of the Plastics, Rapp gained critical acclaim for her performance at the 2018 Jimmy Awards, an award show that recognizes musical theatre performances by high school students. Shortly after her high school graduation, she didn't waste any time chasing her Broadway dreams.
While Rapp admitted it was "a little bit scary" auditioning in front of legends like Tina Fey and Tony-nominated director Casey Nicholaw for Mean Girls, she did feel like she had an extra edge since she was recently in high school herself. "It was nice to audition right after I had graduated because I had a little bit more perspective on some things that...
- 10/5/2019
- by Kelsie Gibson
- Popsugar.com
Standing ovations are certainly nothing new when it comes to Broadway productions (the cast and crew would really have to screw up not to get one), but there was something a little extraordinary about the one that greeted a recent performance of the musical Mean Girls at the August Wilson Theatre. The energy and the enthusiasm from the audience seemed a little overwhelming, which immediately begs the question: what is it like to be on the receiving end of that kind of response? "I have to say, my favorite part in the show is the last 10 minutes," replies Erika Henningsen, who plays nice girl gone mean, but eventually redeemed, Cady Heron. "There are days when I think, 'Oh my God, I don't have the energy to do this.' It becomes such a marathon, but then in the last 10 minutes I get to speak to the cast — the full cast — in that Spring Fling number.
- 9/3/2018
- by Ed Gross
- Life and Style
When Lea Salonga was 20 years old, making her Broadway debut as Kim in the 1991 production of Miss Saigon, not once did she ever think she’d star in Once on This Island, which was playing right down the street. At the time, both musicals were premiering on Broadway.
Now, 26 years later, the two celebrated shows are back on Broadway. Miss Saigon is nearing the end of a limited engagement at the Broadway Theatre, where it performed its original run, while Once on This Island just opened in December at the Circle in the Square Theatre. And once again, Salonga is at the center of it all.
This time, she’s playing Erzulie, one of four gods (including Glee’s Alex Newell) who lead a peasant girl named Ti Moune (Hailey Kilgore) on a journey to the other side of her Antilles island nation after falling for a wealthy boy, in the Michael Arden-directed revival of Once on...
Now, 26 years later, the two celebrated shows are back on Broadway. Miss Saigon is nearing the end of a limited engagement at the Broadway Theatre, where it performed its original run, while Once on This Island just opened in December at the Circle in the Square Theatre. And once again, Salonga is at the center of it all.
This time, she’s playing Erzulie, one of four gods (including Glee’s Alex Newell) who lead a peasant girl named Ti Moune (Hailey Kilgore) on a journey to the other side of her Antilles island nation after falling for a wealthy boy, in the Michael Arden-directed revival of Once on...
- 12/20/2017
- Entertainment Tonight
The term "Triple Threat" fits Cheyenne Jackson to a (tight black) T, as the multi-talent has shown he can sing, dance, and act on stage, TV, and films.
He turns 35 today, and it appears that he had a good time this weekend.
As we ponder the possibilities of what a birthday weekend with Cheyenne and pals would entail, let's take a look back at his career, which has steadily grown in scope and visibility since his first Broadway experience 8 years ago.
2002
Cheyenne makes his Broadway debut as the understudy to both male leads in Thoroughly Modern Millie.
2003
Cheyenne is the standby to play Radames (here opposite Deborah Cox) in Aida (pic: Joan Marcus)
He returns to Seattle, Washington (where he had lived for years) to perform as Rocky in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
2004
Cheyenne originates the role of Matthew in the boyband parody Altar Boyz at the New...
He turns 35 today, and it appears that he had a good time this weekend.
As we ponder the possibilities of what a birthday weekend with Cheyenne and pals would entail, let's take a look back at his career, which has steadily grown in scope and visibility since his first Broadway experience 8 years ago.
2002
Cheyenne makes his Broadway debut as the understudy to both male leads in Thoroughly Modern Millie.
2003
Cheyenne is the standby to play Radames (here opposite Deborah Cox) in Aida (pic: Joan Marcus)
He returns to Seattle, Washington (where he had lived for years) to perform as Rocky in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
2004
Cheyenne originates the role of Matthew in the boyband parody Altar Boyz at the New...
- 7/12/2010
- by snicks
- The Backlot
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