Thursday, March 17, 2016
Laura Benanti would rather be singing “Vanilla Ice Cream” than starring on “Supergirl.” After five years of focusing on TV (“Supergirl,” “Nashville,” “Nurse Jackie”), the…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:57PMTuesday, March 15, 2016
Can a musical have a half-life? “Miss Atomic Bomb” does, and it’s not quite long enough. Set against Nevada’s nuclear tests of the 1950s — specifically, the beauty pageants set…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:50PMThe enduringly popular musical “Wicked” has hit $1 billion at the Broadway box office, 12½ years after it opened in 2003 and snowballed into a global megasmash. The show has ac…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:13PMMonday, March 14, 2016
Country music superstar Strings McCrane is trying to get real — but in Kenneth Lonergan’s funny, beguiling but overwritten new play “Hold On To Me Darling,” reality isn’…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:34PMSpring really started to heat things up at the Broadway box office last week, with the seasonal influx of city visitors driving a spike in sales — especially at the biggest names most …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:23PMHaving fun shouldn’t be as exhausting as director Alex Timbers makes it out to be in his overly antic production of “The Robber Bridegroom” at the Roundabout Theater Compan…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:23PMIt must have seemed like a good idea to adapt “Southern Comfort,” the 2000 film documentary by Kate Davis, into a folk and bluegrass musical. But good ideas don’t always pa…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:23PMSunday, March 13, 2016
Forest Whitaker is blessed with an air of warmth and decency that shines through in film roles like the one he played in “The Butler.” Michael Grandage, for lauded his stagings of &…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:03PMBack in 1996, Drew Hodges and the New York-based company he founded, SpotCo, were the brash upstarts in the insular world of Broadway marketing. Twenty years later, he has put together a boo…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:02PMThe much-lauded revival of “Gypsy,” starring Imelda Staunton, and the West End production of American Tony winner “Kinky Boots” led the pack of nominations for London…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:02PM“Nerds,” the long-aborning and much-delayed musical comedy about the rivalry of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, has hit another roadblock, cancelling a Broadway opening that had been …
SOURCE: Variety at 06:02PMSometimes the most powerful fights are the ones we have in our own minds — a fact vividly depicted on stage in “The Royale,” a riveting play by Marco Ramirez (“Dared…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:02PMIt’s rare for an instant A-lister like Lupita Nyong’o to return to the stage just as her movie career is kicking into high gear. But that’s what Nyong’o did, starring…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:01PMJamie Lloyd is not the first director to cast black actors as Jean Genet’s murderous maids. In doing so, he directly contravenes the playwright’s advice. Genet warned against flattening …
SOURCE: Variety at 06:01PMLongtime Broadway favorite Barbara Cook will bring an evening of songs and stories to Off Broadway this spring in “Barbara Cook: Then and Now,” a new production conceived by Jam…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:01PMIt never fails. The minute you sit down to compose a Requiem Mass, Mom and Dad get on your case and perfect strangers show up on the lawn to keep a death watch. That’s the peculiar pr…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:00PMBroadway got a few intimations of its annual spring crush last week, as two notable titles — “Eclipsed” starring Lupita Nyong’o and the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell mus…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:00PMThe new play by “Eclipsed” writer and “Walking Dead” star Danai Gurira, “Familiar,” is indeed on common turf — in the bosom of a loving family that …
SOURCE: Variety at 05:59PMLincoln Center Theater has come aboard the Broadway revival of “Falsettos,” with the New York nonprofit theater company joining Jujamcyn Theaters to present the show at the Walte…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:59PMBroadway megahit “Hamilton” is heading to the White House next week, where the show’s creators and cast will test out plans for the production’s robust educational in…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:58PMThe Broadway box office showed signs of growth last week — if only in baby steps — as sales began their spring recovery from the deepest depths of winter. It’s around this …
SOURCE: Variety at 05:58PMIn the days leading up to Forest Whitaker’s Broadway debut in “Hughie,” people were nervous. Gossip columns picked up on rumors that Whitaker couldn’t remember his lines duri…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:58PM“Hughie,” the Broadway play starring Forest Whitaker that opened last week, has posted a closing notice for the end of the month, abbreviating its run after weeks of very slow sa…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:58PMA contentious family grappling with a matriarch’s dementia over the Christmas holiday might not seem an obvious template for humor, but in “Dot,” playwright Colman Domingo sees the abs…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:58PMCalling all disco queens. Get out your best polyester frock and fluff up your fro — it’s party time on the Barracuda, the casino riverboat bound for destruction in “Disaste…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PMThe following is an edited version of Marilyn Stasio’s Off Broadway review of “Eclipsed,” including new additions addressing the Broadway transfer that opened March 6. When…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PMMia Michaels, the choreographer best known for her work on “So You Can Think You Can Dance,” has taken the reins of the new live production featuring the Rockettes, a summer sho…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PMChances are you’ve never heard of Hazel Ellis. And why should you? The Irish actress-playwright only wrote two plays, and after her second, “Women Without Men,” was produce…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PMWe’re still seven weeks away from the Tony nominations on May 3, but this year’s competition is already a horse race. “Hamilton,” which opened all the way back in Au…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PMWas it love — or was it statutory rape? That’s the loaded question at the heart of Scottish playwright David Harrower’s profoundly unsettling drama, “Blackbird,” wh…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:57PM 
