Thursday, November 11, 2021
If the team of Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh (“School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play”) and Kenyan-born director Saheem Ali brings nothing else to the stages of New Yo…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:00PMTuesday, November 9, 2021
The new Off Broadway play “Morning Sun” was written for Edie Falco — and it’s not the most comfortable thing for her. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: “It …
SOURCE: Variety at 01:05PMThursday, November 4, 2021
The djembe drum is the sacred heartbeat of West Africa, a powerful instrument conveying messages of struggle and liberation for African people. Traditionally used by griots to connect histor…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMWednesday, November 3, 2021
Stunning performances from Edie Falco, Blair Brown and Marin Ireland humanize Simon Stephens’ new play “Morning Sun,” an earnest if bland love letter to a kind, selfless but fundamenta…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PM“Young hearts, to yourself be true.” It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen never sang along with Candi Staton. But among the many things that the frankly sensational �…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:00PMWednesday, October 27, 2021
The musical “Caroline, or Change” is back on Broadway for the first time since its captivating original production closed in 2004. The best theater revivals highlight the relevance of cl…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:30PMTuesday, October 26, 2021
The first thing audiences see at the new Broadway revival of “Caroline, or Change” is a statue of a Confederate soldier that, early on in the show, gets torn down in an act of protest. I…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:13PMFriday, October 22, 2021
From “42nd Street” onwards, backstage stories were once a staple in the theater, and while there was often a shark or two, they were usually only of the loan variety. But in the West End…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:09PMTuesday, October 19, 2021
Andrew Lloyd Webber would welcome a transgender performer in the cast of one of his shows, the composer and producer said in an interview recorded live at the Variety Legit: Return to Broad…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:32PMSunday, October 17, 2021
“I’m in this world but I’m not,” the middle-aged woman confesses to an unseen interviewer in Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.,” a mesmerizing solo show of theatrical shamanism that is re…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMFriday, October 15, 2021
Welcome to America, all ye wretched immigrants from impoverished foreign lands. Watch closely and learn as the three Lehman brothers from Bavaria — Henry the brainy head, Emanuel the power…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:07AMThursday, October 14, 2021
The title character of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is unequivocal: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it was done quickly.” Director Yaël Farber begs to differ. She …
SOURCE: Variety at 07:01PMWednesday, October 13, 2021
A hope for the future arrives in the final moments of “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” a dutiful and expansive cataloguing of its title subject by Keenan Scott II. “I can’t wait for the …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMTuesday, October 12, 2021
The fan-favorite Broadway veteran Norm Lewis is doing something he’s never done before: starring on Broadway in a play. After a career marked by many of the great roles in musical theater …
SOURCE: Variety at 02:09PMMonday, October 11, 2021
Everyone knows more than they let on at the top of “Is This a Room,” a taut and pulse-prickling docudrama conceived and directed by Tina Satter. That includes audiences who are likely fa…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:30PMSunday, October 10, 2021
“Chicken & Biscuits” is a feast of a production, and there is enough sustenance and libation for the entire family. Zhailon Levingston, who at 27-years-old becomes the youngest Black…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMFriday, October 8, 2021
Here’s a treat: a restorative evening of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s loving recollections of growing up in an upstate New York boarding house run by a life force known as Nanny. When Nanny m…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:35PMThursday, October 7, 2021
The all-powerful family firm has assets aplenty, but its troubled future is being massively fought over with everyone plotting over the next generation. No, not the upcoming third season of …
SOURCE: Variety at 06:42PMEighteen months after theaters around the country shut down, Jerry Zaks is back doing exactly what he was the moment things went dark: rehearsing his next big Broadway comedy. One of the ind…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:45PMWednesday, October 6, 2021
When Stephen C. Byrd began producing on Broadway 16 years ago, he and his partner Alia Jones-Harvey were usually the only Black faces they saw in the business. “We would walk into marketin…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:00AMTuesday, October 5, 2021
Like everyone on Broadway at that moment, British director Michael Longhurst remembers exactly where he was when the COVID-19 shutdown came. “We had just done our dress rehearsal of ‘Car…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:18PMThere are two reasons that, among recent Hamlets, Cush Jumbo (“The Good Fight”) is right up there alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Ian McKellen. Like those two actors, Jumbo has dazzli…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:35PMSunday, October 3, 2021
Strutting strong, arms akimbo and ready for a royal rumble, the sextet of cheeky spouses of King Henry VIII take to the stage in triumph — not just over the much-married monarch who did th…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMFriday, October 1, 2021
In “A Crossing,” the new dance musical premiering at Barrington Stage in the Berkshires, a group of desperate immigrants confront hazardous terrains, punishing weather, threatening vigil…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:02PMTuesday, September 28, 2021
The playwrights Jocelyn Bioh and Martyna Majok have a bond, in life and in their work. “I feel like Martyna and I are these playwriting sisters in terms of the groups of people and the sto…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:43PMMonday, September 27, 2021
The long-delayed Tony Awards ceremony has happened at last, and much of it played out as expected — see, for instance, the string of wins for “Moulin Rouge!,” which seemed the likely w…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:04AMFriday, September 24, 2021
A Tony predictions story? In this climate? Yes, the Tony Awards are happening Sunday, although you might not know it. Publicity has been hampered by the confusing roll-out of the plan for th…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:20PMWith all the uncertainty around Broadway right now, one thing’s for sure: The Tony Awards this year will be unlike any other. The 2021 ceremony comes just as Broadway has begun its recove…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:00PMFriday, September 17, 2021
The claim to theatrical fame of the Long Island hamlet of Yaphank has thus far rested with PG Wodehouse, who included the town in his lyrics for Jerome Kern’s satirical hymn to the simple …
SOURCE: Variety at 07:00PMTuesday, September 14, 2021
“I don’t want to take live theater for granted ever again, do you?” That was Lin-Manuel Miranda, in a brief curtain speech welcoming back the first Broadway audience at “Hamilton” …
SOURCE: Variety at 10:22PMBroadway is back — and it’s looking to make some changes to how it used to operate. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: With producers, creators, advocates and exec…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:07PM 
