1,418 stories by "Roger Friedman"
This time it’s no fun to be right. But I told you two weeks ago that “Dead Accounts,” the play with Katie Holmes as a featured player, was not going to make it. Yesterday p…
Freedom from her past constraints means Katie Holmes gets to kiss a guy for real on stage in “Dead Accounts.” The guy she kisses is Josh Hamilton, and you can tell she has a good…
Cheers and a standing ovation this afternoon at the first screening of the film version of "Les Miserables." Tom Hooper, Oscar winner for The King's Speech, has made a thrilling, sensational…
“Scandalous,” the musical co-written and labored over by Kathie Lee Gifford for a dozen years, is barely holding on. Despite bravura performances by Carolee Carmello and Roz Ryan…
Number 1 on Broadway this week: “The Lion King.” Number 1 five years ago: “The Lion King.” Ten years ago: “The Lion King.” 15 Years ago; yup. “The L…
Kathie Lee Gifford worked for 12 years on “Scandalous,” her Broadway musical about feminist evangelist pill popper and trailblazer Aimee Semple McPherson. Joy Philbin was telling…
Broadway: the show must go on, and it did last night when “The Heiress” opened on Broadway with up and coming movie star Jessica Chastain, veteran actor and former Oscar nominee …
Katie Holmes made a public appearance last night for the new Broadway play in which she will shortly open, called “Dead Accounts.” Katie, playwright Theresa Rebeck and director J…
“Motown: The Musical” is wending its way toward us inexorably. A couple of weeks ago the producers of the show invited group theater bookers and advertisers to come see a little …
EXCLUSIVE Anne Hathaway’s recent wedding to Adam Shulman got a lot of write-ups in various tabloids. The wedding took place in the woods on sacred Indian ground near Big Sur on the ver…
There are several stories that intertwine through “The Exonerated,” a play reading that took root ten years ago at the Culture Project on Bleecker Street. Now the people and thei…
I feel like deja vu all over again. I’ve written this before, but today they sent out the official release about Tom Hanks in the play “Lucky Guy.” This was Nora EphronR…
Little Steven van Zandt is doing the impossible! He’s reuniting the Rascals, the original Rascals, for a theatrical show. “Once Upon A Dream” will happen December 13, 14, a…
Exclusive: throw another film title into the Broadway mix. I’m told that Focus Features is dabbling in its first Broadway musical. They’re turning “Miss Pettigrew Lives for…
Great story in the New York Times: Broadway producer Ben Sprecher is still looking for $4.5 million to put his musical, “Rebecca,” on Broadway. It turns out his major backer disa…
Helen Mirren won the Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth in “The Queen,” written by Peter Morgan. Now Baz Bamigboye reports from London in today’s Daily Mail that Mirren and …
You’d think after every bad thing this country did to Charlie Chaplin we could leave him alone. Apparently not. A version of his life story, poorly and inadequately told, is now on Bro…
Casting directors don’t get Oscars, Tonys, or Emmys. So they have their own awards–called Artios. They’re given out on October 29th. COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINEES FOLLOWS 2012 …
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” screened in Chicago on Thursday night for a large,paying audience. Tickets were $10 for a film charity, and The Weinstein Company says t…
“Diner,” the musical version of Barry Levinson’s classic 1983 movie, is downsizing. Producers announced that the show, with music by Sheryl Crowe, is cancelling its fall ru…
The late wonderful, astounding Dusty Springfield is finally coming to near-Broadway. Writer-performer-producer Kirsten Holly Smith will play her in a show at New World Stages this fall calle…
Katie Holmes has not let one minute pass since her quickie divorce. She’s already lined up a Broadway play. Jack O’Brien is set to direct her in “Dead Accounts,” a ne…
Did you know that Stephen King and John Mellencamp teamed up for a musical recently? It’s called “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” and it opened last spring in Atlanta t…
Cyndi Lauper’s Broadway musical–the movie “Kinky Boots” on stage–has gotten a cast. Stark Sands, of “American Idiot,” will co-star with Billy Porter…
Exclusive: Add Sigourney Weaver’s name to the list of movie stars heading to off or or on Broadway shortly (Alec Baldwin and Jake Gyllenhaal have been in recent announcements). I sort …
