Exciting news abounds in New York theatre at the moment, as we find out where Up Here (the musical from the writers of Disney’s Frozen) will premiere next year, and the celebrity casting radar finds Kelsey Grammer, Matthew Morrison and Emma Stone. Plus, why do Hugh Jackman’s hands hurt?
Kelsey Grammer joins cast of Finding Neverland
Kelsey Grammer (pictured here in La Cage Aux Folles) will join the cast of Finding Neverland. Photo: Joan Marcus
A first performance of March 15 is coming ever closer, and the reworked Finding Neverland keeps putting more pieces into place, with significant casting announcements both last week and this week. Matthew Morrison of Glee, who participated in workshops of the show, will now play JM Barrie in the musical adaptation of the 2004 film, succeeding Jeremy Jordan, who played the role at the American Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts earlier this year. Also new to the production is Kelsey Grammer, well known as Frasier Crane from both Cheers and Frasier. He’ll play Charles Frohman, succeeding Michael McGrath from the ART production (McGrath had replaced Roger Bart during rehearsals for that run). Laura Michelle Kelly retains her role as the mother of the boys who inspire Barrie to write Peter Pan.
Frozen writers’ Up Here to premiere at La Jolla Playhouse
Disney’s musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame has at last reached America, following a three-year run in Berlin that started in 1999. Quasimodo is ringing the bells at the La Jolla Playhouse from now into December, in a largely reworked piece, with a book by Peter Parnell, music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, under the direction of the latter’s son, Scott. Michael Arden plays Quasimodo, Ciara Renee plays the gypsy Esmerelda and Patrick Page is the villain Frollo. The show moves east to the Paper Mill Playhouse in March, and while that theatre launched Disney’s Newsies rapidly onto Broadway, the crowded theatre schedule and Paper Mill closing date means Hunchback is unlikely to make it into this year’s Tony Awards fray. By the way: La Jolla’s seemingly neverending launches of major musicals will continue unabated in 2015. Last week they announced the premiere of Up Here from Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the husband and wife team behind the score of Frozen; Bobby was also on the teams that created Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon.
Hugh Jackman opens in The River
Hugh Jackman in The River. Photo: Richard Termine
As onstage accidents go, reports from The River are inconsequential in comparison with Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Nonetheless, there have been accounts of Hugh Jackman accidentally filleting himself as he prepares a fish in Jez Butterworth’s play, and no doubt there are legions of Jackman fans who don’t want to see anything mar their object of affection. But plenty of people are turning out for Jackman and his co-stars Laura Donnelly and Cush Jumbo (both making their Broadway debuts). Jackman’s star power in the 623 seat Circle in the Square has made the show a hot ticket even before the reviews come out. The show opens on Sunday.
Emma Stone makes Broadway debut in Cabaret
Emma Stone in Cabaret. Photo: Richard Phibbs
Having had to pass on the production when it was first remounted, Emma Stone’s Broadway debut in the Rob Marshall/Sam Mendes production of Cabaret is sure to boost the Roundabout Theatre production to even greater box office success than it found in its run since the spring with Michelle Williams. With only 12 weeks scheduled, Stone’s performance as Sally Bowles is poised to clean up throughout the holiday season and even into the cold of January.
Lost Lake premieres at Manhattan Theatre Club
Tracie Thoms and John Hawkes in Lost Lake. Photo: Joan Marcus
Lost Lake, the new two-character play from Proof playwright David Auburn, has premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off-Broadway space. The low-key story of a single mom whose summer getaway cabin brings her closer than she’d planned, though non-romantically, with her troubled landlord is a showcase for its cast, Tracie Thoms and especially John Hawkes. Hawkes is new to the New York stage but known to many for his performances in the indie films The Sessions, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Winter’s Bone, receiving an Oscar nomination for the last.
Tamburlaine at Theatre for a New Audience
John Douglas Thompson in Tamburlaine. Photo: Gerry Goodstein
According to Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, the last major New York production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine was in 1956. It lasted two weeks on Broadway with Anthony Quayle in the title role under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie. So TFANA’s three-hour production, billed as Tamburlaine Parts I and II, qualifies as an event for classical theatre buffs and the company is serving it up with John Douglas Thompson as the shepherd who became king, in a production edited and directed by former Royal Shakespeare Company chief Michael Boyd with sets and costumes by Tom Piper. Having been minus six years old for the last NYC production, I’m looking forward to encountering this classic for the first time.
Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men at the Public
Pete Simpson and James Stanley in Straight White Men at The Public Theater. Photo: Julieta Cervantes
Highly praised for her self-produced works ‘downtown’, Young Jean Lee has moved uptown, but only as far as New York’s Astor Place where her play Straight White Men premieres at the Public Theatre on November 17. Known for playing with form and technique, Lee has reportedly been cautioning her regular audiences to expect something more conventional than her usual work, with a play inspired in part by her experience of seeing Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park on Broadway with a white, upper class audience. The production has already been seen in Paris and Austria prior to New York.
Punk Rock at MCC Theatre
Pico Alexander and Colbie Minifie inPunk Rock at the MCC Theater. (Photo: Joan Marcus
With The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time attaining hit status on Broadway, Off-Broadway needed a Simon Stephens play to call its own, and MCC Theatre has obliged. The US premiere of Punk Rock opens on November 16 with a young cast of up-and-comers under the direction of Trip Cullman, playing to mid-December.
Side Show returns to Broadway
Emily Padgett and Erin Davie in Side Show. Photo: Joan Marcus
The original Broadway run of Side Show was brief, but the show developed a strong following over the years that followed. On Monday, the story of British-born conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton opens on Broadway in a new production revised and directed by Bill Condon, who adapted Chicago and Dreamgirls for the screen, also directing the latter film. I was a fan of the spare, suggestive original 1997 production starring Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner and I caught the more opulent and literal new production with Erin Davie and Emily Padgett this summer at the Kennedy Center, where the changes were evident. I’m told there’s been even more revision for Broadway, bringing the show yet closer to the true-life story of the Hiltons. While his review may have jumped the usual embargo, here’s some thoughts from sensational kid critic Iain Armitage, who caught a preview performance:
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