New casting news about the upcoming The Wiz LIVE: Orange Is The New Black’s Uzo Aduba will play “Glinda the Good Witch” and GLEE’s Amber Riley will play her sister, Addaperle.
Musicals are not a new environment for either with Aduba having starred in the short-lived 2011 Broadway revival of Godspell and Riley appeared in the 2014 Hollywood Bowl production of Hair.
Check out both singing from the musical theater canon below.
First up, Aduba singing “Lily’s Eyes” from The Secret Garden with Rachel Bay Jones at Broadway Backwards, followed by Riley’s GLEE performance of “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls.
The creators of Allegiance, a new musical based on Star Trek star (and LGBT elder statesman) George Takei’s real life experience as a child in Japanese internment camps during WWII, have launched a 10-part bimonthly online web series following the musical’s journey to opening night.
Titled Allegiance: Trek To Broadway, you can follow the series on George Takei‘s Facebook page:
It’s not quite like “Smash.” Few things are as difficult and complex as taking a show to #Broadway. It’s a long road–a trek, if you will–paved with uncertainty, risks, and challenges. It’s both thrilling and terrifying.
Since we began this journey, the fans consistently have been our biggest supporters. As a thank you, and with our friends at #Facebook, we want to give you all a first row seat to an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at what it has taken to make this lifelong dream of mine a reality. Please pass it along to any one you know who has a Broadway dream of their own.
Previews begin October 6th with an official opening on November 8th at the Longacre Theater.
The first episode makes it’s debut today. Check it out below:
From the 1987 TV special “Broadway Sings: The Music of Jule Styne” – Tony Award winners Ann Reinking, Donna McKechnie and Chita Rivera, perform “Let Me Entertain You” from Gypsy.
I’ve been a fan of all three practically my whole life. It still amazes me I worked with all three.
GYPSY – 1959. Pro-shot photo-call reel as rehearsals were starting. It seems that all of the creative geniuses were on hand except for David Merrick and maybe Leland Hayward, who I wouldn’t recognize..
Merman, Robbins, Klugman, Sondheim, Styne (at keyboard), Church, Laurents . . . Jacqueline Mayro, Gerald Freedman, various performers and stage managers and even Gypsy Rose Lee. Klugman looks great, and the rapport between he and Merman is evident.
For a soundtrack – audio working-tapes of Ethel Merman and pianist, including many lyrics that were deleted or changed during rehearsals and tryouts.
At the finish is a smattering of amateur color film of the original production out of town, including a glimpse of the “Christmas” number that was cut before the NY opening.
This is all just film snippets, apparently in no particular order. I’m sorry the camera fidelity isn’t better – as you see, the original source is spotty to begin with. A good friend in the legal profession has assured me that this film is now in the ‘public domain’.Some parts of the audio were apparently added separately and volume levels may have to be adjusted while you listen. Posted by Stephen B. Crowley on Wednesday, July 8, 2015
GYPSY – 1959. Pro-shot photo-call reel as rehearsals were starting. It seems that all of the creative geniuses were on hand except for David Merrick and maybe Leland Hayward, who I wouldn’t recognize..
Merman, Robbins, Klugman, Sondheim, Styne (at keyboard), Church, Laurents . . . Jacqueline Mayro, Gerald Freedman, various performers and stage managers and even Gypsy Rose Lee. Klugman looks great, and the rapport between he and Merman is evident.
For a soundtrack – audio working-tapes of Ethel Merman and pianist, including many lyrics that were deleted or changed during rehearsals and tryouts.
At the finish is a smattering of amateur color film of the original production out of town, including a glimpse of the “Christmas” number that was cut before the NY opening.
Earlier this week, Broadway icon Patti LuPone made headlines when she snatched a cell phone out of the hands of an audience member who was texting during the performance of her current show Shows For Days at Lincoln Center.
“This woman — a very pretty young woman — was sitting with her boyfriend or husband. We could see her text. She was so uninterested. She showed her husband what she was texting. We talked about it at intermission. When we went out for the second act I was very close to her, and she was still texting. I watched her and thought, “What am I going to do?” At the very end of that scene, we all exit. What I normally do is shake the hand of the people in the front row. I just walked over to her, shook her hand and took her phone. I walked offstage and handed it to the stage manager, who gave it to the house manager.
“I don’t know why they buy the ticket or come to the theater if they can’t let go of the phone. It’s controlling them. They can’t turn it off and can’t stop looking at it. They are truly inconsiderate, self-absorbed people who have no public manners whatsoever. I don’t know what to do anymore. I was hired as an actor, not a policeman of the audience.
It’s getting worse. I’m hired to tell a story, and it takes a lot of effort and work to do that convincingly. It’s a handful of people who destroy that experience for everyone. It’s heartbreaking. Theater is not a social event.”
She issued this public statement about her actions and why she feels so strongly about the issue:
“We work hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few, rude, self-absorbed and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones. They cannot put them down. When a phone goes off or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark it ruins the experience for everyone else – the majority of the audience at that performance and the actors on stage. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore. Now I’m putting battle gear on over my costume to marshall the audience as well as perform.”
Tyne Daly, currently starring on Broadway in IT SHOULDA BEEN YOU, took a few moments at Friday’s curtain call to celebrate the historic news of marriage equality with the audience.
During her curtain speech Tyne explained her own very personal connection to the issue of marriage equality for all.
Very touching, heartfelt and worth your three minutes.
“Hedwig is the role of a lifetime. I’m looking forward to being challenged performance-wise on many levels, as well as being humbled by the musical’s social implications. I also like wearing nail polish.” – Taye Diggs speaking to People Magazine on starring on Broadway in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Roseanne and Getting On star Laurie Metcalf will be playing the frighteningly demented “Annie Wilkes” in the Broadway adaption of Stephen King’s Misery, opposite Bruce Willis.
Can you say SOLD OUT?
Misery will play Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater for 16 weeks only with previews starting on October 22, and an official opening night of November 15.
Check out the beautiful wirework used to simulate swimming from the Japanese production of The Little Mermaid at the Shiki Theatre Company. Beautiful and convincing, although I’m not sure about Ariel’s floating hair…?
The Broadway production of the stage show utilized wheelie sneakers to give the illusion the performers were swimming. I’ve posted a clip from the Broadway show also, just so you can compare.
Added bonus: Broadway featured the fantastic Sierra Boggess as “Ariel” and Norm Lewis as “King Triton.”
The new Gloria Estafan stage musical, On Your Feet! premiered in Chicago last night, and Variety likes what it sees.
While not an absolute rave, Variety says the show is what you expect and achieves that well.
Just a few lines from the positive review:
There is something comfortingly familiar and predictable about “On Your Feet!,” the Broadway-bound new bio-musical featuring the story of Gloria Estefan and her music-producer husband Emilio.
Another way to say that might be that it never goes deeper than the superficial and that its narrative follows a TV-movie template.
But the show boasts sufficient sincerity with its schmaltz, and features a fluid, structurally sound story that strings together the Estefans’ pop ballads with a ready dose of the buoyant Cuban-fusion dance numbers that sold kajillions of albums worldwide.
It’s a show sure to please the built-in audience that will find absolutely exactly the entertainment they expect, and even the less fully acquainted will find that the rhythm really is going to get you.
It’s corny, stereotypical, too on-the-nose… and it works, which is true throughout this unsubtle but ever-crafty and unquestionably entertaining show.
Directed by two time Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell, the show plays in Chicago through July 5th, and is then set for a Broadway opening night on November 5th at the Marquis Theater in NYC.
