Disney has released the first trailer for the much-anticipated remake of The Lion King, and it’s pretty amazing.
Hit the play button below to return to Pride Rock, Simba’s birthplace, as the Elton John classic, “Circle of Life,” rings across the African plains.
Directed by Jon Favreau, the cast of the new film includes Beyoncé as Nala, Donald Glover as Simba, James Earl Jones (that voice!), reprising his role as Mufasa, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, Alfre Woodard as Sarabi, John Oliver as Zazu, and Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner as Pumbaa and Timon.
You may recall Favreau directed the 2016 live-action remake of The Jungle Book, which won an Oscar for its visual effects and garnered almost $1 billion at the worldwide box office.
The Oscar winning soundtrack of the 1994 film, by Tim Rice and Elton John, sold over 10 million copies, scoring an Academy Award for “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.”
According to reports, Beyoncé is collaborating with John on updated versions of the classic songs for the upcoming remake.
Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical), Brandon Victor Dixon (who killed in in this year’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live!), and RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Valentina have been announced for Fox’s 2019 live production of the Broadway hit musical, Rent.
Dixon will play ‘Tom Collins,’ Hudgens will take on ‘Maureen,’ and Valentina will portray the cross-dressing ‘Angel.’
Valentina becomes the first drag queen to be cast in a primetime live musical production. She was a fan favorite in Season 9 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, winning Miss Congeniality.
Rent will also feature Kiersey Clemons (Hearts Beat Loud) as ‘Joanne,’ Jordan Fisher (Hamilton) as ‘Mark,’ Brennin Hunt (Nashville) as ‘Roger,’ Mario (Empire) as ‘Benjamin,’ and recording artist Tinashe (Dancing With the Stars) as ‘Mimi.’
Tony Award nominee Keala Settle, of “This Is Me” fame in the movie The Greatest Showman, will also be featured in the production singing the solo from “Seasons of Love.”
Original Broadway director Michael Greif will again helm the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jonathan Larson musical.
The 1996 rock musical, loosely inspired by Puccini’s La Bohème, was an instant smash hit and was responsible for launching the careers of original cast members Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Taye Diggs, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Jesse L. Martin.
The televised production is set to air January 27, 2019.
Even as the 2018 Tony Award nominations were announced this week, music theater fans are looking ahead to Moulin Rouge! The Musical, based on the 2001 movie musical by Baz Luhrmann, which will begin its journey to the Great White Way this summer.
At Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, audiences will get ‘first look’ at the new show for only 36 performances – June 27 through August 5.
Via press release:
Set in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France at the turn of the century, a world of indulgent beauty and unparalleled extravagance, of bohemians and aristocrats, of boulevardiers and mademoiselles, Moulin Rouge! The Musical tells the fictional story of an ambitious, lovesick writer, Christian (Aaron Tveit), and a dazzling, entrancing chanteuse, Satine (Karen Olivo).
Their lives collide at the Moulin Rouge with its many characters including the host of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler (Danny Burstein); the brilliant and starving artist Toulouse-Lautrec (Sahr Ngaujah); the greatest tango dancer – and gigolo – in all of Paris, Santiago (Ricky Rojas); the tempting Nini (Robyn Hurder); and The Duke of Monroth (Tam Mutu), the wealthy and entitled patron of the club who thinks he can buy anything he wants, including love.
As in the film, Moulin Rouge! The Musical celebrates some of the greatest popular music of the last 50 years. The stage musical features many of the iconic songs from the movie and also includes recent hits released since the movie premiered 15 years ago.
Check out leading man Aaron Tveit singing “Come What May” from the upcoming musical below.
What if “Dorothy” from THE WIZARD OF OZ and her counterpart “Dorothy” from THE WIZ went on the same journey together?
Awesome stuff from some of those Broadway folks – directed by Sean Barrett.
Who doesn’t love both? Very creative. Bravo.
Here’s the video description:
The Oz Project is a love letter to THE WIZARD OF OZ and THE WIZ created by some of their diehard fans at heart. This 10-minute music video follows the parallel journeys of the Dorothy character in each adaptation as they both get whisked away in the same tornado, land in their respective versions of Oz, and follow their own yellow brick road. Their stories are interwoven as the two classic versions are combined through their well-loved scores, and sung by some of the greatest voices on Broadway.
The cast includes: Kate Rockwell, Brynn Williams, Joshua Henry, Rob McClure, Nancy Opel, Liz Larsen, Mykal Kilgore, James T. Lane, Ryan VanDenBoom, Grasan Kingsberry, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Ben Jacoby, Jennie Harney, Natalie Joy Johnson, Ashlee Dupre, Patrice Covington, Alan Wiggins, Julia Knitel, Marty Thomas, Louis Jones, Gabrielle Reed.
Nate Hackmann (center) leads the cast of IDAHO! (click pics to enlarge – all photos by Erik Kabik)
For those readers in Las Vegas this weekend, I heartily encourage you to run to The Smith Center where Idaho! The Comedy Musical is killing audiences with tons of laughs and titular tunes.
The new musical, lyrics and book by Buddy Sheffield with co-composer credit to Keith Thompson, is a mashed up/parody version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical canon with an emphasis on sending up their classic tuner, Oklahoma!. Think applying a healthy dose of double entendre Mel Brooks’ The Producers humor, plus hysterical irreverence like that currently trodding the Broadway boards in hits like Book of Mormon and Something Rotten! and you get an idea of what’s in store.
Sheffield and Thompson’s score is clever and tuneful with plenty of musical inside jokes for the most learned of musical theater fans. Along the way you also get nods to Les Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof and many, many more.
The project got it’s initial exposure at the New York Musical Theater Festival back in 2008 when it was honored with “Best of Fest.” I mention that to note that this is how long it takes to develop a real, honest-to-goodness Broadway musical. Eight years later the show is finally getting a major production here in Las Vegas.
The fruit of that extended developmental period of time is on full display here. The book is tight, the lyrics smart, and the creative team seems open to honest reassessment. Sources report that between the first preview and opening night the second act was tightened by 5 minutes. This is a team that demonstrates a strong sense of clarity in what they want to deliver to an audience.
The official synopsis goes thusly:
Idaho! The Comedy Musical brings a hilarious new love story to life as Cassie Purdy, a mail-order bride from Ohio, arrives to Idaho to marry the notorious Jed Strunk, a real toad gagger who’s got the personality of a festered wart and enough money to buy every last spud in town. Upon her arrival, Cassie encounters the handsome Whip Masters, falling in love to Strunk’s dismay and setting in motion a whirlwind of events that end in three couples either discovering or re-discovering the loves of their lives.
The handsome “Whip Masters” is played to perfection by handsome, gorgeous voiced Nate Hackmann (recently seen in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables) who is worth the price of admission all on his own. A big, huge, golden voice, and comedy chops to match, Hackmann let’s us know up front that, “Heck, it’s a helluva day!” because, after all, “I’m the leading man.”
Jessica Fontana (Broadway’s Cinderella)is the object of his affection, and for good reason. Fontana plays “Cassie” with much sass and a winning soprano.
Also featured in the cast are Matt Loehr (Book of Mormon, The Producers) as “Slim Johnson” (careful of the double entendre there) and Alex Ellis (Catch Me If You Can, On A Clear Day) as “Ida Dunham” (another pun there). Think Oklahoma!‘s “Will Parker” and “Ado Annie” but with a lot more good, clean sexual punning going on.
Carmen Ruby Floyd, Jen Perry and Jay Rogers all join in to farm the fun and frivolity.
Director Matt Lenz has a firm grasp of the very specific kind of humor he working with here, and he delivers keeping the pace turned up high and the humor constantly center stage.
Choreographer Michelle Lynch continually finds terpsichorean creativity throughout including heaping helpings of humor with her “Twister Ballet” and the “Everything’s Up To Date In Kansas City” stand-in “Boise’s Jist as Noisy as Kin Be” led by Loehr.
The audience was clearly happy to take this hay ride as the laughs were constant throughout. This is spud-busting, tater-tickling, home-grown humor here, and the audience was definitely down for the fun.
Myron Martin, president and CEO of The Smith Center who spearheaded the development of the Center as a haven for touring Broadway shows to call home here in Las Vegas, is now taking the Center to the next level hoping to actually create musicals that Las Vegas can send to Broadway.
Idaho! makes for a worthy first effort. Stay tuned to see if the tuner tumbles all the way to the Great White Way.
But in the meantime, head down to the Center’s Reynolds Hall and enjoy Idaho!’s fully baked fun with all the fixings.
Idaho! The Comedy Musical performs now through Sunday, July 17. For ticket info, call 702-749-2000 or click over to at The Smith Center.
FOX has shared the first peek of Danny (Aaron Tveit), Sandy (Julianne Hough), and Rizzo (Vanessa Hudgens) from their upcoming live version of Grease.
I think this looks great! Clearly, the producers are paying respectful homage to the enormously successful 1978 film starring Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta and Stockard Channing. I like that.
Btw – I hear there may be a cameo from a certain “Pink Lady” in the upcoming television presentation. Wanna guess who?
First teaser for NBC’s The Wiz Live!, starring Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Shanice Williams, David Alan Grier, Ne-Yo, Elijah Kelley, Common and more,
Nice to see the network swing into some diversity here with it’s third holiday musical presentation after The Sound of Music and Peter Pan. Loving the costume design.
In a post on his personal blog, Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown shares the original demo of the opening of his Songs for a New World, which premiered in NYC 20 years ago.
Hard to believe the piece is already 20. I remember when it first arrived and theater audiences first discovered Brown’s terrific writing. Since then, the show – essentially a revue – has become a favorite for colleges and regional theaters.
I loved the entire cast recording, although due to contractual issues at the time Tony Award winner Billy Porter was not allowed to record the cast recording. Fab Ty Taylor filled in for the recording, but I’ve always longed to hear Billy sing this glorious opening number.
October 12, 1995, was the first performance of Songs for a New World at the WPA Theatre on W. 23rd St. in Manhattan. Almost no one saw it, the reviews were polite but dismissive, and the theater doesn’t even exist anymore. Yet Songs for a New World lives on, in its wonderful cast album (produced by the great Jeffrey Lesser and released by the visionary Bill Rosenfield) and in the hundreds of productions the show receives all around the world every year.
You can go here to see photos of the original production and read the reviews. And below, I’ve posted (for the first time) the original demo recording of the opening sequence of the show – all twelve minutes of it! – featuring four amazing singers who did so much to shape the sound of the show. Andréa Burns and I had known each other since summer camp in the 80s, and Billy Porter sang during my shifts in the piano bar at Don’t Tell Mama when he would finish his performances in Miss Saigon; they both were able to stay with the project for its entire development. I’ve talked about Amy Ryder a lot on this blog and how much she supported me in my first years in this business and made NY feel like home. And finally, Brian d’Arcy James came in for an audition for a project at Manhattan Theatre Club that I was music-directing, and I immediately grabbed him and got his phone number because I knew I needed him to sing my music.
The voice you can’t hear on the demo is that of my director and collaborator and confidante and support system, Daisy Prince, who heard my songs in a piano bar and signed on to the next four years of her life building this crazy revue.
Twenty years is a long time, and it feels like it, actually. I saw Andréa, Brooks, Billy and Jessica just four days ago at a reading of Prince of Broadway and we are all profoundly different than we were back then, and yet we are still connected, bound by this marvelous mad adventure we had. Songs for a New World was my first professional show. And it was glorious.
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.
