2014-15 Broadway/Off-B'way Season Update

Glenn Close will star in
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance this fall

Theater awards for 2013-14 are pouring in and so are announcements of new shows for 2014-15. In addition to This Is Our Youth with Michael Cera and Kieran Culken, there are several revivals of plays of which I have strong memories. It's Only a Play is Terrence McNally's inside-baseball comedy set on the opening night of a huge flop. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will reunite as a bitter actor and nervous playwright. I saw an earlier version of it called Broadway, Broadway during its out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia just before I went away to college in 1977. It starred James Coco and Geraldine Page, and closed out of town. I do remember one joke about Beatrice Straight doing a cabaret act. It resurfaced as It's Only a Play Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1986, again with Coco and Christine Baranski, Joanna Gleason and Mark Blum.

Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance is also coming back, this time with Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Lindsay Duncan and Martha Plimpton, directed by Pam McKinnon who staged Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for Steppenwolf and on Broadway. When I was in college in Pittsburgh, there were two simultaneous productions by different groups. I must be getting old because the 1996 revival seems like only a few months ago to me.

James Earl Jones will be playing Grandpa in Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You, which was one of the first shows I saw on Broadway when I moved to New York in 1982. It had been playing for a while and Eddie Albert had replaced Jason Robards as Grandpa with Frances Sternhagen, George Rose, and Colleen Dewhurst also in the cast. There were plans for a production at Williamstown with the intention of going to Broadway a few seasons back with James Cromwell, but it never got off the ground. The producers say this one will feature a multiracial cast which should be interesting. 

Here's a rundown of Broadway and major Off-Bway opening announced for 2014-15 so far:       

June 10--When We Were Young and Unafraid (City Center/MTC)

June 12--Just Jim Dale (Laura Pels/Roundabout)

June 19--Holler If Ya Hear Me (Palace)
June--Macbeth (Kenneth Branagh) (Park Ave. Armory); Much Ado About Nothing (Delacorte)

July--King Lear (Delacorte)

August--Gootycandy (Playwrights Horizons); The Wayside Motor Inn, And I and Silence (Signature Theatre Company)

Sept. 11--This Is Our Youth (Cort)

Sept. 28--You Can't Take It With You (Theatre TBA)

Sept.--It's Only a Play; The Fortress of Solitude (Public Theatre)

Oct. 2--The Country House (Friedman/MTC)

Oct. 5--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Barrymore)

Oct.16--On the Town (Lyric)

Oct. 26--The Last Ship (Neil Simon)

Oct. 30--The Real Thing (American Airlines/Roundabout)

Oct.--Allegro (CSC); Father Comes Home from the Wars (Public); Grand Concourse (PH)

Nov. 11--Lost Lake (City Center/MTC)

Nov. 16--The River (Circle In the Square)

Nov. 20--A Delicate Balance (Golden)

November--Straight White Males (Public); Pocatello (PH); A Particle of Dread, Our Lady of Kibeho (Signature) 

2014 (Sometime)—Dames at Sea, Liberace Musical, Titanic, The Elephant Man, The Color Purple

2015--Winter--On Your Feet
Jan. 2015--Hamlet (CSC); Hamilton (Public)
Feb. 24--The World of Extreme Happiness (City Center/MTC)
February 2015--Placebo (PH); Big Love, The Liquid Plan (Signature)
March 12--On the 20th Century (American Airlines/Roundabout)
March--The Total Bent (Public); Iowa (PH)
May 2015--Dr. Faustus (CSC); What I Did Last Summer (Signature)
Fall 2015--Fiddler on the Roof
2015-16--Houdini, Night Mother, Noises Off (Roundabout), The King and I (Lincoln Center)
Future--Disney's Frozen, Soul Train, Pretty Woman