Friday, September 12, 2014

Directors Double--and Triple--Dip

Scott Ellis is one of three directors
 to have more than one show on Broadway this season
A former editor of mine used to say "Three times and it's a trend." So we officially have a new Broadway trend: directors having more than one show on in the same season. Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, Of Mice and Men) staged the revival of This Is Our Youth which opened last night at the Cort to great reviews (here's my review roundup for NewYork.com) and will be helming Larry David's new comedy Fish in the Dark. Youth premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company earlier this year so Shapiro has time to start planning for the Larry David piece. Pam McKinnon won a Tony for Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and gives her spin to the playwright's A Delicate Balance. She'll also be directing another revival this spring: Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles. Scott Ellis is staging You Can't Take It With You and The Elephant Man this fall, which played the Williamstown Theatre Festival two summers ago so Ellis had breathing room to work on the Kaufman and Hart classic starring James Earl Jones, Rose Bryne, Elizabeth Ashley and the always-hilarious Kristine Nielsen and Julie Halston. Ellis will be pulling triple duty this season since he'll also be directing Roundabout's revival of On the Twentieth Century opening in January 2015. It will be interesting to see who gets nominated for Tonys and for which show and if anyone will be competing against him or herself.

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