B'way Update: Billy Crystal and Audra McDonald Return to the Stage

Billy Crystal and Audra McDonald will return to Broadway after long absences. Crystal will star in and co-author Mr. Saturday Night, a new musical based on the 1992 film comedy in which he played Buddy Young, a once famous TV comedian looking for a comeback in his old age. The musical, featuring music by Jason Robert Brown, lyrics by Amanda Greene and a book by Crystal, Lowell Ganz, and Babaloo Mandel (who also collaborated on the screenplay) will begin previews at the Nederlander Theater on March 1 with an opening on March 31. David Paymer will recreate his Oscar-nominated role as Buddy's brother and manager. Also starring will be Tony winner Randy Graff (City of Angels, Fiddler on the Roof) and Chasten Harmon (The Good Fight, Elementary). Tony winner John Rando (Urinetown) directs. The show recently had a presentation at the Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 18: Season 8 Movie Parodies

The Paley Center still has not reopened since the COVID pandemic, so I have not been able to view missing portions of pre-season 6 Carol Burnett Show episodes. However, I have found some interesting segments from Season 8 on Amazon and IMDB.com. The show was really at its near height of hilarity at this point. In two of these episodes, the only regular was Harvey Korman. Lyle Waggoner had left to star as Steve Trevor on Wonder Woman. I believe Vicki Lawrence may have been having a baby (?). Tim Conway was not yet a regular. But Harvey alone is a strong enough supporting actor to carry the burden. Many of these shows featured priceless movie parodies.

Season Eight: March 8, 1975: Buddy Ebsen, Wayne Rogers

Wayne Rogers with Carol
in West Dakota County Fair

Both guest stars were headlining CBS series--Ebsen had gone from The Beverly Hillbillies to Barnaby Jones and Rogers was starring opposite Alan Alda on MASH. For some reason, the version of this episode available on Amazon and IMDB.com runs for 40-odd minutes while all the other segments only run 22 minutes and are part of the Carol Burnett and Friends chopped-up syndication package. Maybe none of the segments fit into the short segments and only now have they released a near complete version on the various streaming platforms. But there are still pieces missing. At one point Carol introduces a sketch wearing a 1940s outfit with blonde hair. But the scene with her in that costume is nowhere to be found.

The show starts with Carol introducing Wayne to the studio audience. A giggly girl asks to kiss him and gaining permission from his wife in the audience, the lucky young woman plants one on Wayne's cheek. He was very hot at the time because of MASH. We then get a rather routine vignette with Carol repeating her accident-prone schtick as she and Harvey prepare for a night out. It's all physical humor as Carol slams her fingers in a door, burns her mouth on a cigarette, smashes her hand through a TV screen, sits down on a light bulb, and inflicts other injuries on herself. Then, the Old Folks get trotted out for more prune juice and geriatric sex jokes. After these tired tropes are played out, we finally get some fun movie stuff.

B'way Update: Buffalo, Funny Girl, Pal Joey

Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell
and Darren Criss will star in
American Buffalo
Credit: Matthew Murphy

With recent announcements of firm openings, casting and theaters, the 2021-22 Broadway season appears to be solidly set. American Buffalo and Funny Girl have solidified their locations and performance dates. That leaves only Sing Street dangling. The musical had announced a Broadway transfer from its New York Theater Workshop run before the pandemic, but that doesn't seem likely now since almost all of the theaters have been snapped up. Many shows have reopened and a few new ones have opened their doors. There have been bumps on the road--Aladdin had to suspend performances due to a breakthrough outbreak of COVID in the company and Lackawanna Blues cancelled a few shows due to the back injury of Rueben Santiago-Hudson, the playwright and sole performer. But, Broadway is definitely back and open for business.

American Buffalo, David Mamet's gut-punch of a play about three petty thieves planning a burglary of a rare coin collection, had been in rehearsals when COVID shut down all the theaters. The show, directed by Neil Pepe, will now begin previews at the Circle In the Square (currently the home of Chicken and Biscuits) the week of March 22, 2022 and open on April 14. Tony and Emmy winner Laurence Fishburne, Oscar winner Sam Rockwell, and Emmy winner Darren Criss will star. 

B'way Update: Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga Will Star in Macbeth

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga
will star in MacBeth,
opening on Broadway in April 2022.

Broadway is definitely back with Sunday night's  long-delayed Tonys followed by announcements of new productions. On Monday, Slave Play and Skin of Our Teeth released dates for openings. Today, we heard Daniel Craig will bounce back on stage after his fifth and final performance as James Bond in No Time to Die. The action and dramatic star will headline a revival of Macbeth opposite Ruth Negga, who played Hamlet at St. Ann's Warehouse. This new production of the Scottish Play will begin previews at the Lyceum Theater on March 29, 2022 in advance of an April 28 opening. Tony winner Sam Gold (A Doll's House, Part 2, Fun Home) directs. Craig has previously appeared on Broadway in A Steady Rain and Mike Nichols' production of Betrayal. Off-Broadway, he played Iago to David Oyelowo's Othello.

B'way Update: Slave, Skin, and Sondheim

Tony nominees James Cusati-Moyer and
Ato Blankson-Wood in
Slave Play.
(Credit: Matthew Murphy)

Last night's long-delayed Tony Awards were full of surprises from the Paramount Plus portion of the ceremony ending ten minutes early to an extra four minutes of Big Brother cutting into the opening of the CBS portion of the show to the unexpected shut-out of Jeremy O. Harris' Slave Play. Harris' controversial play about sex, race, and oppression received the most Tony nominations ever for a straight play with 12 and was thought to be a shoe-in to sweep the dramatic categories. But, Slave lost all of its categories. Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance dominated the play portion of the awards including the top prize of Best Play while the new version of A Christmas Carol copped all of the design prizes for plays. Twitter exploded with complaints of racism. Some commenters stated that the Tonys were white-dominated and discriminatory since The Inheritance concerned white gay males (with a few incidental Hispanic and African-American roles) while Slave Play was told from a black perspective. Ironically, the winning playwright Lopez pointed out that he was the first Latinx playwright to win the Best Play Award in Tony history and that his community needed more representation on Broadway. 

2021 Tony Predictions

After a year and a half, the long-delayed Tony Awards will finally be presented tonight. When all the Broadway theaters shut down in March 2020, the accolades were in limbo. The Drama Desks, Outer Critics and Obies decided to honor the achievements of the abbreviated 2019-20 theater season either online or by press release in the late spring of 2020. But the Tonys dithered for months, probably because they wanted to wait until all the theatres could be reopened to maximize the publicity value. I can't really blame the producers and Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, for this. The COVID shutdown has devastated the industry and they need all the TV coverage they can get to lure a outbreak-weary public back into the seats. I have seen one Broadway show (Pass Over) and a few Off-Broadway ones (Fruma-Sarah, What Happened, The Last of the Love Letters and Sanctuary City) since the shutdown. Everyone has to show a vax card or app and wear a mask. It's still a bit scary because there are reports of even vaccinated people becoming infected with the new variant. 

I can also understand the controversial programming decisions for this weirdest of all Tonys. For the first time in decades, the majority of the awards presentation will be not be available for free on broadcast TV. From 7-9PM EST almost all of the awards will be handed out in a ceremony hosted by six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald on Paramount Plus, CBS's streaming service. Then from 9-11PM, there will be a "Back to Broadway" concert, hosted by Tony winner and Oscar nominee Leslie Odom, Jr. on CBS, celebrating the return of live theater with musical numbers from the nominated and long-running shows. The awards for Best Play, Musical and Play Revival will be distributed during the CBS portion (there are no nominees for Best Musical Revival). Paramount Plus is NOT free, but there is a free seven-day trial period and I'll bet there was a surge of subscriptions made by theater fans like me today. Paramount Plus will probably see a huge number of cancellations within the coming days once every Broadway baby has commented, memorized and hashed over the ceremony. 

Where Are We Now?

Joe Biden acts like a human being
rather than throwing paper towels
after a hurricane.

As summer ends, most of America--myself included--thought we would be in a better place by now. Trump is no longer president and we have a sane, compassionate man in his place. The corona virus was supposed to be defeated and all kinds of great legislation should have been passed. But instead, the delta variant, climate change and the Taliban had other plans. So far only one big bill (COVID relief) has passed. After plateauing, the COVID death toll is rising. Labor Day travel and the return to classrooms threaten another spike. Never mind that one of the main causes for the pandemic resurgence is vaccine hesitancy and downright denial, mostly by Republicans. (I suspect there are more than a few non-vaxxers who are refusing to get the jab just to make Joe look bad.) Biden will get the blame anyway.