B'way Update: John Proctor Is the Villain

Sadie Sink

The spring Broadway season just got more crowded. We just learned Real Women Have Curves: The Musical will be added to the April 2025 roster. Today, there was the announcement for Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, The Whale) to star in Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain, a new play re-examining Arthur Miller's The Crucible about the Salem witchcraft trials. Previews begin March 20, 2025 with an opening set for April 14 at the Booth Theater. Tony winner Danya Taymor (The Outsiders) directs. Additional casting will be announced. Sink previously appeared on Broadway as a child in Annie and The Audience.

B'way Update: Real Women Sets Dates

Satya Chávez and Lucy Godínez in
Real Women Have Curves
at the American Repertory Theater
(Photo: Nile Hawver/Maggie Hall)

Real Women Have Curves: The Musical, previously announced for Broadway sometime in 2025, has landed on specific dates and will be a part of what is becoming a very crowded 2024-25 season. Previews for the show based on the play by Josefina López and HBO’s Real Women Have Curves, (Screenplay by Josefina López and George LaVoo) will begin April 1 with an opening set for April 27 at a Shubert theater to be announced. Music and lyrics are by Grammy Award-winning artist Joy Huerta of the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy and composer/lyricist Benjamin Velez, book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin, music supervision by Nadia DiGiallonardo, and direction and choreography by Tony and Olivier Award winner Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys). American Repertory Theater at Harvard University presented the show's world premiere in 2023.

In 1987, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, Ana is ready to spread her wings. Her dreams of college and a career in New York City are bursting at the seams, but her family’s expectations would keep her home, working at their garment factory. Should Ana pursue her own dreams at the expense of her family’s? 

Catching Up with Robot Dreams and Elsbeth

Robot Dreams

We're now in Malta about to start our Mediterranean cruise (and getting away from the US presidential election at exactly the right time.) We flew Delta from JFK to Rome and then transferred to Malta Airlines to Valetta, Malta where our Oceania Cruise begins. The seven and a half-hour flight provided an opportunity to finally catch up with Robot Dreams, one of the few 2023 Oscar-nominated films I did not see before the awards. The charming Best Animated Feature nominee had very few if any screenings in NYC. This beautiful and touching film about friendship features colorful, eye popping drawings and deep characterizations. Totally silent, the film is set in an anthropomorphic NYC in the 1980s with robot technology. Single and lonely Dog orders a DIY robot for companionship. Their immediate connection could be a metaphor for gay relationships. The canine and mechanical man tentatively hold hands as they walk down the street and lay on the beach. Dog appears to be bisexual as well as interspecies-amorous since he later dates an adventurous female duck. It looks like all the intelligent, human-like animals in this version of Gotham will go out with any other species. Robot and Dog are separated and their separate adventures make up the bulk of the plot. Both search for nurturing friends but long for each other. It's a surprisingly moving plea for acceptance of love in all its forms.

Carra Patterson and Carrie Preston in
Elsbeth. Credit: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS

I also caught up with CBS' quirky crime series Elsbeth with falls into the kooky sleuth genre. Elsbeth (a delightful Carrie Preston) and her pals on the police force solve murders committed by upper-class Manhattanites who are involved in TV, the arts, sports or fashion. She's sort of a low-key, less annoying Columbo. I like that it's filmed in NYC and uses lots of theater actors. On the flight I caught the episode where Linda Lavin falls out her co-op balcony. Jane Krakowski is the prime suspect or is she? Last week I enjoyed the episode with Laura Benanti and Andre De Shields. (All Tony winners, BTW.) Also viewed: two episodes of I Love Lucy, the one where she stages an operetta (The Pleasant Peasant) and the one where she dressed up like a hep cat musician.

Binging on John Ford, Part 6: Gay Rumors and an Alleged Affair w/Hepburn

Maureen O'Hara, John Wayne and 
John Ford during the filming of
The Quiet Man in Ireland

The more I learn about John Ford, the more twisted, fascinating and complex the legendary director becomes. I originally set out to watch all of his movies and read about him because so many film scholars have said he was the greatest director of Hollywood's Golden Era and perhaps even of all movie history. He also reminds me of my late dad who enjoyed his works tremendously and had a similar individualistic streak. But as I read books and articles on Ford, he emerges as a deeply troubled, fickle, jealous man who could be extremely manipulative, abusive and vindictive, if you got on his wrong side, even unintentionally. 

Maureen O'Hara starred in five Ford films--How Green Was My Valley, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Long Grey Line and The Wings of Eagles. In her autobiography, Tis Herself, she reveals an early connection with Ford over their shared Irish heritage. O'Hara was born in Ireland and came to Hollywood to star in The Hunchback of Notre Dame under the tutelage of Charles Laughton who discovered her as a teenager in Great Britain. Ford developed an affection for O'Hara and her family many of whom later emigrated to the US and got into the picture business. 

Book Review: Tis Herself

(Borrowed from the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts) "What a story! It's got everything but the bloodhounds nipping at her rear end." That's how Thelma Ritter's character Birdie described Eve Harrington's history when she first enters Margo Channing's dressing room in All About Eve. She could also be encapsulating Maureen O'Hara's action-packed autobiography. O'Hara went from acting on the Irish stage to Hollywood stardom while still in her teens, survived two horrific marriages and the mysterious, possibly CIA-related death of her third beloved husband, sexual harassment from the top movie execs, bizarre advances and physical abuse from John Ford, and a legal battle with Walt Disney. The prose is vital and full-blooded, though how much can be credited to her co-author John Nicoletti?

I love O'Hara's honesty and settling of old scores. She loves the words "rubbish" and "stinkeroo" when describing some of the papblum she was forced to act in. She doesn't hold back in her assessment of her leading men. Co-starring with Jeff Chandler was like acting opposite a "broomstick." Jimmy Stewart was a nice guy, but not generous with sharing scenes. He insisted on one of their scene being reshot when it was clear O'Hara got the better of it. A great, fast read full of Hollywood backstage stories.

B'way Update: Groff as Bobby Darren in Just in Time

Tony winner Jonathan Groff (Merrily We Roll Along) will return to Broadway playing pop singer Bobby Darin in Just in Time, a new bio-musical employing Darin's songbook. The Circle in the Square Theater will be converted into an intimate nightclub of the 50s and 60s with a big band for a total immersive experience. Previews begin Match 28, 2025 for an April 23 opening. The book is by Tony winner Warren Leight (Side Man, Law and Order: CI) and Isaac Oliver (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). Tony winner Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge) directs and developed the show. Groff leads a cast of 16, TBA. In addition to his Tony for Merrily, Groff was nominated for Hamilton and Spring Awakening. His TV and film credits include Mindhunter, The Matrix Resurrections, Frozen, Glee, and Doctor Who.

“Bobby Darin worked across many genres of music, but he was most alive performing in intimate nightclubs,” says director Alex Timbers.  “And so, it was vital to Jonathan and myself that we stage Just In Time at Circle in the Square.  This is where we could build an environmental nightclub setting including a live, onstage big band that will allow the same sort of intimacy and electrifying audience connection that both Bobby and Jonathan are known for.”

Bobby Darin

“Bobby Darin was a supernova. He blazed his way through every corner of the entertainment industry, but his enormous talent, charisma, and pure genius were most on display when he was letting it rip in front of a crowd. This primal passionate love affair he had with the audience was the inspiration for our show's conceit,” says Groff, who is also serving as a producer on the project. “Alex Timber's distinctive ability to make going to the theater an unforgettable event and Bobby's signature musicality and explosive fleeting life make Broadway the perfect place to experience the story and essence of this once in a lifetime talent.”

Darin was an acclaimed singer, songwriter and actor. He performed jazz, pop, rock, folk and country. His hits included "Splish Splash," Dream Lover," "Beyond the Sea" and "Mack the Knife." He was nominated for an Oscar for Captain Newman, MD. Kevin Spacey, using his own singing voice, played him in the 2004 biopic Beyond the Sea.

Book Review: Some Time in the Sun: The Hollywood Years of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Nathaniel West, Aldous Huxley, and James Agee

(Bought at a used-book store in upstate NY for 50 cents.) Tom Dardis' scholarly study of five distinguished authors who tried their hand at screenwriting during Hollywood's Golden Age is informative if a trifle dry. There's little juice in his chronicling of the quintet's struggles with studio bosses, directors, and, in some cases, alcoholism and depression. It's a scholarly book and also a study of the conflict between art and commerce. All of the authors, to one degree or another, were dependent on their movie money for survival. It's somewhat astonishing to read that literary giants like Fitzgerald and Faulkner had to scramble for cinema dollars in order to pay their bills because the sales of their books, now regarded as classics, were so meager. Though Dardis offers plentiful details such as salary figures and specific studio assignments, he misses the essence of his subjects. I didn't feel I knew any of them any better once I'd finished the book.