Broadway Season Update: Carole King, Dames, and Tyne Daly

Tyne Daly and Manoel Felciano in Terrence McNally's
Mothers and Sons at Bucks County Playhouse
Credit: Mandee Kuenzle

New Broadway season updates: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical has moved up its opening and announced a theater; a revival of Dames at Sea directed by Randy Skinner will open sometime in 2014; The Bridges of Madison County has settled on an opening date; and Tyne Daly will star in Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons, opening in the spring. No specific dates yet. This play premiered at Buck County Playhouse in New Hope, PA, earlier this summer and concerns the mother of a gay man who died of AIDS 20 years ago visiting her son's former lover who is now married to another man and has a young son. It's acceptable to be gay now, but the mother doesn't quite see it that way. The characters are based on those in McNally's one-act play Andre's Mother which was part of the Off-Broadway revue Urban Blight at Manhattan Theatre Club. McNally later expanded the story for a TV script which starred Sada Thompson and Richard Thomas and aired as part of PBS's American Playhouse. He won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. I have a feeling this will be the play to beat for the 2014 Tonys. It's topical and emotional and only about 80 minutes. Below is an updated calendar for the NY 2013-14 theater season: 

Sept. 8—stop.reset (Signature Theatre)

Sept. 12—The Old Friends (Signature Theatre Company)

Sept. 12—Fetch Clay, Make Man (NYTW)

Sept. 15--Mr. Burns, a Post-Electronic Play (Playwrights Horizons)
Sept. 19--Romeo and Juliet (Richard Rodgers)
Sept. 26--The Glass Menagerie (Booth)
Oct. 5--Big Fish (Neil Simon)
Oct. 10--A Night with Janis Joplin (Lyceum)

Oct. 17—The Winslow Boy (AA/Roundabout)
Oct. 20--A Time to Kill (Golden)
Oct. 24--The Snow Geese (Samuel Friedman)
Oct. 27--Betrayal (Barrymore)
Nov. 3--After Midnight (Brooks Atkinson)

Nov. 4—Domesticated (Mitzi Newhouse/Lincoln Center)
Nov. 10--Twelfth Night/Richard III (Belasco)

Nov. 12—The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters (PH/Peter Sharp)

Nov. 13—700 Sundays (Imperial)
Nov. 17--The Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Walter Kerr)

Nov. 18—Small Engine Repair (Lortel/MCC)
Nov. 21--Macbeth (Vivian Beaumont)

Nov. 21—The Commons of Pensacola (MTC/City Center Stage I)
Nov. 24--Waiting for Godot/No Man's Land (Cort)

Mid-Nov.—Little Miss Sunshine (Second Stage)
Dec. 8 or 9—The Curious Case of the Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons)

Jan. 12—Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Stephen Sondheim)
Jan. 16--Machinal (American Airlines)
Jan. 23--Outside Mullingar (Samuel Friedman)
Feb. 27--The Bridges of Madison County (Gerald Schoenfeld)

March 2—Stage Kiss (Playwrights Horizons)

March 18—Tales from Red Vienna (MTC/City Center Stage I)
March 23--Les Miserables (Imperial)
March 27--If/Then (Richard Rodgers)

April 3—A Raisin in the Sun (Barrymore)
April 11--Bullets Over Broadway (St. James)
April 17--Act One (Vivian Beaumont)

April 21—Your Mother’s Copy of the Kuma Sutra (PH/Peter Sharp)

May 5—The City of Conversation (Mitzi Newhouse/Lincoln Center)
Spring--The Real Thing (American Airlines)
Spring--Houdini (Theatre TBA)
Spring--Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Theater TBA)

Spring—Mothers and Sons (Theatre TBA)
Spring--Rocky (Winter Garden)
Spring--Holler If Ya Hear Me (Theater TBA)

June 9—Fly By Night (Playwrights Horizons)

June 17—When We Were Young and Unafraid (MTC/City Center Stage I)

2014 (Sometime)—Dames at Sea
Maybes for Broadway--All the Way, Disgraced, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The Revisionist