2018-19 B'way/Off-B'way Update

Ivo Van Hove
Credit: Stephanie Berger

Several new shows have been announced for the 2018-19 Broadway and Off-Broadway season since our last update and they all sound intriguing. International avant-garde sensation and Tony winner Ivo Van Hove will direct his first Broadway musical with a revival of West Side Story. Heaven knows what the unconventional helmer with do with the Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim-Robbins classic. He turned A View from the Bridge, The Crucible and A Streetcar Named Desire inside out and his current production of The Damned at the Park Avenue Armory just opened to reviews praising his daring. What's really weird is the show starts begins Dec. 10, 2019 and it is

Damon Daunno in Daniel Fish's staging of Oklahoma! 
at Bard College in 2015.

slated to open Feb. 6, 2020 at a theater TBA. That's almost two months of previews! Maybe van Hove, who is extremely busy with upcoming stage productions of All About Eve in London, A Little Life in Amsterdam, and Don Giovanni in Parsi and at the Met on his plate, needs time to work out his startling ideas. West Side Story is also getting a film update from Tony Kushner and Steve Spielberg as well as current productions at the Guthrie and Glimmerglass. Oklahoma! will also get the revision treatment when Daniel Fish's production opens at St. Ann's Warehouse in October. I saw this production at Bard College in 2015 and it treats the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic in a radically new and relevant style.

'Crucible' and 'Father' Join Broadway Spring Roster

Frank Langella will star in a play called
 The Father for the second time

Of course as soon as I post a Broadway/Off-Broadway calendar, two new shows announce openings in the spring--The Father with Frank Langella and the sixth Broadway production of The Crucible. The Father is not to be confused with the play of the same name by August Strindberg which also starred Langella in 1996. This one is a new play by French playwright Florian Zeller about a man suffering from dementia. It will be part of Manhattan Theater Club's season at the Friedman previewing March 22 and opening April 12. Arthur Miller's The Crucible previews Feb. 29 and opens on April 12 at a theater to be announced. Ben Whislaw plays John Proctor, Tony winner Sophie Okonedo will be his wife Elizabeth, and Ciarin Hinds is Deputy Governor Danforth. (I played Reverend Parris in college.) Ivo van Hove is directing so it will probably be set inside a wind tunnel or something with everyone dressed as mummies. Van Hove is one weird-ass director. I still remember his Streetcar Named Desire at New York Theatre Workshop where Elizabeth Marvel as Blanche DuBois dove into a bathtub fully clothed and emerged dripping wet and covered with suds, then went right back into the scene without a pause. It was like a Carol Burnett Show parody of an avant-garde production. (His Scenes from a Marriage was brilliant I will admit.) But van Hove's A View from the Bridge is also opening on Broadway this season and received raves during its London run. With the two Miller plays, Long Day's Journey, Fiddler on the Roof, and Color Purple, the season is like a retread of old times--which is also being done, the Harold Pinter play I mean. Broadway is becoming like a college course in Dramatic Literature with very little new work on display. Here's the updated calendar: