B'way Update: Stoppard, Sesame St., Good Night Oscar, Lena Horne, etc.

A scene from Leopoldstadt
Credit: Marc Brenner

Lots of theater news to report: Tom Stoppard's latest play Leopoldstadt has announced a theater and dates for its Broadway transfer after a critically acclaimed London production in 2020. The decade-spanning epic work about multiple generations of a Jewish-Catholic family in Vienna will begin previews at the Longacre Theatre on Sept. 14 in advance of an Oct. 2 opening. This will be Stoppard's 19th play on Broadway since Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead opened in 1967. He has won four Best Play Tony Awards (for R & G Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, and The Coast of Utopia.) Leopoldstadt won the Olivier Award for its London run but was stopped short by the COVID shutdown. It's the first play in which the playwright uses his Jewish background as a source. 

Also from London: Killing Eve star Jodie Comer will star in Suzie Miller's one-person play Prime Facie, now in the West End, on Broadway in Spring 2023 at a Shubert theater to be announced. Previously presented in Sydney, Australia, Prime Facie focuses on a brilliant barrister coping with patriarchal power, burden of proof and morality. 

Ben Rappaport as Jack Paar and 
Sean Hayes as Oscar Levant
in Good Night, Oscar.
Credit: Liz Lauren

It's not confirmed, but Emmy winner Sean Hayes has stated on his podcast that Good Night Oscar by Tony winner Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife, War Paint) will be arriving on Broadway. Hayes starred in the title role, pianist-actor-humorist Oscar Levant, during a smash hit run at Chicago's Goodman Theater. The play is set during an appearance by Levant on Jack Paar's talk show and features Hayes brilliantly playing George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Levant was a dry-witted comic, gifted composer and musician. He often played the sarcastic, deadpan best friend of the hero in such classic movie musicals as An American in Paris, The Barkleys of Broadway, Romance on the High Seas, and The Band Wagon.

Nanette Fabray, Oscar Levant,
and Fred Astaire in
The Band Wagon