B'way Update: Ohio Closes; What Will Move into the Belasco or Barrymore?

The cast of How to Dance in Ohio
Credit: Curtis Brown

Another new show has announced its closing. How to Dance in Ohio will join the soon-to-shutter Harmony and play its final performance at the Belasco Theater on Feb. 11 after 27 previews and 72 regular performances. The musical inspired by Alexandra Shiva's documentary on autistic young adults preparing for a dance at their center, opened on  Dec. 10.

"Developing new work is always a risk, but producing this show was an endeavor we eagerly accepted,” said the producers in a statement. “We're incredibly proud that this original, joyful, and life-affirming musical has deeply moved countless audience members at the Belasco Theatre and beyond. Broadway has been changed forever because of How to Dance in Ohio and all the artists involved. We look forward to seeing its legacy continue in new and exciting ways."

Pre-Oscar Viewing: Napoleon

Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon
which will not conquer the Oscars.

On this weekend before the Oscar nominations are announced, we watched with Ridley Scott's Napoleon on Amazon for $20. (It's no longer playing in theaters in the greater NYC area.) Before it opened earlier in 2023, this historic epic sounded like perfect Oscar-bait (over two hours, real-life figures, historic sweep, plenty of battles, etc.), but it received tepid audience response and mixed to bad reviews. Now it looks like it might only cop a nod for costume design and perhaps special visual effects, and those chances are iffy. 

Slate dubbed the film a "spectacular mess" and I have to agree. If we hadn't listened to the podcast Real Dictators (narrated by Dr. Who Paul McGann) while driving to see my mom in Pennsylvania and relatives in New Jersey on Thanksgiving, I wouldn't have a clue as to what the hell was going on. Phoenix is drab in the title role and Vanessa Kirby adds a modicum of spice as Josephine but not enough to make this overbaked casserole palatable. You have to admire Scott for staging a plethora of epic battle scenes with horses plunging into icy, frozen water and canons ripping limbs from bodies. Yet there is so little in the way of exposition and context, we never learn the importance of these clashes and what the little emperor was trying to accomplish. Did he unify a fractured post-revolutionary France or grab power and territory for his own egotistical gratification? Was he a Hitler-like thug or a champion of the people? Or  both? Scott and his screenwriter David Scarpa never answer those questions. We get some supertitles with a sentence or two of explanation and the date. Oppenheimer was just as complex a subject, but Christopher Nolan made the conflicts, objectives and contexts much clearer.

B'way Update: Stereophonic Transfer, Harmony Closes

Stereophonic will transfer to Broadway
this spring
Credit: Chelcie Parry

As reported in an earlier blog as a rumor, the Broadway transfer for Stereophonic, David Adjmi's acclaimed play about a Fleetwood Mac-like group's struggles to make an album, is confirmed. The play which had a hit Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons earlier this season, will begin previews at the Golden Theater on April 3 with an opening set for April 19 for a limited 14-week run. The cast, reprising their highly lauded performances, will include Will Brill as Reg, Andrew R. Butler as Charlie, Juliana Canfield as Holly, Eli Gelb as Grover, Tom Pecinka as Peter, Sarah Pidgeon as Diana, and Chris Stack as Simon.

Harmony will close on Feb. 4.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

One opens and one closes: Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's Harmony has posted its closing notice. The final performance at the Barrymore Theater will be Feb. 4 after 24 previews and 96 regular performances. The musical about the real-life Comedian Harmonists has taken a long and arduous path to Broadway. After a 1997 world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, a pre-Broadway try-out in Philadelphia was cancelled due to a lack of funds. There were subsequent productions in 2013 in Atlanta and Los Angeles. An Off-Broadway production in 2022 by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene won the Drama Desk Award for Sussman's book and inspired a Broadway transfer this season. This closing leaves the Barrymore open. Could a new show slip in before the Tony deadline of April 25? Perhaps a commercial transfer of Appropriate or Prayer for the French Republic which are on limited runs from Second Stage and Manhattan Theater Club respectively?

B'way Update: Gatsby Musical

Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada, and 
Samantha Pauly in
The Great Gatsby at Paper Mill Playhouse.
Credit: Jeremy Daniel

The musical version of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of wealth, privilege, sex, and class, will open at the Broadway Theater on April 25, with previews beginning April 2. Tony nominees Jeremy Jordan (Newsies) and Eva Noblezada (Hadestown) will repeat their lead performances of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan from the production at Paper Mill Playhouse earlier this winter. The show features music & lyrics by Tony Award nominees Nathan Tysen (Paradise Square) & Jason Howland (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Little Women), a book by Jonathan Larson Grant winner Kait Kerrigan (The Mad Ones), and is staged by award-winning director Marc Bruni (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and choreographer Dominique Kelley (“Mariah’s Magical Christmas Special”, “Dancing with the Stars”). 

Portraits of Oppression on Oscar Short List

The ABCs of Book Banning
Credit: MTV Documentary Films

There is a common theme among the films on the Oscar short list. Since the list came out I've been trying to catch as many of the shorter films as possible before the final Oscar nominations come out on Jan. 23. Many are available on YouTube or the various streaming services and they don't take up too much time. I even managed to catch a few on Paramount + which we recently rejoined so we could watch the Fellow Travelers limited series. The common thread is the return of oppressive and authoritarian movements or tendencies toward them. The Nazi Holocaust has always been a popular subject for Oscar-nominated docs, but with so many dictatorial leaders coming to the fore these days, new films chronicle repression. 

Just yesterday morning I streamed two 30-min. pieces linked by right-wing crushing of thought and creativity. The ABCs of Book Banning focuses on efforts in the USA to restrict access or ban books from school libraries which dare to document the stories of anti-semitism, LGBTQ people, African-American history, and other "scary" topics. Last Song from Kabul is a heart-wrenching portrait of Afghanistan's only all-girl orchestra. Of course, once the Taliban took over, their school was disbanded and the students, both male and female, left their families and flew to asylum in Portugal. 

In the two films, there were scenes of fascist thugs burning books--Nazis in the ABC film for historical context and the Taliban in the Kabul piece. In the ABC film, a 100-year-old year speaks before a school board, comparing their book-banning tactics to those of the Nazis her husband died fighting in World War II. The Taliban is also shown burning and destroying musical instruments. I never understood why the extremists hate music. Not just Western music, but ALL music including Afghani and Indian songs.  

SAG and DGA Noms; More Short Films on Oscar Short List

Annette Benning and Jodie Foster's
Oscar chances for Nyad increased with
their GG and SAG nominations.
Credit: Kimberley French/Netflix

More Film Award Season News: The SAG and DGA noms came out and I have squeezed in more short films from the Oscar shortlist. There were a few surprises on the SAG list. Annette Benning and Jodie Foster of Nyad snuck onto the list which surprised me. Now I have to watch it. Luckily it's on Netflix. The cast of May December was shut out and Willem Dafoe of Poor Things was nominated but not Marc Ruffalo from the same picture. Sandra Huller was snubbed in both leading and supporting categories for Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest. I'm thrilled that the The Gilded Age cast was nominated for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series though they will probably lose to Succession. Also thrilled Colman Domingo was nominated for Rustin. Bradley Cooper copped a SAG nomination, but did not get a DGA nod. The tide seemed to have turned against Maestro for some reason. If the Critics Choice Awards also go for Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer and Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, SAG might follow suit and the Oscars will too. 

B'way Update: Roundabout and Purple Rain

Daniel Dae Kim will
star in Yellow Face
at Roundabout's 
Todd Haimes Theater.

Roundabout Theater Company has announced major productions for its 2024-25 Broadway and Off-Broadway seasons and the new name for one of its flagship theaters. The American Airlines Theater will be renamed the Todd Haimes after the company's late artistic director. Three productions will make up the first season of the newly named Haimes. First up is the Broadway premiere of David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, a comedy inspired by real events. Daniel Dae Kim (TV's Lost and Hawaii 5-0) stars as a stand-in for the playwright who protests the casting of non-Asians in Miss Saigon and then accidentally casts a white actor in one of his plays. Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet) directs the production which will open in Fall 2024. Yellow Face opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2007. The events depicted in the play were based on the flop Broadway mounting of Hwang's play Face Value in 1993.

Next up is another Broadway premiere of a play previously seen Off-Broadway. Sanaz Toossi's English won the Pulitzer Prize after it opened at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2022 in a co-production with ATC and Roundabout. The play about an ESL class in Iran will open in the winter of 2024-25 with Knud Adams repeating his directing chores.