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Monday, July 27, 2009

God Of Carnage Takes a Summer Break

The Tony Award-winning hit Broadway play God of Carnage started a summer hiatus following its July 26 performance. Though it is unusual for a Broadway show to take an extended break, God of Carnage was only originally scheduled for a limited run to end in July. But due to the massive success of the dark comedy, the producers worked out an extension. However, a break is required first (most likely to accommodate the schedules of the show's in-demand cast). God of Carnage will resume performances at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on September 8 for a run that will go through November 15. The play by French writer Yasmina Reza is about two couples (played by Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, and James Gandolfini) who meet following a playground altercation between their children.

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Friday, July 24, 2009

The Notebook Will Become A Musical

Romantics take note - Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook is now being turned into a musical theater piece. The 1940s North Carolina-set love story about Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson gained a much bigger following when it became a major Hollywood film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, and presumably it will reach yet another slice of the population when it takes the stage. The adaptation is being done by Bethany Joy Galeotti and Ron Aniello, who are currently putting together a preliminary workshop of the musical in Wilmington, NC. According to their website, the "musical styles for The Notebook range from American wartime standards and traditional musical theatre pieces to bluegrass and gospel."

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

A Steady Rain To Become a Hollywood Film

A Steady Rain, the play that will be produced on Broadway this Fall, is going to soon become a movie too. The two-person play is already getting an incredible amount of attention due to the fact that the Broadway production will star major Hollywood stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men, Wolverine, Australia, Broadway's The Boy From Oz) and Daniel Craig (James Bond in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace). Playwright Keith Huff, who is currently working on writing the screenplay adaptation of his own play, sold the film rights for A Steady Rain to the same producers who are behind the upcoming Broadway production. Whether or not Jackman and Craig will also star in the motion picture version has not been determined yet, but it just so happens that one of those producers is Barbara Broccoli, who is a longtime producer of the James Bond 007 movies.

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Sunday, July 19, 2009

Blithe Spirit Floats Away From Broadway

The Broadway revival of Noel Coward's play Blithe Spirit ends its run at the Shubert Theatre today. The production, which recouped its investment during its nearly five months on Broadway, was the first Broadway revival of the classic comedy since 1987. In it, Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, An Ideal Husband) starred as a writer who, following his participation in a seance, finds himself haunted by the ghost of his first wife (Christine Ebersole) - which makes his current wife (Jayne Atkinson) none-too-happy. The role of the medium who conducts the seance was played to loopy perfection by the legendary actress Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote, Beauty and the Beast, Gaslight), who won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her efforts.

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Broadway's Waiting For Godot Ends Run

The Roundabout Theatre Company production of Waiting For Godot concludes its limited run at the Studio 54 Theatre today. This production of the existentialist classic by playwright Samuel Beckett had Broadway star Nathan Lane (The Odd Couple, Butley, November, The Producers, the film The Birdcage) and Bill Irwin (set to be in the upcoming Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie) in the lead roles of Estragon and Vladimir, two frustrated and tired men who are waiting for something or someone that never comes. Waiting For Godot also starred John Glover (The Drowsy Chaperone) and John Goodman (best known from the TV comedy Roseanne, and last seen on Broadway in the '80s in Big River), the former receiving a Tony nomination for his role this year.

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Friday, July 10, 2009

Passing Strange Coming To Movie Theaters

Spike Lee's documentary of the short-lived Broadway musical Passing Strange is set to hit movie theaters on August 21. The film was in the Sundance Film Festival, and it was also seen earlier this year in New York City at the Tribeca Film Festival. If you can't make it to see Passing Strange on the big screen - or if it's not playing in a theater near you come August - you can catch it on television in 2010 when it airs on PBS as a part of the "Great Performances" series. Passing Strange, which played the Public Theater before transferring to Broadway in 2008, is a rock musical written by Heidi Rodewald and Stew. The show is Stew's semi-autobiographical tale of a young black man's journey from a middle class life in Los Angeles to coming-of-age adventure in Europe. The Broadway production, which is captured in Spike Lee's documentary through footage filmed live on July 19, 2008, featured actors Daniel Breaker (currently in Broadway's Shrek), de'Adre Aziza, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and an on-stage band fronted by Stew himself.

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Monday, July 6, 2009

Anthony Mackie To Head Cast of The Bacchae

The Public Theater has completed casting for its second and final Shakespeare in the Park production this summer, Euripides' The Bacchae. Anthony Mackie will play Pentheus in the classic Greek tragedy, which will play August 11-30 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Mackie has been seen on Broadway in productions such as Drowning Crow and the revival of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and is currently on screen in the acclaimed independent film The Hurt Locker. Other actors previously announced to star in the production include Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, The Singing Forest) as Dionysus, Andre de Shields (The Full Monty, Impressionism) as Teiresias, and George Bartenieff as Cadmus. JoAnne Akalaitis directs this 90-minute version (adapted by Nicholas Ruddall) of The Bacchae, which features an original score by Philip Glass.

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Sunday, July 5, 2009

End of the Road for The Wiz

The City Center Encores! Summer Stars production of The Wiz, starring R&B artist Ashanti, ends its limited run at City Center today. Directed by Thomas Kail and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler (both of In the Heights), the production also starred LaChanze and Orlando Jones. The Wiz is a soulful, modern retelling of The Wizard of Oz, which originally played Broadway in 1974 and won several Tonys. The book is by William F. Brown (based on the L. Frank Baum story), and music and lyrics are by Charlie Smalls.

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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Actor Karl Malden Dead at 97

The lights on Broadway dimmed tonight in honor of the late and beloved actor Karl Malden, who died at the age of 97 on July 1st. Although his work has been sporadic over the last couple decades, Malden was a fixture on television sets in the '70s on the TV show "The Streets of San Francisco". Malden is best known to theater fans for two roles in particular, as Mitch in the original Broadway production of the Tennessee Williams classic A Streetcar Desire (which he repeated on film), and as Herbie in the movie version of the musical Gypsy. He performed on Broadway in a number of plays by 20th century greats from the '30s through the '50s, including Golden Boy, All My Sons, Tea and Sympathy, and a 1952 revival of Desire Under the Elms. Karl Malden's notable film credits include On the Waterfront, Birdman of Alcatraz, and Patton. He won an Oscar for his role in Streetcar, amongst many other well-deserved award nominations and honors.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Ragtime Returns To Broadway

The musical Ragtime, a favorite among many lovers of the modern musical, is coming back to Broadway in October, when it will arrive at the Neil Simon Theatre. The lavish show, based on the E.L. Doctorow novel of the same name, opened on Broadway in 1998 at the then brand new Ford Center for the Performing Arts (now called the Hilton Theatre), and ran for about three years before closing. To the consternation of its many fans, Ragtime lost the Tony Award for Best Musical to The Lion King, despite the fact that it had won both Best Book (for Terrence McNally) and Best Score (for Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty). The Broadway revival production originated at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and is both directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge. Ragtime follows three families as their lives become entwined during the tumultuous social change of the early 1900s. It includes a mix of fictional characters such as the ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Eastern European immigrant Tateh, and historical figures like Emma Goldman and Booker T. Washington.

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