Neo-nazis tend to be a noisy bunch, and it takes an extraordinary and confident work of art to drown out their loud, ugly racket. Parade, opening tonight on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, is that work of art.
28.02.2023 - 23:09 / deadline.com
Some recent Broadway arrivals added both star power and box office receipts to the weekly grosses reports, with both Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Parade selling out (the latter despite some loudmouthed neo-Nazi protesters), and A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella coming close.
The musical revival Parade, starring Ben Platt as Leo Frank and Micaela Diamond as wife Lucille Frank, played four preview performances last week – only one of which, the first, drew the antisemitic protesters – and was at standing room only, grossing $587,006 with an average ticket price of $143.24. The Alfred Uhry-Jason Robert Brown musical, directed by Michael Arden, opens at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on March 16.
Sweeney Todd, the revival of the acclaimed Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford at the Lunt-Fontanne, sold out its first preview, taking in $260,691 for the one performance, with a sturdy $174.03 average ticket. The revival, directed by Hamilton‘s Thomas Kail, has its opening night on March 26.
A Doll’s House, starring Jessica Chastain in a high-profile revival of the Ibsen classic adapted by Amy Herzog and directed by Jamie Lloyd, took in a hefty $811,261, filling 95% of seats at the Hudson, with an average ticket of $112.32. Opening night is March 9.
Bad Cinderella, the new ALW-David Zippel musical reimagining of the classic fairy tale (Linedy Genao and Carolee Carmello star), played to 93% of capacity at the Imperial, grossing $684,822 for seven previews. Average ticket was a reasonable $75.20. Opening night is March 23.
Another notable figure: Funny Girl was down $949,604 from the previous week, taking in $933,728
Neo-nazis tend to be a noisy bunch, and it takes an extraordinary and confident work of art to drown out their loud, ugly racket. Parade, opening tonight on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, is that work of art.
Broadway revival of “Parade,” Jason Robert Brown’s sorrowful if flawed musical about the 1915 anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank, is youth.Playing husband and wife Leo and Lucille Frank, Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond come across strikingly young (and at 23 years old, Diamond really is), like a faded photo of your great-grandparents that you discover in a drawer. The subjects neither smile nor frown, but behind their neutral stares is so much promise and fear.2 hours, 30 minutes, with one intermission.
Frank Rizzo Traveling from the relative calm of the Clinton era to more perilous, contemporary times of mobs, mendacity and political mayhem, the much-admired but short-lived musical “Parade” has now found its moment in a brilliant Broadway revival. A decade after its Broadway bow in 1998 under the direction of Harold Prince, when the show received awards but not a lengthy run, a significant re-do directed by Rob Ashford at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2007 gave the challenging show and its dark subject matter a stronger structure and new life. Last fall’s acclaimed gala presentation at New York City Center built on that work, offering a stark and searing passion play of a production, complete with broad strokes, moral lessons and harsh indictments. It also revealed the work as an essential American epic that resoundingly speaks to our times. Now on Broadway, it boldly fills in a vast national canvas, from its Civil War prologue to its modern-times coda.
Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Stephen Sondheim’s final musical “Here We Are” is hitting the stage in the fall. The legendary musical theater figure, who composed “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Follies,” “Sweeney Todd” and countless other Broadway classics, died in 2021 at the age of 91. The musical, formerly known as “Square One,” was in the works prior to his death and took inspiration from two Luis Buñuel films, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” Joe Mantello, whose credits include Sondheim’s “Assassins,” as well as “Wicked” and “Take Me Out,” is directing “Here We Are.” The strictly limited engagement will begin September 2023 in The Shed’s Griffin Theater, an Off-Broadway venue near Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. Casting will be announced soon.
A raft of Broadway’s recent arrivals led by Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street helped push the industry’s total box office last week to $28,638,821, up 13.8% from the previous week. Total attendance was up commensurately to 229,771.
Will Smith was keeping a low profile while the 95th Academy Awards were taking place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Will Smith was keeping a low profile while the 95th Academy Awards were taking place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday.Not too far away from the event in San Dimas, California, the 54-year-old actor was seen driving a car around 4 p.m. PT.The sighting comes about a year after Smith made headlines for slapping Chris Rock across the face during the 2022 Oscars in reaction to the comedian making a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Joshua Jackson caught up with his Dawson’s Creek costar Michelle Williams!
Tonight’s performance of Parade, the Broadway musical revival starring Ben Platt as Leo Frank and Micaela Diamond as wife Lucille Frank, was canceled 20 minutes after the scheduled 8 p.m. curtain due to what an announcement said was technical difficulties involving video projections.
Jessica Chastain has opening on Broadway in her second show!
Trish Deitch There are no props in director Jamie Lloyd’s version of Henrik Ibsen’s drama “A Doll’s House” — no sets, no costumes (just plain contemporary clothing in dark blue), not even a curtain. There’s no dress to be mended, no mailbox, no letter to be read, no cigar to be lit, no children. There are no acts, though Ibsen wrote his 1879 play in three. All you see when you enter the theater is a vast, empty shell of a Broadway stage, the bright houselights exposing the building’s industrial brick walls whose paint has faded from show to show, and a few wooden chairs stacked in back. Oh, and there’s Jessica Chastain, her red hair pulled back, seated in a wooden chair on a turntable and slowly circling the stage in a simple blue dress. It’s hard to say if she’s in character as she comes round again and again — if she’s Nora, that is, a dutiful wife with three young children who, as the play opens, is finally about to get a reprieve from relative poverty because her husband, Torvald (Arian Moayed), has been promoted at the bank where he works — or if it’s Chastain herself placidly looking out at audience members as they file in and get settled in their seats. Over time, one by one, the rest of the cast comes out, taking chairs off a stack onstage, placing them here and there, and sitting quietly with their backs to Chastain.
At more than a few points during Jamie Lloyd’s hypnotic Broadway revival of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, you could swear that stars Jessica Chastain and Succession‘s Arian Moayed are confiding in you, whispering their secrets to no one else. This stark, sometimes chilly production is an eavesdropper’s paradise, so intimate and conversational that all but the most guarded among us will be immune to its frequent enticements.
revival of “A Doll’s House,” starring Oscar winner Jessica Chastain, that opened Thursday night on Broadway. Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes. At the Hudson Theatre, 141 W.
A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain and Succession‘s Arian Moayed has extended its Broadway run by a week, and will now play through Saturday, June 10.
The revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford in previews at the Lunt-Fontanne, is firmly in Broadway’s $1 million club, with receipts for the week ending March 5 at a bloody good $1,526,254. And that’s just for six performances.
The 2023 SAG Awards were full of fun and quirky moments.
Paul Mescal rushed from the red carpet to his next job at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night (February 26) in Los Angeles.
Nominees Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary), Janelle James (Abbott Elementary), and Jenny Slate (Everything Everywhere All At Once), along with Orlando Bloom (Carnival Row), James Marsden (Dead To Me), and Mark Wahlberg (Me Time) are set as presents for the 29th annual SAG Awards.
anti-Semitic neo-Nazi protesters targeted the musical “Parade,” Mayor Eric Adams took the stage before Thursday night’s performance to declare the theater “is not a place where hate lives.”“We have the largest Jewish population outside of Tel Aviv,” Adams said as he addressed the audience at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.“And when you come out and really cross-pollinate with ideas and culture, that’s the beauty and that’s the symbol of New York City.”He continued: “When we fill a theater, we send a message out there that this is not a place where hate lives.”The Tony-winning “Parade” stars “Dear Evan Hansen” actor Ben Platt, 29, and Micaela Diamond, 23, of “The Cher Show.” Both are Jewish-Americans.A post shared by Parade on Broadway (@paradebway)Set in 1913, the Broadway musical is inspired by Jewish factory boss Leo Frank, who was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering 13-year-old employee Mary Phagan.After his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Frank was kidnapped from his cell and lynched by an anti-Semitic mob.Following Frank’s murder, evidence from the case pointed to Jim Conley, the factory’s janitor, as the actual killer.
Two days after about a dozen neo-Nazis harrassed ticketholders and ticketbuyers outside the Broadway venue where Parade had begun previews, New York Mayor Eric Adams addressed an audience at the musical last night, saying, “When we fill a theater, we send a message out there that this is not a place where hate lives.”