Theater Archives - TheWrap https://www.thewrap.com/category/theater-2/ Your trusted source for breaking entertainment news, film reviews, TV updates and Hollywood insights. Stay informed with the latest entertainment headlines and analysis from TheWrap. Fri, 02 Feb 2024 03:39:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.3 https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/thewrap-site-icon-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Theater Archives - TheWrap https://www.thewrap.com/category/theater-2/ 32 32 Sara Bareilles to Adapt ‘The Interestings’ Into Stage Musical With Sarah Ruhl https://www.thewrap.com/sara-bareilles-the-interestings-stage-musical-adaptation-sarah-ruhl/ https://www.thewrap.com/sara-bareilles-the-interestings-stage-musical-adaptation-sarah-ruhl/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7483834 Based on the 2013 novel by Meg Wolitzer, the project marks the Grammy winner's theater follow-up to Broadway smash "Waitress"

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Sara Bareilles is coming back to musical theater.

Following the hit Fathom Events theatrical run of her Broadway smash “Waitress,” the “Love Song” Grammy winner is teaming with Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl to adapt Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 novel, “The Interestings,” into a stage musical.

“I wrote the first song for ‘The Interestings’ before I even finished the book. To borrow a quote from one of our main characters: I have fallen in love … with a group of people,” Bareilles said in a statement announcing the news Friday.

“Meg Wolitzer’s extraordinary creation, ‘The Interestings,’ was such an immediate and fascinating world of humanity and ache and adolescence and regret. I found so many moments that felt like singing,” she continued. “Making this musical has been a conjuring, a deep listening to the themes of the beautiful novel and a tremendously energizing creative conversation with the wild wisdom and endless talent of Sarah Ruhl as my collaborator, bringing these new friends to life in a new way. I am so thrilled to be a part of this wonderful team.”

Based on The New York Times bestselling novel, “The Interestings” is about the friendship of six teenagers who meet at summer camp in the 1970s. It follows the progression of their relationships to adulthood, highlighting how the older they get, the more complex and elaborate their lives become.

At the time of its publishing, The New York Times Book Review called Wolitzer’s book “remarkable” and “acutely perceptive,” while USA Today celebrated it as sprawling, ambitious and often wistful.”

Bareilles has won multiple awards as a songwriter, actor, singer and producer, including include two Grammy Awards and three Tony Award nominations and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Ruhl is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony award nominee who has written a multitude of plays, including “In the Next Room,” “Letters from Max” and “The Clean House.” She is also a published author of “Smile, a Memoir”, “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write” and others. 

“I am so thrilled to be adapting this novel, a hymn to yearning and being alive, with the goddess-like fount of creativity, Sara Bareilles,” Ruhl, who will write the musical’s book to Bareilles’ music and lyrics, said.

“Meg’s brilliant book speaks to some of the biggest questions: How do we become? How do we know when our lives are of value, how do we know when we have ‘enough’? How do complicated friendships endure?” Ruhl added. “The setting of an arts camp is familiar to me as a besotted former camper and sings with nostalgia. I can’t wait to share this tale of youth and growth with an audience.”

“Sara Bareilles and Sarah Ruhl are both brilliant, expansive, electrifying artists whose work I respond to so deeply,” Wolitzer said of the adaptation. “My novel ‘The Interestings’ is populated by a group of characters I still think about and truly miss, and the music they listen to and play when they’re young resonates in the book, so the idea of a musical adaptation is thrilling. To see and hear Sara and Sarah’s interpretation of my novel onstage will be an absolute joy, a novelist’s dream.”

Matt Ross is the producer of “The Interestings.” Previous production credits include the Tony-nominated “What the Constitution Means to Me,” “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812″ and “On the Town.”

The musical is in early development. Additional creative team and production details will be announced in the coming months.

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‘Jonah’ Off Broadway Review: How a Fantasy Becomes Reality if You Write About It https://www.thewrap.com/jonah-off-broadway-theater-review-rachel-bonds/ https://www.thewrap.com/jonah-off-broadway-theater-review-rachel-bonds/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2024 02:00:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7483058 Rachel Bonds' fascinating new play finds hope in an author's imagination

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Leaving the theater where the new play “Jonah” had just performed, a couple behind me barely waited for the curtain to come down to start talking about what they’d just seen.

“So the three male characters were the woman’s fantasies,” he proclaimed with assurance.

“No!” she replied. “They were all real.”

My date for the evening and I agreed on yet a third interpretation. As we saw the play, two of the male characters are real, and one of them is a fantasy. Of course, in the theater, everybody on stage is a figment of the playwright’s imagination, and it’s telling that Rachel Bonds, the author of “Jonah,” has made her lead character, Ana (Gabby Beans), a writer who has written either a memoir or an autobiographical novel, and she is working on a sophomore effort. Her imagination is her salvation. What’s real and what’s not, and how a brutal reality both triggers Ana’s crisis of intimacy and leads her to create a sexual fantasy is very much what “Jonah” is about. At least for me. The description of this play on Bonds’ website gives a quite different interpretation.

The initially head-scratching but always fascinating new play titled “Jonah” had its world premiere Thursday at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre.

Since “Jonah” is open to lots of interpretations, obviously, it’s not an easy play to review. Either I’ll give away too much of the puzzle or I’ll make a fool of myself by exposing what I missed or completely got wrong. Here’s one sure-fire takeaway: “Jonah” is directed by Danya Taymor, who has an unerring knack for picking and directing only the very best new works by young writers. Especially alluring is how Taymor sets Ana apart from the three male characters, who, at different points in this character’s journey, interact with her – or just appear as a figment of her imagination.

There’s a purposeful exaggeration in the performances of the three male actors that puts them in sharp contrast to Beans’ far more subtle and nuanced delivery. Her Ana appears alternately flirtatious, edgy and dismissive. Like most of us, she shape-shifts depending on who’s sharing the room with her.

Regarding the men on stage, Hagan Oliveras brings a benign loopiness to the role of a high school stalker. (He’s the Jonah of the title.) Samuel Henry Levine exudes a brutish familiarity as the man who both triggers Ana’s crisis and rescues her. And John Zdrojeski manages to be nice to the point of repulsive as the too-available guy-next-door who no woman would look at once, much less invite into her room. He just kind of barges in, but with obnoxious charm.

Speaking of rooms, “Jonah” takes place in a teenage girl’s bed room, her dorm room, and a living space at some artist’s retreat. Those were the three locales I was able to identify, even though Wilson Chin’s set design resembles none of those places despite containing both a desk and a bed. I found myself wondering at one point how a college coed could have possibly published a successful book when I realized, finally, that Bonds is not telling her story in chronological order. This realization came to me well over the halfway point in this 100-minute play. Until its penultimate scene, not much in “Jonah” seems to connect to what just happened or what will next happen.

In other words, watching “Jonah” is often an exercise in being confused, an experiment in disorientation that is never less than very absorbing thanks to Beans’ riveting performance – she never leaves the stage – and Bonds’ extraordinary gift for language.

It’s easy to settle into each of the play’s many scenes and revel in the initially witty dialogue that slowly turns downright acrid.

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Chita Rivera, Broadway Legend of ‘Chicago’ and ‘West Side Story,’ Dies at 91 https://www.thewrap.com/chita-rivera-dead-chicago/ https://www.thewrap.com/chita-rivera-dead-chicago/#respond Tue, 30 Jan 2024 19:40:27 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7481938 The actress' decades-spanning work earned her two lead actress Tony Awards and a Kennedy Center Honor

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Chita Rivera, best known for her Broadway roles in “Chicago” and “West Side Story” to name a few, has died. She was 91.

The actress’ daughter Lisa Mordente announced the news.

“It is with immense personal sorrow that I announce the death of the beloved Broadway icon Chita Rivera. My dear friend of over 40 years was 91,” Frimark said in a statement to People on Tuesday.

The actress portrayed Anita in the Broadway musical “West Side Story,” later adapted into the 1961 film that starred Rita Moreno in the role. She later reprised the career-launching role under Seth Redetsky’s direction at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Aside from “West Side Story” and her role of Nickie in “Chicago,” Rivera’s more than 30 Broadway credits include “Guys and Dolls,” “Can-Can,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Jerry’s Girls,” “Seventh Heaven,” “Mr. Wonderful” and more.

She won Tony Awards for her lead performances in musicals “The Rink” alongside Liza Minnelli and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and she was nominated for six additional Tonys.

Rivera received her Kennedy Center Honor from President George W. Bush in 2002. Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

She is survived by her daughter Lisa.

“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda paid tribute to the trailblazing performer, who appeared in his film adaptation of “Tick, Tick..Boom!” on Netflix, in a statement.

“The trailblazer for Puerto Rico on Broadway. Originated Anita AND Rosie AND Velma Kelly AND The Spider Woman AND so many more iconic Broadway roles because she was an absolute original,” he wrote. “When we filmed the diner scene in ttB (Tick, Tick..Boom!), she wasn’t available for the shoot dates, so I left a chair empty in the diner for those three days. The whole shoot, people kept trying to move the chair or clear space and I’d have to say no, we’re GOING to get Chita, I don’t know how but we’re going to do it. 8 months later on our reshoots, she joined us and held court all day. It remains one of the all-time joys of my life. She was magnificent. She IS magnificent, not ready for the past tense just yet. “

My heart is with everyone in Chita’s galaxy of family and friends. We’ll be blasting WSS and Bye, Bye Birdie and Chicago and SO MUCH MUSIC, because she left us so much. Gracias, Chita. Alabanza,” Miranda added.

Kristin Chenoweth mourned the loss of her Broadway predecessor on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“There was only you. Then everyone else,” the “Wicked” alumna tweeted. “I looked up to you and always will admire you as a talent and mostly as a person! A kick butt woman you were. All the rest of us just wanna be you.”

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‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Broadway Review: Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James Fire Up a Truly Great Musical https://www.thewrap.com/days-of-wine-and-roses-broadway-review-kelli-ohara-brian-darcy-james/ https://www.thewrap.com/days-of-wine-and-roses-broadway-review-kelli-ohara-brian-darcy-james/#respond Mon, 29 Jan 2024 02:00:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7480721 Musical theater lightning strikes twice with Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel's long-awaited follow-up to "The Light in the Piazza"

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The most wonderful thing about Adam Guettel’s “Days of Wine and Roses” score is that no one will walk out of the theater humming the songs. His new musical sounds like nothing else in the theater — unless you go back to this songwriter’s previous shows, “Floyd Collins” (1996) and “The Light in the Piazza” (2003), which also features a book by Craig Lucas.

Delivering another smart adaptation, Lucas here uses the 1958 teleplay and 1963 movie “Days of Wine and Roses” as his source material, where the original characters don’t really have any reason to sing. Through sheer dint of his enormous talent, Guettel makes those two chronic alcoholics sing for their life in the new stage production that opened Sunday on Broadway at Studio 54 after its world premiere last year at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater.

Unlike most musicals, the two lovers in “Days of Wine and Roses” don’t sing because they want to. They have to sing to release their demons, which don’t often make for easy listening.

When people walk out humming show tunes, it’s because they’ve heard those songs before in only slightly different forms. Friends of mine who saw and didn’t like “Days of Wine and Roses” in its off-Broadway incarnation complained about the lack of melody in Guettel’s songs.

It reminded me of what people used to say about Stephen Sondheim back in the 1970s. It would be a good educated guess to say that Guettel’s music, like Sondheim’s, is not easy to learn, much less perform — even for such trained singer-actors as Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James. The harmonies are as unusual as the time signatures, and often as mercurial in the ways in which Guettel switches them.

Even when the doomed Joe and Kirsten are having a good time early in the show, the harmonies and time signatures can turn on the characters’ booze-induced whims, creating an undercurrent of discontent. Add to that Guettel’s penchant for vocal lines that leap and then plunge a number of notes. It’s something you hear more often in opera than musical theater, and ultimately, Guettel makes Lucas’ tormented characters sing because their suffering forces them to.

“Days of Wine and Roses” more resembles Guettel’s “Floyd Collins” than “The Light in the Piazza” with its breaking-through-the-clouds optimism. In the former, Tina Landau’s book places the action in a cave that has collapsed and trapped the title character.

In “Days of Wine and Roses,” Lucas’ book places us in the rooms of Joe and Kirsten’s rapidly collapsing marriage. And in an audacious masterstroke of theatrical derring-do, Guettel restricts the singing to his two lead characters. Only their young daughter, Lila (Tabitha Lawing), joins in a couple of songs late in the musical.

Lucas has radically expanded this juvenile role from the original teleplay and film, and Guettel provides a series of haunting duets between the absent mother and the distraught daughter in which they read-sing each other’s letters. Lucas also wisely reduces the role of Joe’s AA sponsor (Jack Klugman delivered an insufferably bombastic performance in the film version). On stage, David Jennings underplays this role, and instead of that character’s sermonizing, the focus remains on Joe and his delivery of powerfully jagged songs that expose a truly warped perception of reality.

Lucas and Guettel never open up the source material. Instead, they restrict it. Despite a few scenes taking place in Joe’s place of business, there is no ensemble “Turkey Lurkey Time” showstopper a la “Promises, Promises” to sweeten up the melodrama.

In this 105-minute musical, Lucas’ book extends Joe and Kirsten’s estrangement from each other, but speeds up their initial meeting. In my review of the off-Broadway production, I wrote that Lucas “skimps a bit too much in establishing their relationship.” Seeing the Broadway production, I think Lucas gets it just right, and I much admire the book’s economy.

D’Arcy James is nearly as ebullient and driven as Jack Lemmon (the movie’s Joe) in his pursuit of Kirsten. O’Hara, on the other hand, is far less prickly than Lee Remick (the movie’s Kirsten). As written and performed, Kirsten is now as gung-ho as Joe to launch into an affair. That approach not only gets things moving fast, it signals an underlying desperation shared by both characters to connect to someone, perhaps anyone.

Michael Greif directs, and he takes full advantage of the resources of a big Broadway stage and theater, which this intimate show has no problem filling. Off Broadway, too many stagehands were often seen moving the set around. Now, in a far more mechanized production, Lizzie Clachan’s set design shows remarkable speed in changing locals, and Grief’s direction takes on a hallucinatory quality that is often arresting and sometimes downright nightmarish.

Most important, Greif obtains truly awesome performances from O’Hara and d’Arcy James. Even if you removed the two actors’ vocals, which are phenomenal, the performances stand on their own — especially the motel room scene where Joe finds Kirsten on an extended bender. O’Hara and d’Arcy James are musical theater stars, but with “Days of Wine and Roses,” we can only mourn all those great “straight” performances they never delivered. Who knows? This gig could open up a whole other door for them in the theater.

The only major criticism to level at “Days of Wine and Roses” is that it took Guettel so long to write his third musical, which can easily take its place as one of the few great musicals of this century.

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Broadway Musical ‘Shucked’ Is Getting Feature Film Adaptation | Video https://www.thewrap.com/broadway-musical-shucked-to-get-movie-adaptation/ https://www.thewrap.com/broadway-musical-shucked-to-get-movie-adaptation/#respond Mon, 15 Jan 2024 21:47:53 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7440619 Mandalay Pictures will produce

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The puns-and-wordplay-heavy musical “Shucked” may be leaving Broadway, but it will soon be headed to Hollywood.

The show ended its Broadway run on Sunday, and during the curtain call, producer Mike Bosner announced that a feature film is in development.

“We’re all a little sad to say goodbye to this, but there’s some good news. We don’t have to say goodbye just yet, because we will be making a feature film of ‘Shucked,'” Bosner said.

Bosner didn’t provide any other details, but on Monday it was reported that the film will be produced by Mandalay Pictures, with the company’s president Jason Michael Berman, along with Alan Fox and Mandalay vice president Jordan Moldo producing. It will be executive produced by David Zelon and Sandra R. Berman.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap, but in a joint statement first published by Deadline, Berman, Fox and Moldo said, “Since the early workshops, we have been huge fans of ‘Shucked.’ With a hilarious book and incredible music, we weren’t surprised by its success on Broadway. This is a movie about community building, told through laughter, music and of course corn. We are thrilled to be able to join the original creative team behind the musical and help bring this story to audiences around the world as a motion picture on the big screen.”

“Shucked” debuted on Broadway in 2023. The book is by Robert Horn and the music and lyrics are by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.

Playbill first reported Mandalay’s involvement in the film.

Watch Bosner’s announcement below:

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10 Best New York Theater Productions of 2023 | Photos https://www.thewrap.com/best-new-york-theater-productions-2023/ https://www.thewrap.com/best-new-york-theater-productions-2023/#respond Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:21:32 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7427241 Ranking the year's best on the boards, from the staging of a classic Cuban album to the first half of Sondheim's last musical

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From the staging of a classic Cuban album to the realization of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, TheWrap critic Robert Hofler ranks the 10 best New York theater production of 2023.

Dianne Wiest in "Scene Partners"
“Scene Partners” (Credit: Carol Rosegg)

10. “Scene Partners” at the Vineyard Theatre

Dianne Wiest plays at 75-year-old widow who wants to be a movie star in “Scene Partners.” Her name is Meryl, and that is the least of her megalomaniac dreams. John J. Caswell Jr.’s new play provides the rollercoaster tour of a most unique brain as it unravels.

here-we-are-off-broadway
“Here We Are” (Credit: Emilio Madrid)

9. “Here We Are” at The Shed

Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, “Here We Are,” is half wonderful, with a book by David Ives. Based on two Luis Bunuel movies, the show’s first act, about people who can’t get a decent meal (“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”), is a comic delight. The second half, about people who can’t leave a room (“The Exterminating Angel”), ends prematurely, about 10 minutes into the act when the Sondheim songs mysteriously stop.

Light in the Piazza
“The Light in the Piazza” (Credit: Joan Marcus)

8. “The Light in the Piazza” at Encores!

Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s masterpiece “The Light in the Piazza” looked and sounded better than ever in the year’s best revival of a musical. Playing the concerned mother and her challenged daughter, Ruthie Ann Miles and newcomer Anna Zavelson made a parent’s difficult decision make perfect sense.

Andrew R. Butler, Sarah Pidgeon, Chris Stack and Juliana Canfield in "Stereophonic"
“Stereophonic” (Credit: Chelcie Parry)

7. “Stereophonic” at Playwrights Horizons

A rock band takes way too long to make an album in the 1970s in “Stereophonic.” As Joan Didion wrote about The Doors, “There was a sense no one was going to leave the room, ever.” Playwright David Admji turns the audience into a fly on the recording-studio wall as a group of musicians, who don’t make much progress on their record, undergo major changes.

Jared Machado, Kenya Browne and Olly Sholotan in "Buena Vista Social Club" (Credit: Ahron R. Foster)
“Buena Vista Social Club” (Credit: Ahron R. Foster)

6. “Buena Vista Social Club” at The Atlantic Theater Company

The landmark 1996 album “Buena Vista Social Club” is a testament to the survival of the people of Cuba, an island under constant assault. Marco Ramirez’s book for the new musical of the same name, the best for a musical this year, effortlessly jumps between the album’s unlikely recording and its glorious genesis 40 years earlier, in 1956. The show also features this year’s best direction of a musical, by Saheem Ali, and best choreography, by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.

Sarah Paulson and Elle Fanning in Appropriate
“Appropriate” (Credit: Joan Marcus)

5. “Appropriate” on Broadway

Brandon Jacob-Jenkins’ great family comedy “Appropriate,” first seen in 2014, receives a much-deserved revival, its first engagement on Broadway. In this scathing portrait of a family, two generations are forced to confront the bigotry of their recently departed patriarch. To paraphrase an old saying, the rotten apples don’t fall very far from the dead tree. With Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll and Elle Fanning.

Kara Young, Heather Alicia Simms, Leslie Odom, Jr., Vanessa Bell Calloway, Billy Eugene Jones, and Noah Robbins in PURLIE VICTORIOUS - Photo by Marc J. Franklin
“Purlie Victorious” (Credit: Marc J. Franklin)

4. “Purlie Victorious” on Broadway

Ossie Davis’ 1961 scorching comedy about a scheming preacher (Leslie Odom Jr., being absolutely delightful) who knows how to handle bigots returns to Broadway in the year’s best revival of a play, “Purlie Victorious.” As the appointed dupe who won’t be duped, Kara Young fully embodies the crazed Lutiebele Gussie Mae Jenkins, giving the year’s best performance by a female actor in a play. Much of the inspired insanity comes courtesy of Kenny Leon, the year’s best director of a play.

Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara in "Days of Wine and Roses" (Credit: Ahron R. Foster for Atlantic Theater Company)
“Days of Wine and Roses” (Credit: Ahron R. Foster)

3. “Days of Wine and Roses” at The Atlantic Theater Company

Two decades ago, composer Adam Guettel and book writer Craig Lucas gave us this century’s best musical, “The Light in the Piazza.” Their long-awaited reunion with “Days of Wine and Roses” brings the year’s best score and musical, a riveting stage adaptation of the well-known teleplay and screenplay about two alcoholics. Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James play the doomed couple, giving the year’s best lead performances in a musical. Now it’s on its way to Broadway with a transfer in January.

"The Comeuppance"
“The Comeuppance” (Credit: Monique Carboni)

2. “The Comeuppance” at the Signature Theatre

Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s high-school reunion play, “The Comeuppance,” has shades of “Return of the Secaucus Seven” and “The Big Chill,” but can best be described as “The Final Freeze.” Led by Caleb Eberhardt and under the direction of Eric Ting, the ensemble of actors here was the year’s best. Then again, what other actors got to play two roles each: an old friend at the reunion and Death itself?

Jay O. Sanders, William Jackson Harper, Eric Berryman in "Primary Trust" Off Broadway
“Primary Trust” (Credit: Joan Marcus)

1. “Primary Trust” at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre

 A man approaching middle age finally says goodbye to his imaginary best friend, in the year’s best play, “Primary Trust,” by Eboni Booth. Playing that unlikely hero, whose childhood made that fictitious character absolutely necessary for his survival, William Jackson Harper gave not only the year’s best performance but its most heartbreaking.

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‘The Color Purple’ Broadway Actress Says She Should Be Paid for ‘I’m Here’ Added Song Lyrics: ‘Want My Royalty Fee’ https://www.thewrap.com/lachanze-sapp-the-color-purple-im-here-song-lyrics-royalties/ https://www.thewrap.com/lachanze-sapp-the-color-purple-im-here-song-lyrics-royalties/#respond Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:18:21 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7430680 "I'm getting a lot of DMs and posts about why I've been left out of the press as the original Celie," LaChanze writes on X

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Broadway’s original “The Color Purple” actress and singer Rhonda LaChanze Sapp, known professionally as LaChanze, called out the 2023 film Tuesday for allegedly failing to pay her for lyrics she says she contributed to a later version of the song “I’m Here.”

On Tuesday, the Tony-winning Broadway star addressed some of the inbox messages she said she’d received from followers and fans about her involvement in the film’s production process and its press tour.

“I am getting a lot of DM’s and posts about why I’ve been left out of the press as the original Celie in the @TheColorPurple (musical). I am thrilled for the movie’s success!” LaChanze wrote. But, while stating that she is glad the film is doing well, she also shared that she wasn’t paid for her work on the song “I’m Here.”

“Happy for all involved. However, I do want my royalty fee for the lyrics I added to “I’m Here,” LaChanze continued.

The track, which is performed by Fantasia Barrino in the 2023 musical film, closes out the movie. When the movie was adapted into a Broadway musical in 2005, LaChanze took on the leading role as Celie in 2006, winning the Tony Award that year for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical.

Barrino carried the character forward when she starred as Celie in the Broadway production in 2007 and 2008. In an interview with Time published Monday, Sapp shared that during a workshop for the show, she helped shape and write the song, mentioning that the song has three unique changes in tempo.

“I said, ‘I want to flirt with somebody, I know I got my sister. She can’t be with me. But she’s still my sister, and I know she loves me and my children,” LaChanze said of her time working with the musical’s composers Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, who asked her to describe how she felt while playing Celie. “I didn’t put it together in the way they did, but my feelings, my emotions and my thought about what I was experiencing as the actor embodying Celie they put in the song. So I like to say I helped write the song.”

Russell, Willis and Bray are credited as the song’s writers. TheWrap has reached out to representatives for LaChanze and for the musical movie adaptation of “The Color Purple.”

“The Color Purple” from director Blitz Bazawule scored the best Christmas day opening since 2009 with a whopping $18.1 million, gaining attention from fans of the 1985 film and the Broadway show. The new movie stars Barrino, Halle Bailey, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins.

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‘Appropriate’ Broadway Review: Sarah Paulson and Elle Fanning Fuel a Spectacular Family Smash-Up https://www.thewrap.com/appropriate-broadway-review-sarah-paulson-elle-fanning/ https://www.thewrap.com/appropriate-broadway-review-sarah-paulson-elle-fanning/#respond Tue, 19 Dec 2023 03:00:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7427871 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' contemporary classic about the sins of the father receives a stellar revival

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The rotten apples don’t fall very far from the dead tree in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s great family comedy “Appropriate.” First seen in 2014, the play receives its belated but totally riveting first Broadway production, which opened Monday at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater.

The three adult siblings at the core of this family dispute are amusingly nasty, backbiting, vile and loathsome toward each other. As families go onstage, the only ones approaching this brood in terms of miserableness would be the bickering bunch in Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County” and Eugene O’Neill’s “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

The genius of Jacobs-Jenkins, as well as that of Letts and O’Neill, is that he keeps these three characters not only human but very relatable, especially if you happen to be of European descent and your family arrived to America a century or two or three ago. Jacobs-Jenkins gives each of his characters time to make his or her point, and, of course, each of them is rarely right. None of them, including their three young children, manages to escape the sins of the recently deceased patriarch who has left them his ancestral mansion (and former plantation) in Arkansas to dispose of.

The incisiveness of Lila Neugebauer’s marvelous direction is most evident in her control of those three principals. Playing the eldest sibling, the archetypal older sister-caretaker of the family, Sarah Paulson is very alpha here. Pissed-off to the extreme, her Toni can’t take one more infraction from her two younger brothers (Corey Stoll and Michael Esper), and lets them and her sister-in-law, Rachel (Natalie Gold) know it in no uncertain and very loud terms. Paulson manages to find nuance in her almost nonstop screeching.

Much better known for her performances in television, Paulson hasn’t been seen on Broadway for well over a decade, and in the meantime, Laurie Metcalf has held the franchise on these prickly defiant-woman roles. Paulson’s performance recalls Metcalf’s work in plays as varied as “Misery” and “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” but makes the Toni role her own, especially in a touching kiss-off speech to her two brothers, delivered with great style from the grand staircase of the magnificent two-story living room set, designed by dots.

Paulson’s performance begins loud and bitter, but ends soft and wounded. Neugebauer’s direction delivers the absolute reversal of that progression with Corey Stoll’s portrayal of the “successful” beta brother from New York City, Bo. Stoll remains quiet and extraordinarily reasonable, even when Toni takes the bait of his wife to deliver a slur on her Jewish heritage. And even when Rachel is freaking out over her two children (Alyssa Emily Marvin and Everett Sobers) having seen some racist artifacts in the vast mess that is her dead father-in-law’s house, Stoll’s Bo remains the still eye of the family storm swirling around all of them – until near the end. His late-in-the-play explosion, which is much louder than anything detonated by Paulson, provides the play’s comic high point.

Once upon a time not so long ago, the other brother, Franz (a.k.a. Frank), would have been called the black sheep of the family. Now, it is more politically correct just to call him a major loser, and he has disappeared from family view for a good 10 years. Franz has the bad timing to show up on the eve of the big auction, and brings with him a too-young girlfriend named River (Elle Fanning).

Playing Franz, Michael Esper perfectly embodies the ephemeral smoke that rises from Toni rubbing everyone the wrong way. He is full of apologies until he is full of the BS of a self-proclaimed baptism, even though the guilt he has inherited can never be washed away by a simple dip into the pond somewhere between the family’s ancestral cemetery and the cemetery of the slaves that his family once owned.

Elle Fanning makes an impressive Broadway debut playing the loopy River. It’s the one character where perhaps Jacobs-Jenkins’s originality deserted him. With her hippie garb (costumes by Dede Ayite) and plant-based diet and nonstop good-vibrations spiel, River is a cliché. Her real name isn’t River, it’s Tricia. At least the playwright didn’t name the character Karen. To her credit, Fanning resists going for the easy laugh.

Graham Campbell rounds out this extraordinary ensemble, playing Toni’s troubled teenage son, Rhys. He is the play’s mystery character, and Campbell is expert at keeping him at the edges of the drama, except for his middle-of-the-night jerk-off session that is misinterpreted – or not – by Uncle Franz.

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‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Off Broadway Review: How Cuba’s Music Fuels Its Survival https://www.thewrap.com/buena-vista-social-club-off-broadway-review/ https://www.thewrap.com/buena-vista-social-club-off-broadway-review/#comments Thu, 14 Dec 2023 02:30:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7423485 A landmark album is now an exciting stage musical and dance spectacular

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It has not been a great year for dance on the musical theater stage – until now. Choreographers Patricia Delgado and New York City Ballet’s Justin Peck bring it all to the tiny stage at the Atlantic Theater Company. The many dances this married duo has created for the new musical “Buena Vista Social Club” erupt in a chemical reaction where ballet, Afro-Cuban, contemporary and a variety of social dances both blend and slam into each other. 

Based on the 1996 album of the same title, “Buena Vista Social Club” opened with a glorious bang Tuesday at the Atlantic’s Linda Gross Theater.

Although other cast members occasionally join in to salsa, Delgado and Peck basically work their magic with only six dancers who are so good they need to be credited at the top of this review: Skizzo Arnedillo, Angelica Beliard, Carlos Falu, Hector Juan Maisonet, Ilda Mason and Marielys Molina.

But “Buena Vista Social Club” is not a dance show nor is it a jukebox musical, even though about half of the musical’s 15 songs come from the original album. (The other songs are from the Buena Vista Social Club ensemble’s extended songbook.) Marco Ramirez’s multilayered book for “Buena Vista” tells the story of the making of the album in Havana, Cuba, which was a reunion of sorts for a number of singers and musicians who first performed together four decades earlier, in 1956.

Delgado and Peck’s choreography often helps to bridge those two radically different time periods of 1996 — when an impoverished Cuba continued to suffer from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. blockade — and 1956 — when a far more prosperous country was on the verge of revolution. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are never mentioned, but both the threat and the promise of a new way of life permeate Ramirez’s book.

Most in danger of being lost are the social clubs that produced the music that ended up on the 1996 album, the dream project of an enterprising young producer, Juan De Marcos (Luis Vega, who exudes optimism). Not featured in Ramirez’s loosely-based-on-the-facts story is the album’s official producer, American guitarist Ry Cooder.

In the typical jukebox musical, preexisting songs are jammed into a plot. That’s not the case here. The songs don’t further or in any way explain the story. They set a mood, they capture emotions and they are performed as those songs would have been originally delivered in Havana’s social clubs, hotel ballrooms and recording studios.

For this gringo reviewer, Ramirez’s story has shades of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “A Star Is Born” without the easy contrivance of a murder or a suicide to goose up the narrative, but with a big dollop of “Dreamgirls” thrown into the mix.

In 1956, the young singer Omara (Kenya Browne) performs with her sister Haydee (Danaya Esperanza) in Havana’s tourist hotels, but her real love is singing with her boyfriend Ibrahim (Olly Sholotan) in the city’s social clubs, which are anathema to her far more ambitious sister. As fate would have it, the record producers (the triple-cast Vega) from America and Cuba have no interest in either Haydee or Ibrahim, drawn as they are racially to the more conventionally glamorous Omara. Haydee eventually escapes to America. Ibrahim is forgotten and recedes into the Cuban countryside.

Ramirez tells that story from the viewpoint of 1996 when the older Omara (Natalie Venetia Belcon) is engaged to make the “Buena Vista Social Club” album and she meets her old boyfriend Ibrahim (Mel Seme), now singing for small change on the streets of Havana. “Buena Vista Social Club” is the story of survival through the preservation of what artists do best, not only for them but a whole island and its culture.

With her absolute command of the stage, Belcon galvanizes and grounds the production in a performance that fulfills all the demands of August Wilson’s greatest female role, Ma Rainey. Belcon instills that same fear and awe without ever pushing it. This actor’s achievement is even more remarkable in light of her having created the role of Gary Coleman in the original production of “Avenue Q” over 20 years ago. The two roles belong in different theatrical universes — and yet, Belcon has made both of them very much her own.

It’s difficult to believe that her Omara, however, was ever the beautiful but wan young Omara presented by Browne. Belcon and Esperanza are a much better match-up. In one of the musical’s more phantasmagorical passages, the older Omara meets her long-estranged sister, now dead and speaking to her from the grave. It is less a meeting of two siblings than it is the same character confronting her own demons, separated by a few decades of experience. Playing the sister, Esperanza matches Belcon beat for beat, punch for punch, stab wound for stab wound.

The Belcon-and-Browne mismatch is a minor misstep on the part of Saheem Ali, who directs. As good as his work was on last season’s Broadway play “Fat Ham,” nothing there prepares you for what he does now. With “Buena Vista Social Club,” he goes to the top of the list of directors who stage musicals. His credits on this show also include “developed by,” which means he must be the mastermind behind the whole project.

There’s no telling where Delgado and Peck’s choreography ends and Ali’s direction picks up, which is as it should be. When the dancers aren’t dazzling us, there is Ali’s seamless use of Arnulfo Maldonado’s multi-level set to guide us between two radically different periods in Cuban history. There is also his fluid staging of a narrative that ends Act 1 with not one but four stories – one of them involves running illegal guns through the social club – and they all explode into a singular, spectacular climax.

I’ve never been to Havana, but watching this production provided me not only a telescope to that place, but to the past. The attention to historical detail here eschews the usual musical-theater glitz to favor what appears to be the real thing. In addition to Maldonado’s weathered set design, there are Dede Ayite’s costumes, Tyler Micoleau’s lighting and J. Jared Janas’ incredibly retro hair, wigs and makeup.

Shows this good don’t appear out of nowhere, and it’s telling that the year’s other great musical, “Days of Wine and Roses,” kicked off 2023 with its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company. Like that Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas musical, “Buena Vista Social Club” looks destined for Broadway, where it would fit beautifully into even the largest stage there.

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‘How to Dance in Ohio’ Broadway Review: Or, How a Therapist Trips Over His Own Patients https://www.thewrap.com/how-to-dance-in-ohio-broadway-review/ https://www.thewrap.com/how-to-dance-in-ohio-broadway-review/#comments Mon, 11 Dec 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.thewrap.com/?p=7422121 Autism comes to the big boards in a muddled new musical

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Giving a bad review to a show about autistic young people is a little like panning your niece’s piano recital at her birthday party. Since I don’t have any nieces, or nephews, here goes:

What I learned about autistic young people from seeing the new Broadway musical “How to Dance in Ohio” is that they are pretty much like other teenagers. In the show, which opened Sunday at the Belasco Theatre, one neurodiverse character refuses to eat her hamburger because it’s got pickles. One boy gets flustered asking a potential date to the upcoming big dance. Another teenager, whose mother must be Carrie Bradshaw, can’t decide which outfit to wear from their voluminous closet. A couple of girls, like most promgoers, have terrible taste in formal wear. (Sarafina Bush designed the show’s really garish costumes.) And another girl doesn’t like to be touched. I most identified with her because, post-pandemic, I have refused to shake hands, and when I hand people a bottle of Purell instead, they look at me odd.

“How to Dance in Ohio” is based on Alexandra Shiva’s 2015 documentary of the same title, which has the advantage of following only three patients or “clients” of Dr. Emilio Amigo, who used various therapy techniques to prepare the autistic teens for their first spring formal dance. Rebekah Greer Melocik’s book for the musical version expands the number to seven autistic teens, and even less promising, those characters now sing peppy jingles written by Jacob Yandura and Melocik. “How to Dance” is promoted to be sensory friendly with regard to lighting and amplification, but looks and sounds as flashy and loud as any other musical on Broadway. Then again, I’m supersensitive to such stuff.

The real Dr. Amigo should not take it as a compliment how he’s depicted in this new musical. As envisioned by Melocik, the Dr. Amigo (Caesar Samayoa) who sings and dances on the Belasco stage gets a little too involved with his clients’ lives and actually interferes with the college admission process when one of those students (the captivating Liam Pearce, more about him later) is accepted at the University of Michigan. Being a disloyal Ohioan, Dr. Amigo wants him to go to the U of M, even though the teen really wants to go to the University of Ohio instead. The doctor’s decision to butt-in is not really explained, except for the fact that the first 15 minutes of this musical feature a lot of lame jokes about how depressing life is in Ohio. Apparently, Sen. J.D. Vance’s home state has replaced New Jersey as the a–hole of the world on Broadway: Danny DeVito is forever trashing the Buckeye State in Theresa Rebeck’s new play “I Need That.”

Dr. Amigo’s real daughter might also be considering legal action. On stage, this young woman (Cristina Sastre) is not only a Juilliard drop out, she is a foot-stomping nepo baby who moves home and demands Dad give her a full-time job at the family counseling center. Being an intermittently responsible therapist, Dr. Amigo has only one choice. He fires his own kid. Clearly, since autism isn’t really very dramatic – at least, as depicted here – the makers of “How to Dance” have felt the need to create drama elsewhere.

Much of the show’s conflict derives from Dr. Amigo being an intrusive, incompetent therapist. Under the haphazard direction of Sammi Cannold, Samayoa’s Dr. Amigo bares an uncanny resemblance to John Astin’s social worker Glad Hand in the 1961 movie version of “West Side Story.” In charge of the “Dance at the Gym,” Astin manages to be absurdly unctuous for about five minutes of screen time. Samayoa defines the word “unctuous” for two and a half hours on stage as his character almost singlehandedly up-ends the spring dance, a big smile pasted on his face.

I call Cannold’s direction haphazard because one of this show’s guilty pleasures is watching the five actors who play the teenagers’ parents attempt to outshine each other as they collectively overact and/or hold the occasional high note way too long. As anyone who has seen “Jagged Little Pill” and other musicals about teenagers knows, the role of the parent is a thankless one. The jockeying for the spotlight among this gaggle of five mature actors is a comic study in how to derail a show that’s already going in all the wrong directions.  

Beyond trashing Ohio and giving parents a bad name, “How to Dance” perpetuates a favorite theater stereotype regarding journalists. Once again, the liberal cultural bastion that is Broadway joins with the political MAGA right to cast the Fourth Estate as the enemy of the people. In the musical “MJ,” Michael Jackson’s alleged pedophilia is attributed to the fantasies of a reporter. In “How to Dance,” a reporter (Carlos L. Encinas) writes a blog about Dr. Amigo’s counseling center, using the verb “suffer” to describe the lives of his clients. Here, the good doctor has only himself to blame, since he holds what is essentially a press junket to publicize the upcoming big dance. The other reporter (Melina Kalomas), who has no problem sharing quotes with Encinas’s irresponsible reporter, manages to show a modicum of discretion when she’s egregiously hit on by Dr. Amigo, who, in real life, is gay. A recent article on “How to Dance” in the New York Times assures us that the switch in sexual orientation “was a matter of timing, not erasure.” By “timing,” do they mean placing the show in a pre-Stonewall mindset rather than the present?

Far more successful in dealing with the opposite sex is the autistic young character named Drew, as played by the aforementioned Pearce. He is the student who decides to go to college in Ohio rather than jump the state line to follow Dr. Amigo’s misguided plans for him. In his Broadway debut, Pearce rises above all the narrative chaos and otherwise lackluster material to channel a young Jude Law who can sing. A star is born under the least likely of circumstances.

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