Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily, in which I look back on the last seven days of theatre news and reviews (including my own).

FRIDAY APRIL 21

Starting this Sunday (April 24), Broadway begins on its now annual home stretch rush to meet the Tony Awards deadline by which productions have to have formally opened in order to be considered eligible for consideration for this year’s Tony Awards, which this year is next Thursday (April 27).

That means a run of back-to-back official openings for five nights running between Sunday and Thursday, with press performances typically being offered ahead of each of those openings to keep New York’s band of critics working even harder than usual.

But the fact that it is an entirely artificially imposed deadline is underlined by the news that the final show to be announced for this season, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, the Lorraine Hansberry play in a production seen earlier this year at BAM, is to have its Tony designated opening on April 27 — but isn’t formally inviting critics to (re-)review it. Those that request to do so are being allowed in from May 5.  


Just as it is wondered whether a tree falling in the forest that no one hears can actually be said to have fallen, is a Broadway play that no critic reviews actually open at all?

Regardless, critics have plenty to deal with as it is, and starting tonight, I’m seeing three of the four shows opening in the next five days; I’m not revisiting the fourth, PRIMA FACIE, that opens formally on Sunday, as I saw it in London and nothing has changed, given that it is a one-woman show with the same star Jodie Comer. (Of course, the audience will have changed, and if I’d had the time, it would have been good to see Comer again, but I don’t).  

Instead, I am at SUMMER, 1976 (opening Tuesday 25th) tonight, GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR (opening Sunday 23rd) tomorrow afternoon, and NEW YORK, NEW YORK (opening Wednesday 25th) on Sunday afternoon. My reviews of each are below on each of the opening dates.

SATURDAY APRIL 22

It’s a sad farewell to Barry Humphries, whose death at the age of 89 was announced today.

In 2018, I interviewed him when he brought his show about Weimar cabaret to the Barbican, with performance artist Miaow Miaow. 

I didn’t use all of the material I collected then; amongst his choice comments that day was talking about his mother taking him to matinees of the big musicals when they came to Melbourne. “She’d sit in the front row and comment loudly — her favourite phrase was ‘Isn’t it pathetic at his age?’ So today if I see a woman with a hat in the front row talking to a schoolboy, I know what she is saying.”

HIs mother, of course, provided much of the inspiration for his greatest creation, Dame Edna Everage. In 2018, he said of her supposed retirement to me: “She’s not a person you can retire. She refuses to retire. She’s a vitamin in a lot of people’s lives! I think you’ll see her next year as a matter of fact.”

 At which point Miaow Miaow commented, “There’s a great Australian tradition — how many farewell tours did Nellie Melba [the Australian operatic soprano] do?” To which Humphries added, “And what about Cher? How many has she done?”

Of course other versions of Dame Edna exist In drag impersonators, like the Dame Edna Experience, I tell Humphries. “They call themselves that? It’s my material no doubt!” When I point out that you’re unlikely to see the real Edna in a shabby gay pub, Humphries replies, “Mind you, I’ve seen a lot of great entertainers in shabby pubs — I saw Mrs Shufflewick in the Black Cap [n Camden] one Sunday, who was extremely funny and extremely drunk!”

SUNDAY APRIL 23

PRIMA FACIE, which opened officially tonight, is one of nine transfers from the West End across the year, which also included mostly re-cast stagings of & JULIET and BAD CINDERELLA, and the plays DEATH OF A SALESMAN and THE COLLABORATION (both of which originated at the Young Vic), THE KITE RUNNER, LEOPOLDSTADT, LIFE OF PI and PETER PAN GOES WRONG (which I wrote about here last Friday).

Last month I also saw the National’s production of LOVE at the Park Avenue Armory, which I wrote about here, and  Juliet Stevenson will reprise her performance in the title role of THE DOCTOR there in June as well.

It was also announced on Thursday that DEATH DROP — the drag show that has played three West End seasons — will make its off-Broadway debut this summer, opening at New World Stages on July 13 (following previews from June 30). I wish it well.

MONDAY APRIL 24

Broadway loves an old-fashioned star turn in an old -fashioned star turn.

While earlier this season we had two for the price of one with Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope as duelling pop artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquaint respectively in the Young Vic import THE COLLABORATION, the opening tonight of Doug Wright’s GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR (at the venerable Belasco, possibly the most beautiful of all Broadway theatres) brings Sean Hayes back to the Broadway stage to play the legendary but troubled wit, raconteur and musician Oscar Levant with a ghost presence of George Gershwin on hand to provide extra colour.

The play is only so-so, but a gorgeous production by Lisa Peterson burns brightly as Levant burns out before our eyes, and Sean Hayes gives a weighty, impressive performance. He also gets to demonstrate his virtuosic keyboard skills when he plays an extended extract from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

TUESDAY APRIL 25

For many decades Manhattan Theatre Club has provided New York with one of its most reliable sources of new plays, originally (and continuing to do so) at its Off-Broadway base at City Center, and also at a permanent Broadway home, the Samuel J Friedman, on West 47th Street, which it has operated since 2003.

Writers like the late Terrence McNally, Lynn Nottage, Theresa Rebeck, David Lindsay-Abaire, John Patrick  Stanley, and Donald Marguelis have enjoyed long relationships with the company; another is David Auburn, whose PROOF won the 2001 Pulitzer for drama and the Tony for Best Play when it transferred to Broadway after premiering at City Center.

Now Auburn has returned to MTC and, reunited with director Daniel Sullivan who also directed Proof, is premiering SUMMER, 1976, that opened tonight at the Friedman.

This two-hander portrait of a female friendship cuts surprisingly deep. It is powerfully enhanced by the richly inhabited performances of Laura Linney (another MTC stalwart) and the knowing Jessica Hecht as the two women, pictured above. Yes, it might be a little static, and director Daniel Sullivan has to work hard to keep it moving, but the writing is warm, witty and textured.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 26

NEW YORK, NEW YORK shares the title (and title song) of the 1977 Martin Scorsese film, as well as the same two lead characters — nightclub singer Francie Evans and musician sax player Jimmy Doyle, who fall in (and then out) of love, played in the film by Liza Minnelli and Robert de Niro respectively, whom Anna Uzele and Colton Ryan have the unenviable task of trying to match in the charisma stakes and inevitably fail to do so, on the stage of the St James, where it officially opened tonight. 

But instead of deepening the story, the show turns it into a period setting to accompany a travelogue tourist-eyed view of the city. It’s as if the sailors in On the Town had been granted another 24 hour shore leave, and instead of visiting the Museum of Natural History, now make their way to Times Square (pictured below, with strong echoes, of course, of GUYS AND DOLLS, currently being far more evocatively recreated in London at the Bridge Theatre), the Chrysler building and Grand Central station, as well as the steel girders of a skyscraper under construction.

All the grit and most of the wit that powers On the Town, though, is absent. The score draws in other songs from Kander and Ebb’s back catalogue, from Flora the Red Menace (‘A Quiet Thing’) to Woman of the Year and Happy Time (in an orchestral suite that includes ‘Sometimes a day goes by’ from the former and ‘I don’t remember you’ from the latter), and even a showstopper from one of Minnelli’s live shows that Kander and Ebb wrote new material for (‘Sorry I Asked’ from her 1992 Radio City Music Hall show), turning this effectively into another jukebox musical, like AND THE WORLD GOES ROUND (a song also featured here) that was one of Susan Stroman’s first big choreographic hits in New York theatre when that revue premiered at Off-Broadway’s Westside Theatre in 1991.

it misses some of the treats from New York, New York’s film soundtrack (like ‘There goes the ball game’) and offers a heavily truncated ‘Happy Ending’ (originally cut from the film but reinstated in the spectacular director’s reissued version of the film). Additional lyrics are provided by Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda (Ebb unfortunately ebbed in 2004, though several shows he had already mostly completed with Kander flowed to Broadway long after his death).

As David Cote, theatre critic of the New York Observer, wittily tweeted,

(When that song finally comes, there’s a coup de theatre that I won’t spoil, but is pretty predictable).

But for all the pervading sense of disappointment that the show seems to suffer from, it is not entirely unenjoyable. DIrector/choreographer Susan Stroman stages a sizzling tap dance routine on those steel girders, though the giddy comic heights she achieved on The Producers at this same theatre are, alas, missing.

Broadway has, of course, already turned into a Las Vegas type theme park; now it has its own bespoke New York ride. Whether there are enough tourists in town to sustain itself is another question.

THURSDAY APRIL 27

I landed back at Gatwick yesterday at 6.30am, and after a day recovering at home in West Sussex, I headed up to London today to catch up with the Almeida’s production of THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES that opened while I was away, and also the opening night of Ryan Calais Cameron’s new play RETROGRADE at the Kiln.

Reviews for both will appear by me on PLAYS INTERNATIONAL’s website in due course.

SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY

My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on Broadway is here:  https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-april-24/

Updates added over the week include Dickie Beau bringing his solo Hamlet play RE-MEMBER ME to Hampstead, the usual Palladium panto repertory company led by Julian Clary joined this year by Jennifer Saunders as Captain Hook in PETER PAN, and three musicals (two of them new, and respectively directed by Trevor Nunn and Ben Elton) at a newly-resurgent Menier Chocolate Factory.

See you here on Monday

I will be back on Monday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)