Musicals – The News Desk

Winners of the 2024 Olivier Awards celebrating work on the London stage

14Apr

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Entertainment

Winners of the 2024 Olivier Awards celebrating work on the London stage

LONDON -- The winners of the 2024 Olivier Awards, handed out Sunday for achievement in London theater, opera and dance:New Play: “Dear England”New Musical: “Operation Mincemeat”New Entertainment or Comedy: “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”Family Show: “Dinosaur World Live"Revival: “Vanya”Musical Revival: “Sunset Boulevard”Actress-Play: Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”Actor-Play: Mark Gatiss, “The Motive and the Cue”Actress-Musical: Nicole Scherzinger, “Sunset Boulevard”Actor-Musical: Tom Francis, “Sunset Boulevard”Supporting Actor-Play: Will Close, “Dear England”Supporting Actress-Play: Haydn Gwynne, “When Winston Went to War with the Wireless”Supporting Actress-Musical: Amy Trigg, “The Little Big Things”Supporting Actor-Musical: Jak Malone, “Operation Mincemeat”Director: Jamie...

A Sense of Mystery and Wonder in a New “Color Purple”

27Dec

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Entertainment

A Sense of Mystery and Wonder in a New “Color Purple”

The prime success of the new movie version of “The Color Purple” is its tone: it plays like legend, filtered through the pleasure and the pain of the telling. It’s a musical, adapted from Alice Walker’s novel and from Marsha Norman’s book for the stage play (which is also a musical and provides the new movie with most of its songs). The interjections and interminglings of the musical sequences in the drama endow the story with narrative distance along with its emotional immediacy; this distance from within seemingly conveys the very notion of adaptation, the feeling of tales retold, reimagined, relived. The movie’s director, Blitz Bazawule—making only his second feature, following his ultra-low-budget dramatic fantasy “The Burial of Kojo,” from 2018—catches the sense of mysteries and wond...

25Dec

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Entertainment

Danielle Brooks Comes Full Circle

Although Danielle Brooks has become most known for her role as Taystee, on the television show “Orange Is the New Black,” she is a creation of the stage. Our generation’s yen for Black-theatre revivalism is rooted in her gift for externalized performance: she is the kind of actor who interprets the monologue as she delivers it. As Berniece in August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” and as Sofia in John Doyle’s 2015 revival of “The Color Purple” musical on Broadway, Brooks has brought the ache of life to her characters, her voice piercing the artifice around her. For her, the act of inhabiting these women was personal. She recalled to me, recently, being fifteen years old, watching the performer LaChanze play Sofia in the original musical staging, and bursting into tears. Brooks won a Grammy a...

Jordan Fisher goes into ‘Hadestown’ on Broadway, ‘stretching every creative muscle’

21Nov

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Jordan Fisher goes into ‘Hadestown’ on Broadway, ‘stretching every creative muscle’

NEW YORK -- NEW YORK (AP) — Jordan Fisher is going to hell this winter and he's very happy about it.The actor and singer star enters Broadway's “Hadestown,” the brooding 2019 Tony Award-winning musical about the underworld, which intertwines the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone.The actor, whose Broadway credits include “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Hamilton,” will step into the role of Orpheus beginning Monday night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, succeeding original cast member Reeve Carney.Fisher, also known for his work in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and winning “Dancing With the Stars,” chatted with The Associated Press on the eve of his new gig, revealing how he might have manifested the role.Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.___...

Texas school reverses decision that banned transgender student from role in musical

14Nov

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Texas school reverses decision that banned transgender student from role in musical

SHERMAN, Texas -- A Texas school district has apologized and reversed a decision that ousted a transgender student from a part in the musical “Oklahoma!”The school board in Sherman voted unanimously Monday to reinstate the original show and cast after a meeting in which dozens criticized them and spoke in support the 17-year-old transgender boy who'd lost his role in the production because of a new policy.“We want to apologize to our students, parents and our community regarding the circumstances that they have had to go through to this date," President Brad Morgan said in a statement on behalf of the board following the vote.Sherman, a city of 45,000 about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Dallas and near the Oklahoma border, became the latest community embroiled in the national debate ...

Theater Review: ‘Once Upon a One More Time’ with Britney Spears songs will drive you crazy

22Jun

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Entertainment

Theater Review: ‘Once Upon a One More Time’ with Britney Spears songs will drive you crazy

NEW YORK -- You're handed an LED wristband as you enter “Once Upon a One More Time,” a musical on Broadway stuffed with Britney Spears songs. But the gift is strangely inert for the whole show, only coming to life and gleaming at the curtain call. It's not a wristband — it's a metaphor. It glows in the end because you are free. Free of this bombastic, patronizing, clumsy, lazy show.“Once Upon a One More Time,” which opened Thursday at the Marquis Theatre, is pure summer dumb — it's got smoke machines working overtime, weird dance breaks, tons of glitter and every song ends with a manufactured IMAX-level sonic boom. One of the main characters actually swings on a chandelier.Everything about it seems recycled: A fractured fairy tale that is a tired concept by now — no less a giant than Andr...