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Mark Brokaw, a prolific director of Off Broadway, Broadway and regional stage productions who beginning in the 1990s worked with some of the brightest emerging playwrights including Douglas Carter Beane, Kenneth Lonergan, Nicky Silver, Paula Vogel and Lynda Barry, died Sunday, June 29, following a battle with cancer. He was 66.

His death was confirmed by the actor Camryn Manheim on social media. “My beautiful friend Mark Brokaw lost his battle with cancer this morning….Today, we lost a beautiful, gifted, beloved friend, artist, husband, and son. The entire theater community is grieving today. I will miss him terribly.”

Raised in Illinois, Brokaw graduated from Yale Drama school and received a fellowship from the Drama League in New York. He soon met Carole Rothman, artistic director of the Second Stage Off Broadway theater, and was hired as her assistant director on Tina Howe’s Costal Disturbances in 1987.

His first solo job, also at Second Stage,...

Put those lightsabers down and pick up a Playbill because Adam Driver is returning to the stage. The Tony and Academy-Award nominated actor will be starring in a new Off-Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Hold on to Me Darling” at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Manhattan’s West Village this Fall for a limited 13-week engagement starting on September 24 and running until December 22.

The official synopsis for “Hold on to Me Darling” reads, “On learning of his mother’s death, country music icon Strings McCrane (Driver) finds himself in an existential tailspin. The only way out, he decides, is to abandon superstardom in favor of the simple life, so he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee. The simple life turns out to be anything but simple in this brilliantly observed tragicomedy, as the consequences of Strings’ success and mind-bending effects of his fame prove all but impossible to outrun.

Sarah Paulson will never forget the actor who sent her six pages of unsolicited notes after watching her in a play.

Paulson recently appeared on the “Smartless” podcast, where she and hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett discussed the theater custom of celebrities coming backstage to meet with the cast.

When Bateman asked the group if they would accept criticism from these visitors, Paulson recalled the “outrageous” experience she had after a show.

“I did do a play once. The last time I was on stage, I did a play called ‘Talley’s Folly’ at the Roundabout, and the actress — and I’m going to say this, and I’m not going to ask you to cut this out, because I don’t f—ing care — this actress came to the play. Her name is Trish Hawkins — Hi, Trish! Hi, Trisha!” Paulson said. “Trish Hawkins came to the...

Sarah Paulson will return to Broadway in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play, Appropriate.

The play, directed by Lila Neugebauer, will begin previews at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater starting Nov. 28, with an opening set for Dec. 18. Paulson was last on Broadway in the 2010 run of Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, where she starred opposite Linda Lavin, and most recently on stage in the 2013 off-Broadway run of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly.

This production is the Broadway debut for Jacobs-Jenkins, whose plays, Gloria and Everybody were both Pulitzer Prize finalists. Appropriate first premiered off Broadway in 2014 and won the Obie Award for best new American play, an honor it shared with An Octoroon, also written by Jacobs-Jenkins. Appropriate transferred to London for a limited run in 2019.

Paulson will play Toni, the eldest daughter in the Lafayette family, who returns home, alongside her brother, Bo, to settle her father’s estate. The two reminisce...

Emmy-winning actor Sarah Paulson will return to Broadway this fall for the first time in 13 years when she stars in the Second Stage Theater production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ darkly comedic family drama Appropriate. Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery) will direct.

The production, part of Second Stage’s 45th Anniversary Season, will begin previews Tuesday, November 28 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater, with an official opening on Monday, December 18. Appropriate will mark Jacobs-Jenkins’ Broadway debut.

Paulson, whose Broadway credits include The Sisters Rosensweig (1993), The Glass Menagerie (2005) and Collected Stories (2010), last appeared on the New York stage in a 2013 Off Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly opposite Danny Burstein.

Additional casting and creative team for Appropriate will be announced in the coming weeks.

Lila Neugebauer (Credit: Courtesy)

The playwright is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner best known for his plays An Octoroon and The Comeuppance.

Robert Patrick, the prolific playwright and onetime roommate of Lanford Wilson best known for the drama Kennedy’s Children, which starred Shirley Knight in a Tony-winning performance, has died. He was 85.

Patrick died in his sleep Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, Jason Jenn, his caregiver and longtime friend and associate, announced.

Patrick got his start at the West Village off-off-Broadway venue Caffe Cino and worked at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and more than 300 productions of his plays were staged in New York in the 1960s.

Patrick started writing Kennedy’s Children — set in a bar on New York’s Lower East Side on Valentine’s Day — in 1968 and finished it four years later. He premiered it off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon to little attention before taking it to London, where it played in a pub and then the West End, was directed by Clive Donner and became a sensation.

Robert Patrick, a pioneering playwright in the Off Off Broadway movement who later won wider acclaim for the 1975 Broadway staging of his play Kennedy’s Children, died in his sleep at home in Los Angeles on Sunday, April 23. He was 85.

His death was announced by Jason Jenn, a longtime friend and associate.

The Broadway production of Kennedy’s Children starred Shirley Knight, who won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, beating out a competitive roster that included Meryl Streep, Mary Beth Hurt and Lois Nettleton.

The play, which focused on a group of former 1960s activists reuniting and reminiscing in a Lower East Side bar, was adapted by Patrick for a 1982 TV movie that starred Knight, Jane Alexander, Lindsay Crouse and Brad Dourif, among others.

Robert Patrick O’Connor was born in Kilgore, Texas to migrant workers, later joining the Air Force for a stint cut short when a poem...

Off Broadway’s historic, if long financially beleaguered, Cherry Lane Theatre has been purchased by The Whale and Everything Everywhere All at Once film studio A24.

The 179-seat mainstage venue, located on one of the most picturesque side streets of Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood, is a central part of Off Broadway history, founded as a playhouse in 1923 and eventually providing a home space for such major theatrical figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, LeRoi Jones, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Joe Orton and David Mamet.

Recent years have seen the small, tucked-away venue hitting one financial brick wall after another, most recently when executive director Angelina Fiordellisi agreed to sell the theater to the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation for $11 million in 2021. According to The New York Times, that deal fell through over the selling price.

A deed...

Judd Hirsch has portrayed several memorable characters over the past 50 years including Alex Rieger in the classic ABC/NBC 1978-83 sitcom “Taxi” for which he won two Emmys, the caring psychiatrist Dr. Berger in 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which earned him a supporting actor Oscar nomination, and Eddie Ross, the angry, verbally abusive bartender in Herb Gardner’s 1992 play “Conversations with My Father,” for which he won a Tony. His latest indelible character is the colorful Uncle Boris, a former lion tamer and film worker, in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” earning a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Hirsch.

Hirsch, who just won the AARP’s Movies for Grownups Award for supporting actor, has made Academy Award history with his nomination. He eclipsed by one year the 41-year gap between bids set by Henry Fonda. At age 87, Hirsch would be the oldest acting winner; Christopher Plummer was 82 when he won for 2011’ “Beginners.

Donna Kaz is a multi-genre writer and the author of “Un/Masked, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour,” which covers her relationship with the late William Hurt and her path to becoming an activist fighting domestic violence. Kaz writes about her emotional response to the news of his death.

I will never forget the first time I saw him, standing by the front door of Jimmy Day’s bar in Greenwich Village where I waited tables. The sun behind him made him appear almost godly. It was 1977. I was 23 years old and had just moved to New York City to pursue a career in theater. He was a regular at Jimmy Days and worked at Circle Repertory around the corner. As I took his order, he asked me what I did. When I told him I was really an actress he said, “Congratulations,” as if the pursuit of a...

William Hurt was tall, blond, and attractive, and the product of a prep-school education and training at Julliard. For someone whose first movie came out in 1980 — the year Ronald Reagan was elected and “The Official Preppy Handbook” was published — he could have had a much different career as an actor, one that was blander, less eccentric, and less daring.

But the approachable exterior camouflaged a complicated, difficult artist, one who constantly challenged himself, even when dealing with his own inner demons. As Mark Harris noted on Twitter upon hearing of Hurt’s death at the age of 71, “Hurt always seemed profoundly uncomfortable being a good-looking leading man, which may be one reason that his performance in ‘Broadcast News’ is absolutely perfect — he understood that he was playing someone who was miscast.”

Before making his way to the screen, Hurt had already established his bona fides on the New York stage,...

Chicago – I will never forget meeting Olympia Dukakis. It was in Chicago in 2009, and among all the pomp and sequins of a Greek American awards night. it was Dukakis who was, by her natural presence, the movie star. Oh yeah, and she was slightly tipsy. Ms. Dukakis passed away in New York City on May 1st, 2021, age 89.

She was known for her high level of performance on stage and screen, and resided in both for over 60 years. She won a Golden Globe and Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress) for “Moonstruck” (1987), and garnered two Obies (Off Broadway Theater Awards) for her work in outer circle and independent theater. She also was a prominent acting instructor, a political activist (her cousin was 1988 Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis) and wrote her memoir in 2003 entitled “Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress.”

Olympia Dukakis in Chicago, circa 2009

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.

Dramatists Play Service, the theatrical licensing and publishing agency formed in 1936 that represents scores the stage’s most prominent playwrights, has been acquired by Broadway Licensing in what the companies are calling a landmark agreement.

Broadway Licensing, a full-service theatrical licensing partner specializing in the development, production and worldwide distribution of new and established theatrical properties, will now house Dps under its slate of brands. Among the dramatists now represented under this newly formed umbrella are Ayad Akhtar, Edward Albee, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, Richard Greenberg, Katori Hall, Beth Henley, George S. Kaufman, Tracy Letts, Martyna Majok, Donald Margulies, Terrence McNally, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Eugene O’Neill, Susan-Lori Parks, John Patrick Shanley, Alfred Uhry, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, and Doug Wright.

The deal was announced today by Sean Cercone, CEO/President, Broadway Licensing, and David J. Moore, Acting President, Dramatists Play Service.

G.W. “Skip” Mercier, a Tony-nominated set and costume designer, died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Rowayton, Connecticut, a publicist announced. He was 66.

From his graduation from Yale School of Drama in 1983 to his death, Mercier worked on nearly 400 shows for the stage. As a resident designer for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, he collaborated on such seminal works as August Wilson’s Fences and taught.

His first New York production, Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky, starring Jeff Daniels and Cynthia Nixon, received praise in ...

G.W. “Skip” Mercier, a Tony-nominated set and costume designer, died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Rowayton, Connecticut, a publicist announced. He was 66.

From his graduation from Yale School of Drama in 1983 to his death, Mercier worked on nearly 400 shows for the stage. As a resident designer for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, he collaborated on such seminal works as August Wilson’s Fences and taught.

His first New York production, Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky, starring Jeff Daniels and Cynthia Nixon, received praise in ...

G.W. “Skip” Mercier, a prolific set, costume and puppet designer whose scenic work for Julie Taymor’s Broadway production of Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass earned a Tony Award nomination in 1997, died March 11 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Rowayton, Connecticut. He was 66.

Noted for his many designs on Broadway, Off Broadway and in regional theater, Mercier was a frequent collaborator of director Tina Landau, including acclaimed Off Broadway productions of Old Hats starring Bill Irwin and David Shiner, the musical Dream True and Tarell McCraney’s Head of Passes.

Among his designs for nearly 400 shows were the popular children’s productions Rugrats: A Live Adventure, which toured on three continents, and Finding Nemo – The Musical, which has run five times a day at Walt Disney World since opening in 2007.

Born in Methuen, Massachusetts, Mercier graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned an Mfa from the Yale School of Drama,...

Oscar winner and multiple Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, best remembered as the delightfully neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and her own subsequent sitcom, died of natural causes on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. She was 94.

“It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her longtime manager Juliet Green said. “There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh ’till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”

The daffy, self-absorbed Phyllis, a character she claimed was close to her own persona, brought the actress two Emmys as a featured actress in a series during the mid-’70s and made Leachman a household name.

Leachman...

Mitch Douglas, a literary agent who spent three decades at ICM and represented the likes of Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene, Arthur Miller, Lanford Wilson and Howard Koch, has died. He was 78.

Douglas died Nov. 5 of metastatic brain cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, his friend and client Lawrence Leritz announced.

Other clients for the Kentucky native included Broadway duos John Kander & Fred Ebb and Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee; playwrights Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy), Frederick Knott (Dial M for Murder) and Reginald Rose (12 Angry Men); and novelists Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider ...

Mitch Douglas, a literary agent who spent three decades at ICM and represented the likes of Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene, Arthur Miller, Lanford Wilson and Howard Koch, has died. He was 78.

Douglas died Nov. 5 of metastatic brain cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, his friend and client Lawrence Leritz announced.

Other clients for the Kentucky native included Broadway duos John Kander & Fred Ebb and Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee; playwrights Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy), Frederick Knott (Dial M for Murder) and Reginald Rose (12 Angry Men); and novelists Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider ...

Conchata Ferrell, best known for her role as Berta the housekeeper on “Two and a Half Men,” died on Tuesday in Sherman Oaks, a rep for Warner Bros. Television confirmed to Variety. She was 77.

“Two and a Half Men” creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre described Ferrell as “one of the greats.”

“We called her Chatty. And we all loved her,” Lorre said in a statement. “Twelve years of highs and lows, and lots and lots of laughter. Through it all she was a rock. One of the greats. I was privileged to call her a friend.”

“We are saddened by the loss of Conchata Ferrell and are grateful for the years she brought us laughs as Berta which will live on forever,” Warner Bros. TV, the studio behind “Two and a Half Men,” tweeted.

We are saddened by the loss of Conchata Ferrell and are grateful for the years...

Conchata Ferrell, a three-time Emmy nominee who appeared in more than 200 episodes of Two and a Half Men and was a regular on L.A. Law‘s sixth season, died Monday at Sherman Oaks Hospital of complications following a cardiac arrest. She was 77 as a result She died peacefully surrounded by family.

Ferrell probably is best known for her role as no-nonsense housekeeper Berta on the hit CBS comedy Two and a Half Men. The role earned her a pair of Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy nominations in 2005 and 2007.

“She was a beautiful human,” Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer said. “I’m crying for the woman I’ll miss, and the joy she brought so many.” Added fellow Men star Charlie Sheen, “An absolute sweetheart, a consummate pro, a genuine friend. Berta, your housekeeping was a tad suspect, your ‘people’ keeping was perfect.”

The veteran...

Clark Middleton, who appeared in such films as Birdman and Snowpiercer and had a recurring role on The Blacklist, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of West Nile virus, his wife said. He was 63.

Middleton also was a stage veteran who in 2018 made his Broadway debut as Hugo in the Tony-nominated revival of The Iceman Cometh, led by Denzel Washington and directed by George C. Wolfe.

During the past 30 years, he performed in New York and across the U.S., creating roles for such writers as Sam Shepard, John Guare, David Ives, John Belluso, Lanford Wilson and Jason ...

Clark Middleton, who appeared in such films as Birdman and Snowpiercer and had a recurring role on The Blacklist, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of West Nile virus, his wife said. He was 63.

Middleton also was a stage veteran who in 2018 made his Broadway debut as Hugo in the Tony-nominated revival of The Iceman Cometh, led by Denzel Washington and directed by George C. Wolfe.

During the past 30 years, he performed in New York and across the U.S., creating roles for such writers as Sam Shepard, John Guare, David Ives, John Belluso, Lanford Wilson and Jason ...

The director of Sergio and many docs talks about docs and movies taken from true stories.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Sergio (2009)

Sergio (2020)

Reds (1981)

The Two Popes (2019)

Rules Don’t Apply (2016)

Bulworth (1998)

Dick Tracy (1990)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Innerspace (1987)

Ishtar (1987)

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Man On Wire (2008)

The Fog of War (2003)

American Dharma (2018)

Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru (2016)

The Killing Fields (1984)

The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)

Under Fire (1983)

Salvador (1986)

The Quiet American (2002)

The Quiet American (1958)

A Private War (2018)

The War Room (1993)

The Final Year (2017)

Independence Day (1996)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Bloodsport (1988)

Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite (1996)

When We Were Kings (1996)

Soul Power (2008)

High School (1968)

Hospital (1970)

Titicut Follies (1967)

The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007)

Before Night Falls (2000)

At Eternity’s Gate (2018)

American Factory (2019)

Dina (2017)

Honeyland (2019)

The Act of Killing (2012)

The English Patient (1996)

Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Purple Noon (1960)

Other Notable Items

Sergio Aragonés

Wagner Moura

Narcos TV...

The 2019 Tony Awards are almost upon us. Before you watch the CBS ceremony hosted by James Corden on June 9, make sure to check out these 11 conversations with Tony nominees. Follow the links below to watch all of our exclusive interviews with these nominated performers.

See Tony Awards predictions slugfest: 3 Experts track hottest races [Video & Audio Podcast]

Derrick Baskin (“Ain’t Too Proud”): Baskin portrays Otis Williams, the founder of The Temptations, in “Ain’t Too Proud.” It’s a role so large that he never leaves the stage. His previous Broadway credits include “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “Memphis.” This is Baskin’s first Tony nomination. (Click here to watch the full interview)

Stephanie J. Block (“The Cher Show”): Block transforms herself like never before to emobdy the pop icon Cher. This marks Block’s third Tony nomination, after previously competing for “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “Falsettos.

“I just sort of assumed some other celebrity was attached to the project,” admits Brandon Uranowitz of the initial table read for Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This.” His assumption was wrong. The next day he was offered the role of Larry and about a year later he’s doing the show eight times a week with a Tony nomination for his efforts. Watch the exclusive video interview above.

“Burn This” is Uranowitz’s sixth appearance on Broadway, but shockingly marks his first appearance in a play. He didn’t intend on a such a musical heavy career. “I spent my entire college career doing plays,” he reveals, but he was “cast in the only musical I auditioned for in college.” An agent happened to be in the audience and wanted to work with him. So musical roles have followed the actor ever since.

Seetonys Predictions Slugfest: Watch our writers Sam...

When posters for Broadway’s revival of Burn This started heating up New York’s chilly subway stations earlier this winter, stars Adam Driver and Keri Russell, snuggling, entangled, staring holes, seemed a sort of inevitable pairing. Both looked incredible, and he was arriving in step with his Oscar nomination for Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman, she a Golden Globe nominee for her still-fresh-in-the-mind final season of The Americans. And both would be appearing in the next installment of Star Wars, no less. If theater marketing had gods, somewhere they were smiling.

The buzzy ad campaign proved both effective and prophetic: The revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1987 drama, directed by Michael Mayer and co-starring David Furr and Brandon Uranowitz, is easily one of the hottest newcomers this Broadway season, pulling in the type of weekly box office – $768,766 for the week ending April 21, the most recent numbers available – that are more typically...

Oscar-nominated actor Adam Driver and Golden-Globe winner Keri Russell took a bow on Tuesday night after opening night of their limited engagement on Broadway. In Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, which first opened in 1987, Driver and Russell play two people thrust together after the loss of a mutual friend – and their performances were met with rave […]

The post Keri Russell & Adam Driver Take A Bow After Premiere Of Broadway Revival ‘Burn This’ [Ticket Info] appeared first on uInterview.

The Ferryman, Network, To Kill A Mockingbird and What The Constitution Means To Me are among the Broadway and Off Broadway productions taking nominations in this year’s New York Drama League Awards.

The 2019 nominees were announced today in the categories of Outstanding Production of a Play, Outstanding Revival of a Play, Outstanding Production of a Musical, Outstanding Revival of a Musical, and the Distinguished Performance Award. The roster was read this morning by the current stars of Broadway’s Waitress, Shoshana Bean and Jeremy Jordan at Sardi’s Restaurant.

The 85th Annual Drama League Awards will be held on Friday, May 17.

Here is the complete list of nominees:

Outstanding Production Of A Broadway Or Off-broadway Play

Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties

by Jen Silverman

Directed by Mike Donahue

McC Theater

Dance Nation

Written by Clare Barron

Directed by Lee Sunday Evans

Playwrights Horizons

Fairview

Written by Jackie Sibblies...

The first revival of Pulitzer Prize Winner Lanford Wilson's Burn Thisofficially opened just last night, April 16, at the Hudson Theatre. Stars Academy Award Nominee and three-time Emmy Award Nominee Adam Driver Pale, Golden Globe Award Winner and Emmy Award Nominee Keri Russell Anna, Tony Award Nominee David Furr Burton and Tony Award Nominee Brandon Uranowitz Larry celebrated the special occasion on Monday, and we're taking you inside the big night below...

Can a play lie in wait? Let’s say it can so we can say that it has: Lanford Wilson’s Burn This has been lurking about since 1987 anticipating the arrival of Adam Driver, and for that match-up alone the years haven’t been wasted.

But that match-up alone is very nearly all we get in Michael Mayer’s Broadway revival opening tonight at the Hudson Theatre. And that’s pretty odd, since the production’s other match-up – Driver and his fellow Star Wars: Episode IX compatriot Keri Russell – is the major selling point here, a teaming that’s been scorching subway walls since steamy ads began cropping up earlier this winter.

To say that Burn This hasn’t aged particularly well since ’87 is rather like pointing out a lopsided old house with a badly built foundation needs a paint job – true enough, maybe, but almost beside the point. Burn...

With all of its new spring arrivals up and running, Broadway box office held about steady from the previous week, a good sign given that two fewer shows were on the boards during Week 46 (ending April 14). In all, the 36 productions took in $34,725,461, with attendance of 304,463 down a small 3.4% from the previous week.

A roster of eight previewing productions awaited opening nights that will unfold over the next couple of weeks. So in chronological order:

Burn This was down about 6% from the previous week, a slip that can be chalked up to five heavily comped press performances. The Lanford Wilson revival starring Keri Russell and Adam Driver at the Hudson Theatre took in $762,998. Opening night is April 16; Hadestown, the remarkable musical re-telling of the Orpheus myth, was Sro at the Walter Kerr, grossed $688,422, about 81% of potential. Opens April 17; Hillary and Clinton, starring Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow at the Golden, also had a press-heavy week,...

Cindy Hulej on Only Lovers Left Alive: "I relate a lot to that movie on multiple levels. And for Paterson I customised the guitar in that." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

While I was talking with Rick Kelly at his work bench in the back of the shop of Carmine Street Guitars, Ed Bahlman was having a lively conversation with Cindy Hulej on music. The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Blixa Bargeld, Rowland S Howard and Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire were being discussed.

Cindy told me that she customised a guitar for Golshifteh Farahani to play in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, which also starred Adam Driver. Driver is now in New York tearing up the stage opposite Keri Russell in the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This, directed by Michael Mayer, and he will soon be seen in Jarmusch's Cannes Film...

Broadway’s Temptations jukebox musical Ain’t Too Proud sang to the tune of $1 million-plus last week, joining the upper reaches of a generally on-key 35-show box office roster. In all, Broadway grossed $34,204,242, a 4% bump over the previous week’s take.

Attendance for the 35 productions during Week 43 (ending March 24) was up a commensurate 4% to 298,672.

Opening to mixed-to-positive reviews, the full-titled Ain’t Too Proud: The Life And Times of The Temptations grossed $1,102,218, a $152,437 increase over the previous week – and that’s with opening comps and press nights. Seats at the Imperial Theatre were 99.9% filled.

The Temps tale certainly got Broadway’s spring off to a fine start, with plenty of other hopefuls in the wings. What the Constitution Means to Me, writer-performer Heidi Schreck’s Off Broadway smash now in previews at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre, played to nearly full houses — 98.2% of capacity, to be exact — and grossing $387,553, about...

Another slate of high-profile Broadway arrivals hit the street last week, with much anticipated productions like Burn This, Hillary and Clinton, What the Constitution Means to Me and Gary: A Sequel To Titus Andronicus adding both money to the till and words (so many words) to the district’s marquees.

In all, box office receipts for the 34 productions (three more than the previous week) were up 9% to $32,944,573, with attendance taking a commensurate 6% hike to 288,544. Average ticket price for a Broadway seat during the season’s Week 42 (ending March 17) was $114, a few bucks more than the previous week.

Let’s start with the recent arrivals: Kiss Me, Kate opened March 14 to fine reviews at Studio 54, with stars Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase playing to Sro houses. Press seats and opening night comps, along with the non-profit Roundabout’s subscription-heavy base, kept grosses at $681,659, an increase over the previous week and about 68% of full-price potential.

Three-time Emmy Award nominee Adam Driver Pale and Golden Globe Award Winner and Emmy Award Nominee Keri Russell Anna will lead the first revival of Pulitzer Prize Winner Lanford Wilson's Burn This. Directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, Burn This is set to begin performances on tonight, March 15, 2019. Get to know the cast below as they begin Broadway performances...

The first revival of Pulitzer Prize Winner Lanford Wilson's Burn This, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, will begin performances on Friday, March 15, 2019 and officially opens on Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at Broadway's Hudson Theatre.Burn This stars Academy Award Nominee and three-time Emmy Award Nominee Adam Driver Pale, Golden Globe Award Winner and Emmy Award Nominee Keri Russell Anna, Tony Award Nominee David Furr Burton and Tony Award Nominee Brandon Uranowitz Larry.

Kevin Bacon takes the prize for sweetest Valentine’s Day gift!

The 60-year-old actor shared a video of himself singing Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” on a ukulele that he said was a gift for his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick.

“Ok, we don’t really do Valentine’s Day in my family so shhh don’t tell Kyra that I got her this little Valentine’s Day present,” Bacon whispered to the camera as he showed off the instrument. “All right? Just keep it quiet, thanks!”

The actor began to sing Mitchell’s 1971 song from her album Blue with his dog,...

As we’re now about halfway through the Broadway season, there are currently eight productions of plays set to open this spring. Could we be seeing any of them contend at this year’s Tony Awards? Below, we recap the plot of each play as well as the awards history of its author, cast, creative types, the opening, and (where applicable) closing dates.

“Choir Boy” (opens January 8; closes March 10)

In this new play by Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, the story centers on the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys, which for a half a century has been dedicated to the education of strong, ethical black men. One talented student has been waiting for years to take his rightful place as the leader of the school’s legendary gospel choir. But can he make his way through the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key?...

Next spring’s Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This starring Adam Driver and Keri Russell has completed casting and set an April 16 opening date at the Hudson Theatre.

Previews begin March 15, with Tony Award nominees David Furr and Brandon Uranowitz rounding out the four-member cast, says producer David Binder. Michael Mayer will direct, with the design team including Derek McLane (Sets), Clint Ramos (Costumes) and Natasha Katz (Lights).

Burn This, which originated Off Broadway in 1987 before transferring to Broadway in an acclaimed production starring John Malkovich and Joan Allen, is set in a downtown Manhattan loft in the 1980s, as four New Yorkers are brought together after a funeral. Driver and Russell play the brother and the roommate, respectively, of the deceased.

Furr will play Burton, the longtime lover of Russell’s Anna. Tony nominated for his performance in the 2016 Noises Off revival, Furr has also appeared on Broadway in Accent On Youth,...

Signature Theatre, one of Off Broadway’s premiere companies, has named Meghan Lantzy as its new general manager. She arrives at the Signature from Lincoln Center Theater, where she worked for 12 years.

“There’s always a lot of exciting activity happening at Signature and The Pershing Square Signature Center, and I’m confident Meghan’s management expertise and thoughtful approach will help us continue moving forward and realizing the possibilities inherent in our unique mission,” said Executive Director Harold Wolpert

The company announced Lantzy’s hiring today. She’ll join senior leadership that includes Wolpert, Artistic Director Paige Evans, among others. Lantzy takes the spot previously held by Gilbert Medina.

At Lincoln Center Theater, Lantzy was part of the team that managed over such productions as My Fair Lady, Falsettos, The King and I, South Pacific, and Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, among many others.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are still deeply in love.

The two actors celebrated 30 years of marriage on Tuesday and gave their fans a treat with a Bee Gees duet of “To Love Somebody” with both playing the ukulele.

“30 years with this amazing woman. She is the music in my life. #luckyguy #tolovesomebody #beegees@kikkosedg,” Bacon, 60, wrote in the caption.

Singing in unison, Bacon and Sedgwick shared sweet looks between each other while laughing slightly when one of them fumbled a note in the song.

30 years with this amazing woman. She is the music in my life. #luckyguy #tolovesomebody #beegees...

‪Michael Mayer‬ on ‪Keri Russell joining Adam Driver in the director's Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This‬: "We did a reading of the play with Adam some weeks ago, and I responded immediately to her great intelligence and passion." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

‪Michael Mayer‬, the director of The Seagull and the timely and rapturous Broadway musical Head Over Heels (based on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia featuring the song catalogue of The Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle), has just announced that ‪Keri Russell will be joining her Star Wars: Episode IX comrade Adam Driver (star of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman) in Mayer's Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This‬. The original production of Burn This in 1987 starred John Malkovich and Joan Allen.

‪Michael Mayer,‬ who is also directing Nico Muhly's opera Marnie, based on Winston Graham’s novel, at The Metropolitan Opera in New York, will participate in...

Keri Russell is Broadway bound.

The award-winning actress is joining Adam Driver in the first Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This.” Tony Award winner Michael Mayer will direct the show, which begins performances in March of 2019 at a theater yet to be announced.

“Burn This” is set in the ’80s and tells the story of four New Yorkers, whose lives are shaken up after a young dancer’s accidental death. Russell will play a modern dancer named Anna, and Driver will portray Pale, a hyperactive restaurant manager, who are brought together in wake of the tragedy. The rest of the cast will be announced shortly.

Russell, fresh off her third Emmy nomination for her role as Elizabeth Jennings in FX’s acclaimed drama “The Americans,” is returning to New York theater after making her off-Broadway stage debut in Neil Labute’s “Fat Pig.” She will appear next in...

The Americans‘ Keri Russell will join the previously announced Adam Driver in Michael Mayer’s Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, producer David Binder announced today. The play begins performances in March 2019 at a theater to be announced.

The production will mark Russell’s first appearance on a New York stage since her 2005 Off-Broadway debut in Neil Labute’s Fat Pig.

Russell will play Anna, one of four New Yorkers brought together at a funeral following an accidental death. Set in the gritty downtown New York of the 1980s, Burn This focuses on the tempestuous relationship between dancer Anna, who was roommates with the recently deceased Robbie, and Pale (Driver), Robbie’s sexy and dangerous brother.

Additional casting and design team will be announced shortly.

Before the announcement of Driver’s casting last December, Mayer was set to direct a Burn This revival with Jake Gyllenhaal in 2017. Gyllenhaal...

The Seagull and Head Over Heels director Michael Mayer on Adam Driver for the role John Malkovich originated in Lanford Wilson's Burn This: "It will be the first Broadway revival. He is just perfect for this part." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

While The Seagull, starring Annette Bening, Saoirse Ronan, Elisabeth Moss, and Brian Dennehy with Corey Stoll, Billy Howle, Jon Tenney, Michael Zegen, Glenn Fleshler and Mare Winningham is in cinemas across the Us, including the prestigious Paris Theatre, Michael Mayer is busy in preparation for an original Broadway musical (producers include Gwyneth Paltrow and Jordan Roth) that he is directing. Head Over Heels, based on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, a 16th century masque, adapted by James Magruder, original book by Jeff Whitty, costumes by Arianne Phillips, scenic design by Julian Crouch, choreographed by Spencer Liff to the song catalogue of The Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle, arranged by musical supervisor Tom Kitt,...

Glenda Jackson is almost certain to win her first Tony Award on Sunday for her acclaimed performance in the first Broadway production of Edward Albee’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Three Tall Women.” She will become the 24th performer to win the Triple Crown of show business awards and cap off a comeback after an absence of almost a quarter of a century.

Jackson walked away from acting in 1992 to began a second career in politics, winning election to the British parliament. Yes, Ronald Reagan did the same thing but he had never reached the level of acclaim and success that Jackson had in Hollywood.

She is one of only 14 two-time Best Actress Oscar winners and she pulled off this double act in just four years. What makes that even more surprising is that she expressed a certain disdain for awards and didn’t attend any of the four Academy Awards...

Conrad Ricamora didn’t set out to be an actor. Growing up, the “How to Get Away With Murder” star lived all over the world, from Iceland to Florida, due to his father’s job in the Air Force. Though he enjoyed singing and dancing when he was little, by the time he hit middle school, “I realized guys would be ridiculed if you did that, so I quickly stopped and started playing sports.”

It wasn’t until his junior year of college, where he was majoring in psychology, that he took an acting class. He chose to do a monologue from Lanford Wilson’s “Lemon Sky” about a boy meeting his estranged parent. The actor, who says “my father was born in the Philippines and my mother is white,” elaborates on how the play spoke to him. “My mom left when I was an infant and I didn’t...

Elisabeth Moss, Mare Winningham, Annette Bening, Saoirse Ronan, Michael Zegen, and Jon Tenney in the sublime costumes designed by Ann Roth for Michael Mayer's lush and layered take on The Seagull

In the second instalment of my conversation with The Seagull director, who is currently working on an upcoming Broadway production of Head Over Heels, based on the song catalogue of The Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle with costumes by Arianne Phillips, Michael Mayer spoke about collaborating with screenwriter Stephen Karam (Tony Award winner for The Humans) and composer Nico Muhly.

Michael Mayer on ‪Nico Muhly‬'s music for Billy Howle's role in The Seagull: "[It] goes with the spirit of Konstantin who is young and trying to make new forms and is passionate about that."

Michael Mayer is a very busy creator. He has a Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This with Adam Driver on board...

Adam Driver, back on the big screen this weekend with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, will lead a Broadway revival next season of the late Lanford Wilson’s ferocious drama Burn This, producer David Binder (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Of Mice and Men) announced this morning. Michael Mayer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Spring Awakening) will direct the planned 2019 show, at a Broadway theater to be announced. An earlier announcement of the revival, with a different producing team…...