News

The Green Room 42 in association with The Civilians, is proud to present Michael Friedman's The State of The Union Songbook to benefit The Civilians Michael Friedman Legacy Fund on Election Night, Tuesday, November 6, for two shows at 700 Pm and 930 Pm. The cast will include Jill Sobule, Jaime Cepero, Julian Fleisher, Kristolyn Lloyd, Nick Blaemire, Lauren Molina, Michael Winther, Conor Ryan, Wayne Pretlow, Johnny Shea, and Robbie Sublett, who will serve as the host for the evening, in addition to other names to be announced.

The York Theatre Company, dedicated to the development of new musicals and preserving musical gems from the past, has added Samantha Bruce The Fantasticks, Ava Della Pietra School of Rock, Julian Fleisher February House, Randy Harrison Cabaret, Samantha Massell Fiddler on the Roof, Randy Rainbow Viral Video Sensation, Lee Roy Reams 42nd Street, Ben Rimalower Bad with Money, the Hot singing string quartet Well-Strung, and The Manhattan School of Music Musical Theatre Ensemble Judith Clurman, Director to the line-up of Broadway performers who will honor legendary musical theatre writing team Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt The Fantasticks, I Do I Do, 110 in the Shade, Celebration with the 2017 Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre at the 26th Oscar Hammerstein Award Gala on Monday evening, December 4, 2017 at The Asia Society 725 Park Avenue.

Hail Oblivion A Pirate Fantasia, the latest music theater work by composerlyricist Stephanie Ryan Johnstone and librettist Joshua William Gelb, will be released as a concept album on April 9th with a cast featuring Bryce Pinkham Gentlemen's Guide, Heidi Chronicles, Holiday Inn, Ato Blankson-Wood The Total Bent, Lysistrata Jones , Hair, Amber Gray Great Comet, An Octoroon, Julian Fleisher February House, Coraline, Rick Burkhardt Three Pianos, among others.

In The Jonathan Channel's new special series 'For The Record' Thomas Z. Shepard and Julian Fleisher explore the making of five seminal Broadway cast albums. Listeners will hear how these albums were made, and what it was like working with some of Broadway's biggest stars. Plus we'll answer the question everyone is dying to ask what exactly does a record producer do, anyway...

February House Public Theater, NY

In a theater season dominated by musicals adapted from movies, it is nice to see an original new musical, but originality alone is no guarantee of a fully realized and satisfying entertainment. February House, the new musical opening at the Public Theater, is indeed original. It has its assets, including intelligence and an impressive score, but it is also uneven. While the musical has moments that are close to magical, it ultimately left me wishing it had delivered more than it did.

February House is inspired by real-life events. In 1940, flamboyant editor George Davis took a house in Brooklyn and turned it into a bohemian commune for writers and artists, including such icons as Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden, and Gypsy Rose Lee. The musical depicts life at what was called February House -- because so many of those artists had February birthdays --...

February House (Playing at the Public Theater through June 10) February House is an ambitious artistic experiment about an ambitious artistic experiment: An attempt by Harpers fiction editor George Davis (Julian Fleisher) to found an art commune in Brooklyn Heights in 1940. Davis’s incandescent brood of tinderbox souls included wunderkind novelist Carson McCullers (the adorable Kristen Sieh), composer Benjamin Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and his lover-muse, the tenor Peter Pears (Ken Barnett), anti-fascist firebrand Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes), “thinking-man’s stripper” Gypsy Rose Lee (Kacie Sheik), and, as elder statesman (at 33), the revered poet W.H. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld, subtly and sustainedly wrong for a disagreeable and miswritten role).To capture the brilliant din, composer-lyricist Gabriel Kahane, a narrative songwriter of great skill and ample wit, has attempted a simultaneous dialogue with the yearning poetry of Auden, the modern musical decouplings of Britten, McCullers’s Southern longings, and Gypsy’s brass. It’s...