Whitaker coming to Broadway with ‘Hughie’
Oscar winner Forest Whitaker (“The Butler”) will come to Broadway this spring in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s two-actor drama “Hughie,” which was last seen on Broadway in 1996 with Al Pacino. It will join the previously announced revival of O’Neill’s masterpiece “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” with Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne.
‘Hamlet’ with Cumberbatch gets mixed reviews
The reviews are finally in for the sold-out London production of “Hamlet” with Benedict Cumberbatch — and they are extremely mixed. The Guardian gave it two out of five stars and compared the show to a prison. The Telegraph wrote that Cumberbatch is “victorious.” The Daily Mail called Cumberbatch “a fine Hamlet in a patchy, occasionally puerile production.” It can be seen in movie theaters nationwide in a few weeks as part of the NT Live series.
Sheen Center to open with three-week festival
The Fulton J. Sheen Center, a new arts complex on Bleecker Street run by the Archdiocese of New York, will open next month with a three-week series of events including a showcase of current Broadway performers such as Aaron Lazar (“The Last Ship”) and Alysha Umphress (“On the Town”) and a production of the one-woman drama “The Amish Project.”
Roger and Chaz Ebert will get their own musical
The lives of the late movie critic Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Ebert will be dramatized in the new musical “The Black/White Love Play (The Story of Chaz and Roger Ebert),” which will premiere in September in Ebert’s hometown of Chicago. I can’t think of any other musical where the main character is a newspaper critic.
‘Salesman’ speaking in Yiddish
The New Yiddish Rep, which recently presented “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish, is now set to do a Yiddish-language production of Arthur Miller’s seminal drama “Death of a Salesman,” which will play the Castillo Theatre on 42nd Street in October. For those who can’t speak Yiddish, supertitles will be provided.
Hugh Jackman to do song-and-dance spectacle in Australia
Hugh Jackman, who took Broadway by storm three years ago with his one-man song-and-dance show “Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway,” will get back into the act with “Broadway to Oz,” an autobiographical, larger-than-life stage spectacle that will play Australia, as reported by Deadline.com. No word on whether New York will follow.
Spotted …
Stephen Colbert, Ron Howard, George Lucas and Lenny Kravitz at “Hamilton” … Josh Groban at “On the Town.”
