“Nobody Cares,” Laura Benanti’s latest one-woman cabaret/autobiographical comedy show, which was produced Off-Broadway by Audible earlier this year, will receive an encore run at the Minetta Lane Theatre in the West Village beginning May 9, which will coincide with the audio release of the show as an Audible Original. The show features new music by performer and composer Todd Almond and stories from Benanti (who began her Broadway career at the age of 18 as an understudy for Maria in “The Sound of Music” and won a Tony Award a decade later for “Gypsy”) about how she went “from ingénue to recovering ingénue.”
Documentary drama about October 7 attacks will premiere Off-Broadway
“October 7,” a documentary-style new play about the October 7 attacks on Israel that is based on interviews conducted by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with those who lived through the events, will be produced at the Actors Temple Theatre in Midtown in May. It will be directed by Karen Carpenter (“Love, Loss and What I Wore”). McElhinney and McAleer are politically conservative Irish journalists and documentary filmmakers who are also married. “Everyone we spoke to witnessed death and destruction or lost a loved one, often right in front of them. Many of them fought back, often in heroic ways against overwhelming odds,” McAleer said in a statement, adding that he hopes that the play will subsequently be filmed and also performed at Ivy League colleges.
Jim Parsons leads cast of ‘Our Town’ revival alongside Holmes and Deutch
Jim Parsons, who is currently back on Broadway in Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play,” will lead the upcoming Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s classic American drama “Our Town,” which will begin previews on Sept. 17 at the Barrymore Theatre and be directed by the always busy Kenny Leon (“A Soldier’s Play”). Parsons will play the “Stage Manager,” who narrates the drama. The 28-person cast will also include Zoey Deutch (“The Politician”), Katie Holmes (who previously appeared on Broadway in a revival of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”), Richard Thomas, Ephraim Sykes (“Ain’t Too Proud”), and Julie Halston (“You Can’t Take It With You”). “Our Town” was last revived on Broadway over two decades ago in a production starring Paul Newman as the Stage Manager. In 2009, David Cromer directed an acclaimed Off-Broadway production that received an extended run.
New Sondheim revue ‘Old Friends’ will play Broadway
“Old Friends,” a new revue celebrating the songs of Stephen Sondheim devised by mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh and staged by Matthew Bourne, which debuted as a starry gala concert (which was recorded as an album and filmed for television) and then received an extended West End run, will be produced on Broadway next season by Manhattan Theatre Club with Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, who both previously appeared in the West End production. The upcoming MTC season will also include the Broadway debut of “Eureka Day” (Jonathan Spector’s comedy about the board of directors of an ultra-liberal private California elementary school, which debuted Off-Broadway in 2019) and the Off-Broadway world premiere of “Vladimir” (Erika Sheffer’s play about a Moscow journalist who faces danger as she covers Vladimir Putin’s first term in office).
