Lea Salonga, who is currently appearing in the new Broadway musical “Here Lies Love” (which officially opens later this week), has addressed a recent incident (which was captured in a video that was later posted on social media) in which two audience members snuck into her dressing room without warning or invitation, forcing Salonga to usher them out of the theater herself.
“The money you pay for a theatre/concert ticket does not mean all-access,” Salonga wrote on Twitter. “You pay for that performer’s art, and that’s where it stops…I have boundaries. Do not cross them. Thank you.”
Metropolitan Playhouse to cease production after 31 seasons
The Metropolitan Playhouse, an Off-Off-Broadway company dedicated to presenting long-forgotten American dramas dating back all the way to 1787, has announced that it is ceasing production after 31 seasons and leaving its longtime home at the second floor theater in the Cornelia Connelly Center in the East Village (which is next to the larger Connelly Theater). “Metropolitan has accomplished far more than we might have dreamed in these three decades…But ultimately, we have reached the limits inherent in a company of our small size, and it is time to draw the curtain on a wonderful run,” artistic director Alex Roe said in a statement. The company is currently in the process of considering new production and financial models in the hope of being able to present work again in the future.
‘Show Boat’ to receive experimental revival based on 1927 version
Given that “Show Boat” recently became part of the public domain (well, at the musical’s original 1927 version), it was inevitable that a local company would decide to revive it. Target Margin Theater has announced that it will present an experimental, highly theatrical production of “Show Boat” that uses the original 1927 score and book in spring 2025 at NYU Skirball. “’Show Boat’ is famously unresolved,” artistic director David Herskovits said in a statement. “It has been endlessly reworked, cut, amended, added to, and rearranged. Its gorgeous songs pulse through a chaotic story that is a back-stage romance, a fantasia of troubling racial tropes, and a history of the dawn of the American century. Above all, ‘Show Boat’ is a call to all of us to reconsider who we are as a nation and as human beings.”
Jennifer Holliday exits cast of ‘Pal Joey’ at City Center
Jennifer Holliday will no longer appear in City Center’s upcoming reworking of the classic Rodgers & Hart musical “Pal Joey,” which will serve as its Annual Gala Presentation in the fall. Taking over for Holliday as nightclub owner Lucille Wallace will be Loretta Devine, who, like Holliday, appeared in the original Broadway cast of “Dreamgirls.” In this version of “Pal Joey,” the title character is a Black Jazz singer (to be played by Ephraim Sykes) who struggles to make it in the Chicago nightclub circuit.
York Theatre’s Musicals in Mufti series to return
The York Theatre Company’s Musicals in Mufti series (in which rarely-seen musicals are presented in no-frills, bare-bones concert productions) will return for the first time since the pandemic shutdown this fall at the Theater at Saint Jean’s, where the company has been in residence since its basement theater at Saint Peter’s Church was damaged by flooding in 2021. The Mufti season will include three extremely-rare titles: “How to Steal an Election: A Dirty Politics Musical,” a 1968 Off-Broadway musical in which Calvin Coolidge returns to life and tries to win over political protesters; “The Lieutenant,” a 1975 rock opera that ran only a week depicting a court-martial for the My Lai massacre; and “Golden Rainbow,” a 1968 musical that is best remembered for starring Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé and introducing the song “I’ve Gotta Be Me.”
