Month: January 2023

Broadway’s Best Shows invites you to the starry Opening Night of Pictures From Home. To enter to win, all you have to do is email us a “picture from home” (This can be any vintage photo of you or your family) to this address with your name and you’ll be automatically entered. Five lucky winners will get a pair to the Opening Night on Thursday, February 9th at 7pm at Studio 54 Theatre.

Based on the landmark photo memoir by Larry Sultan, adapted to the stage by Sharr White, starring Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein, and Zoë Wanamaker and staged by award-winning director Bartlett Sher, PICTURES FROM HOME will evoke memories of childhood, parenthood, and the hard-won wisdom that comes with both.

*No purchase necessary and winners will be randomly selected Monday, Feb 6th. Photo submissions will be featured across social platforms. Travel not included.

By Jordan Levinson

On Tuesday, the nominees will be announced for the 95^th annual Academy Awards. There have been many Best Picture nominees and winners throughout Oscar history that have been based on plays and musicals; this article will shine a light on some of them:

During the Academy’s early history, around 8-12 films were nominated for Best Picture every year, and plays proved to be popular source material. In fact, there was at least one nominee most every year in the 1930s and early 1940s that used recent plays as its basis. When there were only three Best Picture nominees for the very first Oscars in 1927/28, two of them — 7^th Heaven and The Racket — were play adaptations from earlier in the decade. The first Best Picture winner that started as a work of theatre was 1931/32’s Grand Hotel. Based on a 1930 drama by screenplay writer William A. Drake, it remains to this day the only Best Picture winner to not be nominated in any other category. 

Other notable nominees during this era were based on dramas, like 1932/33 winner Cavalcade (based on Noël Coward’s historical play), 1936 nominee Dodsworth, 1939 nominee Dark Victory, and 1940 nominee Our Town (which currently has a Broadway revival in development, on track for the 2023-24 season). Early comedies were also popular fare, like 1938 winner You Can’t Take It with You, 1940 nominee and rom com The Philadelphia Story, and 1932/33 nominee She Done Him Wrong, starring Mae West and Cary Grant. The first musical adaptation to garner a Best Picture nomination was 1934’s Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers charmer The Gay Divorcee. 

As the 1940s rolled on, Lillian Hellman got some Oscar love, with 1941 and 1943 nominees The Little Foxes and Watch on the Rhine having been based on her plays. 1943 was also the last time until 2010 that there would be more than 5 nominees for Best Picture; the winner that year happened to be the classic Casablanca, based on the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Because of this new nomination limit, that created a lesser chance that play-based material could be up for Best Picture. 1948 and 1949 drama nominees Johnny Belinda and The Heiress were among the only non-Shakespearean works to be up for top honors. 

The 1950s were Tennessee Williams’s time to shine in filmland, with his A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof all receiving top-honor nods. That decade was also a good time be a drama, as works like Witness for the Prosecution, Picnic, and The Diary of Anne Frank were well-represented in their respective awards years. 

The next decade proved to be a golden age for the movie musical. West Side Story, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver!, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly! were all based on smash-hit Broadway tuners; three of them won Best Picture. The ‘60s also saw a renewed interest in historical works, like 1964’s nominated Becket and ’66 victor A Man for All Seasons. The year 1968 was the first time since 1955 that at least 3 out of 5 of the Best Picture nominees were originally seen on stage. 

Though the early 1970s saw a couple more successful nominated musicals — Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof — aside from them, theatre was starting to be represented less and less (and likewise, novels, disaster movies, and thrillers much more) in the running for Best Picture, a trend that continues today. 

The dramedy Driving Miss Daisy and the Mozart bio-drama Amadeus won Best Picture in the 1980s, with another bio-drama and family drama — The Elephant Man and On Golden Pond — getting nominations. By the time the ‘90s came, theatre representation was vastly nonexistent amongst Best Picture nominees, with 1992’s A Few Good Men serving as the sole nod of the decade. 

However, with what the 21^st century has showed us so far, there is much optimism for the future of theatre-based films at the Oscars. 2003 saw Rob Marshall’s Chicago become the first musical to win Best Picture in 35 years, with War Horse, Les Misérables, Fences, The Father, and the acclaimed West Side Story remake all getting nominated in the 2010s and 2020s thus far. 

This year’s nominations will be announced at 8:30 AM ET and will be available via global livestream on Oscar.com and on their social media platforms, as well as a Good Morning America / ABC News Live telecast from the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills at the same time. Tune in — you don’t want to miss it.

By Jordan Levinson

Sunday, January 22 marks Lunar New Year 2023. Observed by millions across the continent of Asia, the holiday traditionally represents reunion and rebirth and a transition from winter to spring. It is also a time to honor ancestors and deities, and some traditional celebrations are marked by family reunions, parades, and pyrotechnic displays. Though Americans are most familiar with China’s Lunar New Year traditions, different Asian cultures observe in different ways. 2023 marks the Year of the Rabbit — the Asian calendar operates on a 12-year cycle where each year corresponds to one of a dozen different animals. The fourth animal represented in the Chinese zodiac, the rabbit is a symbol of grace, beauty, mercy, and good luck. 

In honor of Lunar New Year, we would like to spotlight some of the finest pieces of theatre — both musicals and plays — set in Asia:

In 1951, Broadway audiences got to know The King and I, the fifth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the Margaret Landon novel “Anna and the King of Siam,” the show follows British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens, hired by the King of Siam as part of an attempt to modernize his nation. As she takes a liking to the King’s children, Anna’s relationship with the King is marred by conflict, as well as a love for each other neither one of them can admit. Critics whistled a happy tune when The King and I officially opened at the St. James Theatre on March 29, and the musical received five 1952 Tonys, including best musical. It ran for 1,246 performances, making it the fourth-longest running musical in Broadway history at the time. As of this writing, the show has been revived four times on Broadway; the most recent mountings in 1996 and 2015 have each won the Tony for best musical revival. Musical highlights include “Hello, Young Lovers”, “Getting to Know You”, “Something Wonderful”, and “Shall We Dance?”.

19^th-century Japan served as the locale of Stephen Sondheim’s 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. The story tells of the country’s 1853 Westernization, as American ships opened it to the rest of the world. Pacific Overtures takes a Japanese point of view and follows two friends who are affected by this change. 

The original production was nominated for ten Tonys, with a 2004 revival receiving four more. Sondheim wrote his score in a quasi-Japanese style, utilizing many parallel 4ths and omitting all leading tones; highlights include “Someone in a Tree”, “Chrysanthemum Tea”, and “Please Hello.”

The heat was on at the Broadway Theatre in 1991, as the popera Miss Saigon opened to much fanfare. Written by Les Misérables songwriters Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, the tuner relocates Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” to the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Miss Saigon chronicles the doomed romance between a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese bargirl and a United States Marine. Like Les Mis and some of the other British “mega-musicals” of the 1980s, Miss Saigon had no shortage of visual spectacle; most notably, the famous onstage helicopter was an actual life-sized piece of machinery that served as a metaphor for both freedom and fear. The musical was nominated for eleven 1991 Tony Awards, and it ran for a decade; today, that production remains the 14^th-longest running musical in Broadway history. A 2017 revival marked Miss Saigon’s return to its original home for a limited engagement. 

A tragic affair based on Puccini’s opera also provides the groundwork for the David Henry Hwang play M. Butterfly. Here, a French diplomat is posted in China and has a twenty-year romantic relationship with who appears to be a Beijing Opera diva. M. Butterfly won the 1988 Tony for Best Play, and it was adapted into a 1993 film starring Jeremy Irons. Like Miss Saigon, the play also received a 2017 Broadway revival, with Hwang making textual changes that mostly addressed the issue of intersectional identities. 

Lesser known is The World of Suzie Wong, a 1958 play by Paul Osborn. Based on Richard Mason’s novel of the same name, it follows a British businessman who moves to Hong Kong to try and start a career as an artist; he falls in love with a Chinese prostitute who he has hired as a model. The World of Suzie Wong opened on October 14 and starred William Shatner as the businessman. In turn, the play was adapted into a successful 1960 motion picture starring another William, William Holden.

Another old, rare gem is the 1946 Raymond Scott / Bernard Hanighen musical Lute Song. Based on the 14^th-century Chinese play Tale of the Pipa, it is about a young scholar who leaves his bride behind to seek advancement in Peking. However, once he succeeds in doing so, he is unable to return home or contact his family. Mary Martin and Yul Brynner worked on this project together, and appearing as a lady-in-waiting was then-known Nancy Davis in her only Broadway show; of course, she became First Lady of the United States in 1981. Scott and Hanighen’s score for the show is thin — the cast album only includes 6 tracks — but it includes the gorgeous “Mountain High, Valley Low.”

Finally, we can look optimistically to future pieces of theatre that take place in Asia, as Maybe Happy Ending received its English-language premiere in Atlanta in early 2020, right before the COVID-19 shutdown. The winner of six Korean musical awards, Will Aronson and Hue Park’s original musical, directed by 2-time Tony nominee Michael Arden, is set in mid-21^st century Seoul, where two helper-bots undertake an adventurous journey. It opened at the Alliance Theatre — a prime breeding ground for forthcoming Broadway shows — where the Atlanta-Journal Constitution gave it a warm welcome: critic Wendell Brock called it “a dazzling, wonderfully strange new musical… brimming with ideas and technological inventiveness,” concluding, “As far as happy endings… I see nothing but a bright future for this deeply affecting show.” Producers are currently targeting the 2023-24 season for a New York transfer. 

By Jordan Levinson

Another one of Wilson’s most notable works is the fourth play in his Pittsburgh Cycle, The Piano Lesson. The play takes the ideas of legacies and family history and asks how we preserve them. Set in post-Depression Pittsburgh, The Piano Lesson follows a brother and a sister debating whether they should sell their family’s prized heirloom piano (carved with their ancestors’ faces). Only by revisiting their history can the family find a way to decide. The play arrived on Broadway in 1990, winning that year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A revival starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, and Danielle Brooks opened in September 2022 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and is about to conclude its limited engagement later this month. 

Wilson’s final work, Radio Golf, is also the last installment in the Cycle. It tells the story of Harmond Wilks, who is on a quest to reinvigorate Pittsburgh’s Hill District (through a major redevelopment project) and become its first Black mayor. Following a 2005 premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre, Radio Golf received a Broadway mounting in 2007, with Kenny Leon directing. Notably, it played the Cort Theatre, the same house where Wilson’s first Broadway play— 1984’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — opened.

The African nation of Liberia saw itself represented on the Broadway stage when Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed opened in 2016 at the John Golden Theatre, following a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run at the Public Theatre the year before. A story of hope and resilience, the play is set in 2003 in a small, bullet-ridden, one-room shack, and it follows five Liberian women as they survive the final stages of the Second Liberian Civil War. The Broadway production made history, as it became the first all-Black and female play to make it to the Great White Way. Eclipsed marked the Broadway debut of Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, who received one of the show’s 5 Tony nominations, which included Best Play. 

In 2022, Broadway audiences braced themselves for the flight of their lives, as Ain’t No Mo’ took off at the Belasco Theatre, also following a successful Public Theater run. Through a biting mosaic of vignettes, this sketch comedy imagines a world in which descendants of enslaved peoples are offered the chance to escape to Africa following Barack Obama’s election. The vignettes throughout the show touch upon themes of racism, classism, and culture. As Ain’t No Mo’ arrived at the Belasco for a limited engagement, Jordan E. Cooper became the youngest Black American to debut on Broadway as a playwright. Sales were lacking, though, and the run was cut short. What followed was one of the most triumphant final weeks in recent history: Cooper launched a #saveAINTNOMO campaign on Twitter, which gained a big celebrity push. Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Shonda Rhimes, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade, Queen Latifah, Sara Ramirez, and Tyler Perry all bought out performances, resulting in a one-week extension. 

By Jordan Levinson

Monday, January 16 marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day across the United States. One of the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, King challenged segregation through nonviolent protests and civil disobedience. Notably, he organized the March on Washington in August 1963, which culminated in his “I Have a Dream” speech. In it, King spoke of his “dream”: that one day, people would be judged by personal qualities — the “content of their character” — rather than the color of their skin. The speech had tremendous effects: it put pressure on then-President John F. Kennedy and his administration to advance civil rights legislation through Congress; it also played a major role in King being named TIME Magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1963. The following year, he became the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. 

We would like to pay tribute to King with a singular work from each decade beginning in the 1950s up until today, highlighting major Black plays on Broadway:

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black female author to have a work represented on Broadway, as her A Raisin in the Sun premiered in March at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The story follows the Younger family and their experiences in a Caucasian-heavy neighborhood in south Chicago; following the death of the father figure, the family tries to improve their financial standing with an insurance payout. Throughout the play, the family deals with experiences of racism, assimilation, and housing discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun was nominated for 4 Tonys, including Best Play. It has been revived on Broadway twice as of this writing, and it has spawned a film adaptation (starring its original leading man, Sidney Poitier), a musical version (the Tony-winning Best Musical Raisin), and a stage prequel told from the perspective of the family that sold their house to the Youngers (Clybourne Park, which won the 2012 Tony for Best Play).

Ossie Davis — who replaced Poitier during A Raisin in the Sun’s original run— had a play of his own, Purlie Victorious, reach the Broadway stage in 1961, playing the Cort Theatre (now the James Earl Jones). The New York Times greeted Purlie Victorious with great praise, calling it “marvelously exhilarating.” “The play tells the story of Purlie Victorious Judson, a joyous, robust preacher,” the Times explained, adding, “it won’t let you wipe that grin off your face.” The New York Herald Tribune also raved, calling the play “a bucketful of bristling laughs” with “wild, outrageous fantasy.” Like A Raisin in the Sun, Purlie Victorious was adapted into a movie (under the title “Gone Are the Days!”), and later it “got life” as the musical Purlie, which won lead actor and featured actress Tonys for Cleavon Little and Melba Moore. The play is set to receive new life soon, as a revival is currently in development and preparing for a Broadway bow in the 2023-24 season. 

On March 27, 1973, The River Niger arrived at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (now the Lena Horne) after a celebrated Off-Broadway run that saved its home — the Negro Ensemble Company — from devastating financial difficulty. The tale of a family and the unrest they face when their son returns to their Harlem home after a stint in the Air Force, Joseph A. Walker’s work won the 1974 Tony for Best Play — the first Black play to accomplish that feat. The River Niger was filmed in 1976; it starred James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. 

Known as “the theater’s poet of Black America,” August Wilson is best known for the ten plays that make up his Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicles the Black experience and African American heritage in the 20^th century. The sixth play in the cycle, Fences, premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985, before a Broadway production took up space at the 46^th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers) in 1987. Fences is the story of Troy Maxson, who is a garbage collector but once had tremendous upside as a baseball player in the late 1950s. His childhood circumstances led him to prison, and when he got released, he met his wife and started a family; he struggles to provide for them throughout. The show won 4 Tonys, including Best Play, and its 2010 Broadway revival (with Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, and Stephen McKinley Henderson) picked up 3 more. Washington and Davis reunited on a film adaptation that gave both Oscar nominations; it was also nominated for Best Picture.