It’s every Broadway fan’s favorite time of year… the start of the World Series!
While not every theater goer is an avid watcher of baseball, it may be one of the most represented sports on stage. Here are just a few times baseball has been featured on Broadway.
Damn Yankees
Probably the most known Broadway show centered on baseball is Damn Yankees. The 1955 musical comedy, book by George Abbot and Douglas Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, follows Joe Boyd, a middle-aged baseball fan who makes a deal with the devil to help his favorite team, the Washington Senators, defeat the New York Yankees. The original Broadway production starred legend Gwen Verdon and was choreographed by Bob Fosse (both of whom won Tony Awards for the production). The show won the 1956 Tony Award for Best Musical and in 1958, the musical was adapted into a film featuring many members of the original Broadway cast. The musical was revived at the Marquis Theatre in 1994 starring Victor Garber and Bebe Neuwirth as the dynamic duo, Mr. Applegate and Lola.
Considerably less successful than Damn Yankees, Allen and Ruby Sully Boretz’s The Hot Corner opened in January of 1956. This farce comedy about a minor-league manager trying to get back to the major leagues ran for a measly 5 performances before closing. The play was directed by and starred Sam Levene, who originated the role of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.
The First
In 1981, The First opened at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The musical, book by Joel Siegel and music and lyrics by Robert Brush and Martin Charnin, depicts the life of the first black player in major league baseball, Jackie Robinson. Closing after 31 performances, the musical was the Broadway debut of Tony Award winner and Broadway veteran David Alan Grier.
Baseball plays an important role in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Fences. Troy, a middle-aged trash collector in Pittsburg, had ambitions of being in the Major League, but was unable to get in due to his troubled past and the color of his skin. When his son receives a college football scholarship, Troy’s past clouds his judgement, further separating him from his son. The original Tony winning production opened in 1987 starring James Earl Jones and had a Tony winning revived in 2010 starring Denzel Washington (Both leading men won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor).
Take Me Out
Most recently, baseball appeared on Broadway in the 2022 2nd Stage production of Take Me Out. The 2022 Tony winning revival will be returning to Broadway this fall for a limited engagement. Richard Greenberg’s play, which premiered in 2002, explores themes of racism and homophobia in sports. Among the returning cast is Jesse Williams and Tony Award winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Performances begin October 27 th at the Schoenfeld Theatre.
So, even if 42 nd St. feels more at home to you than Yankee Stadium, there’s always a way to catch America’s favorite pass time.
Three of the theatre’s most inventive, inspired and award-winning artists will return to the stage in the Broadway premiere of Pictures From Home, which brings to vivid theatrical life a comic and dramatic portrait of a mother, a father and the son who photographed their lives. Based on the photo memoir by Larry Sultan, adapted to the stage by Sharr White (The Other Place, Annapurna), 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 vicissitudes that comprise familial relationships.
Pictures From Home will begin previews on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at Studio 54 on Broadway (254 W 54 th Street) and officially open on Thursday, February 9, 2023 for a strictly limited engagement. The creative team and ticketing information will be announced at a later date.
Even Hillary Clinton is [successfully] jumping on the hot Mystery bandwagon today, as audiences seeking great ‘Whodunits’ stories are steadily growing in abundance. So, in honor of her upcoming Broadway debut for Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy takes our top spot. See who else we ranked and why!
Lately, Whodunits are all the rage. From books to famous podcasts to Netflix to HBO to the theater and the theatre, mystery content and suspenseful storytelling is showing no signs of losing steam with audiences anytime soon. Maybe it’s the promise of escapism wrapped in thrills and oftentimes chills, that viewers find so enticing. Whatever the allure, mystery writers have provided a solid niche that has satisfied the itch of readers seeking a surprise since at least the 1800s.
Keep reading for our countdown of who we’d pick to be the top ten women writers for mystery.
1. Adrienne Kennedy
Born in Pennsylvania, 91 year old author and playwright, Adrienne Kennedy is best known for her early work of Funnyhouse of a Negro. In 2022, Kennedy won a Gold Medal award for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, solidifying her incredible career and trajectory to Icon status. Kennedy’s plays draw on the past, both her own and outside events, and address the struggles of race, sex and individuality. Kennedy often relies on metaphors and narrative fragments that can leave audiences reeling and wanting more. As a playwright, she consistently centers Black women in her incredible storytelling. Her Broadway debut, at 91 years young, with Ohio State Murders, stars six-time Tony winning Audra McDonald, and will offer a nail-biting suspense thriller like no other, this November at the stunning James Earl Jones Theatre. Get your tickets now, as the play is sure to be a hypnotic success.
1890 – 1976. Born in the UK in 1890, Agatha Christie became, and remains, the best-selling novelist of all time. Christie is known for her popular 1966 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in multiple translations.
Photograph: Peter Jones/Corbis/Getty Images
3. Patricia Highsmith
1921 – 1995. Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, TX and later died in Switzerland. Highsmith is an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psychological thrillers. The author delves into the nature of guilt, innocence, good and evil wrapped in beautiful backdrops. Her most famous works to-date are Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Carol, to name a few.
Photo credit: Heidi Jo Brady
4. Gillian Flynn
Born in Kansas City, MO, Gillian Flynn is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Gone Girl, for which she wrote the Golden Globe–nominated screenplay and film starring Ben Affleck and more Hollywood A-listers. Flynn has since released the The Times bestsellers, Dark Places, Sharp Objects, and even a novella, The Grownup. A former critic for Entertainment Weekly, she lives [and writes] in Chicago with her husband and children.
5. Ngaio Marsh
1895 – 1982. New Zealand born, Ngaio Marsh, is best known internationally for her 32 detective novels published between 1934 and 1982. Along with Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, Marsh has been classed as one of the four original “Queens of Crime” – a group of female writers who dominated the genre of crime fiction in the Golden Age of the ‘20s and ‘30s.Several of Marsh’s novels feature her other loves—the theatre and painting. A number of her works are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens).
6. Ruth Rendell
1930 – 2015. Born in the UK, Ruth Rendell is a British writer of mystery novels, psychological crime novels, and short stories and was perhaps best known for her novels featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford. Rendell initially worked as a reporter and copy editor for West Essex newspapers. Her first novel, From Doon with Death (1964), introduced Wexford, the clever chief inspector of a town in southeastern England, and his more stodgy associate Mike Burden. The pair appear in more than 20 additional popular novels thereafter.
Photo by Eric Vorenkamp
7. Dorothy Salisbury Davis
1916 – 2014. Born in Chicago, Dorothy Salisbury Davis was an accomplished writer in the crime-fiction genre. She was nominated eight times for the renowned Edgar Award for Best Novel, and eventually served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America group in 1956. Davis is well known for such works as A Gentle Murderer, and A Gentleman Called. She continued working with literary organizations, such as Sisters in Crime, until her death in 2014.
8. Margaret Maron
1938 – 2021. Born in Greensboro, NC, Margaret Maron’s 1992 novel, The Bootlegger’s Daughter, is part of her famous Deborah Knott Series. She is also one of the founders of Sisters in Crime, an organization that helps and encourages women mystery writers and includes the likes of fellow writer Dorothy Salisbury Davis.
9. Charlotte Armstrong
1905 – 1969. Born in Michigan, the Edgar Award-winning Charlotte Armstrong was one of America’s finest authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong attended college at Barnard, in New York City. After college she found work at the New York Times and the Breath of The Avenue magazine. For a decade she wrote plays and poetry, and though she had work produced on Broadway and published in The New Yorker, Armstrong was unsatisfied. In the early 1940’s, she began writing suspense. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films–the latter was renamed “Don’t Bother to Knock”, starring Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft. A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel that year.
PHOTO: SYNDICATE BOOKS
10. Margaret Millar
1915 – 1994. Born in Canada and died in California, Margaret Millar was well-known for her suspenseful writing style and shocking novel endings. Beast in View, a novel that won the 1956 Best Novel honor for the Edgar Award clearly shows why. This psychological thriller was also adapted into an Alfred Hitchcock Hour TV episode.
With so many incredible female mystery writers throughout our time, this list wasn’t easy to breakdown and rank. But that’s a great problem to have thanks to a huge, insanely talented pool of both old and newer contenders steadily pumping out hard-to-beat stories and characters that we can’t get enough of.
Be sure and see Adrienne Kennedy’s debut masterpiece, Ohio State Murders, for all the thrilling twists and turns on Broadway, beginning November 11.
Today we celebrate what would have been Angela Lansbury’s 97th birthday with Broadway’s Best Shows’ 2021 “Show of Titles” special tribute to Angela, “Angie” as friends called her, performed by Len Cariou, Rob McClure and Aaron Tveit. We miss you deeply already, Angie.
All week long Broadway’s Best Shows will be sharing memories from friends and colleagues.
60 years ago on this date in 1962, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? exploded on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre; the author was an acclaimed Off-Broadway playwright, Edward Albee, whose previous successes had included The Zoo Story, An American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith. The director was Alan Schneider, whose reputation soared after this production and went on to direct several Albee plays (Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and The Ballad of the Sad Café) as well as major productions of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Robert Anderson. His life was tragically cut short when he was killed in an accident in London, when he looked to his left for traffic on a cross street, forgetting that motor vehicles traveled on the left side of the road, and was hit by a motorcycle. The play won Tony Awards for its leading actors, Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, who were supported by George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon and became a cause celebre, as well as the talk of the town, when it was passed over for a Pulitzer Prize despite the recommendation of the advisors to the Pulitzer Prize board. It was said to have been denied the award because of its frank language and explicit sexual themes. It played for 664 performances, it did not have an out of town engagement, there were only five previews when it opened in New York, and the first-string critics all attended the opening night.
One of the intriguing anecdotes concerning the production was the potential involvement of Henry Fonda, the great film actor who periodically returned to the stage every few years beginning in 1948 with Mister Roberts, then Point of No Return, then The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Two For the Seesaw and Critic’s Choice. His agent rejected the script out of hand, without consulting him. The agent gave as his reason the assertion that, “You don’t want to be in a play about four people yelling at each other all the time.” Fonda, who was an admirer of playwright Edward Albee’s talents, reportedly was furious. Finally seeing the show himself, Fonda was duly impressed by Arthur Hill’s performance in the role, and conceded that he couldn’t have played the part any better.
In 1970, he and Richard Burton approached Albee about doing an all-male version; for the younger couple they wanted Warren Beatty and Jon Voight, but the playwright turned them down.
Virginia Woolf didn’t come to Broadway again until 1976 when Ben Gazzara and Colleen Dewhurst co-starred in a production at the Music Box Theatre. It played for slightly over 3 months and unlike the original production, which had a second company doing matinees due to the length and the fierce, uncompromising battle of the sexes (that second company by the way included Elaine Stritch at one point), Gazzara and Dewhurt played all eight performances.
By that time Virginia Woolf had entered into the canon of major American plays, helped also by the film version which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, with Sandy Dennis and George Segal in support. Major artists who interpreted the roles over the years ranged from Mike Nichols and Elaine May to a recent production in Los Angeles with Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart.
Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart (photo by Justin Bettman)
The next time that Virginia Woolf appeared on Broadway was approximately 28 years after the first revival, which was 14 years after the original. Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin were Martha and George and Irwin won a Tony for his performance. He had earned the admiration of Albee when he stepped in to do The Goat after Bill Pullman had departed. The play alternated seven and eight performances bi-weekly and played for 177 performances. Since the 60’s when Hagen and Elizabeth Taylor (who won an Oscar), the role of Martha has eluded the top prize but George in the three out of four major Broadway productions has provided Tony Awards for its interpreters.
The most acclaimed revival came to Broadway in a very roundabout way just seven years after the Turner-Irwin. For the first time the artist who staged the play was a woman who had done resident theatre productions of The Play About the Baby (Philadelphia Stage Company), The Goat or Who is Sylvia (the Alley Theatre) and the world premiere of Pete and Jerry at the Hartford Stage Theatre; the latter served an opener to The Zoo Story. Pam Mackinnon, the director, had the previous season brilliantly directed the award-winning play Clybourne Park and wanted to do Virginia Woolf with Amy Morton as Martha Henry. Molly Smyth, Artistic Director, was all set to do the production, which had been approved, when Martha Lavey, the Artistic Director of Steppenwolf, insisted that as Amy Morton was a member of the company it had been to be done at that theatre first. Albee had never allowed a play of his to be done at Steppenwolf, but Mackinnon was persuasive and the play began its life there in 2011-2012 and then traveled to the Arena Stage. The response to the production was overwhelming, there were two performances left, when Lavey called the New York producer Jeffrey Richards and ask him to come and see the production, noting his relationship with Amy and Tracy Letts (portraying George) from August: Osage County and Superior Donuts. The matinee performance was magnificent, so much so that Richards and his producing partner Susan Gallin immediately decided to bring it to New York. Albee’s agent, Jonathan Lomma, was called who met with Richards the next afternoon and granted the rights. The play now titled Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? again awarded the George (Tracy Letts) with a Tony Award, Mackinnon with the Best Director Award, and the play won Best Revival. Noteworthy note: it was the first time two American women directors had won the Tony Award in the same year (Mackinnon for Woolf, Diane Paulus for Pippin).
When Richards met with Albee, he asked why it was now called Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Richards had retitled, with the playwright’s permission, the generic The Best Man to Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Albee said he had seen a program of a production in a resident theatre in which his name was so small that he felt that it would never happen again if his name was in the title.
At intermission when the play opened, 50 years to the actual date of the first production, Albee agreed to come onstage at the end of the performance and received a standing ovation. It was the last time he was to appear on stage at the conclusion of one of his plays.
A production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was scheduled to open in March 2020 with Rupert Everett (initially Eddie Izzard had been announced) and Laurie Metcalf as George and Martha and Joe Mantello was the director. Sadly it was one of the productions which never reopened after Covid and it was the production which signaled the beginning of the Broadway shutdown when an usher at the theatre was found to have Covid.
With rumors currently spreading regarding a forthcoming transfer of Once Upon a One More Time at the Marquis Theatre in the spring, it means New York City is being treated to three different musicals in the 2022-23 season using fairy tales as their inspiration (also Into the Woods and the forthcoming Bad Cinderella).
Why fairy tales? Perhaps the answer lies in the colorful utopia in which these stories are set: a perfect world free of corruption, plague, and strife, and full of love and magic defined by larger-than-life creatures, humans or not. In this second full Broadway season back from an 18-month COVID-19 shutdown, it can be assumed theatregoers want to forget their troubles and be transported to a different environment — and the familiarity of centuries-old fairy tales can help their cause, serving as lighthearted, bubblegum fare to all those in need of it.
But there’s a twist though…this season, these stories that have been told and retold for generations are not always the ones you think you know. Audiences will head to their seats expecting the familiar, but instead be treated to new, diverse tales with some recognizable figures.
Once Upon a One More Time
Take, for instance, Once Upon a One More Time. While utilizing the impressive back catalogue of pop princess Britney Spears, Jon Hartmere’s book brings the Brothers Grimm’s princesses together at a book club. There, a fairy godmother introduces the group to Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”, inspiring them to gain new perspective on themselves and their lives. The women eventually realize that waiting for their princes or knights in shining armor to arrive and kiss them may not be the only path to “happily ever after.”
Sondheim’s Into The Woods
Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods also combines multiple Grimm stories to form an original creation. Though the show begins rather lighthearted, it eventually becomes the darker side of a fairy tale. James Lapine’s book introduces a common everyman and everywoman — the Baker and his wife — and their quest to start a family. To do so, they must reverse the curse that a witch has placed on their house. The two interact with Jack, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood. It turns out, they all have something they wish for — and the latter half of the show teaches audiences a harsh truth: granted wishes have consequences and repercussions, so “careful the wish you make.”
A second revival kicked off the current Broadway season in late June 2022; it was originally staged in 1987 and revived for the first time in 2002.
Bad Cinderella
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella will begin previews at the Imperial Theatre on February 17, prior to a March 23 official opening. Here, the famous titular damsel in distress is both a damsel and a distress. Cinderella is a goth-dressing, rebellious outcast in Belleville, a town that prides itself on beauty and attractiveness. Also, her beloved Prince Charming (as seen in other works) is seemingly dead; his younger brother — the shy Prince Sebastian — is Cinderella’s only friend and love interest. Other plot points in this new adaptation include reflections on body shaming and some recast gender relationships.
Between the Lines
Some credit must also be given to Between the Lines, which had a brief Off-Broadway run at the beginning of the season. Although it isn’t based on any particular fairy tale (the basis is Jodi Picoult’s YA novel of the same name), this musical follows a high school girl who escapes her difficult life at home and school by reading books. In particular, she is struck by a fictional fairy tale involving a prince who she has a crush on. When the prince starts talking to her, she longs to escape into his world; however, if the two want to stay together, they must change the story he is stuck in so that they can control their own narrative.
Of course, adapting fairy tales into Broadway musicals is not a brand-new trend; more traditional productions have popped up through the years. As early as 1903, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — considered by some to be America’s first great fairy tale —was musicalized for the first time before receiving a legendary film adaptation in 1939 and a Motown makeover in 1975’s The Wiz. Wicked — the backstory of the two witches of Oz — provided a prequel of The Wizard of Oz in 2003 and is still currently running on Broadway.
The WizWicked
In 2013, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella opened on Broadway for the first time. Although more traditional (and true to the Grimm original) than something like Bad Cinderella, librettist Douglas Carter Beane adapted the old tale by throwing in some small additions to bolster the show’s running time, including a romantic subplot, several new characters, and a sympathetic stepsister.
Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella
The various stories of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen have also made their way to the Great Bright Way; in 1959, his The Princess and the Pea was adapted into Once Upon a Mattress. The plot chronicles a far-off place in which its inhabitants must abstain from marriage until Prince Dauntless — the Queen’s son — finds a bride of his own. The Mary Rodgers tuner received a Broadway revival in 1996.
Disney’s Frozen
Finally, no list on musical fairy tales would be complete without mentioning the success of Disney on Broadway. Under the leadership of Thomas Schumacher, the Mouse has launched many of its films into the theatrical medium. The venture launched in 1994 with the purple-and-gold warhorse known as Beauty and the Beast, running for 13 years at two different houses and ushering in a new era of commercial Broadway theatre that continues to this day, before closing to make way for a splash-hit adaptation of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (which in turn, was given a Caribbean twist in Once on This Island).
Andersen’s most recent Broadway adaptation was a twist on his short story “The Snow Queen.” Following the runaway success of the 2013 animated feature Frozen, Disney did not miss a beat and brought a stage version to New York five years later. The heartwarming story about two sisters who find love where they least expect it thawed many cold hearts, and it had a solid run at the St. James Theatre before the COVID-19 shutdown provided its knockout punch.
Gore’s first venture in the theatre was the result of a teleplay that had been produced on the Goodyear Playhouse in 1955; It was described thusly: “A visitor from another planet arrives on Earth and seems anxious to provoke a war- “one thing you people do really well”. The teleplay starred Cyril Ritchard, at the height of his US popularity having created the role of Captain Hook in Peter Pan. He starred as Kreton, the visitor who had hoped to cover the United States during the Civil War, and through a time warp, had arrived in the 1950’s, upending the household of a General in Manassas, Virginia. The popularity of the Playhouse presentation inspired Gore to expand the “Visit” into a full-length play and it opened to mostly positive reviews in February of 1957.
Brooks Atkinson in the Times called “Planet” “uproarious” and Life Magazine called it “the freshest and funniest invasion of the Broadway season.” Not only did Ritchard create the role, he also directed the production. The play was later adapted into a Jerry Lewis film which bore little resemblance to the original. In the fall of 2000, there was a special reading of “Visit to a Small Planet at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre. The cast included Alan Cumming (as the Visitor), Lily Tomlin (in the gender-changed role of the General), Philip Bosco, Christine Baranski, Kristin Chenoweth and Tony Randall, directed by John Tillinger. One could have charged premium tickets. While the reading was positively received, its future was dimmed when Cumming, who was approached to continue in the role, was unable to schedule a commitment.
Melvyn Douglas, Lee Tracy and Leora Dana in “The Best Man” by Gore Vidal, (1960)
His most famous play would open three years later. When it opened in 1960, it was simply titled “The Best Man” and acclaimed as one of the best political plays ever on Broadway. It ran for over a year at the Morosco Theatre and the leading role won Melvyn Douglas the Tony Award for Best Actor. In the fall Douglas had portrayed President Warren G. Harding in “The Gang’s All Here” but here he was merely a former Secretary of State who was was an aspiring Presidential Candidate at a convention. The play was written pre-primary politics which has subsequently become a staple on the American scene, though that spring there would be the first highly publicized major Presidential primary with Senators Stuart Symington, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy vying to be the Democratic candidate. In the play the opposing candidates were famously drawn upon Adlai Stevenson who had twice been the Democratic presidential candidate and Richard Nixon. Almost stealing the spotlight was the character of the ex-President and potential kingmaker (patterned after Harry Truman) portrayed by Lee Tracy, who recreated the role in the film, which co-starred Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson.
Melvyn Douglas (far right) with fellow 1960 Tony winners Mary Martin (“The Sound of Music”), Jackie Gleason (“Take Me Along”), and Anne Bancroft (“The Miracle Worker”).
When the play was revived in the year 2000, it came on the heels of the popular film “The Best Man” which starred Taye Diggs. When the producer Jeffrey Richards, with director Ethan McSweeney, travelled to Ravello to meet with Vidal, it was suggested, to avoid confusion, that the play be retitled “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man”. Gore’s response: “I thought you’d never ask”. The production which co-starred Charles During, Spalding Gray, Chris Noth, Elizabeth Ashley, Michael Learned and Christine Ebersole won both the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revival and was a surprise success of the fall season. It also benefitted from the five week delay in the Presidential contest which resulted in the George Bush presidency. A line that before the election did not get a laugh was noted to receive one after November 4th when the putative candidate Joe Cantwell remarked “and the last thing we want is a deadlocked convention.”
Spalding Gray, Mark Blum and Charles Durning, 2000 THE BEST MAN Photo by Peter CunninghamJohn Larroquette and James Earl Jones, 2012 THE BEST MAN directed by Michael WilsonFrom left, Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen, Amy Tribbey, Kerry Butler and Donna Hanover in “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesElizabeth Ashley as Mrs. Sue-Ellen Gamadge and Cybill Shepherd as Alice Russell in The Best Man. Photo Joan Marcus
There was a second revival of the play in 2012 with another all-star cast including John Larroquette, James Earl Jones, Eric McCormack, Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen, Jefferson Mays, Kerry Butler, and Michael McKean. Again the play was a success. Gore attended the second week of rehearsals in a wheelchair and serenaded the company with stories about the original production and the night that JFK attended a performance. Unlike the first revival in which he joined the company on stage at a glittering opening night with celebrities in the audience included Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Bebe Neuwirth, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick among others, Gore was unable to attend the second re-opening. He died later that year, during the engagement of the production, which focused attention on his life and work and, consequently, resulted in an extension of the play with a replacement cast of Cybill Shepherd, John Stamos, Elizabeth Ashley and Kristin Davis.
Gore Vidal (AP)
Gore’s third Broadway play was an adaptation of Frederich Durrenmatt’s “Romulus” about the last of the Roman emperors. premiered on Broadway in 1962; once again his director and star was Cyril Ritchard (Vidal quipped- “Cyril was a wonderful actor but as a director he would just tell the actors to stand there, in a line and recite the dialogue”) and Dame Cathleen Nesbitt and Howard DaSilva were also starred.
His fourth play reunited him with the original director of “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man”, Joseph Anthony, but did not repeat the success. The play was “Weekend “and a one sentence description of the play read as follows: “An unscrupulous Republican senator’s son brings home his black girlfriend”. The play opened in March of 1968; the previous December the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn-Sidney Poitier film had a similar racial theme in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and was Oscar-nominated and a big box office success. “Weekend” was neither a box office success, despite a starry cast which included John Forsythe, Rosemary Harris and Academy Award winner Kim Hunter and introduced Carol Cole, Nat King Cole’s daughter, as the girlfriend, nor was it well received. The producers advertised it without quotes calling it THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. It wasn’t. It played three weeks at the Broadhurst Theatre.
Gore’s fifth and final play on Broadway was in 1972; a blistering satire called “An Evening With Richard Nixon and…” with George S. Irving in the title role. Originally scheduled to be directed by (Sir) Peter Hall, it was directed by Ed Sherin, who had staged “The Great White Hope”. It opened 50 years ago and was budgeted at $150,000; there was a cast of fifteen (with a very young Susan Sarandon) portraying a gallery of over 50 characters ranging from George Washington to JFK, including, FDR, Harry Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Gloria Steinem and Pat Nixon – Clive Barnes in his review said “I laughed a great deal at this political bloodletting” but had reservations about the play’s cumulative impact. So did audiences, and without the star power that had been associated with previous Vidal entries, the play last only two weeks after opening at the Shubert Theatre.
George S. Irving, Susan Sarandon
Gore Vidal celebrates Charles Durning birthday during the engagement of On The March to the SeaCharles and Gore Vidal bond backstage
Gore’s final play that received a production premiered at Duke as part of Duke Theatres’ Previews in 2005. A glittering cast headed by Charles During, Chris Noth, Michael Learned, Harris Yulin, Richard Easton, Isabel Keating and David Turner brought “On the March to the Sea” to life for a brief engagement. Directed by Warner Shook, who had brought “The Kentucky Cycle” to Broadway, “Sea” was a noble effort that failed to march on to New York. The play concerned a Georgian family’s trial by fire during Sherman’s famous march during the Civil War. Vidal delighted students at a writing class with various bon mots such as “The best writers have been actors…Shakespeare, Shaw, Twain, Wilder.”; “Reading is like going to bed with someone. Save Jane Eyre for a dismal night” and on the staged reading format of the play “naked language…the eye is not distracted by the adventurous and dangerous set designer”…
Gore had developed and was retooling a script inspired by his novel Lincoln (which had also been a mini-series on television in the late 80’s) when he passed away. A reading had been scheduled and ultimately was not realized.
Mother Nature has her faux fur coat on the foot of her bed and she’s almost ready to step out for New York’s hottest shows. We are here to celebrate the eight shows that will open up on Broadway before October.
Marianne Elliott (Company, Angels in America, Warhorse) directs this critically-acclaimed West End Transfer
Tony Award Nominee and Multi-Olivier Award Winner Sharon D. Clarke, Wendell Pierce (HBO’s The Wire) and the incomparable André De Shields round out this powerhouse cast
The Black actors portraying the Loman family during the 1940s transcends the writing making an even harder hit for Willy, his wife and his boys
The 2017-2018 Broadway season reached 13,792,614 in attendance and grossed over $1.6 million. Despite these record setting numbers, discussion and debate broke out amongst fans as all four Tony nominated Best Musicals were stage adaptations of films; The Band’s Visit, SpongeBob SquarePants the Musical, Frozen, and Mean Girls.
The Broadway cast of Some Like It Hot
A major criticism of Broadway is the trend of stage adaptations of popular movies, which has been featured heavily in recent seasons. With this upcoming season having two announced adaptations, Almost Famous and Some Like It Hot, and even more rumored for the future including The Notebook, The Devil Wears Prada, and a transfer of the West End’s Back to the Future, there is an understandable interest in the creation and development of original stories on Broadway. What many theatergoers are unaware of is that this trend isn’t new to Broadway. In fact, Broadway has a long history of translating movies to the stage including some classic and fan favorite shows.
Little Shop Of Horrors
While some adaptations are more obvious, such as the Disney Broadway catalog including shows like Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, and The Lion King, many well known theater classics were inspired by movies. Sondheim and Wheeler’s A Little Night Music, which originally opened on Broadway in 1973 and ran for 601 performances, is based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. The well-known Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon staple Sweet Charity, written by Neil SImon with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, is based on the 1957 screenplay Nights of Cabiria. Little Shop of Horrors, whose award winning Off-Broadway revival is currently running at the Westside Theatre, is based on the low budget 1960 dark comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors. Andrew Lloyd Webbers’ Sunset Boulevard, which broke advance sale records and sold over 1 million tickets with its original Broadway production, is based on the 1950 film of the same name. Some other classics include Nine, based on Frederico Fellini’s 1963 film 8½, On The 20th Century, based on the 1930s film of the same name, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair, and Promises, Promises, based on the 1960 film The Apartment.
Heathers The Musical on Roku
Beyond the classics, many fan favorites, such as Heathers which currently has a production on the West End, are based on films. The 2007 Legally Blonde, which has become a go-to for many community theaters and High Schools across the country, is heavily based heavily on the 2001 film starring Reese Witherspoon as well as the Amanda Brown novel. The beloved Sara Bareilles musical Waitress, which ran on Broadway from 2016 to 2020 and returned in a limited engagement in 2021, is based on the 2007 film written by Adrienne Shelly. Other fan favorite adaptations include the currently running Beetlejuice, based on the Tim Burton horror comedy, 9 to 5, based on the 1980 film, Anastasia, based on the 1997 animated movie, and many more.
Billy Elliott the Musical
Some screen to stage adaptations have even garnered critical acclaim and gone on to win Tony Awards, such as Once, which won the 2012 Tony Award for Best Musical. Carnival, which won the 1962 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical and an Outer Critics Circle Award, was based on the 1953 film Lili. The 2013 winner Kinky Boots, which ran on Broadway for 2,507 performances and is currently running Off-Broadway at Stage 42, is based on a 2005 British film of the same name. The 2021 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Moulin Rouge!, is based on the 2001 film starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. Other Tony Award winning adaptations include Billy Elliot the Musical, Spamalot, Hairspray, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Producers, and Passion.
The river flows both ways. While many musicals based on films have gone on to win awards and break records, Hollywood continues to turn out movies based on beloved Broadway shows. In the last 5 years alone, there have been a slew of film adaptations of Musicals including Jonathan Larsons’ Tick, Tick…Boom, directed by Lin Manuel Miranda starring Andrew Garfield, a remake of West Side Story directed by Stephen, In The Heights, 13, The Prom, Dear Evan Hansen, and The Last 5 Years (although this came out in 2014 and has yet to have a Broadway production). Coming to Netflix this December will be a movie adaptation of the acclaimed musical Matilda. The long-running Broadway musical Wicked, which has multiple national tours and international productions, has a film adaptation in the late stages of development starring Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, and Jonathan Bailey.
While there should be a healthy mix of original stories and adaptations in commercial theater, the relationship between Broadway and the silver screen has an extensive history that shouldn’t be dismissed. If a screen to stage adaptation is done well, it has the potential to connect with audiences, set records, and become a staple in the theater canon.
Is there anything more moving or beautifully rendered than the Sabbath Prayer from “Fiddler on the Roof”. Whether it was recently celebrated on Broadway by Danny Burstein or is currently in its fourth year in a record-breaking national tour, whether it is done in English or in Yiddish by Steven Skybell about to return to New York for the holiday season in the unique Joel Grey production, this is a highlight of one of the great American musicals.
What better time to listen to “Falsettoland” which not only has its youngest protagonist singing about “The Miracle of Judaism” but then also has the ensemble celebrating “Jason’s Bar Mitzvah”. William Finn is not the only acclaimed composer-lyricist that has explored the Bar Mitzvah on stage—one could go back 60 years ago when Harold Rome’s heartfelt “A Gift Today” was sung (by Elliot Gould, no less) to Sheldon the young Bar Mitzvah in “I Can Get It For Your Wholesale”.
And composer Jule (“Gypsy,” “Funny Girl”) Styne, one of the most prolific of Broadway composers, couldn’t get his musical “Bar Mitzvah Boy” to Broadway (it played in London and was introduced in New York by the American Jewish Theatre) but if you can find the original British recording, take a listen to the obscure song “The Bar Mitzvah of Eliot Green”.
Stephen Bogardus, Barbara Walsh, Chip Zien, Jonathan Kaplan, Michael Rupert, Heather MacRae and Carolee Carmello in the original Broadway production of Falsettos Photo by Carol Rosegg – pictured right, Elliot Gould
Looking forward to Jerry Herman’s “Dear World” at Encores this coming season. Well, before that there was “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame” and after that came “Mack and Mabel” and “La Cage Aux Folles”. But in his very first show, Herman said hello to Broadway with “Shalom”, the opening number of his vastly underrated score for “Milk and Honey”. That may not have been the first time that word found itself in a Broadway lyric but it definitely was the first Broadway song to use that word in the title. When “Milk and Honey” arrived on Broadway in the state of Israel had recently celebrated its Bar Mitzvah as a nation and the rousing title song was a paean to the spirit, humanity, the dreams and the hopes of that country.
Last season the Tony nominated revival of “Caroline, Or Change” reminded us of the Festival of Lights, with its joyous “The Chanukah Party”. The Tesori-Kushner score was even handed with its equal appreciation of that other seasonal holiday with its lively “Santa Comin Caroline”. Theatergoers can look forward later this fall to the latest Jeanine Tesori score when “Kimberly Akimbo” arrives on Broadway at the Booth Theatre.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Finally let us salute, with break fasts coming up in at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, the ultimate panacea proscribed by almost every Jewish mother. Again we reference “I Can Get It For You Wholesale” with the quiet but powerfully moving finale (in the original production) of “Eat a Little Something”, sung by Mrs. Bogen to her son Harry, whose ambition and manipulation has come tumbling down on his friends, family and business empire.
Lillian Roth
Maybe “Milk and Honey” at a future Encores; maybe “I Can Get It For You Wholesale” at a major revival of a resident theatre. Maybe happy New Beginning and Ending for them both, as we wish you a Happy New Year from Broadway’s Best Shows.
