With the first green shoots of spring — and mass vaccinations — bringing hope for continued drops in Covid-19 cases, some events and venues sidelined for the past year are cultivating comeback plans. Below is a running list of theme parks and movie theaters that are reopening, movies rescheduled, and awards shows, film festivals and
Broadway
New York City’s annual symbol of summertime – Free Shakespeare in the Park – will return from its Covid hiatus in July, the Public Theater has announced. “We have spent the last year getting ready,” the theater posted on its website to announce the upcoming production of Merry Wives, described by the Public as Jocelyn
Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 Oscar winning animated film, Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi), has been set for a stage production which will have its world premiere in Tokyo in 2022. This is the first-ever stage adaptation of the beloved movie and will be written and directed by Tony and Olivier Award-winner and Honorary Associate
The Broadway premiere of Skeleton Crew, written by Tony Award nominee Dominique Morisseau (Ain’t Too Proud) and directed by Tony winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson (August Wilson’s Jitney) will begin performances on Broadway during the winter of 2022, producer Manhattan Theatre Club announced today. The production joins MTC’s previously announced 2021-22 Broadway line-up of Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says widespread, national use of an efficacious vaccine this spring and early summer could allow Broadway to retake the stage by late summer or early fall. In an interview with NBC New York’s David Ushery last night, Fauci was asked when Broadway
Despite what you may have read, The Right Girl is not a musical about Harvey Weinstein. Then again, having been created by one of the first women to speak out against the rapist, it’s not not a musical about Harvey Weinstein. Had Broadway not gone dark with the coronavirus pandemic last March, audiences might already
Encores!, the acclaimed series of concert-style theatrical productions founded to rediscover overlooked Broadway gems of years past, announced plans to stage Into The Woods, the beloved Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical that is anything but overlooked. Into The Woods, which has been staged, revived and filmed many times over (including the 2014 feature film
Steppenwolf’s Broadway production of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes is exiting the Cort Theatre, its pre-COVID home, with plans to re-open in 2022 at another Broadway venue. The move signals yet another way the pandemic shutdown has impacted Broadway’s shuffle of theater tenants and reopening schedules. The Minutes, a political comedy directed by Anna D. Shapiro
The Roundabout Theatre Company says it will resume production in Fall 2021 with two much anticipated shows – the COVID-delayed Jeanine Tesori/Tony Kushner musical Caroline, Or Change and Alice Childress’ Trouble In Mind. The planned musical revival of 1776 will now begin performances in Spring 2022. The nonprofit theater company does not have a date
The Broadway premieres of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive have been set for 2022 and 2021, respectively, with producers at the Manhattan Theatre Club expressing “hopes high that we will be able to return to live theatre.” The nonprofit MTC announced the target openings today, along with plans
The Right Girl, a new musical based on (and co-written by) the real-life story of former screenwriter Louisette Geiss and the sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein she says ended her film career, will be presented in a film version to a live audience for the first time next month. The production features music by 11-time
David Byrne’s American Utopia will return to Broadway next fall. Producers announced today that the critically lauded production will hit the stage Sept. 17, 2021. The show, filmed by Spike Lee for an HBO adaptation that launches this weekend, had initially planned its Broadway return for fall 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown axed that.
With Broadway’s shut down at least until June, some producers who had been hoping to open shows this spring are re-setting their sights on fall or even 2022, while others have announced no plans whatsoever. The latest to announce a new schedule is Lincoln Center Theater’s much anticipated production of Flying Over Sunset, a new
Broadway will remain closed through at least May 30 2021, the Broadway League announced today. The four-month extension beyond the most recent January date will force producers hoping for a Spring opening to come up with new plans. The Broadway League announced the continued suspension of all ticket sales for Broadway performances through May 30,
EXCLUSIVE: With Broadway dark at least until next summer, The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman has set a new opening night for 2022. The highly anticipated musical revival, costarring Sutton Foster, now will begin previews at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre on Monday, December 20, 2021, with Opening Night scheduled for Thursday, February 10, 2022. The
Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre will take its acclaimed production of Lauren Yee’s play with music Cambodian Rock Band on the road, marking the theater company’s first production to tour. The production, with songs by L.A. band Dengue Fever and directed by Chay Yew, was praised by critics upon its Signature opening earlier this year, and
The upcoming season of Encores! at New York’s City Center will include an adaptation by Pose‘s Billy Porter of The Life, a musical last seen in New York on Broadway in 1997. Porter’s adaptation, which he’ll direct, is one of two upcoming Encores! productions reviving rarely staged Broadway musicals centering on Black lives; also in
A COVID-19 vaccine would likely not be an immediate, complete solution to Broadway’s woes, suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci, who noted in an interview this week that it could take a year of reliable vaccine usage before theatergoers could safely attend shows without masks. Fauci issued the warning during a 30-minute Instagram Live chat with actress
Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre has indefinitely postponed its world premiere stage adaptation of the 2005 George Clooney-co-written film Good Night, and Good Luck, a project that had generated considerable interest on Broadway. Steppenwolf announced yesterday that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the theater company’s 2020-21 season will consist largely of streaming, virtual productions. Good Night, and
In a lawsuit that offers a glimpse of COVID-19’s economic threat to the Broadway industry, Jujamcyn Theaters, owner of five major Broadway venues, is suing its insurance companies after the insurers offered to pay a mere $250,000 of what Jujamcyn claims should be “tens of millions of dollars” in losses due to the coronavirus shutdown.
EXCLUSIVE: The Broadway production company behind the upcoming Michael Jackson musical MJ and the stage adaptation of the hit 2000 film Almost Famous has hired The Old Globe Theater’s Travis LeMont Ballenger as producer to help oversee both high-profile projects. Ballenger, most recently the Associate Artistic Director at the Globe in San Diego, also will
Sing Street, the sold-out Off Broadway musical that was set to begin performances at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre just as the COVID-19 shutdown hit, is now targeting an opening sometime between winter 2021 and winter 2022. The announcement was made Monday by producers Barbara Broccoli, Brian Carmody, Patrick Milling Smith, Michael Wilson, Orin Wolf and Frederick
A new work by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage will join Second Stage Theater’s Broadway line-up for 2021, joining the company’s postponed revival of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out starring Patrick J. Adams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jesse Williams. The newly announced, as-yet-untitled production of Nottage’s new play will be directed by Kate
As expected, Broadway will remain dark through 2020, with the Broadway League announcing today that theater owners will refund or exchange all tickets purchased for productions through Jan. 3, 2021. “The Broadway experience can be deeply personal but it is also, crucially, communal,” said Chairman of the Board of The Broadway League Thomas Schumacher. “The
The Broadway revival of the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical Caroline, or Change and the New York premiere of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles starring Debra Messing are the latest productions to announce postponements until 2021, and they’ll be joined on the Roundabout Theatre Company line-up with the Broadway debut of Alice Childress’ 1955 play Trouble in
UPDATE, with Music Man confirmation Producers Scott Rudin, Barry Diller and David Geffen confirmed today that The Music Man Broadway revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster has been postponed until next spring, making the musical the second Broadway postponement announced today. “We’re obviously profoundly disappointed to be unable to start rehearsals for The Music
The second season of The Politician has landed, and given us a new Ben Platt cover to obsess over. The Politician season two features two stunning musical performances from Ben Platt, including a weirdly perfect cover from an iconic Broadway musical Ryan Murphy is not afraid to utilise the musical talents of his Tony-winning lead,
Few artists can say they’ve surmounted social-distancing obstacles as magically as Portuguese illusionist Helder Guimarães. The impact of social distancing on the performing arts needn’t be re-stated here: In one way or another, most installments of Deadline’s Coping With COVID-19 Crisis series have dealt with just that topic, as performers – or those aspiring to
A musical stage adaptation of NBC’s Smash is in development for Broadway, with Steven Spielberg, Robert Greenblatt and Neil Meron on board as lead producers. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who wrote more than 20 songs for the 2012-13 TV series, will write the musical’s score, with a book co-written by Bob Martin (The Prom,
EXCLUSIVE: New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre has announced an upcoming online run of four plays, becoming what could be Off Broadway’s first summer season created specifically for virtual viewing. Included in the line-up is the world premiere of Darren Murphy’s short play The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, with characters affected by the COVID-19