← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Previewing the 2024 Spring Theater Season
00:21:57
Learn more about the best theater to look out for this Spring.
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Listener support WNYC Studios.
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This is all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're about to enter peak season for theater with so many off and on Broadway shows to check out. The list is long. And then there's the issue of cost. For sure, there are big blockbuster new musicals like the Great Gatsby and the Notebook. There are anticipated musical revivals like the Wiz and Tommy and Cabaret. And there are a bunch of star studded productions on the horizon with big names like Rachel McAdams, Jeremy Strong, Steve Carell, Wayne Brady and Jessica Lange taking to the stage. You can also catch some gems in smaller theaters off Broadway that can be more affordable. Here to help you navigate through all of it and to tell you what he's excited about is Jackson McHenry, theater critic for Vulture and New York Magazine. Welcome back. As always.
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Thanks for having me, Allison.
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Listeners, we want to hear from you. What shows are you most excited about this spring? Or maybe you want to share the best theater you've seen recently? What are you hoping to see in the theater this year on or off Broadway? Our numbers 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. You can call in, join us on the air. You can also text to that number. Our social media is available as well at all of it. Wnyc. We are talking the theater season currently coming up. So why is this time of year, now through early spring, such a busy time for theater?
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Traditionally, Jackson, it's a series of sort of collisions. But the main thing is that the Tony Awards are held in the first week of June. And so in order to qualify for the awards and that gives you a big boost of attention. If you're nominated for something or you win something, you can have a performance on live tv. People from out of town might be more familiar with your show. You have to open the show before the end of April. It's sort of the cutoff date. It's like the Oscars at the end of December. And so more and more theater producers who are looking for a way to be able to raise attention and think they might compete want to open things right before the end of April so that they're right on everyone's minds and it's ready for the Tony season.
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Is it problematic at all financially for producers if you have all of these.
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Giant shows competing for dollars?
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It certainly is. It's very risky. And this year it's an immense pileup. I think there are 19 shows left to open before the End of April in this season, and they've just one after the other, especially through the month of April. I can say it's exhausting as a theater critic, and it's really hard because things that might not get the buzz just don't get the attention, and they're just drowned out in this kind of cacophony of openings.
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We're seeing a few musical adaptations this year. The Notebook, the Great Gatsby, Water for Elephants, Days of Wine and Roses. Why does Broadway keep leaning into adaptations? Is it. Is it good business sense?
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It's often business sense. It's a sense of as. As with film adaptations. It's. It's something that's familiar to an audience. And, you know, if you're just trying to find a way to get people to get excited, they hear the Notebook, they're like, a Notebook is a musical. I saw the movie with Rachel McAdams. I might want to check this out. I might want a red water for elements, that kind of thing. The Great Gatsby is now in the public domain, so it's that much cheaper to make a Great Gatsby musical. So there's all sorts of reasons why it incentivizes something familiar, which is too bad for sort of risk taking, but it is certainly business sense. You can understand it.
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Of all of the adaptations that are on the slate, which one feels the most promising in terms of being creative with an already existing intellectual property?
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Oh, gosh, that's a. I think. Ooh, I'm excited for. Well, there's a. There's a Cabaret. Well, that's a revival. What are the most. There's lots of ones, but Princess is a rival of Cabaret that they're doing with a sort of immersive element that people are familiar with. The movie, it was originally on stage, but it has a sense of it as if you're at the Kit Kat Club at the bar in Berlin. There's certainly lots of excitement about the Notebook musical, which has music from Ingrid Michaelson and an exciting cast of especially sort of younger newcomer stars. And that got great buzz in Chicago. So I'm excited to see that. That's just started. Performances.
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All right. We are talking about what's happening in theater this spring. So let's talk about some of these shows coming up that have people who are very well known for film and TV work. Steve Carell's gonna make his Broadway debut in Uncle Vanya. Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret, as you said. Jeremy Strong and an Enemy of the people. Rachel McAdams and Mary Jane, obviously big names bring people into the theater in the past few years. Who some of you feel has made a successful screen to stage performance in the last few years.
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Oh, one that comes to mind sort of immediately is Jodie Comer, who won the Tony last year for Prima Facie. And she had done a little bit of theatre before her career took off in Killing Eve on British television and also in films like the sort of Last Duel. But she hadn't really done much stage work before. And she was doing this one woman show about a woman who is trying to sort of prosecute her own rape. And it was very involving. It was pretty much her on stage the entire time holding it all together. And it was one of those moments where you really saw that she, in addition to all of her compelling work on screen, had the stage chops and the presence and the ability to really carry that.
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Let's talk to Charlotte from Jersey City. Hey, Charlotte, thanks for calling in. You're on the air.
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Hi.
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I usher whenever I can to see new work. And I ushered at Playwrights Horizons for Stereophonic, which is a thinly, thinly veiled play about Fleetwood Mac, basically, same kind of personnel. And it knocked my socks off. I used to think plays should not be more than an hour and a half long. It's almost three hours. And I loved every second of it. It's really a deep dive into the 70s rock and roll scene. And written by. I can't remember his name, but from Arcade Fire. So a legit rock and roller wrote it and it's fabulous. Wrote the music for it.
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Yeah. It's Will Butler from Arcade Fire.
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And it's moving.
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Yeah.
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I don't know where it's moving to. It's uptown somewhere. But it's moving and I'm very excited.
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Thank you so much, Charlotte. Someone else texted Stereophonic. Stereophonic. Stereophonic. It's sold out downtown. And it's all about a band in the 70s struggling to record an album. And I couldn't get a ticket in the first run as a 70s kid. I'm super excited. I have a lot of questions about this one. I know you like this one.
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I did.
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So there's been a couple of 70s esque Broadway one, 70s s, Broadway musical, a couple of miniseries that have been not as well received. What does this get right about this storyline, which we've seen in a couple different iterations?
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I think what's so fun and engaging about Stereophonic is it's really kind of about the work of making the album. The set itself. Is a recording studio, at least off Broadway. There was half of the set that was behind glass. And you really get the sense of the lived in experience of these people. They're doing drugs, they're sleeping with each other. There's all of this personal drama, but it's really about them working through, okay, how do we figure out the baseline, how do we figure out the vocals, Whose song do we record, whose songs do we cut? And all of this sort of process stuff really grounds it in this really lived in sense. David Ajme, who's the playwright who wrote it, does such a good job of making you feel like you're there in the room with these people and you sort of smell the smoke and you get the energy and you're sort of with them as they're like, oh wait, maybe they can really figure out how to make this song work. And that feels so engaging. As that caller said, it's a long show, but you sort of sink into like the reality. It reminded me a little bit of that documentary about the Beatles recording their album and that sense of like, okay, here we are. Like, it's like, who's going to make the coffee? Who's going to, you know, talk to the, to the writer who feels like she's slighted because we're not using as many of her songs and like how we actually collaborate. And that really makes it feel so real.
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We're doing a spring theater Preview with Jackson McHenry, theater critic for Vulture and New York Magazine listeners. If you'd like to weigh in. What shows are you most excited excited about this spring? Maybe you want to share some of the best theater you've seen recently on or Off Broadway. 2124-3396-9221-2433-WNYC. You may call in and join us on air. You can also text us that at that number. Social media is available as well. Let's talk about Lempicka, a new musical about the life of an earliest 20th century female artist named Tamara de Lampica. It's directed by Rachel Chavkin, known for Hadestown and I personally love Natasha and Pierre in the Great comment. In the lead role, Eden Espinosa, big voice. She was Idina Menzel, understudied in Wicked. Then she went on to take on the part of Elphaba. So you get a sense of the voice we're talking about. It had a successful run at Williamstown and La Jolla Penny House. For those who aren't familiar with the artist or the story, can you Give us a general idea of what Lempick is about.
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I mean, it's sort of this fascinating woman who was able to self mythologize. She was born in Poland, she was fought, you know, involved in both world wars. She was a great art deco artist, but also sort of a gave herself the name Tamara de Lempicka and sort of built this whole mythology and was highly influential for the kinds of celebrities that we think of today, like Madonna brings out Lempicka photos and performs before them in her tour right now. And this sort of idea of a woman creating this almost like pop star sense of herself. And she was also queer and she was also sort of very boundary breaking for the time and really kind of interesting figure in the early 20th century. So the kind of thing that you're like. I wasn't very familiar with her until I heard about the musical and then I was suddenly fascinated.
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What do you think is Rachel Chavkin's special skill as a director?
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I think she's wonderful at evoking a sort of mood and sense of engagement with the audience that you don't get from a lot of Broadway directors. She's so good at sort of a sense of. I mean, I think I saw her work in Natasha and Pierre and that was having the performers weaving in and out of the audience. A sense of kind of immersion and earthiness and sort of groundedness in musicals that you don't often get from sort of more sleek pro commercial productions. And so she's someone who is really exciting to get her to her work on this. And she's also working on her own Great Gatsby that's going to be in Boston later this summer. And she's always great at sort of bringing in a real wonderful vibe, I guess to the TUA Theater.
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We got a text that says I'm excited for almost every new show opening this spring. There are so many. I have tickets to a few already, but I'm dying to see everything. Let's talk to Jen from Glen Cove. Hi Jen, thanks for calling in.
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Hi, it's Jeannie, actually.
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Oh, Jeannie. Hi, Jeannie.
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That's okay. I'm calling because I wanted to give my recommendations for Days of Wine and Roses. I saw it twice off Broadway over the summer and then I saw it on Broadway in previews. And each time it just grabbed my heart at a different moment and I walked out just so moved by it. The singing, the music is intricate, it's different, it's exciting. And Kelly o' Hara is amazing and she soars, her voice is powerful. And they just put on an amazing production. And so I just highly recommend it for everyone.
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Jeannie, thank you for calling in. We have a caller who recommended Brooklyn Laundry. Someone else who is recommending thinks the Outsiders has the most creative potential, in my opinion. Looking forward to that as well. Let's talk about creative people. Michael R. Jackson, the creator of a strange loop. This one is called Teeth. The subtitle is a Coming of Rage musical comedy. I think her last thing I saw was him was White Girl in Danger, which was very wild. Is this based on the movie of the same name?
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It is based on the movie of the same name of the sort of horror comedy about a woman with a vagina. Dentado is a sort of heath in her nether regions, I guess I can say on radio that is she's a Christian teen. It was a sort of 2000s movie. This is an off Broadway production with Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs, who's writing the music. But this, this sort of Puritan girl who discovers she has this thing in her body and then also is rebelling against realizing, you know, the Christian teachings of, you know, purity and everything are maybe not exactly how the world works and getting her vengeance, which seems very fun, very dark. The kind of right mood for a Michael R. Jackson piece.
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There's an Off Broadway show at Park Avenue Armory titled Illinois, and I'm gonna spell it, I L L L I N O I S E Illinois. And the music comes from a Soufian Stevens album of the same name. And there's some really creative people attached to this project who's turned this album into a musical. It's a musical performance, right?
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Musical performance is sort of a dance piece. It's. Well, Jackie Sibley's Drury, who's a really interesting playwright, is working on the book of it. And then it's directed and choreographed by Justin Peck, who is a choreographer from the New York City Ballet. And he's also worked on other musicals and projects since then. But he does very interesting contemporary balletic dance. And if anyone knows the Sushant Stevens album, this is based on their wonderful little meditative pieces about Chicago and Illinois in general. And he was sort of originally writing State by state through the 50 states, but sort of it's a big touchstone piece of sort of indie music. And so I've heard it's very interesting. They did it at Bard last year, upstate kind of mood and dance piece.
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Let's talk to Thomas from Brooklyn. Hi, Thomas, thanks for calling all of It.
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Hi.
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I love the segment. I wanted to talk about Little Shop of Horrors, which my wife and daughter went to go see. And my daughter is 4 years old, and she saw the movie, which is a great movie. The music is great. And then we just found. We looked and found out randomly that it was on Broadway. And then we found out that it was originally an off off Broadway play, which I just thought was so cool. And that now it's again, you know, in New York City. And that's the origin of it. And now. Now today. And they said it was great, the plant. If anybody remembers the plan. It was. They said it was just like the movie, you know, and all the songs were great and everybody was, you know, amazing.
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Who.
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Who are your leads?
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I think that's.
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Who did you get to. Who did you get to see? Thomas didn't catch off there.
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My wife and daughter went. It was Evan Rachel Wood.
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Hold on.
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I just had it.
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And Darren Criss, maybe.
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Evan Rachel Wood. Yeah, I think so. Yep. Darren Criss, Bryce Pinkham, Steven DeRosa. Aaron Harrington was the voice of Audrey. Audrey II.
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Audrey II.
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And they had the ensemble singers. Oh, they said it was great. Yeah, it was just. And I think it goes till April. Yeah. Little Shop of Horrors.
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Thomas, thanks for calling in. There is something about a classic like that, and especially with rotating cast members, it can be very interesting.
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Yeah, it's fun. And it's a little shop. It's this Off Broadway revival, and they've cycled through all sorts of interesting stars, like having Darren Criss come in and Rachel Wood. They've had Constance Wu and Corbin Bleu and all these different people. And it's such so fun to see it in a little bit of a smaller theater. It was. The original show just ran off Broadway for years, and they're kind of keeping that spirit up, and it feels intimate and exciting and hilarious and bloody and all of the things you want from a kind of cult horror thing.
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All right, I have to ask about the Wiz.
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This is my childhood.
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The Wiz is coming back with a refreshed book by Amber Ruffin, who's so hilarious. Also revamped the book for Some Like It Hot on Broadway. What do you hope Amber Ruffin brings.
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To this new version of the book?
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What's something that you've heard about?
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You think that it might need to.
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Be in 20, 20, 24?
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I mean, I think that there's definitely ways to just sort of update the humor, update the sort of contemporary elements and bring in the sort of. She did a great job I think with some like at hot of just keeping up. She has a kind of classical humor sensibility. Good love's a good punchline and that kind of thing and can enliven it and this show has been done. The interesting strategy of touring first around the US So I think it was just in Southern California and sort of getting that tryout ability and sort of I'm hoping they're kind of incorporate the notes from that, figure out the energy of the audience and then bring it to Broadway sort of in its best possible form. Shelley Williams, who's directing it, is also co directing the Notebook musical. So she's an exciting new talent making her beaut debut with two shows at once in one spring.
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Amazing. Last fall as a text Last fall I saw the Unauthorized Unofficial Hunter S. Thompson musical at La Jolla Playhouse and it was fantastic. I am hoping it transfers to Broadway or Off Broadway. Got this text. Cole Escolas as Mary Todd Lincoln in oh Mary. The show was tight and hilarious and insane. My face hurt from non stop laughing for 20 minutes. Highly recommend this demented gym I went yesterday. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. That is a funny show.
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It is so hilarious. I really, you know, I hope they extend oh Mary for more space because I imagine it's hard to get tickets with how much the raves are. But it is so funny. Col Scola is really just a killer talent.
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Let's talk about a couple dramatic plays really quickly. Succession fans are excited to see Jeremy Strong star in the revival of the Ipsen play An Enemy of the People. We had a Doll's House last year with Jessica Chastain as I believe they're being it was reworked by Amy Herzog. For those who aren't familiar, what's the basic plot?
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So the enemy of a people is is essentially that it's a small Norwegian spa town where people would go to take in the B and enjoy hot springs and everything. And Jeremy Strong is a doctor in the town who discovers that the spa water is polluted. It's the 19th century. They're just discovering about germ theory. And so he tries to tell the town leaders to shut down the town. His brother is the mayor, but they argue that they can't risk that to their economy shutting down their tourist business would be terrible for them. And so it becomes this debate about essentially a lot of debates that we've had about climate change and Covid and how do you properly protect people while also what are the interests of the economy? What do the business people want how do these debates play out in terms of public health? But it was all predicted hundreds of years ago.
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Let's talk to Joan from Hell's Kitchen. Hi, Joan. Hello. Hi, you're on the air.
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Hi, this is Joan from Hell's Kitchen, and I want to recommend Deb Margolin's new play, Time no Time for Peace, which is basically about the results of being hounded by the House front American Activities Committee, and that's sort of playing out today and in Congress and people hounding the Harvard professors out of their jobs, which is not a laughable thing. Anyway, Joan, thank you.
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Thank you. Let's talk to Zoe from Long Island City. Real quick. Zoe, you're working on something kind of exciting.
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Hi, I'm a specialty prop builder for Broadway, and I, I loved working on Days of Wine and Roses, which I also agree is a terrific show. I'm about to start working this week on Suffs, which opens in March, and I'm very excited. Hillary Clinton is actually one of the producers, and it's about the suffragettes, and I think it's pretty cool that they called themselves the Suffs.
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It is pretty great.
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I saw it off Broadway at the Public. I'm kind of excited for that myself. Want to getting one last play on your list? Jackson, Uncle Vanya. This is an incredible cast. Steve Carell, Alfred Molina, Alison Pill and Anika Nani Rose. Wow. So what are you thinking about Steve Carell on stage?
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I'm very curious to see. I think, you know, everyone knows him from the office and of course, his film work, but he hasn't really done anything on professional stage. And this is quite a role to jump into. It's one of the big Chekhov role roles, and I'm curious to see how he carries it off. And it depends a lot on his sort of work with the director Lyla Neugebauer, but it's exciting possibilities there. And often, I think in American productions with Chekhov, we underplay the comedy of it and sort of there is this sort of comedic element to these plays. They're certainly sad and terrible things happen in them, but they can be sort of wonderfully kind of looking at the omni of what the universe is up to. So there's exciting potential there. It's certainly an interesting thing. And it's being put at Lincoln Center's gigantic Vivian Beaumont stage. So it's they're really hyping it up.
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And in our last 45 seconds and anything off Broadway you're really jazzed about, oh, my gosh.
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We talked about Teeth and Illinois. I'm excited to see there's a play with Cynthia Nixon, the Seven Year Disappear. She's coming back. It's an exciting playwright, Jordan Seavey and Taylor Trench, and she's a sort of performance artist comes back into his life. So I'm seeing that this week and I'm excited to see what it's like.
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Jackson Henry will not be home very much the next few months. He is the theater critic for VOG and New York Magazine. Thanks for walking us through some of the upcoming offerings.
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Oh my gosh, I'm excited to see it all. Thanks for having me, Alison.
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Coming up on tomorrow's show, we'll continue our big picture series of conversations with Oscar nominees who work behind the camera. I'll speak with first time film composer Jerskin Fendricks. He worked with dissonant sounds to create a wholly unique score that fits the movies fantastical universe. That's poor things. Yes. Yes, it's poor things. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time. For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities and expanding access to care. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org Are you ready to get spicy?
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These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy. Maybe it's time to turn up the heat or turn it down.
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It's time for something that's not too spicy. Try Doritos Golden Sriracha, spicy but not too spicy.