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welcome to Last Week on Broadway for Monday, May 18, 2026. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Camp Henny. We have a ton of news to get through today, but I did want to remind you that I am continuing to turn out individual show reviews for everything that I saw on my most recent New York trip. Hoping to try to do them one per day, but they are a bit labor intensive when I also have my day job to do. So far I have put out reviews for the Lost Boys and Schmiga Dune. My next one, which will be record shortly after I'm done with this, will be the third and final best musical nominee that I saw on that trip. Titanique. Then I will continue to roll through with the only best play nominee that I saw, which was the Ballisters. Then I'll hit the reviews and then get into off Broadway stuff and not nominated stuff. So make sure that you are sticking with that. I also did a standalone review for the national tour of the Outsiders last week, so if you want to hear all of those, make sure that you are subscribe wherever you get your daily dose of audio goodness, as well as heading over to patreon.com broadwayradio or broadwayradio.com patreon where you can hear them first. Over the weekend we also had an episode of Something Like it pop where Jennifer McHugh and I ran through our top pop culture things from the month of April. And of course, we also had Sunday's episode of this Week on Broadway. In the episode, Peter, James and Michael reviewed a ton of things on both sides of the Atlantic and also spoke with performer Meg Busser. All right, let's dive into the news and we're going to start over at the Eugene o' Neill Theater, where on Thursday we got an update as to how things are going with the Broadway return of the Book of Mormon. We've talked about the fire that shut down the show for a number of weeks now, the Ambassador Theater Group and the Show's producers are hoping to be back up and running by this Thursday, May 21, which is surprisingly fast. But after temporarily moving the show's box office, they did reopen the box office on the 15th in honor of the 15th anniversary of the show. So as of now, if everything continues to go well, they will be back on the boards on Thursday. Of course, ATG and the producers said if anything changes, they will let everybody know. But they did release a statement saying, quote, the work inside the theater is being completed by an extraordinary team that has made tremendous progress. They continued saying that they are, quote, extremely grateful to FDNY and the Department of Buildings for their help and cooperation throughout the repair efforts. This is great. When this first happened, I didn't think that it would be this quick of a turnaround. So if this does end up coming to fruition and folks can get back into seats at the Eugene O' Neill Theater for all of the 15th anniversary celebrations, that would be wonderful. All right. Of course, we are in award season. So last week, the big awards that we got were from the Drama League. And as we've talked about before, they just do production, direction and then one major performance award. So the outstanding production of a play winner was Liberation, which is starting to pick up a lot of steam for that. Best play, Outstanding revival of a play. Went to Death of a Salesman, also looking pretty much like a shoe in for best revival play at the Tonys. The outstanding production of a musical winner was Mexico. This is the first time that an off Broadway show has won that award in 30 years, which is wild because generally the best shows happen off Broadway anyway. But it is surprising. And to be honest with you, like, I know it's a two person show, it's very small, it has dates set up around the country already. But I really want this to come to Broadway. This was such a special show. I will have a standalone episode about it eventually as I continue to work through everything getting through Broadway first. But I think this is a great show. It is undoubtedly the best musical of this season. And. And I really hope for not only a future life for it, but for more people to have an opportunity to see it. And as much as it might be difficult to think of this show being in a Broadway house, the way that more people can see it, not only in New York, but then for it to be done around the country, is if it gets a Broadway run. And I really, really hope that happens. Outstanding revival of a musical went to Ragtime. This is really interesting. Ragtime is certainly picking up Steam and momentum. I think most people assumed that Cats, the Jellicoe Ball would be the leader in this catego. And even though Cats and Jellicoe Ball is not eligible for a lot of the other awards because it was coming from Off Broadway, it was not only eligible for the Drama League, it was nominated for the Drama League. But Ragtime did win there. Outstanding direction of a play went to Joe Mantello for Death of a Salesman and outstanding direction of a musical went to Lear to Bassinet for Ragtime. I said it at the time when the outer critics circle, my organization, released our winners. I would not have put her anywhere in the category. I did not think that the direction of Ragtime is tremendous. But she is winning here. So it certainly draws into question whether Michael Arden for Lost Boys or Zylon Livingston and Bill Rauch for Cats, the Jellicoe Ball are going to have an opportunity to pull out that Tony Award winner. I thought that though where I think a lot of people assumed that would be the race there with the size and spectacle of the Lost Boys versus the ingenuity of catsangelica Ball. But Lear is certainly gaining some momentum for Ragtime. Speaking of the Broadway production of Ragtime, the distinguished performance winner for this year was the one and only Joshua Henry. He was nominated against like 50 other people. You can only win this award once in your lifetime. There were a handful of people that I thought could win it. Obviously Josh was one of them. I also thought that Laurie Metcalfe for her turns both in Death of a Salesman and Little Bear Ridge Road could win. I thought perhaps Kara Young for Gruesome Playground Injuries and Proof, could win. But this is obviously something that is well deserved. And Joshua Henry, one of the most beloved people in the musical theater community, looks like a shoo in for the Tony at this point, sticking in the world of awards and well deserved ones at that. Last week when we talked about the Theater World award winners, we said that the John Willis Award for lifetime achievement had not yet announced. Now it has. And this year's recipient of that award will be John Lithgow, who will be recognized at the June 2 awards ceremony along with the 15 Broadway or off Broadway debuts that will be celebrated then. The Off Broadway Alliance Award nominations were also announced this week. The best musical nominees are Bo Bigfoot, Mexicus, Nightside Songs in the Porch on Wendy Hill. The best play nominees are Cold War, Choir Practice, the Honey Trap, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Kyoto, the Reservoir and this Much I Know Best Revival play and musical combined. Here the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Beat, the Baker's Wife, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Titus Andronicus and you'd Got Older. Best Solo Performance. The nominees are Can I Be Frank? Ken Rex, the Least Problematic Woman in the World, Other and Ta Da. And Best Unique Theatrical Experience. The nominees are Eleven to Midnight, Amaze, Burnout, Paradise, Got a Dance and Masquerade. And wrapping up our awards section here, the nominations went out for the Actors Equity Association's Advisory Committee on Chorus affairs, or acca, I'm not sure has announced the nominees for this season's award for Outstanding Broadway Chorus. There were four productions represented Cats, the Jellicle Ball, Chess, Ragtime and Schmigadoon. Moving into some show and casting news last week we got in addition to the cast of the upcoming Broadway premiere of the musical Wanted, we already know that Solea Pfeiffer and Lisi LaFontaine will be playing the Clark sisters. Now we know who is going to be playing their mother starring as Tallulah Clark when the show begins. Performances at the James Earl Jones Theater on October 15th will be Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, actor, author and producer Leticey. While this will be Leticey's first ever Broadway principal performance, she was in the original Broadway production of Caroline or Change as a standby for both the washing machine and the radio. Then over at the Hudson Theater, it was announced that Mariska Hargitay will be extending her run in Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway by a week. She will now begin performances next week on the 26th of May and will play through the holiday weekend on July 5th. Hargitay obviously most known for Law and SVU. I have been led to believe that she will not be the last person to star in Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway. In fact, she will not be the last TV star to star in every brilliant thing on Broadway. After her run, I believe she will be replaced by another TV icon who has essentially been starring on television for all of the 21st century in two highly acclaimed sitcoms. It's also appropriate that she will be doing this solo show because her most recent television endeavor was all about her solo traveling around the world. We are going to talk a little bit about celebrity Autobiography later in the show because it opens this week, but we have gotten a list of other folks who have joined this production. Joining the rotating, ever expanding cast will be Matthew Broderick, Katie Couric, Anthony Anderson, who may or may not have a very strong connection with the person I was just alluding to in the Last Story, Jason Alexander Tyler Peck, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer and more. Also last week we found out that the Manhattan Theatre Club's world premiere production of David Lindsay Abears, the Ballisters, obviously currently nominated for Best Play, has extended for a second time. The show will now continue to play through June 21st over at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Now turning our attention Off Broadway, Last week it was announced that the upcoming world premiere musical of the John Legend and Lynn Nottage musical Imitation of Life has gone through some changes in terms of the creative team and has shifted its performance dates. The show began as a brainchild of director Liesl Tommy, who actually pitched it for Nottage and Legend to write it. However, despite staying on as a producer, she will not be directing the production anymore. Instead, Tony nominee Whitney White, who could become the first black woman to ever win for directing at the Tonys. Next month she will step in and the production is also shifting dates and instead of coming in the early fall, will now begin performances on November 21st and will play through January 3rd. That is a two week extension from the originally announced dates. The show will still continue to be at the Shed. It's interesting because if you think about it, November 21st through January 3rd, that's only six weeks. They are saying it is a strictly limited engagement and also I don't think extending into January does a whole lot, especially for an Off Broadway show. But what that does signal to me at least, is that if reviews are strong and word of mouth is strong, that they could give themselves plenty of time to make changes and make preparations to come to Broadway this spring. That's still a quick turnaround, but certainly something we've seen before and you have the names like Legend, Nottage and now Whitney White attached. Don't be surprised if this one does well and ends up in a Broadway house a year from now. Sticking off Broadway, La Femme Theatre Productions has announced the cast for the upcoming revival of Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter. The show is going to play the Pershing Square Signature center this summer from July 23 through September 6. Leading the cast will be Montego Glover. She will be joined by Robert Sean Leonard, Gene Lichty, Dakin Matthews, Mary Beth Peele, Ryan Spahn, Will Deveri, Chris Gaffery and Carmen Zillis. The show follows a healthcare expert slated to become Surgeon General who suddenly finds herself up against a scandal involving her past. What's interesting about this production, which will be directed by Sarna Lapine, is that will actually feature for the first time ever, a previously unpublished second act which is absolutely fascinating for a show that premiered 30 years ago and was written by a playwright who passed away 20 years ago. Heading over to Lincoln Center Theater actually tonight. We previously talked about the gala performance production of man of La Mancha with an incredibly star studded cast. It's happening tonight, but there has been a fairly last minute change in terms of the cast. We had said that Harvey Guillen was going to be playing Sancho Panza. He has been replaced by multi time Tony nominee Robin DeJesus. He will join Rolando Vilazone as Cervantes and then of course course Don Quixote, Lindsay Mendes as Aldonza and Dulcinea along with Philip Boykin, Patrick Page. That's kind of cool to have two Hades together there. Adam Danheuser, J. Harrison G, Bonnie Milligan, Maria Bilbao, Olivia Hernandez and more. As I said when this was announced, Lincoln center often does these gala performance concert versions of shows ahead of bigger productions. It's happened fairly recently in the past with like Camelot and Pirates. So don't be surprised if there is a Man of La Mancha in the future over at Lincoln Center. And then wrapping up the news section here. In what is both a bit of a surprise to me and not a surprise to me at all, last week the Lost Boys announced that it will embark on a national tour beginning at Cleveland's Playhouse Square in the spring of 2028. Not a surprise that they made this announcement because this is the time of year when they are trying to do everything they can to bump up the profile of shows, especially with the out of town voters ahead of the spring road show trying to make sure that they are front of mind for all of the Tony voting. I am a little interested here though in how this show is going to tour. If you listen to my review of the Lost Boys, you know that this show is a massive spectacle. I tried not to spoil anything in terms of how that works and what is all involved in the set and the design and the effects, but I feel like Michael Arden and company are going to have to do quite a bit of changing to make this a show that can tour. I imagine it already is going to have to be a top notch tour to start off with, but just to have the physical space to do anything even resembling the Broadway version of this show is going to be tough. So I will certainly be interested in two years time when this show gets up and running on the road how they are able to modify what's they are doing over the Palace Theater for not only theaters across the country, but how to be able to transport it from one venue to the next. All right, let's wrap up the show today because tonight over at the Schubert Theater we do have a Broadway opening and it is celebrity autobiography. This is a limited run of this show through August 16th. How it works is that someone will read an excerpt from some stars autobiography and they're going to read them verbatim. And then the cast focuses on what is ridiculous, absurd, weird about those autobiographies and acts them out on stage. So certainly a lot of room for fun playfulness with this show. As I mentioned earlier, they just announced a fresh group of cast members. Some of the folks that will also be involved in addition to the ones I talked about earlier, are Mario Cantone, Jeff Hiller, Jackie Hoffman, Chris Chris Jackson, Gayle King, Andrea Martin, Bobby Moynihan, Eugene Pack, Kenan Thompson, Nia Vardalis, Rita Wilson, Brooke Adams, Pam Adlon, Lewis Black, Christie Brinkley, Danny Burstein, Bob Costas, Tate Donovan, Chloe Feynman, Will Forte, Gina Gershon, Kathy Griffin, Ken Jeong, Susan Lucci, Ralph Macchio, Eric McCormack, Donna McKechnie, Lorraine Newman, Oscar Nunez, Sherry O', Terry, Tyler Peck, Billy Porter, Tony Shalhoub, Molly Shannon, Sherri Shepherd, Jennifer Tilly, Bruce Vlanch and more. Just a great group of people. You obviously have to make sure that you are checking who is scheduled to be on if you are going to see a specific performer. If you're not really going to see a specific performer, you can go to any night and kind of be surprised as to who's in. But obviously great talent should be a lot of fun. I hope it finds an audience and is able to run on Broadway through its Aug. 16 closing date. All right everybody, that is all that I have for you today. Thank you so much for supporting Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio broadwayradio.com patreon and keep an eye out for the new Broadway radio app. We are currently testing it. I've played around with it. It is very cool and easy to use and should help you find all of the information that you need from Broadway radio. Alright everybody, thanks again for listening. This has been Matt Tammanini and I'll talk to you soon. Foreign.
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