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Today on Broadway: Friday, Aug. 29, 2025
00:09:09
Stars join sold-out ‘Rink’ concert, Manye to depart ‘Lion King’ after 21 years, first snippet of Tveit singing ‘One Night in Bangkok’ Since 2016, “Today on Broadway” has been the first and only daily podcast recapping the top theatre headlines every Mo...
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Welcome to Today on Broadway for Friday, August 29, 2025. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Tamnini. Grace is off running around trying to dot a bunch of eyes and cross a bunch of T's before heading into the Labor Day holiday weekend. So I'm going to run you through what little bit of news we have all by myself and we're going to start over the Classic Stage Company downtown in New York City. We already knew that for two nights on September 15th and 16th, the iconic Tony Award winners Jesse Mueller and Beth Leavel won were going to lead a concert production of the seldom seen Kander and Ebb musical the Rink. But we now know additional cast members and they are all equally fantastic. Joining the cast will be Tony Award winner Santino Fontana, Alex Boniello, Alex Jimigni, Michael McCormick, Mason Reeves, Joe Aaron Reed and Sophie Nassanilis. The evening will be directed by Dave Solomon, who worked with Fontana on Tootsie, and to be choreographed by Shannon Lewis, currently represented on Broadway with just in time. Individual tickets for the concert are completely sold out and any cancellations that are available will be sold via a standby list at the Classic Stage box office beginning at 6pm on the day of each performance. I don't know how a full run of the Rink would do Off Broadway, but but if anything about this experience tells CSC that people want to see Jesse Mueller and Beth Leavel doing this show, I hope that they take us up on it because I think that there would be more than enough interest for a full run of this show Off Broadway at a future date, moving from downtown to Midtown. This week we found out that an absolute staple of the Broadway community will be taking her final Broadway bow for now over the Minskoff Theater because to Tahiti Manye, who has been playing Rafiki in the Lion King on and off since 2004, will play her final show in the role on Sunday, August 31. She first joined the Lion King family back in 2000 in the Toronto production and she's been a part of the Broadway company for the majority of 21 years. In total, she has done over 9,000 performances and as Rafiki. And despite the fact that she is leaving, she told the New York Times, quote, here's the thing, you never leave the Lion King. I'm pretty sure that if they call me two days after I've left and say, tahiti, we want you to come in for a second, I'll jump up and be there no matter what. Disney Theatrical has not yet named a successor for many a in the role, but good luck trying to recreate the longevity that she had in that part. Congratulations. Obviously, millions upon millions have seen her perform this role over the years, and I can't imagine the joy that she has brought to audiences for literal decades. Currently on Broadway, you can see Michael Urie playing Mary's teacher in O Mary. But coming up later this fall, he's going to be returning to one of his regular Off Broadway homes, the Red Bull Theater, to lead a new production of Richard ii. This version was adapted and will be directed by Australian director Craig Baldwin and and will run from October 27 through November 30. The production will play at the Astor Place Theater. And Yuri has long been associated with the Red Bull Theater doing productions of things like the Government Inspector and many other things, both virtually and in person. So love having Michael Urie on stage, whether it is in a comedy like oh Mary, in a classic production like so many things that Happen over at Red Bull, or in a musical like Once Upon a Mattress. And if you aren't watching Shrinking on Apple tv plus, you absolutely should because he is great in that show. In a Deadline exclusive yesterday, we found out about a documentary that I didn't even know was in the works, but apparently it's debuting this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival. This one is called King Hamlet and it documents Oscar Isaac's turn as the Prince of Denmark in the 2017 production from the Public Theater. That production was directed by Sam Gold. This documentary is being directed by filmmaker Elvira Lind, who just so happens to be Oscar Isaac's wife. It's a really interesting look at not only this production, which takes a slightly different approach to Hamlet than many others. Sam Gold explained that while many other productions focus on the revenge of the murder of Hamlet's father, this one really dove into the grief that Hamlet was going through and that really overlaid itself perfectly, perfectly with what was happening in Oscar Isaac's life at the time. Not only was he dealing with the passing of his own mother, but he was also getting ready to welcome his first child with Elvira, who they eventually named after his mother. So there was a lot of really complicated emotions in Oscar Isaac's personal life happening at the same time that he was going through a production of what is universally believed to be the most emotionally taxing role and in the English language theatrical canon. So this will debut on Friday tonight at the Telluride Film Festival with an encore performance on Sunday. And we will see what happens with distribution if it gets picked up and potentially ends up streaming somewhere in the future. But that's not the only theatrically related documentary news that we have today. And I do feel, I do wish Grace was here today because I feel like people over at the Queen of Versailles owe her an apology or at least an invite or even ask her to host because. Because Queen of Versailles, the Broadway musical that's coming up over at the St. James Theater, is going to be running a week of screenings of the 2012 documentary the Queen of Versailles that inspired this musical. The documentary is going to be running from September 18th through the 26th at the Angelica Film center in New York City, and over three days, members of the cast and creative team are going to participate in post screening talkbacks. Again, Steel and Grace's thing here across the three dates are going to have talkbacks. They're going to have the show's star, Kristin Chenoweth, the show's director Michael Arden, the show's book writer Lindsey Ferrantino, the show's costume designer Christian Cohen and other cast members a part of it. They're also going to involve the documentaries director Lauren Greenfield in some of these Q and A's as well. So if you either love that original documentary and want to see it again before the musical starts, or if you've never seen the documentary before and want to have that context before you see it on stage, you can head over to angelikafilmcenter.com and we'll have a link in the show notes. All right, I'm going to wrap up here with a couple of videos as a recommendation. One is a much more substantive video than the other, and I'll explain why here in a second. But the first comes from the Times Square immersive interactive attraction Rise and why, which is kind of like a museum for New York. But there's like an interactive thing where you're like back in the 50s at a new Year's Eve party and there's kind of like a mock Soren thing that goes on there. But anyway, they have this big faux Statue of Liberty torch outside of it of Rise NY and they regularly will have Broadway performers come and perform. Just last week they had the always phenomenal Kerry Butler come and sing a pair of songs. First. First Shine a Light, a song she sings in Heather's the Musical off Broadway currently. And then she did Home for you, which is from Bat Boy, which she's going back in to do at City center here coming up. So that's great. Check out that video. The other one is a very small snippet as part of a social media teaser for Chess on Broadway of Aaron Tveit singing One Night in Bangkok. That might not be like the last musical theater to pop crossover hit, but it's probably one of the last. But we only hear a little bit of it and to be quite honest with you, there's so much else going on that I don't know that I would have been able to pick out Aaron Tveit's voice from that in the first place. But as I was kind of scrolling through Chess's social media, it looks like Aaron Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher has started rehearsals. I don't know if just those three have started rehearsals in the rest of the ensemble will be coming soon, but they haven't announced the rest of the cast. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and use this as a, as a reason to say that post Labor Day, we should be getting the rest of the cast for this show announced. I have heard that playing Svetlana is, I think, one of the best up and coming voices in musical theater. She's been on Broadway, she's been off Broadway, she's been on tour. And, you know, if maybe she asked me for some advice for some reason, I don't know why she would, but all I would tell them is show them who you are. All right, that's all that we have for today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram rodwayradio. And if you want more BroadwayRadio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio we will be observing the Labor Day holiday this weekend. We will not be working. So we'll be back to talk to you with a new Today on Broadway on Wednesday.