Matt Tamminini (3:38)
Moving to some other Off Broadway news yesterday, the full casting and creative team was announced for the Signature Theater's upcoming production of Lauren Yee's Mother Russia. It is going to play from February 3rd through March 15th. Teddy Bergman is directing. The show is set in post Soviet Russia. It is a dark comedy about a generation grasping for identity in the aftermath of collapse. In it, young man Yevgeny stumbles into a job working surveillance with his old friend Dimitri. Their target Katya, a former pop singer with questionable allegiances and a mysterious past. As their lives chaotically intertwined, Evgeny finds himself falling in love and losing his bearings with all while grappling with the taste of freedom and fast food. Along the way. Playing Dimitri will be the one and only Stephen Boyer. Evgeny will be played by Adam Chandler Barat. Katya will be played by Rebecca Naomi Jones and as Mother Russia will be David Turner. We had a story about Patrick Page, original cast of Hadestown. We had one about Rebecca Naomi Jones, current cast of Hadestown well now let's turn it over to the director of Hadestown and that is Rachel Chavkin. She will direct the new show My Joy is Heavy that'll play at the New York Theater Workshop. It is by the OBI winning singing songwriter married duo the Banksons. It will run from February 25 through April 5. The work explores through song a young family's yearning for connection amidst the loss of a pregnancy in rural isolation. It'll be performed by Sean and Abigail Bengson and it will feature choreography by Steph Paul and music supervision by or Matias. I love the Banksons. Obviously they were the house band, I guess for all in last year, but their show Hundred Days is incredible. That is a show about their like dating and how they fell in love and got together. And it sounds like this one is also a fairly autobiographical show and very excited to to see this one. Not only do I love the Banks, but I also obviously love Rachel Chavkin. So this is one to put on your radar for the late winter early spring in New York. More news about an Off Broadway show that is coming up. Yesterday, the J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company announced that they will be producing the rarely performed musical Do I Hear a Waltz? The show, written by three of the titans of musical theater, Arthur Lawrence, Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim, will run from April 30th through May 10th. The artistic director and co founder of J2 Spotlight Musical Theater is our old friend Robert W. Schneider. He's been on here to talk about those shows in the past. He will direct this production with music direction by Liz Hastings. We don't yet know the cast, but we will obviously let you know when we do. This is the second show in J2's season. They already announced that they're going to be doing Jerry Herman's Milk and Honey. There is one more show that will be announced coming up. All of these shows will be performed at the AMT Theater. And finally I'll wrap up with a pair of recommendations. The first one, if you are not already Wicked out there, was a performance earlier this week with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande performing For Good Live at an event in Hollywood as part of like the awards season hoopla. They did this little event for a screening that was happening at the Chinese the Groom Grauman's Chinese Theater or the TCL Theater, whatever they call it now. But it was a very special event. Attendees were invited to dinners and cocktails before Grande and Erivo joined to sing For Good. They also did the, appropriately enough, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand duet medley mashup of Happy Days Are Here Again and Get Happy, which they had previously done on Wicked Colon one wonderful night back in November. So we will have a video of For Good in the show notes if you want to check that out. And yesterday on Good Morning America. The cast of Ragtime performed the opening number, the title song of the show. And what's great about it is is they did it in front of an audience at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. And because of the staging, that kind of makes sense. That wouldn't really have worked as well in a little studio at ABC Studios. So the fact that they did this on the actual stage is very cool, very fun. You don't see this very often. So if you want to check out what this actually looks like at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln center, check out the video in the show notes. All right, everybody, that's all that we have for today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram oddwayradio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio don't forget, we will not have a show on Monday, but we will be back and better than ever on Tuesday. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.
