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Today on Broadway: Friday, Feb. 28, 2025
00:12:56
‘Sunset Blvd.’ to Close in July, Equity and League Reach Developmental Agreement, Carlos Valdes Signing ‘Hadestown’ Since 2016, “Today on Broadway” has been the first and only daily podcast recapping the top theatre headlines every Monday through Frida...
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Welcome to TODAY on Broadway for Friday, February 28, 2025. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Tammini and I'm.
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Tell Me on a Sunday podcast, Grace Hockey.
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Grace People might have noticed that in the podcast feed on the Patreon side of things, in the middle of the week, a new episode of Jan Simpson's Stagecraft went up in which she spoke with the fantastic playwright Bess Wall, who is currently represented Off Broadway with the play Liberation. This is a show that is getting phenomenal reviews, so if you haven't listened to that yet, you can head over to patreon@patreon.com broadyradproductyradio.com patreon and hear that that will eventually appear in the regular feed as well. But if you've seen the show, you are going to want to hear this conversation. If you think you might want to see the show but don't know what it's about, you want to listen to this conversation as well. My interview with the new Jane Seymour and six on Broadway, Kelsey Watts will hit the Patreon feed on Saturday before coming to the regular feed a little bit later. So you want to hear all of that at the Mezzanine Tier and above. All right, Grace, this is some news that we're going to start with that is not surprising but still disappointing to me because yesterday it was confirmed that the current Broadway revival of Sunset Boulevard, which is going to absolutely destroy at the Tony Awards, is going to close on July 13th. It originally been scheduled to close on the 6th. So they're adding one more week, but they are not going to extend after those nine months that Nicole Scherzinger had already said that she was going to do in the role of Norma Desmond. So it's going to wrap up at the St. James Theater a little over four or five weeks after the Tony Awards. It's going to leave a month and a half, two months of the summer on the table. And I guess that makes sense because Nicole is the draw for this show, even though Mandy Gonzalez is doing quite well with her shows. And Mandy for her part is going to play her final performance on July 1st. So I guess that's not a huge surprise because it's kind of how they did it in London. This is how a lot of Jamie Lloyd shows are. But it still is a little bit disappointing for me that we're not going to see, I don't know, somebody else jump into that role and do it. I understand it, but I'm still a little bit disappointed because it's a show that I would love to return to for years and years as more and more people have the opportunity to play this version of Norma Desmond.
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100%. Like, I totally get that. And I think that this makes sense for them just to go out with a bang with her. And. And I'm glad that it hopefully also creates a lot of excitement around the fact that like, you only have from now until then to see it. You will then miss out on what I have described to others as one of the greatest performances I will ever see in my lifetime. And I mean that from top to bottom. So not just Nicole. So yeah, I think get it while it's hot.
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Yeah. And it's interesting because we know at about this time Jamie is going to be directing Evita in London. We still don't know who is going to be doing that show. We know that Ariana DeBose is not going to be doing it. I have heard some other people who have gone in for it, but nothing confirmed as to who has been cast. So it is interesting that he's going to be opening up that show in late June, coming over here and closing this one. I wonder if it's just going to be kind of like a revolving door and we are going to get Evita over in New York City on a similar schedule. Sunset Boulevard began previews on Broadway on September 28th and then it opened on October 20th. Could it just be like Evita is coming in now and so you're gonna have to go from Nicole and Sunset to somebody else in Evita and a Jamie Lloyd production? It's just kind of going to be in rotation? I don't know. I would imagine that that is probably at least being contemplated at this point, but I don't know if that'll be for the fall or the spring or whatever. So we'll have to wait and see. But Jamie Lloyd is clearly making a big wave with everything that he is doing on both sides of the Atlantic. I saw the Much Do About Nothing and my travelogue episode will be up on Friday. But it was stunning in every way and in very different ways from everything I've seen from him before. So hopefully we get more and more Jamie Lloyd on the Broadway very soon. Moving from onstage stuff to rehearsal room stuff. Grace Yesterday it was announced that Actors Equity in the Broadway League have reached a deal on a new new developmental agreement. Now this has been a little weird because there has been an eight month long strike on developmental work. Except for when those workshops had been authorized before the strike so we've talked about workshops and readings and developmental stuff already, but this is putting to an end something that began in mid June. This new agreement raises the pay for equity members of 8% during these developmental periods. And it also increases pre production time for stage managers and works on a way for Equity and the league to create a completely new audition access program. This is a four year contract, so it will now run through February 11th of 2029. So that is good that we don't have to worry about the a work stoppage there. But Equity in the league are now going to almost immediately turn their attentions from this contract over to the production contract, which is like the contract. It is what governs everything that happens on a Broadway stage. It establishes the baseline for what performers and stage managers are doing. And those negotiations are set to begin in the summer. But Grace, for like somebody who works with shows in development and kind of knows what's going on there, we don't know. Like, I don't really know that I've noticed much big of a difference. But from your end and behind the scenes of things like what has this strike really meant to shows, plays, musicals in development, if anything at all, really.
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I feel like I'm not qualified to answer that. In all honesty, like, I've not noticed it, but, but I agree with you that in terms of like the pipeline of development, I have seen a drastic drop off in the last year specifically of new show development. And I don't know if that's budgets, I don't know if that's, you know, external houses not being able to accommodate new works like, you know, regional theaters and things like that in terms of out of town tryouts. But I do think it's interesting and I think it's worth noting, like in terms of overall what's coming up next for Broadway, specifically about what things are in the pipeline. Like you look at the Lost Boys already announcing their Palace Theater run and things like that. You know, I'm curious to see what other toll this takes on new shows.
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Yeah, it's interesting because we've heard about the workshops of those that have happened with Casey Likes and Casey Levy. Like those have happened and so much that has been going on and a lot of those predate this strike. So I do wonder if they're just kind of like skipping some steps that are traditional and just coming to Broadway or if it's slowing things down. But we will see and hopefully now that things are running back like normal, that pipeline can pick up a little bit more. All Right. On yesterday's show I told you that this announcement would be coming because they tease it on their social media. But the long in the works Hunger Games on stage has set its world premiere performances and they will happen at the Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre in London and it will happen first on October 20th. As we talked about before, Connor McPherson, who is a multi time Tony nominee, Girl from the north country, the Seafarer, all of those Things has adapted the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. This will be directed by Matthew Dunster who directed Hangman and the Pillow man and 222 a ghost story that I know a lot of people saw over in London as well. I don't know much else about that, but I would imagine that Katniss Everdeen will be one of those roles that a lot of people will be looking to see who they cast. Will it be a theater person? Will it be somebody known for their work on screen? Obviously that is a role that has created one huge mega A list star. We'll see what happens with the second version of it to see if they can do it again. Going from London to the North American national tour, Grace and this is one I missed because I was out of town. So I didn't get get to see this show when it was here in Orlando earlier this month. But A Beautiful Noise launched its national tour in September and it has already recouped its $6 million investment, which is insane. And it also shows you just how different the touring model is from the Broadway model. Obviously, when a show goes up on Broadway, unless it's in a subscription house, there aren't thousands of people every time you go into a theater that have paid subscriptions to be there. So you kind of pre sell tickets so much more than you do in Broadway because people are invested in coming to whatever show hits their town. But Nick Fradiani, who we've had here on Broadway Radio and Grace, you've worked with him in the past. He stars as Neil diamond in the show as he did in the closing cast on Broadway. The show has been just about everywhere and it is going to continue running for a while and it's already made money, it's already profitable. So that's wonderful for them. And that hopefully means that it can continue to run and employ people. Employ people for a long, long time. But Grace, explain to people how kind of like quick and mind boggling five months is for any show to recoup, whether it's on tour or not.
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I mean, I've never seen it. It's. Yeah, it's shocking. And you all know the stats of like 88% of shows will not do this at all. So think about that statistic, which I know is wrong, but. But somewhere close to that number. Right. So you're looking at that likelihood is quite small of it even happening at all. And that's over the course usually, I'm going to say on average of 2 years of running, let's say in these modern days and ages, sometimes, you know, one year, if you're lucky, one year plus. But a lot of times it's, it's much further than that. Five months is unfathomable and those are usually due to a lowering of production costs, things like that. So kudos to all of it.
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Yeah. And that wasn't a super tech heavy show to begin with. So it wasn't like they had a bunch of automation and stuff that they pared down. Like I said, I didn't see it when it was here in town because I think it was when I was in London or maybe Nashville, I don't remember. But it's not like they were having to completely reinvent the show to save a buck. So congratulations to them. And also I think it speaks to the popularity of Neil diamond with touring patrons as well. All right, Greece. We had previously talked about some of the fantastic stars that are going to be a part of the Broadway Carers, Equity Fights aids, Broadway Backwards this year. We talked about Titus Burgess, Lynn Cariou, Jordan Fisher, Joshua Henry, Adam Lambert, Joy woods, many others. Well, we have added another list of stars that'll be joining them this year and those include Bobby Conti, Lorna Courtney, Nikki Renee Daniels, Eden Espinosa, J. Harrison G. Sydney, James Harcourt, Dorian Harewood, Manu Naray, Jessica Phillips, Conrad Rigamora, and Ryan Vasquez. If you want to see all of those great incredible stars together, you can get tickets to the show on March 10th over at the Gershwin Theater. The proceeds from the concert benefit both Broadway Cares as well as New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. Jen Colella will return for the fifth year to host this incredibly fun concert. All right, Grace, that's all the news that I've got. I'm going to wrap up with a little video that Hadestown has released. The current Orpheus on Broadway is Carlos Valdez, who had previously been seen on Broadway and once and then was a star on the TV show the Flash. They released a video about a little bit over a minute of him singing Epic two from the show, which is always a favorite. It's a little different. I saw him on Broadway when I was in town in January, and he doesn't necessarily have the wispy head voice that Reeve does, is a little bit more powerful than a lot of other Orpheuses that I've seen, but it's a really cool sound. So if you want to hear what that is all about, check it out in the show notes. All right, everybody, that's all that I have for today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Broadway Reading. Follow me on Instagram @bwwmattgrace. Where can people find you?
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You can find me at. It's Graceaki.
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All right, everybody, have a wonderful Friday, a wonderful weekend, and we'll be back to talk to you on Monday. D.