Transcript
Matt Tammanini (0:00)
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After years of being together, Reeve Carney finally popped the question to Eva Noblezada a week or so ago and they made it public. They shared the photos, but they also really made the official announcement at their cabaret at Green Room 42. Eva, before they started, said, oh, I've got to go get something. Hold on. She went into the audience and said, I've got to get this from my future mother in law. And everyone kind of went crazy. And she got the ring and went on and went on stage. And so we've got a article from People magazine that has a bunch of the pictures and a video From Green Room 42 of the announcement at their cabaret. So if you want to check those out, you can do that. Congratulations to those two crazy kids. And so hopefully this leads to many, many years of happiness with the two of them. All right, let's get into the news and we are going to start with something that was finally announced on Friday. This is something that has been in the ether and I've teased it a little bit here on Broadway Radio and it is the fact that Rachel Zegler has signed on to play Eva Perrone in Jamie Lloyd's production of Evita at the London Palladium. This had long been rumored to be a role that Rachel's west side Story co star Ariana DeBose was going to take. But apparently scheduling conflicts, presumably with the Prime Video TV show that Ariana is doing with Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis prevented her from taking on this role. So instead they went with the Maria to Ari Zanita and Rachel will be taking on this role. The show is scheduled to play a 12 week summer run from June 14th through September 6th. That would put it in line for a potential late fall opening on Broadway if they wanted to. But I would think that probably makes it most likely that it will come to Broadway in the spring of 2026. No other casting has been confirmed for the rest of the show, particularly either for Shea or Juan Perrone. But in the article from Baz Bumble Boy from Deadline, it did say that director Jamie Lloyd was in New York City auditioning people for the show. I have heard that for the role of Shea, Jamie is going to go with somebody who has been in and currently is in one of his other shows, the one that is currently playing on Broadway. And while he does not always walk through Shubert Alley, he does occasionally walk through Shubert Alley and you might have seen him walk through Shubert Alley. So that is what I am hearing from that. Again, no confirmation on that. That is just the rumor on the street. Long ago, even probably before Ari was rumored, the thought had been that the movie Shay Antonio Banderas could be playing Juan Perrone. If you ask me, there's really with the casting of Rachel, no chance of that happening. They are just so far different in age. It would be just too much of an age gap to overlook. Obviously there was a real life age gap between Juan and Eva Perron, but it was only about 20 years. There is a 41 year age gap between Antonio Banderas and Rachel Zegler. So I would not expect that casting to happen, although that would have been very cool. Nonetheless, Rachel Zegler is starring in Evita and what's interesting about this is is that I have less than zero doubts that she can sing this score and she is going to absolutely, as the quote in Basma Boy's article says, blow the roof off the London Palladium. She is going to sing the hell out of this. But I am interested what this means about the production because when this was originally done at the Regents Open Air Outdoor Theater in London, it was staged with Sam Pauley as Ava to be kind of like a Beyonce concert. There was a lot of dancing. I don't know if Rachel can dance. I've never seen her really dance dance. And I do think that's interesting because obviously Ariana DeBose is a dancer by trade and that would have made sense if they were sticking with that kind of conceit for the production to have somebody who has has the dance skills that of Ariana DeBose. But despite the fact that they have this connection from west side Story in terms of type, Rachel and Ari are very different. So I think that's it's incredibly interesting to see what that means for how Jamie is going to approach this. Obviously, it's been, what, six years since this was originally staged, so it doesn't ne he's not necessarily tied to doing it the way that he did in the past. So we will see what happens again. I'm dying to hear her sing this score because there is no doubt in my mind that she will absolutely sound magnificent. So looking forward to that and hearing more about this production as it unfolds. In other news that we got on Friday, I'm still wrapping my head around this. This is something that I think probably aligns with what Grace had mentioned in the past. But all the times that we've talked about how the Broadway League and the Committee of Theater Owners have bungled the dimming of lights for Broadway stars, Grace has always argued that they need to come up with some other way to honor people when they die, rather than dimming the lights because all that actually leads to is people getting upset about who does and doesn't get recognized. Well, the newly formed Broadway in Memoriam Committee, which is still theater owners but also in consultation with industry service organizations, has announced this new idea, what they are calling Broadway in Memoriam. What they're going to do is they are going to create a quarterly tradition that is dedicated to honoring those who have died in the past quarter that have left a mark on Broadway in some way. So the second Tuesday of September, December, March and June, throughout the Broadway season, they will recognize multiple honorees to ensure that the contributions of these artists and writers and creators and industry professionals are remembered. The first one is going to take place on June 10, and they will celebrate people who have passed away in 2025 with the list of honorees to be announced in advance. On the evening of each of these events, the marquees of all 41 Broadway theaters will be dimmed simultaneously. But it gets a little complicated because if that's how we're going to do this, I don't know. I mean, I don't love this idea, but I don't dislike it either. I don't have a problem with it this way. I think this is probably, without putting words into her mouth, somewhat close to what Grace had envisioned, where it's a little bit more universal and everybody can have an opportunity to recognize anybody. But the committee does reserve the right to honor single individuals who have profoundly impacted Broadway in one way or another. And of course, you have people like Stephen Sondheim or Chita Rivera. So they are still going to recognize people individually, but then have this quarterly thing. So I'm not sure what the point of the quarterly thing is. So are they just saying, okay, only the biggest and the best, which is really what they wanted all the time? They get pressured into honoring more people because the theater owners have such a limited scope of who they determine to be worthy. This just seems like one step forward, two steps back. Maybe two steps forward, one step back. I don't know. It just seems like they're bungling it again. I just don't understand what the point of this is. If you're saying we're going to do a quarterly thing, do a quarterly thing. Don't say we're gonna do a quarterly thing. It's gonna be encompassing everybody, and we're going to, you know, honor everybody equally, and it's gonna make everybody happy and hopefully calm down people getting angry at us. But it's a very Orwellian thing where, to paraphrase Animal Farm, all Broadway artists are equal. Just some Broadway artists are more equal than others. So I'm not sure that they've really nailed this as much as they think they have. So we'll have to wait and see. But I can guarantee you at some point, there are going to be people getting upset that somebody is not getting this super special recognition that fans believe that they deserve. And the theater owners and the recognition committee or whatever are going to say, well, they're going to be included in the quarterly thing, but then they're going to get pressured by fans into doing an individual recognition for them. It's a mess. It's always a mess. And the theater owners never stop making things messier than they have to be. All right, this is a very busy week in New York theater, so I'm gonna run through everything very quickly. Lots of stuff happening on Broadway. Of course, if you want more information on any of these shows, I will have it in the show notes. But tonight, Monday, March 17, we have our next Broadway opening, and that is over at the Helen Hayes Theater, where Brandon Jacobs Jenkins new play Purpose, will officially open, is directed by Phylicia Rashad and has a wonderful cast, including Alana Arenas, Glen Davis, John Michael Hill, latonya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennox, and Kara Young. Cannot wait to see this one. I love all things Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, and of course, anything that Kara Young is in. And then on Tuesday night over the Hudson Theater, we have the very first Broadway performance ever of Jason Robert Brown's the Last Five Years. This one, of course, is directed by Whitney White and stars Nick Jonas as Jamie Wellerstein and Adrian Warren as Kathy Hyatt. Now, just as a sneak peek, those two, Nick and Adrian were on the Tonight show last week and performed the last 10 minutes. Here's what I'm going to say about this. Nick does not sound bad to me, but he doesn't sound like he's singing musical theater. It is. It is a very pop vocal for him and Adrian is singing it more traditional Broadway. But I'm still a little up in the air as to what this really means for the show moving forward. But we will have to wait and see.