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Matt Tammanini (0:27)

Welcome to Today on Broadway for Thursday, April 10, 2025 on Broadway Radio's Matt Tammanini. I'm coming to you on my own today because Grace is taking a bunch of folks over to see Buena Vista Social Club. I believe not 100%, don't quote me on that, but you can follow her socials to see where she was at. But we have some news. We have some reviews. But before we get into that, I want to let everybody know I'm going to be gone this weekend. So we will not have traditional Today on Broadway episodes on Friday or Monday. That does put us in a little bit of a pickle because Smash opens on Broadway on Thursday night. I am still not 100% sure what I'm going to do with those reviews because to be quite honest with you, I'm going to be somewhere with no Internet. So I'm going to have to try to figure something out there. I will do my best, but we will get to those reviews as quickly as humanly possible. Of course, if you don't want to wait for me to tell you about them, you can head over to did they like it.com or broadwayworld.com they always do review roundups there. In the meantime, we will have episodes. I've done a number of interviews. We will start first with tomorrow's episode in which I spoke with Dane Laffrey, who is the scenic designer behind behind maybe Happy Ending, which I think is just absolutely brilliant. So I had a great conversation with him, not only about that specific show, about his process about working with Michael Arden, who he has done a dozen or so times throughout their careers, and will again on Broadway with Queen of Versailles and Lost Boys. So wonderful conversation there. We'll also have another interview or some sort of episode. Haven't decided what's going to go where on Monday. And we'll also have some other really fun things in Patreon as well. And if you want to hear my final travelogue episode, Some Like It Pop, and my little theater group chat at trying to predict Tony nominations, you can head over to patreon.com broadwayradio broadwayradio.com patreon. But we are finally going to talk about the reviews for Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, which officially opened at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Tuesday night. I'm recording on Wednesday, obviously. This one is currently scheduled to play through June 15, although I do think it has some wiggle room to potentially extend beyond that. It is a review of Stephen Sondheim's shows that originally premiered as a one night only concert in London, produced by Cameron McIntosh and then became a West End show and is now on Broadway after having done a run at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. Cameron McIntosh did produce it and his fingerprints are all over it because not only does he get a shout out in the opening from Leia Salonga and Bernadette Peters, they actually show a video that references how great he is in the middle of this, which is par for the course with Sir Cameron. But the thing is, is that like everybody I know who has ever worked with him loves him. So a little bit of an ego, you're a billionaire. I guess you can. You can do that if you want, but it is directed and musically staged by Matthew Bourne and features an incredible group of performers from both Broadway and London, many of whom who have worked on Stephen Sondheim shows in the past. Of course, it is led by the aforementioned Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, but some of the other big names from both sides of the pond that are in this cast include Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Beth Leavel, Gavin Lee, Joanna Riding, Kyle Selig, Jasmine Forsberg, and many other folks. As of recording time, the review aggregator site Did They like it? Has collected 16 reviews, eight were positive, six were mixed and two were negative. This is a review, so I'm not really going to spend a lot of time diving deep into these reviews, especially not the New York Times. But I will say that Jesse Green not only was positive, but he made the show a critics pick. He said, quote, these gems speaking of the Sondheim songs had been waiting in the 12 stones of the Western scale and the million words of the English language unobserved until Sondheim came along with his flashlight and pickaxe. Any opportunity to experience how the feelings he channeled and the connections he made have mined our psyches and reshaped our world is an opportunity even old Friends should take. Jesse, getting a little poetic here about Stephen Sondheim. Love that Brittany Samuel of Broadway News was also positive. She said, quote, Old Friends boasts a larger cast than previous Sondheim reviews, filled with a melange of theater stalwarts and newcomers, each finding pockets of comedy, passion and showmanship while marching through the songs. Jackson McHenry of Vulture was a little bit more mixed. He said Old Friends stretches to two and a half hours, counting an intermission, which is both way too long and woefully incomplete. You can't take offense at the concept. It accomplishes exactly what it aims to do, which is to remind you that Sondheim wrote some really great songs. But you do start to fantasize about it all slowing down and just committing to the dramatic frames that contained them. One of the two negative reviews comes from Matt Winman of AM New York, who said, unlike other Sondheim reviews that made at least a passing attempt to shape Sondheim songs around a concept or narrative frame. Old Friends is a two and a half hour buffet of greatest hits delivered without context, cohesion or much reason of being. And I'll wrap up with Chris Jones from the New York Daily News who said, there's Bernadette Peters, now 77, performing Losing My Mind while proving that could not be further from the truth. There's Bonnie Langford, a British familiar face for most of Sondheim's career, zestfully declaring I'm still here, a fine thing. There's Lea Salonga, a star since Macintosh put her in Miss Saigon in 1989, exploring somewhere from west side Story. And Beth Leavel, who clearly has known plenty of ladies who lunch in her long career, taking their ilk down with relish. I will go into more of my thoughts in the travelogue episode that will wrap up my last New York trip. But I will say this is just a delightful show. It is not, as one of the reviews said, anything that tries to do any type of contextualization in terms of putting these songs together. There is no overarching narrative. But I do disagree that, like I think some of these songs do really have fuller context of the, of the, of the shows that they are taken from. You're not going to get like super long scenes by any means, but these performers are just so good. You do get the bigger feel for the stories. And let's be honest with you, the same OG Friedman is a very small house. It is, I think it's the second smallest house on Broadway, bigger only than the Helen Hayes. So the vast majority of the people that are in that theater know these songs, know these shows. Of course, there will hopefully be people who are unfamiliar with Sondheim coming to see the show and learning about him, but I think the vast majority of them don't need a lot of context, and that's fine. They do kind of play up the humor, I think, a little bit more than they would in a normal context for the songs, but that's fine. The performers are tremendous. It is well staged, it is well choreographed, and as I said at the beginning, it's a delightful show. All right, let's run through some show and casting news. Yesterday it was announced that the Chicago Shakespeare Theater will present the North American premiere of the stage adaptation of Brokeback Mountain next summer. The show will run from May 28 through June 28 of 2026. The show had played the West End in 2023, where it was led by Broadway alums Mike Feist and Lucas Hedges. There is no word on if either of those stars will continue with it, although I would imagine that this show, especially based off how well it was received in London, is going to try to aim to Broadway. So if either or both of them were still going to be a part of it, that would not surprise me. As it was in London, Jonathan Butterell will again direct and Dan Gillespie Sells is providing original country western songs that are performed live on stage. This, of course, is based off of the novella and film of the same name in which two cowboys in the early 1960s strike up an unlikely romance while working on a mountain called Brokerage Mountain in a still very homophobic world. Speaking of shows coming from London over to the United States, we already knew that the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University would be presenting the North American premiere of Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York that will take place from May 20 through June 29. We now know who is going to star in that two hand musical. Playing the two strangers will be Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty. This is a romantic comedy that follows a naive and impossibly upbeat Brit Dougal who has just landed in New York for his estranged father's second wedding. When Robin, the sister of the bride, picks him up at the airport, they embark on a serendipitous adventure through New York City. The show will again be directed and choreographed by Tim Jackson and it was written by Jim Barn and Kit Buchan. Staying a little closer to home yesterday we found out who is going to be leading a re envisioned production of the Great War and the Great Gatsby from historian and narrator John Monsky. It'll take place on Monday, April 21 and Tuesday, April 22 and is directed by Michael Mayer. This is a newly reimagined production, so it's part Concert Part suspense, part drama, romance tribute, an exhibition of rare and iconic images and film from the National Archive. Leading the production will be Adam Chandler Barat, Nicholas Christopher, Michaela Diamond, Gracie McGraw and Diego Andres Rodriguez. This had previously played a sold out performance at Carnegie hall in 2023. So I remember hearing about how cool it was. So this is another opportunity for you to check that out. We also found out yesterday that the Deaf West Theater Company and Two River Theater are going to be co producing a new world premiere musical called Elephant Shoes. It features a book by Evan Menschel and music and lyrics by Caroline Kay and it is a modern day Cyrano story, but it will feature both American Sign Language and Spoken English. It actually centers on Psy, who is on the verge of revolutionizing communication with a new invention that translates Spoken English into ASL and vice versa. But of course he can't have his breakthrough because he is in love with Roxy and you see how this goes. His best friend Chris then sweeps her off her feet. Tony nominee Jeff Calhoun will direct and choreograph and the show will play the Two River Theater from June 4th through the 28th of 2026. All right, this is very cool. Jason Robert Brown as he is want to do, but I don't remember him doing this very often in recent years, but he took to his own website and wrote a blog about all of the different changes that he did for the Broadway version of the last five years. This is something that he's done multiple times throughout his career, most recently with Parade. But it's fascinating for him to talk about things like the orchestrations and he goes into all of that. He also does quite a bit of deep diving into the lyric changes that were kind of prompted by Whitney White wanting to do the production in modern times. And it's funny because some of them he says you can feel free to use these in your own productions regionally and some of them he says you absolutely cannot use these in your productions regionally. So those are very fun. And he also goes into like why they made them. He also includes some sheet music to talk about some of the changes that they made both in terms of notes and then also like how the lyrics fit a little bit differently, talks about the key changes and what keys Adrian is doing versus Sherry or Lauren or Betsy or Anna who have played this role previously. So it's a really fascinating read and I really appreciate him doing this because I certainly noticed some of these lyric changes. They are, you know, if you know the score as well as many of us do. They certainly pop out, but it was fun to have them all enumerated there and then moving on to some recommendations. This one is coming up on Saturday and it will be the YouTube streaming release of the Disney on Broadway 30th anniversary concert which took place at Epcot in I guess probably at the end of February. Yeah, in February. It brought together five Disney on Broadway stars, Rodney Ingram, Kara Lindsay, Kissy Simmons and Michael James Scott, as well as Ashley Brown who served as the host. And they were looking through songs from nine Disney on Broadway shows. I got to see Rodney and Kara perform together a couple of times. They were wonderful. You can tune into the concert on YouTube on Saturday, April 12th at 11am and then finally a couple of weeks ago, a month or so ago, you might remember that I interviewed Kelsey Watts, who was the new Jane Seymour and six on Broadway. And yesterday Broadway World released an exclusive video of her singing her version of Heart of Stone. I will tell you I have not listened to it because I saw it on social media and I clicked out of it immediately because I did not want to see her sing this song until I saw it in person at the Lena Horn Theater. The little clip I did see while scrolling through social media was tremendous and I cannot wait to see it. So you can head over to the Show Notes if you want to hear it. I am not going to play it underneath here because I do not want to be spoiled whatsoever. So get thee to the Show Notes and then get thee to the Lena Horn. I will be there about a month, almost exactly a month to finally be able to see her on Broadway. 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 rodwayradio. Have a wonderful Friday, a wonderful week and we'll be back to talk to you on Tuesday. Despite the fact that there will be a lot of episodes in the meantime.