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Matt Tamaneni (1:03)

For Thursday, April 3, 2025. I'm Broadway Radio is Matt Tamaneni. I'm coming to you on my own today because I'm recording on Wednesday and I had a two show day. I did not come back to my hotel in between shows thanks to new friend Jay who took me to the Players, which was an unbelievable experience. I will talk about in my next Travelogue episode. I've recorded the first one that'll go out later today, but I'll talk about the Players which if you're unfamiliar, it's a social club that was originally by Edwin Booth. Yes, that Edwin Booth. And it actually is located in his former home. His bedroom is maintained. Got to see that. It was very cool. I'll talk all about that along with some other shows in the second Travelog episode. On Tuesday night, Grace and I went downtown to see Vanya starring Andrew Scott. Then on Wednesday, my two show day consisted of Redwood and then Glengarry Glen Ross. So I talk about that as well as other things over on patreon@patreon.com broadwayradio broadwayradio.com patreon all right, so let's dive into the news and we're going to start with our first real major award nominations of the New York Theater Awards season. And Those are the 2025 Lucille Lortel Awards. They were announced on Wednesday and the ceremony will happen on May 4th at the NYU Skirball Center. If you want to get tickets, I'll have information on that in the show notes. But in total, there were three shows that led the way in terms of the most nominations. They were Drag, the Musical, Our Class and Three Houses. Let's run through the big major awards and we'll start with outstanding play. The nominees are Here There are Blueberries by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronitch, Liberation by Bess Wall, Sumo by Lisa Sineadring, the Antiquities by Jordan Harrison and We Had a World by Joshua Harmon. In the outstanding musical category, the nominees are Drag the Musical, Madea Reversed, the Big Gay Jamboree, Three Houses and We Live in Cairo. The outstanding revival category, the nominees are Beckett, Briefs, Ghosts, hold on to Me Darling, R Class and Wine in the Wilderness. For outstanding solo show, the nominees are 300 paintings, a knock on the Roof and Vanya Outstanding director. The nominees are Igor Goyak for R Class, Moises Kaufman for Here There are Blueberries, Xylon Livingston for Table 17, Whitney White for Liberation and Sam Yates for Vanya. Moving into the performance categories, outstanding lead performer in a play, the nominees are Adam Driver, hold on to Me Darling, Madison Ferris, all of Me, Susanna Flood, Liberation, Lily Rabe, Ghosts, Paul Sparks, Grangeville, Marisa Tomei, Babe and Kara young for table 17, outstanding feature performer in a Play, Betsy Adam for Liberation, Stephanie Berry for Staff Meal, Ahmed Kamal in Sumo, Julia Lester in All Nighter, Michael rashon for table 17, Olivia Washington for Wine in the Wilderness and Frank Wood for Hold on to Me Darling. Outstanding lead performer in a musical. The nominees are Marla Mendel for the Big Gang Jamboree, JD Mollison for Three Houses, Mia Pack for Three Houses, Lauren Patton for the Lonely Few, Margo Siebert for Three Houses, Alaska Thunderfuck for Drag the Musical and Sirinh Monet west for Madea Reversed. Outstanding feature performer in a musical, Jujubee for Drag the Musical, Eddie Corbich for Drag the Musical, Jacob Minga Trent for Madea Reversed, Paris Nix for the Big Gay Jamboree, Helen J. Shin for the Lonely Few and Natalie Walker for the Big Gay Jamboree. Outstanding ensemble. The nominees are Here There Are Butterflies, Our Class and We Live in Cairo. In the honorary awards categories, the playwright sidewalk inductee will be Alice Childress. The outstanding body of work goes to the New Federal Theater and the Edith Oliver Service to Off Broadway will be received by Carol Fishman. Obviously there are tons of other categories in here, including all of the technical ones. So if you want to check out all of those, you can head over to the show Notes all right, let's go from nominations to the latest big screen film making its way toward the Broadway stage, and this one comes to us from a fairly interesting collection of creatives. There's a new stage musical in the works Based off the 1998 Irish comedy Waking Ned Devine. It is being directed by John Doyle and the book will be written by Come From Away writer David Hein and the score will be written by the Once composers and film stars Marquita Ergo and Glenn Hansard. The production is specifically saying that it is Broadway bound, although they do not have any type of timeline for that. Waking Ned Divine or Waking Ned, it was originally called in the uk, tells the story of a man who wins the lottery in a small Irish village, and as everyone is trying to figure out how they are going to get a piece of Ned's wealth, they have to figure out how they're going to get over the fact that Ned died from the shock of winning the lottery. So lots of corpse things going on right now between this and Operation Mincemeat. Who knows, maybe we'll get a Weekend at Bernie's musical too, but this is a kind of fun group of collaborators. Obviously there's a lot of similarity between the stage musical version of Once and a lot of the work that John Doyle has done where everybody in the show is a musician and plays instruments. There's no indication as of yet whether or not that will be the philosophy behind Waking a Divine the Musical, but even though John Doyle didn't direct Once, John Tiffany did. There certainly is some similar DNA to the works that he has done and I think that this could be a really good pairing and a fun, interesting show. Moving on to another show coming to New York, this one is called Ava the Secret Conversations. It was written by and features Downton ABBEY Star Elizabeth McGovern, and it follows legendary actress Avengers Ava Gardner through a series of interviews she gave about her life. The show had originally played the Geffen Playhouse where it had a wonderfully reviewed run. It is going to be coming to New York this summer. It'll play New York City center beginning performances on July 30th and is currently scheduled to run through September 13th. The show is directed by Tony nominee and the man with the best name in all of showbiz, Moritz von stupenagel, and alongside McGovern, it'll star Aaron Costa Gannis. Additional casting will be announced at a later date, but the show goes through Ava Gardner's life and is based off of published interviews that she gave over 25 years that Gardner's estate has given permission to use. But in the show, Gardner discusses her relationships with Peter Evans, Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes. So this one should be a lot of fun. And having somebody like Elizabeth McGovern bring Ava Gardner to life on stage will certainly be something that I think a lot of people will be paying attention to. Speaking of shows this summer that probably should be on your radar because I'm not in New York, I know of Little island, but I don't know a ton about it, but Little island announced their summer programming on Wednesday. This is their second annual season. It has multiple world premieres and theatrical performances. The season will run from May 29 through September 28 and it takes place at two outdoor performance spaces, the Amph and the Glade, which are in the park on a small island in the Hudson River. Tickets to all of the shows at the AMP are $25 and all of the shows at the Glade are free. There will be a number of shows happening this season and I'll have a link in the show notes if you want more information, but the one of major note is a new show called the Counterfeit Opera. It is actually an adaptation of the iconic the Beggars Opera, which takes John Gay's original 1728 ballad opera and has a new book in lyrics by Kate Tarker and music by Dan Schlossberg and is directed by Dustin Willis. The production has an unbelievable cast including Damon Duano, Lauren Patton, Zenzi Williams, Anne Harada, Dorcas Leung, Emma Ramos, Henry Stram and more. This is going to open the summer season on May 29th and it's currently scheduled to play through June 15th. This is at the AMP so tickets are $25 and since this is outdoors, all performances will begin at 8:30. Some of the other things that might be on your radar for that include a production of the Gospel of Colonus starring Grammy nominees Kim Burrell and Devon Tynes. Rachel Chavkin is going to direct Sarah Ganchar's bluegrass adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Also in the season, the aforementioned Whitney White will premiere a Shakespeare inspired song cycle titled the Case of the Stranger. Moving on to something that I am incredibly excited about. We've already talked about the fact that Judd Apatow is producing a new documentary about that incredible Toronto production of Godspell that featured the likes of Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas and Paul Schaefer. Was the music director well, now it has been confirmed that there will be a companion blue book that will come out in association with the film. It is going to be released in early 2026. The documentary is going to come out at the end of this year for all of the awards consideration. And then Nick Davis, who is directing the film, co wrote the book with Jane Mendelsohn. And the book will work in conjunction with the film to give an even more insightful look at what honestly has become one of the most important and incredible productions in theater history. When you look at just the amount of people from that cast who went on not to just like have careers or even just to be stars, but to be like huge mega stars is really kind of fascinating. So I cannot wait for both the film and the book. Yesterday it was announced that coming up on Friday there will be an industry reading of the romantic coming of age musical Unlocked. This is a show that actually premiered off Broadway in 2013 in a production from the Prospect Theater Company. They've apparently been continuing to work on the show and they are now getting some folks together to do this latest incarnation. It features a book and lyrics by Sam Karner and music by Derek Greger. Michael Barnard is directing and the cast will include some pretty fun names including Troy Iwata, storm lever, Heather McElhenny, and more. I'm hoping to get to check this one out too. I've got another reading that I mentioned the other day, edition with Divine. So I'm hoping that they these lineup that I can get to both of them because I love seeing these shows. I love seeing things in in process and as they are developing. So make sure to check out my travelog episodes to hear my thoughts about these shows in progress. I won't give up say a whole lot about them because it's that's not what the point of these presentations are. But I will give you at least a little bit sense as to what the shows look like and what they're all about. All right everybody, that's all the news that I have for today. Remember to head over to Patreon and check out the Travelogue episode that will be posted. The first one will be out on Thursday, then I'll have another one go up on Saturday and then another one will come up early next week once I am back and able to talk about all of the shows that I saw over the weekend. Still left on my trip are the Picture of Dorian Gray, the Last Five Years, Good Night and Good Luck, Purpose and Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim's old friends. So lots of good stuff still to come and I cannot wait to discuss it all. All right, that's all that we have for you today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram broadwayrading. Follow me on Instagram at bwwmatt. Have a wonderful Thursday and I'll be back to talk to you tomorrow.