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Today on Broadway: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Reviews for ‘Buena Vista Social Club,’ Jackman and Friedman Form Partnership, ‘Just in Time’ Delays First Preview Since 2016, “Today on Broadway” has been the first and only daily podcast recapping the top theatre headlines every Monday through Friday....
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Matt Tamneni
Broadway for Thursday, March 20, 2025. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Tamneni and I'm.
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Grace Ake
Telling on the Sunday podcast Grace Ake.
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Matt Tamneni
Grace over at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. On Wednesday night the musical Buena Vista Social Club officially opened. We're gonna talk about those reviews here in a minute, but I wanted to give everybody a little bit of a programming update because for tomorrow's episode, because of everything going on, we do have the Operation Mincemeat opening happening late on Thursday. I'm going to be about two and a half hours away seeing Guys and dolls with Dan DeLuca, Kyle Taylor Parker and Jen Cody. So I'm not going to be around to get those reviews. What we're going to do is we're going to have an interview for the Today on Broadway episode on Friday and then Friday morning I'm going to do a standalone episode with all of the reviews for Operation Mincemeat so we will have a special interviewed episode in the feed as normal. And then once I can pull myself out of bed on Friday morning, I will pull together all of the reviews for Operation Mincemeat which hopefully will be as good as the reviews for Buena Vista Social Club, which we are going to dive into now. As I said, the show officially opened on Wednesday night over at the Schoenfeld. This is kind of the latest installment in this long history of The Buena Vista Social Club, which was a real life music kind of collective that started in Cuba. There they did an album together in 1996. There was a documentary about that album and now this show eventually made its Off Broadway debut in December of 2023 and is now on Broadway. It features a book by Marco Ramirez and all of the music is by the Buena Vista Social Club. Sahim Ali is the director and it is choreographed by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. In this story there are two timelines, one of the 1996 recording session and then one about four decades earlier in which all of these artists first met and started creating music together. In the cast we have Issa Antonetti as Young Amara, Renacito Evic as Eliades, Leonardo Batista Sterling as Ruben, Natalie Venetia Belkan as Omara, Justin Cunningham as Juan demarcos, Ashley de la Rosa as Young Haiti, Julio Mongue as Compe Devon Moody as Young Compe Leonardo Reyna as Young Ruben and Mel Sime as Ibrahim with Wesley Ray as Young Ibrahim. As of recording time, did they like it? Has not put out their review aggregation yet, but Grace, I do want to go through the ones that we have and we're going to start with the New York Times and Jesse Green did make the show a critics pick. He said, quote, the spirit of the musical Buena Vista Social Club is evident in its opening scene. Audience members have barely settled into their seats before a group of onstage musicians strikes up the number El Carretero, with the rest of the cast gathered around and watching. Some are leaning in from their chairs, others get up and dance on the side. The music is center stage and we immediately understand its power as a communal experience that binds people. Therein lies the production's greatest achievement. For a place where music so often plays a crucial role, Broadway hardly ever highlights the thrill of making music itself. Oh, there have been shows that have effectively pulled the curtain on the process. David Ajmee's play Stereophonic takes place inside recording studios, and the most effective scenes in Beautiful, the Carole King musical, are set in one as well. But the interconnections between musicians, songs and a society have rarely been evoked as vividly and as lovingly as they are in Buena Vista Social Club. And he does say that this is an improved version from what they saw at the Atlantic theater in 2023, although he does say that the show is kind of weighed down by clunky dialogue and heavy handed exposition. From that point he continues quote the book scenes set in 1996 when the actual album was recorded have a lot more spark, mostly thanks to the easygoing rapport among the cast members, in particular Belcon, who as the older Amara excels at dropping dry cut downs with a hauteur of someone who does not suffer fools or amateurs. A lot of that grace talk about the book being kind of the weak spot is continued in a lot of these reviews, but I will go now to Juan A. Ramirez for theaterly, who was positive saying quote On a recent Saturday matinee, the roars of the crowd following every song were akin to an insert any pop star at MSG. The music won the world over in the late 90s for a reason. Its delicious blend of Cuban rhythm and Afro Cuban percussion harkens back to the heyday and golden era of Havana, yet feels timeless and perfect for today. It's a sound we don't get all that often on Broadway, and boy do I hope it stays a while. Matt Winman of Bam New York was one of those folks that, even though he was mostly positive mixed to positive, didn't love the book. He said, quote, the ideal way to present Brainovis a Social Club would have been as a nightclub concert or review that discarded the new book altogether. Chris Jones for New York Daily News wasn't as harsh, but he said, quote, still few people in the house are there for the story. They bought tickets to hear the great music and watch the thrilling dance here, rendered as an ebulent social form of balletic flourishes as skillfully crafted by co choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck Bravoro performances flow to the ear and eye from pretty much the entire company, and I'll wrap up with Robert Hofler of the rap saying quote, buena Vista Social Club is the story of survival through the preservation of what artists do best, not only for them, but for a whole island and its culture. So Grace, this was one that we knew was incredibly well received off Broadway and it is no surprise that those strong reviews and responses have continued to Broadway. But I do want to throw one piece of information out there for people who don't know this show. All of the music is in Spanish, the dialogue is in English, the book is in English, but the songs themselves have been untranslated and are in the original Spanish that they are written in. But Grace, I think these are the reviews that people expect and I think certainly puts it into the race for best musical. Maybe not at the top yet. It might still have some work to do to catch up with maybe Happy Ending and eventually Dead Outlaw, but it certainly seems like this is going to Be right in the thick of the race for nominations.
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Grace Ake
Yeah, listen. And always full disclosure, like, I do participate in working on the influencer part of marketing the show. This one has meant so much to me for like a number of years. And then finally getting to see it through its fruition, like finally opening on Broadway. It's been very exciting. It's been through a lot of different changes. It's been through a lot of additions. But I think at the heart of is such a gorgeous celebration of not only this music, but this culture. And I'm so honored to work on it. I just look forward to everything that we're doing with it. When you get to the theater and you open your programs, another program falls out and you learn about the history of the piece and the artwork that's on that. It's just all single element of the show, even down to the lead hair supervisor, which is my friend Eric Morales, who I met 12, 15 years ago when we were working in small town theater in Tennessee and he was working on his first wigs. And now he's like doing this. It's just there. There's so many things that I love about this show and getting to work on it, but also I think it's a, it's such a powerful piece to see on stage. Like, I could not stop dancing in my seat. I would kindly like the ushers of that theater to allow for all of us to have like dance nights where we all just can get up and no one will be upset that they have obstructed view. We should have a dance section because it's just, you can't stop. Like the rhythm is so good. And I'm just so excited for everything that's going on with the show. I love it so dearly. But I agree with you. Like, there are some really exciting, big contender shows and I think that this is one to watch.
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Matt Tamneni
Yeah, let's, let's get to the Schubert's. Get your request in to see if they will allow for a dance section or a dance night. I think that that is, based off these reviews, very appropriate for this show. So stay tuned, stay, stay, stay tuned into this space to see if that actually happens. All right, great. Something that we know is happening and this is kind of interesting to me. Yesterday it was announced that uber producer Sonia Friedman, and honestly the biggest draw on Broadway, or at least one of them, one of the biggest draws in movies, Hugh Jackman, have launched a new theater company. It is called Together and it is focused on creating intimate and accessible live theater and they've said that it, quote, will be driven by a commitment to offering audiences a chance to experience theater in a fresh and engaging way. They are working with director Ian Rickson and what they're going to do is they're going to do short runs of fully rehearsed full length play. So not like encore style things. They're also going to do readings and panel discussions and other things in the us, UK and around the world. But these aren't going to have huge sets, they're not going to have huge costumes, they're not going to have huge effects. They're going to be focused instead on collaboration and ensemble as well as some of the behind the stage things of equal pay for actors and shared creative credit. The announcement says, quote, by stripping the fully rehearsed productions down to their essentials with minimal decor, together aims to celebrate the raw power of storytelling. Getting back to what often makes theater so compelling in the first place. Performances are going to take place in very small venues with well known and established actors in a way that creates kind of an intimate relationship with the audience that's elemental. This is something that we've seen quite a bit of here. Grace and full disclosure, my friend and regular Broadway radio contributor Oliver Henry Roth has done this with a number of productions with the multi Drama Desk nominated Uncle Vanya a couple seasons ago with pre existing condition that's going to be eligible for a lot of awards this season. Getting in some really great actors in small spaces, it really does change what you are going to see. So I'm interested what this is going to look like when you have someone with the power of Sonja Friedman and someone with the power of Hugh Jackman. They could really do some incredible things. The one thing that I worry about is how much these things are going to cost because they do say they want it to be intimate and accessible. So is it going to be just like a lottery system to get in? Because that's the only way something that can be that small for a short run and be accessible because otherwise it's going to be so expensive. But I'm excited. I love this type of theater and I hope that whatever they do can find a way to meet the goals of being accessible to theater fans and not just strictly reserved for the people who can pay 2, 3, $400 for a seat.
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Grace Ake
But yeah, you're also talking about two people that at the end of the day love live theater. Hugh Jackman does not have to do a damn show. He doesn't. He could sit at home with Sutton for the rest of his life playing Mario Kart. And we wouldn't give a flying toot him investing in this, him doing his live show. Like, he loves it. Sonia loves this. She loves theater. She loves plays. I mean, I just saw the years in the UK that I was talking about, like, that's hers. If you saw that piece, it's not. There aren't these massive celebrities in it. They're not like, it's a very intimate drama about, like, history. I mean, she does it with Leopold shot. Like, I could go on and on about how much I really appreciate and adore the work that she chooses to produce. I think this is really cool. I loved this announcement. I love this called Together. I loved that it was a collab post and it was called Together, Chef's Kiss. But yeah, so I like things like that. When. When people are choosing to invest in these capacities in varying ways of live entertainment, especially theater, I'm always going to say yay.
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Matt Tamneni
Yeah. This is the kind of stuff that I love. And I think it's why I really have been drawn to the work of Jamie Lloyd recently because is just focusing on the piece, whether that is a classic play like A Doll's House, a modern classic musical like Sunset or Shakespeare With Much Ado. These things are incredibly stripped back, as technically advanced as, like Sunset is like, it really is focusing on the work in a new interpretation. And I hope that we get a lot of that moving forward. All right, Grace, we have some show and casting stuff that I want to talk about. Some of it good, some of it a little disappointing, but yesterday was announced that the first preview performances for the upcoming Bobby Darin musical Just in Time have been canceled, pushing back the first Broadway performances to March 31. Often when we hear about this, it's because, oh, somebody's sick and they're not ready. They lost rehearsal time. What it sounds like with this, and not completely unexpected with an Alex Timbers production, but apparently they're having a little trouble transforming the circle in the Square theater into a nightclub. Obviously, Alex Timbers is no stranger to kind of reinventing the spaces that he works in, but apparently it is taking a little bit more time they had originally anticipated. So instead of beginning performances on March 28, which is a week from this Friday, they will now begin on March 31, which will be like a week and a half on Monday. The other announcement that we have means, Grace, that you have a little bit extra time to get over to see Glengarry Glen Ross at the Palace Theater because they announced a Two week extension and they are calling it a final extension. Instead of closing on June 14, which is actually already extended from Tony weekend on the 7th, they will now place through June 28th. It's interesting to me, Grace, that on the heels of this deadline report about a potential all female version of Glengarry Glen Ross, they are calling this a final extension. Obviously with folks like Bob Odin, Kurt, Kieran Culkin, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, all of those folks, they very likely have other things they have to do and they can't extend any further. Whether or not that means this is the final extension for this cast or the final extension for this production altogether, we will have to wait and see. But two more weeks is two more weeks to see Kieran Culkin on Broadway, which is something I'm sure you're excited about.
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Grace Ake
I cannot wait. I cannot wait to see him. It's gonna be so good.
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Matt Tamneni
Speaking of extra time to see beloved stars, yesterday it was announced that Idina Menzel has extended her run in Redwood over at the Nederlander Theatre. She will now continue through August 17th. No word as to when she was going to stop that, at least I haven't seen it. As to when she was going to end her run. It is interesting to me because this is a show that she helped create, not just like she was in the original workshops, but she was one of the people that came up with the idea for this show. So I'm surprised that she only has 6ish months in the show or whatever. So that's a little bit surprising to me. But now you can see one of the biggest stars on Broadway swinging around on a big giant tree for, I guess almost exactly five more months. Then yesterday, Grace, we got some additional casting for a musical that we talked about heading off Broadway. And this is the musical, Jo A New True Musical. We already know that Betsy Wolf is going to star along with Jill Abramowicz and Honor Blue Savage. Now we know some of the other people who are going to be a part of that cast. Joining the company are Charl Brown, Adam Grouper and Mauricio Martinez. It is going to begin performances at the Laura Pel's Theater on June 21st ahead of an opening night on July 20th. And then the final little bit of news that we have comes to us from the Vineyard Theater who is producing the new show Bull EP by Nazareth Hassan with the National Black Theater and the new group. The show is going to begin performances on May 1st and it's currently scheduled to run through June 8th. They've announced some of the other people who will be in the production playing Kelly K. Clarkson will be Essence Lotus playing Quintavious De Quitter will be a Canero Gabaje and Felicia Curry will play Lemon Pepper Wings. This is one that I've been really excited about. This is the show that not only has to do with with young people trying to make it in the world of hip hop, but there's also live skateboarding going on in the show. So interested to see what this looks like when it begins. Performances in a couple weeks. And then finally, Grace, I've got a real quick recommendation that I'm going to throw one over to you. But one of my all time favorite Broadway performers, Jesse L. Martin has been a mainstay on television for years now. He is currently the lead on the NBC procedural drama the Irrational and he co stars with Karen David who was of the stars of the ABC musical Medieval show Galavant. Well, they're both on this show. They both play law enforcement type people and for a case that they are working on, they are thrown into a production of a community theater run of Little Shop of Horrors. So we get to see them singing from the show, Karen playing Audrey and Jesse playing the voice of Audrey ii. So I love that. Love hearing Jesse sing anytime he does not do it nearly enough. We need to get him back on Broadway sometime soon. And then finally, Grace, you've got a show that you want to mention about that is happening over at the Green Room this week.
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Grace Ake
Yeah. So at Green Room 42, a friend and composer Tyler Tofola is doing a moving right along, an all star tribute to Jim Henson on World Puppetry Day. So if you love puppets and you love the Muppets and you like it when people celebrate those things, you should go see this show. It's going to be lovely. They're also going to do a live stream. So if you're not in New York City, you can buy a ticket for the live Stream. And again, March 21, 9:30pm in New York City. Lots of really lovely people attached. Julia Shemmer. Like it's, it's a really good group and I'm very excited for them.
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Matt Tamneni
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 at broadervadian. You follow me on Instagram @bww. Matt Grace, where can people find you?
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Grace Ake
You can find me at. It's graceaki.
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Matt Tamneni
All right, everybody, have a wonderful Thursday. Remember, we'll be a little weird with our Friday episodes. But you will get special drop with all of the Operation Mincemeat reviews sometime on Friday morning. All right, everybody, have a great day, and we will talk to you soon.
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Grace Ake
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Matt Tamneni
Look good, Brad. You're on mute.
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Grace Ake
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