Matt Tammanini (0:01)

Welcome to Today on Broadway for Thursday, May 15, 2025. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Tammanini over in the Patreon feed. By the time you were hearing this, at least in the regular feed, a long overdue episode of Something Like It Pop will be in there. Jennifer McHugh and I recorded it before I went to New York at the beginning of May, but I haven't gotten around to publishing it. So that will be there. And then coming up over the weekend, we will also have my travelogue episode wrapping up the 20242025 Broadway season where I will tell you about the last group of new shows that I saw when I was in town over last week for eight days. Those included Real Women have Curves, Dead Outlaw Pirates, the Penzance Musical, Stranger Things, Smash, John Proctor is the Villain, Just In Time and Floyd Collins. I've got a lot of thoughts about those. Some things I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to, and some that I thought I was going to like a lot more than I actually did. So you will want to make sure to hear all of that by heading over to patreon.com broadwayradio is which broadwayradio.com patreon and signing up at the Mezzanine Tier and above. All right, let's get into the news for today and yesterday the Manhattan Theater Club announced some new shows that are going to be a part of their 2025, 2026 Broadway and off Broadway seasons and that will be led by the latest play by David Lindsay Aber to premiere at the Manhattan Theater Club. This will be a world premiere play called the Ballisters and it will come to the Samuel J. Friedman on Broadway in the spring of 2026. No exact dates yet, but this show will be directed by Kenny Leon and it is world premiere play that David Lindsay Aber has had with the Manhattan Theater Club, dating all the way back to the Off Broadway premiere of Fuddy Mears. Lindsay Bear also of course won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Rabbit Hole, which was with mtc. Also did Good People ripcord, Wonder of the World and the play version of Kimberly Akimbo with Manhattan Theater Club as well. The official description of the show reads, quote, the Ballisters is a raucous, wild ride through a small community with big feelings. The Vernon Point Neighborhood association is a passionate bunch, whether squabbling over historically inaccurate porch railings or debating trash can protocol. Still, no one is prepared for the Neighbor vs. Neighbor battle royale that ensues when a newcomer to the board suggests the unthinkable installing a stop sign on the corner of the enclave's prettiest block. This is the second show in Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway season where I already know that the play Punch by James Graham is going to be there in the fall. So we know two shows. There could be another one that fits in there. They often will do one in the early, early part of the year, so maybe we'll hear about that one then. The other show that they announced yesterday is going to be coming Off Broadway in the fall of this year, and this one is also from a playwright who had their Pulitzer Prize winning show debut at the Manhattan Theater Club. And this is a newly reimagined version of a play that Martina Mayock has been working on for a long time called Queens. This one will be directed by Tripp Coleman and it is going to premiere obviously at New York City center and it joins Nagazi and Wanyu's the Monsters in the Off Broadway season so far. The Monsters will be in the spring of 2026. Of course, Mayo's cost of living premiered both off and on Broadway, with Manhattan Theater Club going on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Martina started writing the show in 2016 and she's talked about how she has continued to to work on it and think about it and try to get it in that perfect form. The show is described thusly, quote, in an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the woman made to survive. As I said, those are two of the four shows that have already been announced. Manhattan Theater Club is planning to announce additional shows for the season coming up in the next few weeks and months. Going on to some awards news earlier this week. The Actors Equity foundation, which supports the professional theater community, has announced the recipients of its performance awards for the 20242025 season. The Richard Seth Award has been given annually for over 20 years, goes to character actors 50 years old or older and they are given in the best performance in a featured or unfeatured supporting role on a Broadway or Off Broadway production. Generally, recipients have to have been members of Actors Equity association for at least 25 years. This year's winners are Jessica Hecht for her role in Eureka Day, and Francis Zhu for his role in Yellowface. Recipients of the Clarence Derwent Award for the two most promising performances of the season went to Nicholas Barish for Pirates, the Penzance musical and Julia Lester for All Nighter. This has been awarded since 1945 and acknowledges artists in the early stages of their careers. Careers. The Jo A. Calloway Award is given to two actors for best performances in a classical play. And this year it was awarded to Stephen Epp for the theater for a new audience production of Henry iv and Kimber Elaine Sprawl for her performance as Amelia and Othello on Broadway. And then wrapping it up will be the Michael McCarty Recognition Award, which celebrates a Los Angeles based equity actor who has built their lives in the theater. This one goes to Jennifer Lee Warren. All right, let's get into some show and casting news and yesterday we found out who the three titular mean girls will be when Heather's the Musical returns off Broadway coming up this summer. It was exclusively announced in Deadline, but if you have been hearing anything about this show, you already knew this was not a surprise. And in fact, last week I hinted at the fact that Mackenzie Kurtz, most recently seen on Broadway in the heart of rock and roll, will be playing the mythic bitch herself, Heather Chandler. She will be joined by Olivia Hardy, most recently of Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway as Heather Duke and Elizabeth Teeter of Beetlejuice fame as Heather McNamara. They joined the previously announced Lorna, Courtney and Casey Lights as Veronica and JD Respectively. Additional casting is expected to be announced next week. The show is set to begin promising performances at New world stages on June 22 and is currently slated to run through September 28. This is such interesting casting to me because they didn't have to actually go out and get names. This is a show that I think is probably going to ride on the love of the material and if it is going to play, which I'm hoping it does because it had such a great off Broadway life originally. And I love this, this show. You're going to have to engage fans and I didn't know if they were going to go out and get a bunch of young people. I didn't know if they're going to bring over some, some folks from the British production, which is where this production originated. But I'm really glad that we have at least from these five lead performers, some really heavy hitting Broadway young stars. So very excited to see this one at New World Stages when it begins performances next month. All right, going from New World Stages to the other side of the world. Yesterday the principal cast for the upcoming South Korea production of the Great Gatsby was announced and there are a lot of fantastic Broadway names leading the company as Jay Gatsby will be Tony Award winner Matt Doyle playing his Daisy Buchanan will be Sinzel Amadi. Gerald Caesar is going to be playing Nick Carraway. Amber Ardellino is taking on the role of Jordan Baker. Gina Duvall will be Myrtle Wilson. Wes Williams will be Tom Buchanan. Tali Sessions is going to be playing George Wilson, and Ed Stoutenmayer will be playing Meyer Wolfsheim. The show is scheduled to play the GS Art center in the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea from August 1 through November 9. The show was produced in New York and then in London and now in South Korea by Korean producer Chunsu Shin. So it is not a surprise that this show is eventually making its way to South Korea and the fact that it is bringing in, I mean, honestly, a cast that could be doing the show on Broadway. So that is fantastic. Congratulations to all of them and what a great way to spend, you know, the fall of the year over in South Korea, doing a show. All right, from South Korea back to the US and heading into the middle of the country. In St Louis yesterday, the two stars of the upcoming Muni production of La Caja Falls were announced. Directed by Marsha Milgram Dodge, the show is going to run in St. Louis from August 8th through through the 14th. Taking on the role as George will be the one and only Norm Lewis, and playing Albin will be Michael James Scott Cameron. Anika Hill will play Anne Terrence Archie will play Monsieur Dindon, Alison Black will play Madame Dindon, Troy Iwata will play Jacob, Michael Hartung will play Francis, and Megan Murphy will be Jacqueline. Additional company members will be announced soon. Earlier this week I talked about the fact that apparently the trailer for Wicked 4 Good was shown at the NBC upfronts in New York City, and I thought maybe there'd be an opportunity for us to see that trailer either online or in theaters fairly soon. Now we know when that is going to be because Wicked Part one, or whatever we're calling it, is coming back to the movie theaters for an encore screening beginning in just a few weeks on June 4th. And that will be the very first place where you can see the trailer for Wicked for Good. The trailer is set to debut simultaneously across all North American time zones for following the screening of the first film, and then it'll be available online subsequently. These special screenings are also going to include exclusive giveaways, commemorative posters, things like that. So if you want to be a part of it to not only get a chance to see the movie on the big screen again, but to also see the trailer and then potentially take away some gifts. You can purchase tickets wherever you see your movies now. All right, I've got some recommendations. Three of them. One of them I mentioned earlier this week as PBS Great Performance's new digital series Stagebound premiered and it focused on Tony nominee and Outer Critics Circle winner Jasmine Amy Rogers as she went through the rehearsal, preview and opening night process for Boop. The Musical on Broadway. You can check that out. I have a link to it in the show notes. Then we also had a pretty cool Instagram video that somebody took and then I saw a different version from the actual account itself of Tom Francis at Marie Crisis doing the Sunset Boulevard walk around the entire bar and people filming him with cameras doing it the whole time. It was very funny. He was very playful. I gotta tell you, when I went to the Town hall that they did at the St. James a week or so ago, it was very weird to see Tom Francis smile and laugh. You don't see that in the show at all, which is obviously by design in Jamie Lloyd's production. But he did the entire song, the entire walk while walked around the entire time people were filming. It was very cool. So check that out in the show notes. And then finally we have video from the first Ham for Ham from this year outside of the Richard Rogers Theater. They didn't do it last year, but they've done it a couple times in recent years where they welcome the nominated new and revival musicals to perform throughout Tony's season and they often have people from nominated plays introduce them as well. Performing at this week's Ham for Ham were Jinx Monsoon from Pirates, the Penzance Musical, both Darren Criss and Helen J. Shin from maybe Happy Ending and the Tony Honored Band from Buena Vista Social Club. Tyla Ash from English was also on hand to introduce folks. These Ham for Hams will reportedly continue on Tuesdays for the next few weeks. Don't know who's going to be a part of next week's, but if you are in the area and around the Richard Rodgers, maybe head over there at 4pm and you will get to see some very, very fun performances as well. Last recommendation of course. If you're in New York City, head over to Soho Playhouse, see Grace's show To Free a Mockingbird. She is doing it through the 25th of May. I will have a link in the show notes if you want to check that out. 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 Broadway Radio. Have a wonderful, wonderful Thursday, and we'll be back to talk to you tomorrow.