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Today on Broadway: Tuesday, April 1, 2025
00:13:55
‘Pirates’ Extends on Broadway, ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ Teases Return, See Hurder Sing ‘Let Me Be Your Star’ from ‘Smash’ Since 2016, “Today on Broadway” has been the first and only daily podcast recapping the top theatre headlines every Monday throug...
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- [00:02]
Matt Tiamineni
Welcome to Today on Broadway for Tuesday, April 1, April Fool's Day 2025. I'm Broadway Radio's Matt Tiamineni and I'm.
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Grace Aki
Telly on a Sunday podcast, Grace Aki.
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Matt Tiamineni
Grace, not only are you tell me on a Sunday podcast it's Grace Aki, but as I discovered on Monday morning, you are someone that people should know, at least according to the Broadway Women's alliance and Broadway News. Yeah, if people didn't see that you as part of Women's History Month, you were named by the Broadway Women's alliance and Broadway News as one of the people that theater fans should know. There's a lovely write up on their Instagram pages about you with some interviews, some quotes. So how did that happen? What kind of process was that and who are some of the other people that you're involved with?
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Grace Aki
Yeah, no, I was just honestly kindly asked by the women behind all of this, which is Ruthie Fireberg of Broadway News and Diana Salame of Sereno, who helped found Broadway Women's alliance with with Molly, who is an incredible PR specialist with Grapevine PR to be featured. And it was just so lovely. I got to have a conversation with them and it was really, really a generous write up. So I cannot thank them enough.
- [01:10]
Matt Tiamineni
Yeah, they have some other people that have already been included in that as well. Somebody who we talk about pretty much every time that there is a review on Broadway, Brittany Samuel from Broadway News, Nikki Hunter who is associate artistic director for the Manhattan Theatre Club, people from across arts organizations, whether that is production companies or marketing groups or all that kind of stuff. So some wonderful people over at the Broadway Women's Alliance Instagram that you should be getting to know. And of course our favorite Grace Ake there as the most recent one. So we will have a link to that in the show notes and Grace, it does feel kind of appropriate that that happened on Monday because on Monday over the Palace Theater they are opening the latest Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. But we are not going to talk about the reviews on today's episode because they are embargoed until 11:30pm EAS. And even though I am going to a show that will get me out pretty late, that's still much later than I'm going to be awake and functioning at that point. So we will have the reviews for Blengarry Glen Ross on tomorrow's episode and if there's anything earth shattering, I'll do a standalone thing if it either gets like the most rapturous reviews in the history of the theatrical media or gets absolutely lambasted. I'll throw together a special episode, but I don't imagine either of those things happening. So we will probably have them on tomorrow's episode. Grace, I'm going to boop tonight. What are on night? What do you have coming up on Monday night? Because I know you've got something pretty much every day.
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Grace Aki
Yeah, tonight I'm actually now fortunate enough to go to the Glengarry opening. So I will have some feedback from, from that whole thing. I'm very excited about it. Yeah, it'll be a great night.
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Matt Tiamineni
And you actually saw it over the weekend as well, right?
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Grace Aki
Exactly. Yes, just now. So I can't wait to see it again.
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Matt Tiamineni
Yeah, seeing, seeing your boy Kieran as many times as humanly possible is not a bad thing. But let's talk about something that we can actually talk about because this has not been embargoed. But yesterday the Roundabout Theater Company announced that their kind of reimagining revival of the Gilbert and Solomon musical the Pirates of Penzance, now called the Penzance Musical, has extended on Broadway. It hasn't even begun performances yet. It will begin performances on April 4th, which is this coming Friday. It was originally supposed to play through June 22. It is now going to push back its closing by almost five full weeks and will now play through July 27th. And to kind of coincide with this announcement, they released some rehearsal footage from the show. We see Jinx Monsoon, Ramin kiramlou, David Hyde Pierce and more performing. So if you want to check out what Pirates looks like, based in New Orleans and with a jazz feel, you can check it out in the show notes I like we talked about the other day. Grace never seen this. Only know it basically because of some of like the iconic songs that are featured in it. So I'm very much looking forward to seeing this one later in the spring. And Grace, one of the shows that we talked a lot about last season was Cat's the Jellicle Ball and we bandied back and forth whether or not we thought it would make sense for it to come to Broadway. Whether or not it was, you know, should just kind of live as its own little thing off Broadway. Maybe it should find a commercial place where it could run in perpetuity as an open ended run. Nothing really happened with the show after it closed last season, but based on some social media action yesterday, it sounds like the show is gearing up for some sort of run in the fairly near future. The social media accounts Kat's Jellicle Ball posted yesterday. It just said category is House of Jellicle. And it had a very nice crisp logo with the word meow on it and a spinning disco ball in the shape of a cat's head. It says, come one, come all. Kat's the Jellicle ball dot com. We don't know what this means. We don't know if this is looking to do a commercial off Broadway run, a Broadway run, a West End run, which is something that Andrew Lloyd Webber has talked about in the past. But I'm starting to hear some rumors about what the plans are here, Grace. And one of the things we bandied back and forth at the time was whether or not ALW would want two of his shows competing for best revival in the same season. So now that Sunset is kind of wrapping up its hold on this season, maybe that means that this is coming to Broadway for next season. But I know you had had some pretty strong feelings about what you thought Cat's Jellicoe Ball should do. Now that we've had some distance from the closing of the Off Broadway run@PAC NYC, what are you hoping that this amounts to in terms of this announcement?
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Grace Aki
Yeah, you know, like, I'm eager for it to be on a Broadway stage. I think it's super smart for them to have posted all of these regardless of if they have, you know, seized, you know, some kind of closure on a Broadway house. Part of these things, like what you're seeing on social and on their website is like, sign up to learn more. That's part of a lead generation campaign. So that's so that they can collect those emails to get the first access of tickets if they have like a, you know, a financial partner or things like that. So it's super smart for them to just like go ahead and get a sense of the excitement, especially as they collect, you know, producers and investors and things like that, to say, hey, look at the demand here. There's going to be demand for more tickets.
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Matt Tiamineni
So do you think that this is more, like you said, just kind of whetting the appetites and laying the groundwork for something in the future? Or do you think that it is more they have something already planned and this is kind of gearing up to something very specific in an actual announcement in the relatively near future rather than like still kind of figuring out what's next?
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Grace Aki
I mean, they might, I don't, I don't know. I haven't heard like concrete plans, but I mean, they, they might have something secured, but more so than not they are probably looking to see what that gauge of interest is so that they can generate, like an idea of a scope and a budget and all that stuff for future parts holders in that kind of process. But I think it's super smart also, because the steam has been let off of that show because of how long it's been since their final performance at the PAC center, that it would make sense to me that they would say, hey, we need to launch something. We've got a team assigned. We've got, you know, creatives in place, we've got an advertising group, we've got the PR firm. But we, like, solidified other things. Like, it makes sense that they would do this.
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Matt Tiamineni
The rumors that I have heard are that this is Broadway bound. And they are, you know, my first thought was, oh, well, then they have to be doing it at Circle in the Square. Apparently that's not necessarily the case. From what I've been told, it is looking for a more conventional Broadway proscenium theater, but that they're gonna build a catwalk into the audience. So that is what I have been told. We'll see if that's true. That could just be people speculating and passing it around the grapevine, but that's what I have been led to believe. But it's also interesting, Grace, because we talked about, like I just said a few minutes ago, the thought was that Andrew Lloyd Webber and everybody would want to keep Cats and Sunset in different seasons because they, you know, they don't want to see the properties either battle against each other either just for maximum awards consideration, but also box office considerations. But we've talked about the fact that Jamie Lloyd, the director of Sunset Boulevard, is going to be doing Evita in London this summer. And the belief is that that is going to be looking for Broadway as well. You start to wonder as they are starting to stack Andrew Lloyd Webber shows up, whether or not that means that perhaps Evita might wait for the 2026, 2027 season, which seems unlikely if it is playing London in the summer of 2025. But it is something to consider. And then there's the Phantom, Off Broadway immersive thing that we're getting. And they're still sending out marketing material. Grace, we've spent so many years with at least one Andrew Lloyd Webber show on Broadway. Now that we are getting away from those original productions and having new, very, very different takes on these shows coming back to New York, is there a concern from a marketing and ticket selling standpoint of an Andrew Lloyd Webber saturation point, do they need to consider spacing things out or because it's Andrew Lloyd Webber, and because these are different takes, is it okay to kind of overlap a little bit? And maybe they might actually help each other. If one does really well, maybe it helps another one that has a different take on the material do well as well.
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Grace Aki
Listen, he's gonna get that check. You know what I mean? Like, I, I, I think it's, I think it's whatever. I, I kind of love that there's this kind of, like, expanded universe, in a way, for all of these theatrical properties, whether that's immersive or ballroom style or in Cats Deli, I don't know. But, like, I'm sure there's a bodega cat somewhere in, in, in my mind's eye that I'd like to, to personally execute. So, yeah, I think I, it makes sense. Also, like, when are we getting Starlight Express here? That's my question.
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Matt Tiamineni
I know I wanted to see it so bad in London, but it was so far, like an hour or so away, and I was, I was nervous about getting out there. So, yeah, let's bring Starlight Express over as well. All right. There's not a ton of other news, so I did want. I'd had some people reach out and ask what I was seeing while I'm in town. So I figured I'd run through that here before I dive into all of the travelogue episodes over on Patreon. But so far I've seen Buena Vista Social Club and Operation Mincemeat. I saw those on Saturday. Then on Sunday, I saw two off Broadway shows, Liberation and All Nighter. As I mentioned earlier in the show tonight, on Monday, I am going to see Boop. And then Grace, as long as you can get your schedule organized. We're going to go see Vanya on Tuesday night. And then Wednesday is Redwood and Glengarry Glen Ross. Thursday is Picture of Dorian Gray. Friday is the Last Five Years. Saturday is Good Night and Good Luck. And then Purpose. And then Sunday is Old Friends. Before I head back home, what are some of the things that you're doing this week? I know you're working some, some opening nights. You're going to opening nights. You're doing, you know, influencer events. What, what's everything on your schedule this week, Grace?
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Grace Aki
There's just a lot going on. I'm seeing, I don't know, Take the lead. Stranger things, Glengarry Ton, some sunset stuff. I'll give you guys a great update next week. I just need to physically get through them this week because you never know what happens. But yeah, no, I'm really excited for Arvanya and so many things. So I also just. Can I say this? Like, whenever I go to a show external of like our very fortunate, like press invitations when I am facilitating visits for others and or content creators and things like that, I love listening to audiences. I had the fortunateness of going to the invited dress of Stranger Things and having seen the show already, it was very different. But also listening to the audience scream and have these very big verbal and physical reactions to certain things that I knew were coming in the piece, that is so exciting to me. That's worth a ticket on its own. You know what I mean? So, like, I'm excited to see a lot of these shows again and again because I like hearing the conversation that's happening through the stage, through the audience.
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Matt Tiamineni
Yeah, that is very, very fun. All right, we will wrap up the show with a couple of recommendations. Here we have footage from the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends that the Manhattan Theater Club has released. As I said, I'm seeing this on Sunday before I head home. But it officially opens at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on April 8th. So you can check out that and see some highlights of that show. And then we have now video of the great Robin Herder singing Let Me Be youe Star, the opening number version of that so song from Smash. That one opens April 10th. I'm not seeing that one until I'm back in town in May. But obviously something to tide you over if you're not seeing it right away. So check out both of those videos in the show notes. 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 Reading. You can follow me on Instagram @bww. Matt. Grace. Where can people find you?
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Grace Aki
You can find me at its Grace Aki.
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Matt Tiamineni
All right, everybody. Have a wonderful Tuesday, a wonderful April. Don. Don't get fooled by any stupid headlines. I always hated that. I hope that we are past that in this era of disinformation. It's reductive. It's unnecessary. So have a safe and media literate day and we're about to talk to you tomorrow.
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C
I'll just have to forget the girl I used to love. Forget poor Norma Jean. The past is what I'm rising above. The future is there on screen. That's me on Grand.