Musical Theatre

Lili Thomas will be first Asian-American actor to play Matron Mama Morton in Broadway’s Chicago, stepping into the role on 11 September 2023.

Tituss Burgess will step into the role of Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge on Broadway from 10 October 2023 for a limited engagement to 17 December, after which Eric Anderson (who currently plays Zidler) will return to the role.

Betty Who makes her Broadway debut in Hadestown as Persephone on September 5 2023, the same day Phillip Boykin joins the cast as Hades

Broadway newcomers Max Chambers and Jace Bently join the cast of MJ in the roles of ‘Little Michael’ and ‘Little Marlon” respectively. Chambers will alternate the role with current cast member Bane Griffith.

Cassie Silva joins SIX as the new universal alternate for North America. Silva will cover all North American productions (Six is currently playing on Broadway and touring the US in North America), replacing Marilyn Caserta in the role.

Casting is now complete for Paper Mill Playhouse's upcoming world premiere of the new Kait Kerrigan/Jason Howland/Nathan Tysen musical The Great Gatsby. Joining the previously announced Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada are Stanley W. Mathis as Meyer Wolfsheim, Samantha Pauly as Jordan Baker, Noah J. Ricketts as Nick Carraway, Paul Whitty as George Wilson and John Zdrojeski as Tom Buchanan. The ensemble comprises Lauryn Adams, Raymond Edward Baynard, Ayla Ciccone-Burton, Austin Colby, Colin Cunliffe, Natalie Charle Ellis, Curtis Holland, Brianna Kim, Dariana Mullen, Pascal Pastrana, Mariah Reives, Julio Rey, Dan Rosales, Maya Sistruck, Jake Trammel, Jake Urban, Tanairi Vazquez, and Katie Webber.

Full casting has been announced for the upcoming US national tour of Company, set to launch October 8 2023 in Schenectady, New York. As on Broadway, Marianne Elliott is directing the gender-swapped version of the 1970 musical, starring Britney Coleman as Bobbie. Newly announced for the cast are Judy McLane as Joanne, Kathryn Allison as Sarah, Matt Bittner as David, Ali Louis Bourzgui as Paul, Derrick Davis as Larry, Javier Ignacio as Peter, James Earl Jones II as Harry, Marina Kondo as Susan, Matt Rodin as Jamie, Emma Stratton as Jenny, Jacob Dickey as Andy, Tyler Hardwick as PJ, and David Socolar as Theo. The ensemble includes Matthew Christian, Christopher DeAngelis, Kenneth Quinney Francouer, CJ Greer, Elysia Jordan, Beth Stafford Laird, and Christopher Henry Young.

Full casting has been announced for the world premiere of Gavin Creel's off-Broadway musical Walk On Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, which will run November 13–December 10 2023. Joining Creel will be Sasha Allen, Madeline Benson, Chris Peters, Ryan Vasquez and Scott Wasserman. The musical features 17 original songs written by Creel, who makes his theatrical songwriting debut with the production.

The stage musical adaptation of the 1992 film comedy Death Becomes Her will make its pre-Broadway debut at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre from April 30 – June 2, 2024. Megan Hilty stars as “Madeline Ashton” (Meryl Streep in the film) and Jennifer Simard as “Helen Sharp” (Goldie Hawn in the movie). The show features an original score by Noel Carey and Julia Mattison and book by Marco Pennette. Christopher Gattelli directs and choregraphs.

Fairly lengthy article on the Color Purple movie musical. Highlights include:

The upcoming film version of The Color Purple directed by Blitz Bazawule, from a script by Marcus Gardley brinsg something new to its sweeping story, adding elaborate fantasy sequences that redefine the characters and the feel. It’s now a period drama with a magical realist twist.

“It was very important that the grand multiverse that is ‘The Color Purple’ is represented in this film,” Bazawule said.

This multiverse encompasses the storied history of productions of “The Color Purple,” with celebrity producers from earlier iterations like Spielberg, Winfrey and Quincy Jones (who was responsible for the music in the original film), as well as Scott Sanders, who put the show on Broadway. And it builds on its past with performers including Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks, who reprise their Broadway roles. Rounding out the cast are Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, Halle Bailey and a few surprise cameos.

Those sequences, written into the screenplay and envisioned by Bazawule as glorious song-and-dance numbers, gave Celie more agency. “In previous iterations, quite frankly including the stage musical, she’s a passive protagonist for a good part of the storytelling,” said Sanders. Now, audiences can see “what her inner voice was telling her, as she was moving through her self-discovery and triumph over adversity.”

Barrino, the “American Idol” alumna, played Celie in the first Broadway production and on tour, and needed to be convinced to revisit the role. “She was very, very hesitant to do it,” Bazawule said, “because it’s heavy work — it weighs down on the artists. And she was dealing with her own personal healing.”
Editors’ Picks
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Max Roach
The Mystery Behind ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Cover Art Is Solved
Latest in Wellness Travel: The Menopause Retreat

He won her over by showing her a rough clip of a dream sequence between Celie and Shug Avery, the sultry chanteuse played by Henson; it promised character development on a big scale. “I said, ‘We’re going to go there — you know, we’ll have a 50-piece orchestra. It’s going to be wild,’” Bazawule said. (Barrino and the rest of the cast were unavailable for interviews because of the actors’ strike.)

Callum Bell, a member of the ensemble and swing in the cast of Nicholas Hytner’s immersive production of Guys and Dolls at London's Bridge Theatre, stepped into the lead role of Nicely Nicely Johnson without any prior rehearsal on the 4 September 2023 evening performance.

This unexpected substitution occurred when Cedric Neal, the regular performer for the role, and both of his understudies were indisposed due to illness. Without Bell’s willingness to take on the role with little notice, the show would have faced cancellation.

Lily Dyble, assistant director for the production, described the evening as “genuinely electric,” adding “the audience went wild for Callum – they totally got behind him. It is an insane role to step into on the day! I can’t communicate the scale of it enough or what a massive undertaking it is for Callum.”

The season finale of HBO’s Emmy Award-winning sports docuseries “Hard Knocks” will showcase players from the New York Jets attending a performance of “MJ” on Broadway.

Each season, “Hard Knocks” features one NFL football team as they undergo training camp. The current season, the 20th of the series, focuses on the Jets. Throughout this TV season, Jets players — most notably defensive lineman Solomon Thomas and tight end CJ Uzomah — have expressed their admiration for Broadway. Thomas and Uzomah have both talked about their multiple visits to “MJ,” and decided to bring their fellow footballers along for their most recent visit.

Updates on two theater-related lawsuits in progress:

• The producers of Hadestown have moved to dismiss the complaint of former cast member Kim Moore, who filed a complaint in federal court alleging race discrimination and retaliation.
• The Garth Drabinsky Legal Drama Mounts

Highlights for people who can't get past the paywall:

“That was my dream come true,” Lea Michele gushed from the stage on Sunday after her final performance in “Funny Girl,” the Broadway revival that the actress breathed new life into when its future looked grim one year ago.

Michele’s sudden addition to the production, which closed with its star’s exit, stretched its run to nearly 600 performances and allowed it to recoup its capitalization costs — far from a guarantee on Broadway. At Sunday’s matinee, the actress basked in the show’s success, and received seven standing ovations, including for the insistent barn burner “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and the reflective ballad “People.”

At her final show at the August Wilson Theater, Michele gave the audience an extra song: “My Man,” which includes lyrics from an original performed by Fanny Brice, the pioneering Jewish entertainer whose life is the basis for the musical.

Michele has said that the song has been an important one to her since she sang it on the television series “Glee.” A belter about devotion to a man despite him being a constant disappointment, “My Man” was dedicated in the series to a character played by Cory Monteith, whom Michele dated both on TV and in real life. Monteith, who had struggled with substance abuse, died of a combination of heroin and alcohol in 2013.

Streisand has long been an idol to Michele, who started as a child actress on Broadway, became a known entity as a lead in “Spring Awakening” and rose to become a household name in “Glee” as an uptight but talented high school glee club member. In a blending of TV and reality, Michele’s character, Rachel Berry, landed the role of Brice, and Michele performed several of the musical’s songs on the show.

Michele had long been discussed as an option for a “Funny Girl” revival, but the show’s director, Michael Mayer, who has directed Michele in “Spring Awakening,” said last year that he had sensed that she was not ready to return to work after the birth of her child. The actress Beanie Feldstein was cast in the role, but she drew middling reviews when the show opened in spring 2022. It received one Tony nomination, for Jared Grimes, who portrays Brice’s dance coach and sidekick.

With “Funny Girl,” Michele made her first appearance in a Broadway cast in 15 years. She has indicated that the next gap won’t be so significant. The actress told Variety that she has already booked her next job, hinting that it is a show she expects people will recognize, but that is very different from the one that drew her back to Broadway.

Michele also posted a short essay (or long thank you note?) on her Instagram account after she finished her run as Fanny.

Remaking a vintage musical for the 2020s takes guts, sensitivity and perhaps a medium. On Broadway, Off Broadway, in special events and out of town, living authors are collaborating with dead ones. Amber Ruffin is revamping the book of “The Wiz,” the 1975 musical that is itself a revamp of “The Wizard of Oz” with Black characters. Richard LaGravenese and Daniel Koa Beaty are overhauling John O’Hara’s 1940 script for “Pal Joey” while keeping the classic songs Rodgers and Hart wrote for it — along with a bunch borrowed from the duo’s other shows. And John Weidman’s revisal of the 1962 musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” finds him working intimately with an unexpected yet familiar old name.

Tinkering with the books of revivals is of course nothing new. Some otherwise viable shows, like “Annie Get Your Gun,” need surgery because their racial or gender assumptions are now unacceptable. Others, from a time when musicals were not meant to be models of dramaturgical cohesion or gravitas, have plot holes the size of canyons, or a general air of silliness no longer in style. (Pretty much anything before 1943.) Others, like “Show Boat,” are merely falling out of copyright, with heirs eager to find a way to remonetize their property.

And some — well one — are “Here We Are,” the musical Stephen Sondheim was working on when he died in November 2021. News from the Sondheim batcave is sparse, and we don’t know who or what has completed the work that the songwriter, five days before his death, told my colleague Michael Paulson was unfinished. Still, something by Sondheim, and presumably still based on the Luis Buñuel films “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel,” is scheduled to show up at the Shed starting Sept. 28. Directed by Joe Mantello and with a book by the comic playwright David Ives, it will reflect a very unusual collaboration indeed.

But most of the post-mortem collaborations this season are of a different sort. Weidman, who wrote the books for Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” and “Assassins,” says his work on Classic Stage Company’s revival of “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” which opens in October, isn’t a collaboration at all, but a conversation. And the person on the other end of the conversation is his father.

Bob Hofmann, the vice-president at Broadway Inbound discusses the ‘bounce-back’ of Broadway and how it is one of New York’s leading attractions for travellers.

National Theatre and the Roald Dahl Story Company announced the cast of 53 (!) of the upcoming new musical The Witches, based on the novel by Roald Dahl (who also wrote Matilda). With book & lyrics by Lucy Kirkwood and music & lyrics by Dave Malloy,

The Witches will star Katherine Kingsley as the Grand High Witch, Daniel Rigby as hotel manager Mr Stringer and Sally Ann Triplett (Oklahoma!) as Gran. Playing Luke’s parents are Laura Medforth and Richard David-Caine, while playing Bruno’s parents Mr and Mrs Jenkins are Ekow Quartey and Maggie Service. Irvine Iqbal plays Chef Chevalier.

Playing the witches are Julie Armstrong, Chrissie Bhima, Zoe Birkett, Maddison Bulleyment, Miracle Chance, Daniele Coombe, Molly-May Gardiner, Tiffany Graves, Bobbie Little, Tania Mathurin, Amira Matthews, and Alexandra Waite-Roberts. Completing the team at Hotel Magnificent are Adrian Grove, Jacob Maynard and Ben Redfern. The cast will also be playing multiple roles as part of the ensemble.

Amongst the young cast and playing the hero, Luke, are Bertie Caplan, Frankie Keita and Vishal Soni. Playing Bruno are Cian Eagle-Service, George Menezes Cutts and William Skinner, and playing Helga are Jersey Blu Georgia, Asanda Abbie Masike and Chloe Raphael.

Completing the young ensemble are Nesim Adnan, Alaia Broadbent, Chenai Broadbent, Cristian Buttaci, Sekhani Dumezweni, Rudy Gibson, Florence Gore, Elara Jagger, Annabelle Jones, Jemima Loosen, Charlie Man-Evans, Iesa Miller, Jack Philpott, Sienna Sibley, Savannah Skinner-Henry, Poppy-Mei Soon, Benjamin Spalding, Dylan Trigger, Alice Valeriano, Sasha Watson-Lobo and Stella Yeoman.

Lyndsey Turner directs the show which will start previewing at the National Theatre on 7 November 2023.

The full cast of The Time Traveller’s Wife at London's Apollo Theatre has been announced. Joining the previously announced David Hunter (Henry) and Joanna Woodward (Clare), are Tim Mahendran (Gomez), Hiba Elchikhe (Charisse), Ross Dawes (Henry’s Dad), Sorelle Marsh (Henry’s Mum), Alwyne Taylor (the Librarian), Irfan Damani (Clare’s Dad), Alexandra Doar (Clare’s Mum), Alex Lodge (Jason/Mark) and Helena Pipe (Dr Kendrick).

Also in the cast are Billie Hardy, Daniel George-Wright, Serina Mathew, Nathaniel Purnell and Bobby Windebank. The roles of Young Clare and Alba will be shared by Ava Critchell, Lily Hanna, Poppy Pawson and Holly-Jade Roberts.

The Time Traveller's Wife has a book by Lauren Gunderson and music & lyrics by Joss Stone & Dave Stewart, with additional lyrics by Kait Kerrigan. Bill Buckhurst directs. Performances start 7 October 2023.

The cast of the UK & Ireland tour of Disney's Aladdin has been announced. Yeukayi Ushe will star as Genie, while Gavin Adams – a recent graduate of the Royal Academy of Music – will play Aladdin. Desmonda Cathabel will play Jasmine when the show opens in Edinburgh in October 223, with casting for the role in future venues to be announced in due course.

The cast also features Adam Strong as Jafar, Jo Servi as Sultan, Angelo Paragoso as Iago, Nay-Nay as Babkak, Adam Taylor as Omar and Nelson Bettencourt as Kassim.

The ensemble comprises Hannah Amin, Dammi Aregbeshola, Rico Bakker, Daisy Barnett, Sarah Benbelaid, Erin Gisele Chapman, Tau-En Chien, Zac Frieze, Juan Jackson, James Lim, Harriet Millier, Aaron Elijah Patel, Abbie Platts, Joseph Poulton, Olivier Scheers, Kerry Spark, Ricardo Spriggs, Damien Winchester and Niko Wirachman.

The final cast members of the Australian (Sydney and Melbourne) production of Grease have been announced. Keanu Gonzalez (as Kenickie), Lucy Fraser (Patty Simcox) and Gareth Isaac (Eugene) join the previously announced Annelise Hall (Sandy), Joseph Spanti (Danny), Mackenzie Dunn (Rizzo), Brianna Bishop (Marty), Patti Newton (Miss Lynch for the Melbourne season), Jay Laga’aia (Vince Fontaine) and Marcia Hines (Teen Angel), with Paulini playing the Teen Angel in certain performances.

Other cast members include Catty Hamilton (Frenchy), Caitlin Spears (Jan), Andy Seymour (Roger), Harry Targett (Sonny) and Tom Davis (Doody).

The ensemble includes Fabian Andrés, Oscar Bridges, Laura Joy Bunting, Cristina D’Agostino, Axel Duffy, Daniel Erbacher, Madeleine Mackenzie, Conor Putland, Rose Shannon-Duhigg and Emma Whitefield.

With new clarity and a 360-degree surround sound, these iconic Broadway albums suddenly sound like they were recorded yesterday. From the article:

I have maybe never been as shocked by a remaster as when I threw on a pair of headphones and started the Into the Woods Broadway album, honestly expecting the same experience but with some new surround sound elements added in. I was scarcely a second or two into the “Prologue” track when I could immediately tell how much of an upgrade had happened here. That echoey, far-away sound? Gone. Tom Aldredge and the rest of the original Broadway cast suddenly sound like they’re right there with me.

And somehow the sound upgrade also massively impacts the energy of the recording. Listening to the new remaster honestly sounds like it’s a completely new album when it’s actually just a re-mix of the original. Suddenly what I used to find low energy and dull is just as bright, vital, and sharp as that filmed stage performance I love so dearly.

Beyond the vocal performances, there’s lots to be said to what this newfound clarity adds to Jonathan Tunick’s orchestration as well. As a former music director who has conducted productions of Into the Woods during my career, I know that orchestration pretty well. But this new remaster adds such clarity that now I’m hearing all kinds of details in the instrumentation that I’ve never heard before. Whether it’s physical things like the scratch of a bow in that iconic fairy tale sextet or woodwind lines formerly relegated to a distant background, it adds a complexity that is really refreshing. Even with more modern recordings of the score available, this 360-degree mix might just make the original the definitive.

Sunday's final performance of FUNNY GIRL on Broadway ended with Lea Michele giving an emotional speech and singing 'My Man' as an encore (as Barbra Streisand did at her last performance in the original production).

According to BroadwayWorld, a pre-show announcement said that the role of Ms. Fanny Brice would be played by .... Lea Michele, also as they did they did for Streisand at her last performance. But given that Michele has been sick in the show's last week I imagine the announcement would have caused a lot of heart palpitations in the audience when it started.

Musical theatre related books on this BroadwayWorld reading list include:

• Song After Song: The Musical Life of Julie Andrews by Julie Hedlund
• Here's to the Ladies: Conversations with More of the Great Women of Musical Theater by Eddie Shapiro
• Bing and Billie and Frank and Ella and Judy and Barbra by Dan Callahan
• Face the Music: My Story by Alfie Boe
• Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory by Douglas L. Reside
• Broadway Decoded: Musical Theatre’s Forgotten References by Thomas S. Hishack
• Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance by Peter C. Kunze
• Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy by Stephen M. Silverman
• Seriously Mad: Mental Distress and the Broadway Musical by Aleksei Grinenko
• C'mon, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock by David Fantle & Tom Johnson
• Sondheim & Me: Revealing a Musical Genius by Paul Salsini
• Conversations with Women in Musical Theatre Leadership by Amanda Wansa Morgan
• Seasons of Love: Why Rent Matters by Emily Garside
• Conversations in Color: Exploring North American Musical Theatre by Sean Mayes

The actor and singer, aged 52, on what she learned by singing at weddings, her childhood dream coming true and battling vanity.

Australian musical theatre is set to hit a post-pandemic high note with a record seven shows playing on Sydney stages, three major productions to hit Melbourne, and the genre’s surging popularity buoyed by a new generation of young super fans.

For the first time in decades, all Sydney main stage theatres are fully booked this weekend with an array of Broadway revivals, West End stalwarts, and Australian originals playing to 40,000 people.

This weekend in Sydney, Wicked is previewing at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre ahead of its Thursday opening, Beauty and the Beast is at the Capitol, Miss Saigon at the Opera House, Elvis the Musical at the State Theatre, Tina at the Theatre Royal, and The Dismissal The Musical at the Seymour Centre. Even Sydney Fringe has embraced the bespoke cabaret musical with its Spiegeltent offering of The Marvellous Elephant Man, conceived and composed by three Australian musicians, and Hayes Theatre is running a cosy crime musical, Murder for Two.

In Melbourne, the return season of Moulin Rouge! The Musical is soon to be joined by La Cage aux Folles, Mamma Mia, Grease, and Chicago.

Singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose catalog and lifestyle formed the musical Escape to Margaritaville, has passed away at 76.

Escape to Margaritaville (with a book by Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley) features Buffet's music and lifestyle from an original story, and includes both new songs and the most-loved Buffett classics. The show premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2017, then had runs in New Orleans, Houston and Chicago before opening on Broadway in early 2018, closing after several months. A US tour followed.

Moulin Rouge's Broadway company held a "Spectacular Sing-Along Performance" of the musical on 30 August 2023. According to the Broadway Briefing newsletter:

The audience was handed a Sing Along Lyric Sheet that indicated when they were welcome to chime in with highlighted verses of certain numbers. During those verses, the house lights went on to signify the go ahead. The crowd was filled with superfans of the show who sang along to every lyric. The joy and energy of the audience and the cast was palpable, creating a unique and special night at the theater.

The Australian production of Moulin Rouge will hold a similar sing-along performance on Tuesday 21 November 2023 in Melbourne. where "the audience will be able to sing along to certain songs."

A Broadway fundraising concert next month for President Joe Biden will feature Josh Groban, Ben Platt, Sara Bareilles, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr, Laura Benanti, Annaleigh Ashford, Josh Gad, Alex Edelman, Christopher Jackson, LaChanze, Ruthie Ann Miles, Andrew Rannells, Aaron Tveit and Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Although at least one detail is being kept under wraps for the moment – the Broadway venue in Times Square has not been identified – the date has been set for Monday night, September 18, with ticket prices ranging from $250 for rear mezzanine seats to $7,500 for orchestra center front. The seating chart at the ticket website indicates that the concert will take place at an indoor theater rather than outdoors in Times Square.

Ahead of Mamma Mia! celebrating its 25th Anniversary in London on 6 April 2024, a new cast will be joining the West End company from 9 October 2023. Mamma Mia will continue to star Mazz Murray as Donna, Christopher Dickins as Harry, Stephen Beckett as Bill, Meg Hateley as Sophie and Miles Henderson as Sky, with Jennifer Adab continuing as Donna at certain performances. Jessie Odeleye moves from Ensemble to play the role of Ali. They will be joined by Kate Graham as Tanya, Nicola-Dawn Brook as Rosie, Haydn Oakley as Sam, Olivia Brookes as Lisa, Chay Wills as Eddie and Arcangelo Ciulla as Pepper.,Also continuing in the cast are Sinéad Courtney and Lawrence Guntert. They will be joined by Aaron Archer, Amy Barker, Matthew Barrow, John-Paul Birss, Daniel J Brian, Izzy Cross, Ellis Dackombe, Lauren Dawes, Léa Desjacques, Samantha Ivey, Jennie Jacobs, Luke Jasztal, Nicole Lupino, Flyn Mullins, Hayley-Jo Murphy, Bradley Perret, Jacob Ritzema and Ella Tweed.

Casting has been announced for the North American tour of Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan's Girl From the North Country, which will launch October 8in Minneapolis. The cast will include Alan Ariano as Dr. Walker, David Benoit as Mr. Burke, Ben Biggers as Gene Laine, Paul Blankenship as Offstage Cover, Jennifer Blood as Elizabeth Laine, Matt Manuel as Joe Scott, Sharaé Moultrie as Marianne Laine, Jay Russell as Mr. Perry, John Schiappa as Nick Laine, Chiara Trentalange as Kate Draper, Jill Van Velzer as Mrs. Burke, Jeremy Webb as Reverend Marlowe, Aidan Wharton as Elias Burke, and Carla Woods as Mrs. Neilsen. The ensemble includes Ashley D. Brooks, Justin Michael Duval, Kelly McCormick, and Hosea Mundi, with swings Warren Nolan Jr., Ali Regan, Rayla Garske, and Danny Vaccaro.

Drag artist Willam and Drew Droege will join the Tye Blue and Constantine Rousouli-penned Titanique off-Broadway. RuPaul’s Drag Race star Willam will take over the role of “Victor Garber” (currently played by Anthony Murphy) beginning Tuesday, September 5, while actor-comedian Drew Droege (Bright Colors and Bold Patterns) will take over the role of “Ruth” (currently played by Russell Daniels) beginning Thursday, August 31.

The Lion King North American Tour to Welcome Back Mukelisiwe Goba as Rafiki beginning performances on September 26 at the Showcenter Complex in Monterrey, Mexico, where the award-winning musical will play a two-week premiere engagement from September 19 through October 1, 2023. Goba, who previously played the role from 2015 – 2016 and intermittently from 2018 - 2023, succeeds Gugwana Dlamini, who will play her final performance as “Rafiki” on September 10 in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music.

Pearl Sun leads the cast of A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) of Connecticut's production of Sunset Boulevard. Michael Burrell plays Joe Gillis, and Helen J. Shen is Betty Schaefer.

Zachary Noah Piser has withdrawn from Tiananmen, a musical about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests weeks before its 4 October 2023 debut in Phoenix, Arizona. Piser posted a simple statement to this effect to his Instagram while on tour in China, prompting speculation that his withdrawal was due to pressure from the Chinese government.

Also in Connecticut, Goodspeed Musicals has announced casting for The 12, a new musical by
Robert Schenkkan and Neil Berg. The 12 is about the apostles in the days following the crucifixion, which will begin previews on September 8 ahead of an official opening on September 27 2023. Performances are scheduled through October 29. Pete will be played by Akron Lanier Watson, Andrew will be played by Wonzaā Johnson, Tom by Wesley Taylor, Jimmy by Etai Benson, Simon by Gregory Treco. John by Kyle Scatliffe, James by Kelvin Moon Loh, Tee by Mel Johnson Jr, Phil by Brandon J. Ellis, Bart by Rob Morrison, Matt by F. Michael Haynie, Mags by Adrienne Walker, Mother Mary by Rema Webb, with understudies Matt Caplan, Dion Simmons Grier, and Aurelia Williams.

2023 Tony winner J. Harrison Ghee will be out of Broadway's Some Like It Hot for "at least" the next six weeks, according to an Instagram story the actor posted August 30 2023. Understudy DeMarius R. Copes will take over the role of Jerry/Daphne in Ghee's absence. The musical continues its run at the Shubert Theatre.

Ghee shares that the sudden departure is due to surgery the actor must undergo "to address some issues that have arisen," though they stress that there's nothing to be worried about.

As Broadway's Funny Girl enters its final weeks on the boards, leading lady Lea Michele is "under the weather" and out of the August 29 performance, according to a production post on Instagram. Alternate Julie Benko will perform in her absence.

No word on when Michele is expected to return. The production, playing the August Wilson, will offer its final performance September 3.

Ran across this website which rush, lottery, standing room and other special tickets available for Broadway shows.

Other sites which detail rush and lottery details include:

• Playbill
• NY Tix
• New York Theater

Highlights of new releases this week include cast albums for the Nick Butcher / Tom Ling musical The Little Big Things, the Drew Lanimore musical The New Peggy, the Anthony Leigh Adams / Rex Pickett musical Sideways, and the book Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory by Douglas L Reside.

“Tick, Tick ... Boom!” has long been a passion project for Neil Patrick Harris. He’d been offered the lead in an off-Broadway staging of Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical, but film commitments prevented him from playing the part until its London premiere, in 2005.

Now he rekindles his relationship with the show by the composer of “Rent,” in a different role: as director of the concert version of “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” that launches the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage season in January.

“I’ve always loved how the alchemy of different performers and their processes, and different designers coming together, create a singular voice,” Harris said in a phone interview. “I always am interested as an actor in how I fit in a larger piece, rather than just being myopic, or my being a singularity.”

The actor-director said he has some ideas about what his new “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” will look like, and about the questions the musical addresses, regarding an artist’s choices between craft or commerce. “It’s the dream job,” he said of assuming the director’s chair. “And I do spend a lot of my time questioning what I should or shouldn’t be doing.”