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Exclusive: The Broadway revival of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal has added to the cast with Andrew Burnap, Anthony Michael Lopez, Daniel Pearce (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and Kimber Elayne Sprawl (Girl from the North Country).

The four will play, respectively, Cassio, Roderigo, Brabantio and Emilia. They’ll join the previously announced Washington, who plays Othello, Gyllenhaal (Iago) and Molly Osborne (Desdemona).

The new castings were announced today by producer Brian Anthony Moreland. Complete casting will be announced soon.

Kenny Leon directs.

The production will begin previews Monday, February 24, 2025, at Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre, with an opening night on Sunday, March 23. The limited 15-week engagement runs through Sunday, June 8.

The production’s creative team will feature Derek McLane (scenic design), Dede Ayite (costume design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), Justin Ellington (sound design), Mia Neal...

Exclusive: Grammy winner and Real Housewives vet Kandi Burruss and husband/entrepreneur Todd Tucker have joined the producing team of next spring’s much-anticipated Broadway revival of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Burruss and Tucker previously collaborated with Othello producer Brian Anthony Moreland on the Tony Award nominated revival of The Piano Lesson as well as The Wiz and Thoughts of a Colored Man.

Moreland announced the pair’s participation as Othello producers today. Also announced was the co-producing roster, which will include football player-turned-actor Devale Ellis and A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical producer Ken Davenport.

The first Broadway revival of the Shakespeare tragedy since 1982’s production starring James Earl Jones, Christopher Plummer and Dianne Wiest, the spring 2025 staging will star Washington as Othello, Gyllenhaal as Iago and Broadway newcomer Molly Osborne as Desdemona. Kenny Leon directs.

The revival’s line-up of co-producers includes Ellis, Adam Zotovich,...

Floyd Collins, the 1994 musical that has built an enduring popularity due to an Off Broadway cast recording, will finally receive a Broadway staging: The Adam Guettel-Tina Landau musical will be part of the just-announced 2024-2025 40th Anniversary Lincoln Center Theater season.

The musical, based on the true and tragic story of a 1925 cave explorer in Kentucky that has long since passed into folklore, joins the previously announced play McNeal starring Robert Downey Jr. on the Lct season Broadway line-up. Floyd Collins will being previews on March 27, 2025 at Lct’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, with an opening night of Monday, April 21.

Lct also announced its Off Broadway season line-up, which will include The Blood Quilt by Katori Hall, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, featuring a new version by Mark O’Rowe, directed by Jack O’Brien, both at Lct’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

At Lct’s smaller Clair Tow Theater,...

Robert Downey Jr. will make his his Broadway debut in the lead role of McNeal, the new play by Ayad Akhtar, author of the Tony-nominated Junk and the Pulitzer-winner Disgraced.

Downey will play the title character Jacob McNeal in the production staged by Lincoln Center Theater and directed by Bartlett Sher (To Kill A Mockingbird).

McNeal will begin previews Thursday, September 5, and open on Monday, September 30, at Lct’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The production will play a strictly limited engagement through Sunday, November 24.

Complete casting will be announced at a later date.

The official synopsis: “Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Jacob McNeal is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a...

Robert Downey Jr. is making his Broadway debut this fall in a new play by Ayad Akhtar.

The play, called McNeal, will see Downey portraying a talented writer who grapples with a new novel, a broken family life and “an unhealthy fascination with artificial intelligence.” Bartlett Sher, resident director at the Lincoln Center who also helmed To Kill a Mockingbird, among others, is directing.

Downey’s production company, Team Downey, is producing, in association with Lincoln Center Theater.

The play will run at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater starting Sept. 5 and opening on Sept. 30. The play will be a strictly limited engagement running through Nov. 24. Complete casting will be announced at a later date.

The Iron Man star won his first Oscar this year for his role in Oppenheimer. His recent projects include the HBO and A24 adaptation of the novel The Sympathizer. He is also slated to appear in Paramount Pictures’ Vertigo.

Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch and Katie Holmes will star in the Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town this fall.

In the production, directed by Kenny Leon, Parsons will play the role of Stage Manager, Deutch will play Emily Webb and Holmes will play Mrs. Webb. They lead a cast of 28 actors, who also include Richard Thomas (The Waltons, To Kill a Mockingbird) as Mr. Webb, Ephraim Sykes (Ain’t Too Proud, Hairspray Live!) as George Gibbs and Billy Eugene Jones (Purlie Victorious) as Dr. Gibbs.

The play will begin previews at the Barrymore Theatre on Sept. 17, ahead of an Oct. 10 opening.

Known for his role as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, Parsons also has extensive stage credits, including a role in Mother Play, which begins Broadway previews April 3. He has previously appeared on Broadway in productions including The Boys in the Band, An Act of God and The Normal Heart.

Home, the Samm-Art Williams play directed by Kenny Leon and opening on Broadway this summer, has announced its cast.

The Roundabout Theatre Company production will star Tory Kittles (The Equalizer) as “Cephus Miles,” Brittany Inge (Atlanta) as “Woman One / Pattie Mae Wells,” and Stori Ayers (The Last O.G.) as “Woman Two”—all in their Roundabout Theatre Company debuts.

The production will mark the first Broadway staging of Home since 1980. The play was originally staged by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979.

The synopsis: Cephus Miles has the whole world in his callused hands—until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man. Roundabout describes Home as “a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong.”

Home will begin preview performances on Friday, May 17, with an official opening on Wednesday, June 5, at the Todd Haimes Theatre.

A new production of Samm-Art Williams’ 1979 play Home, to be directed by Kenny Leon, will begin performances May 17, 2014, at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre / Todd Haimes Theatre, with an opening night set for June 5.

The limited engagement – casting yet to be announced – runs through July 28.

Tony-nominated for its original 1980 Broadway run starring Charles Brown and directed by Douglas Turner Ward, Home was initially staged the year prior by the Negro Ensemble Company and was featured in 2021 as part of the initial year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project.

As described by Roundabout, Home “is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong.” The main character, Chephus Miles, “has the whole world in his callused hands – until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man.”

The creative team...

The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for the first time during the 2023-2024 Broadway season on November 30, to discuss eligibility of 10 productions for the 77th Annual Tony Awards in 2024.

The productions discussed were: “Grey House,” “Once Upon a One More Time,” “Here Lies Love,” “The Cottage,” “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “The Shark is Broken,” “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Gutenberg! The Musical!”

See‘Here We Are’ reviews: Stephen Sondheim’s final musical is ‘enchanting,’ ‘compelling’ with ‘exceptional’ cast

The following determinations were made:

Briga Heelan and Justin Guarini will be considered eligible in the Lead Actress/Actor in a Musical categories for their respective performances in “Once Upon a One More Time.”

Anna Fleischle (scenic design) and Sven Ortel (projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Musical...

Daniel Radcliffe won’t be competing against his Merrily We Roll Along Broadway co-star Jonathan Groff for a Tony Award next June, and the reason has nothing to do with performance quality: The awards administration committee ruled today that Radcliffe will be eligible in the featured performer category, apparently leaving the lead category to Groff.

Lindsay Mendez, who plays Mary Flynn, the musical’s most prominent female character, will, like Radcliffe, who plays Charley Kringas, be eligible in the featured slot (the Tony’s equivalent to Oscar’s “supporting” categories).

While Groff’s character of Franklin Shepard has traditionally been considered the main character of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, this year’s hit Maria Friedman-directed revival included the three stars’ names above the title, leaving some wiggle room with regard to the category decisions.

Indeed, audience members might be hard-pressed to decide which actor goes where: While...

Corruption, a new play by Oslo playwright J.T. Rogers about the phone hacking scandal that engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in 2011, will be produced by Lincoln Center Theater this winter in a production that will reunite Rogers with his Oslo director Bartlett Sher.

Based on the book Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and The Corruption of Britain by former British Labour Party MP Tom Watson and Martin Hickman, Corruption begins previews Thursday, February 15, 2024, at Lct’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Opening night is Monday, March 11.

Casting will be announced at a later date.

According to the official synopsis, Corruption “tells the story behind the story of the phone hacking scandal that engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in 2011, stunning the world and upending British politics. When Parliament member Tom Watson is maliciously smeared by the newspapers of Murdoch’s News International, he decides to fight back – taking on its larger-than-life leader Rebekah Brooks.

Tony winner Kenny Leon will direct a new Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the fall of 2024, the first revival of the classic play since the 2002 production that starred Paul Newman as the stage manager.

The production dates, cast, and venue will be announced at a later date.

Leon’s many Broadway directing credits include Ohio State Murders, Topdog/Underdog, A Soldier’s Play, American Son and the current Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch starring Leslie Odom Jr. at The Music Box Theatre. He won the 2014 Tony for Best Direction for A Raisin in the Sun starring Denzel Washington, Sophie Okonedo, Latanya Richardson Jackson and Anika Noni Rose.

“Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in my mind stands at the top of the Mount Rushmore of great American Theatre,” said Leon in a statement. “I feel blessed and fortunate to have gained the trust...

Tony Award nominee Ato Blankson-Wood (Slave Play) will take on the title role of Hamlet this summer, starring in the Public Theater’s extended, nine-week Free Shakespeare in the Park production at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Kenny Leon will direct.

Previews begin Thursday, June 8, with an official opening on Wednesday, June 28. The production runs through Sunday, August 6 as part of the outdoor theater’s 61st season.

The Public describes the production as “a riveting, contemporary post-Covid take on Shakespeare’s classic tale of family and betrayal, as enduring as the stars above Central Park.”

“I’m so happy to be at The Delacorte once again and to share something that binds us to one another,” said director Leon, who directed Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte in 2019. “A 500-year-old play exploring the need for a strong foundation of family, with music and words, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has...

Ohio State Murders, the Broadway debut of 91-year-old playwright Adrienne Kennedy starring Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, is ending its Broadway run in January.

Producers said Thursday that Jan. 15 will be the Kenny Leon-directed play’s final performance at the James Earl Jones Theatre. The show was the first to be staged in the newly renamed theater on W. 48th St. The show officially opened Dec. 8 following previews, which began Nov. 11, and was originally scheduled to close Feb. 12.

McDonald portrays writer Suzanne Alexander, who has returned to her alma mater to appear as a guest speaker discussing the violence in her work. But with her arrival, a dark mystery unravels, as Alexander grapples with the racial violence she experienced as an undergraduate in this suspense play that examines the destructiveness of racism in our society.

Ohio State Murders also stars Bryce Pinkham, Lizan Mitchell, Mister Fitzgerald and Abigail Stephenson,...

Fans of the extraordinary Audra McDonald have had a long wait for her return to the Broadway stage. Yes, she did host the 2021 Tony Awards that were previously postponed by the pandemic, and yes, she has been starring in “The Good Fight” with countless theatre alums, but nothing compares to seeing McDonald live. After three and a half years, the actress now leads the first production of an Adrienne Kennedy play on Broadway: “Ohio State Murders” opened at the newly-minted James Earl Jones Theatre on Dec. 8.

In “Ohio State Murders,” McDonald plays Suzanne Alexander, a writer who returns to her former college to deliver a lecture on her work. Through her narration, she reveals the racism she experienced as a young student, her relationship with a professor (played by Tony Award nominee Bryce Pinkham), and the murders of the play’s title that continue to haunt her and her writing.

Additional casting and the full creative team for the Broadway premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders were announced today, with Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) and Lizan Mitchell (Cullud Wattah) joining previously announced star Audra McDonald.

Ohio State Murders will be the first show to play at the newly renamed James Earl Jones Theatre, with previews for the limited engagement beginning Friday, November 11, and an official opening on Thursday, December 8.

Kenny Leon directs, and additional casting will be announced soon.

The creative team for Ohio State Murders includes set design by Beowulf Boritt, lighting design by Allen Lee Hughes, costume design by Dede Ayite, sound design by Justin Ellington and projections design by Jeff Sugg.

The plot follows the unraveling of a mystery when writer Suzanne Alexander (McDonald) returns to her alma mater as...

Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, will return to Broadway this fall in a 20th anniversary production directed by Kenny Leon and starring In the Heights‘ Corey Hawkins and Watchmen‘s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

The strictly limited 16-week engagement will begin previews on Tuesday, September 27, at Broadway’s John Golden Theatre. The production officially will open on Thursday, October 20.

Tickets are set to go on sale Monday, June 20, Juneteenth National Independence Day.

The production is being produced by David Stone, Lachanze, Rashad V. Chambers, Marc Platt, Debra Martin Chase, and the Shubert Organization.

Hawkins and Abdul-Mateen II will play brothers Lincoln and Booth, respectively, in Parks’ “darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity.” Topdog/Underdog tells the story of the two brothers Lincoln and Booth — named as a joke by their father — who are haunted by the past and their obsession with three-card monte, the street con game.

Click here to read the full article.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins will star in Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’ play Topdog/Underdog on Broadway this fall.

Directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon, the limited 16-week engagement — which doubles as the 20th anniversary of its original Broadway run — will open on Oct. 20 at the John Golden Theatre, with previews set to begin Sept. 27.

Tony nominee Hawkins and Emmy winner Abdul-Mateen II will star in the show, described as a darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, as brothers Lincoln and Booth — names given to the duo as a joke by their father. When Lincoln comes to live with his younger brother after being thrown out by his wife, he’s working as a whiteface Abraham Lincoln impersonator, something he finds embarrassing but that serves as the duo’s only source of income until his job is suddenly...

Director and choreographer Camille A. Brown and her cast of seven female singer-dancer-actors breathe life and vitality into Ntozake Shange’s still-potent mid-1970s touchstone for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre on Broadway, Shange’s fantasia of poetry, dance and stories of confession, defiance, sisterhood and, above all, perseverance, holds a power that’s not been weakened either by decades or the loss of a once startling newness.

Shange called her mix of spoken word set to dance and movement a “choreopoem,” a word as lovely and evocative today as it was when for colored girls (as it’s often abbreviated) began Off Broadway performances back in 1974. If the word itself seems tied to its era, the form would take root and work its influence on any number of theatrical works in any number of decades, from The...

The Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, directed and choreographed by Tony Award nominee Camille A. Brown has announced its full cast and creative team, with performances set to begin at the Booth Theatre on Friday, April 1 and opening night on Wednesday, April 20.

Joining the cast are Amara Granderson as Lady in Orange, Tendayi Kuumba as Lady in Brown, Kenita R. Miller as Lady in Red, Okwui Okpokwasili as Lady in Green, Stacey Sargeant as Lady in Blue, Alexandria Wailes as Lady in Purple, and D. Woods as Lady in Yellow.

The revival will feature set design by Myung Hee Cho, costume design by Sarafina Bush, lighting design by Jiyoun Chang, sound design by Justin Ellington, projection design by Aaron Rhyne, and hair design by Cookie Jordan. The show also will feature...

The quest to create the perfect sandwich takes on existential tones in Clyde’s, the tasty if occasionally and slightly undercooked new dramedy from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Though it lacks the heft of the playwright’s great Sweat, Clyde’s makes for an intriguing companion piece.

Starring a scenery-chewing (and that’s not a slam) Uzo Aduba and a calming Ron Cephas Jones, Clyde’s is set in a truck stop sandwich shop in Pennsylvania, one of those last-chance places dotting America’s highways both concrete and metaphysical, somewhere between the roadside hash joint of The Petrified Forest and the Double R Diner of Twin Peaks..

Even before the first bolt of flame erupts when a particularly devilish character...

Multiple Emmy Award-winners Uzo Aduba and Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us) have been cast in Second Stage Theater’s upcoming Broadway production of Lynn Nottage’s new play Clyde’s, along with Reza Salazar (Sweat) and Kara Young (Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven).

Second Stage announced the casting today, with a fifth role remaining to be cast.

Directed by Kate Whoriskey, Clyde’s will begin previews Wednesday, Nov. 3, with an official opening on Monday, Nov. 22, at Second Stage’s Broadway home, The Hayes Theater.

Second Stage describes the new play as “a stirring and funny new play from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and her frequent collaborator, director Kate Whoriskey,” set in a truck stop sandwich shop where a formerly incarcerated kitchen staff has a shot at redemption.

Aduba will play Clyde, the shop’s callous owner who...

The Lincoln Center Theater production of Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s award-winning play Pass Over will begin performances August 4 at the August Wilson Theatre, making it first Broadway show in line to hit the stage since the industry’s Covid shutdown in 2020.

As now planned, Pass Over will begin preview performances nearly a full month before the previous front-runner, Hadestown, returns on Sept. 2. The official opening night for Pass Over will be Sunday, Sept. 12; tickets go on sale Friday for performances through Oct. 10.

Directed by Obie Award winner Danya Taymor, Pass Over will star Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood in his Broadway debut, and Tony Award winner Gabriel Ebert (Matilda). Pass Over will mark the Broadway debuts of writer Nwandu and director Taymor.

The play’s world premiere was produced and presented at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was filmed by director Spike Lee for a film...

Second Stage Theater has confirmed the post-shutdown Broadway productions of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out and Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy, with the earliest – Clyde’s – set to begin performances this Fall.

Take Me Out, the all-star Covid-delayed revival directed by Scott Ellis and starring Patrick J. Adams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jesse Williams, will begin performances in Spring 2022, a year later than initially planned. Casting was not confirmed, but Second Stage’s website still lists the cast as originally announced.

Between Riverside and Crazy, directed by Austin Pendleton, is planned for Fall 2022. All Broadway productions of the nonprofit Second Stage will take place at the company’s Helen Hayes Theater.

Second Stage also confirmed two upcoming productions at its Off Broadway Kiser Theater, including the previously announced Letters of Suresh by Rajiv Joseph, directed by May Adrales (Fall 2021) as well as...

Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s play Pass Over, which received the 2019 Lortel Award for Outstanding Play for its Off Broadway run, will open at Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre for a limited engagement. Dates and cast have not been announced.

The play will be directed by Obie Award winner Danya Taymor.

The 2017 play, which was filmed at Chicago’s Steppenwolf theater by Spike Lee for a 2018 adaptation that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, will be updated and revised for its Broadway debut. The Broadway production will be “a new version that centers the health, hope and joy of our audiences, especially Black people,” said the playwright in a statement.

Pass Over, drawing inspiration from Waiting for Godot and the Exodus story, is set on a city street corner where Moses and Kitch “stand around – talking shit, passing the time, and hoping that maybe today will be different.” As they dream of their promised land,...

The American Theatre Wing’s President and CEO Heather Hitchens and The Village Voice President and CEO Peter Barbey revealed the winners of the 63rd Annual Obie Awards Monday night. Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, produced by Atlantic Theater Company, was honored as Best New American Play while Tony Award-nominated and three-time Obie Award-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant received a special Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Hosted by Emmy and Obie-winning actor John Leguizamo, the ceremony was held at Terminal 5 in New York and was live streamed on the official Obie Awards Twitter account. Presenters included Matthew Broderick, Lucy Liu, Oliver Platt, and many others.

The ceremony also included a special performance by Stephen Trask who performed “Wig in a Box” honoring the 20th Anniversary of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Laura Osnes also performed “What Matters Most” as part of the In Memoriam segment.

Read the complete list of winners below.