Interscope Records has released the official video of the country cover version of “Only Us” from the upcoming Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, performed by Grammy winners Carrie Underwood and Dan + Shay. The full album will be released September 24, the same day that the film premieres. Other cover versions on the soundtrack feature Sam Smith, Finneas, and Tori Kelly. All tracks were written by the show’s original Tony-winning composing team, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, with the song “The Anonymous Ones” written in collaboration with actor Amandla Stenberg, who plays Alana Black in the film.
Ben Platt, who reprises his 2015 Tony-winning turn in the title role of the upcoming Universal Pictures film Dear Evan Hansen, performed the song “You Will Be Found” live on the September 1 episode of NBC’s America’s Got Talent. Both the movie and its soundtrack will be released September 24. The film cast also includes Julianne Moore (Heidi Hansen), Kaitlyn Dever (Zoe Murphy), Amy Adams (Cynthia Murphy), Danny Pino (Larry Murphy), Colton Ryan (Connor Murphy), Amandla Stenberg (Alana), and Nik Dodani (Jared).
Directed by Stephen Chbosky, the screenplay is by the show’s Tony-winning librettist Steven Levenson, with music and lyrics by the show’s Grammy- and Tony-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The remaining creative team includes Brandon Trost (cinematography), Anne McCabe (editing), Beth Mickle (production design), Brittany Hites (art direction), and Lance Totten (set decoration).
Last night, the first two Broadway musicals returned to in-person performances, as New York’s stages begin to reopen and welcome back audiences after 18 months in the dark. The first show is a revival of the 2016 Tony-nominated musical Waitress, which will play a limited engagement through January 9, with creator Sara Bareilles headlining the cast through October 17. The second show is the 2019 Tony-winning musical Hadestown, including its Tony-winning featured actor André De Shields as Hermes. On September 14, the next group of Broadway musicals is scheduled to return, including Tony winners Chicago, Hamilton, The Lion King, and Wicked.
After its show, the cast of Hadestown took to the balcony of the Walter Kerr Theatre to celebrate its first night back, leading the crowd in a sing-along of “Lean on Me.”
At the curtain call of her show’s reopening run, Waitress composer Sara Bareilles invited Amanda Kloots, widow of original cast member Nick Cordero, to join the company on stage to perform Cordero’s song “Live Your Life.”
The Amazon Prime musical adaptation of Cinderella that begins streaming September 3 has received mixed reviews from critics. A modern take on the traditional fairy tale by Charles Perrault, the film is written and directed by Kay Cannon, based on an idea from James Corden, who produced the film through Fulwell 73 with Leo Pearlman, Jonathan Kadin, and Shannon McIntosh. Other creative team members include Jessica Weiss (music), Stacey Schroeder (editing), Paul Kirby (production design), Kathryn Pyle (art direction), Ellen Mirojnick (costumes), and Keith Harrison (music direction).
The cast includes Camila Cabello (in her acting debut as Ella), Billy Porter (godparent Fab G), Idina Menzel (stepmother Vivian), Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer (Stepsisters), Nicholas Galitzine (Prince Robert), Minnie Driver (Queen Beatrice), Pierce Brosnan (King Rowan), and James Corden, John Mulaney, and Romesh Ranganathan (Footmen).
Associated Press (Jocelyn Noveck): There’s nothing so drastic here that people won’t end up Happily Ever After. Yet if there’s a catchphrase here, it is not that: it is “I Choose Me.” If only this admirable message weren’t reinforced so strenuously. … However it measures up to its predecessors (and inevitable future iterations), you can’t argue … that your destiny belongs in your own hands, not in those of someone who chooses to pluck you magnanimously from your own story and place you in theirs. 2 stars out of 4
The Atlantic (David Sims): It’s a loud, brassy update that mixes in pop songs, self-referential jokes, and a thuddingly obvious message of empowerment. … Like the worst modernizations, Cinderella feels like the result of out-of-touch executives trying to identify the hip new thing. A town crier raps the news with all the bravado but none of the skill of a Hamilton song. … Everything in Cinderella, admirable as its message may be, is soulless—and that robs it of any joy.
AV Club (Caroline Siede): There’s plenty of fun to be had in its goofily self-aware retelling of the age-old fairy tale. … While this version of Cinderella likely won’t top anyone’s list of all-time best adaptations, it’s a winking, glittering family comedy that’s cohesive in tone and confident in what it wants to be. And mostly it just wants to be flashy, toe-tapping karaoke. … This frothy Cinderella may have all the heft of a helium balloon, but that’s as much a feature as it is a bibbidi bobbidi bug.
Chicago Sun-Times (Richard Roeper): The Cinderella fairy tale has been adapted time and time and time again … and now we’ve got a new jukebox musical update with some modern and progressive themes about gender roles, and it’s a most welcome addition to the library. … Cinderella is filled with positive messages for princes and princesses of all ages, the soundtrack is irresistible and Camila Cabello can now add “movie star” to her resume. 3 out of 4 stars
The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw): Cinderella isn’t bad, and Camila Cabello makes a rather personable lead, carrying off some of the movie’s generous helping of funny lines. … But satirizing a fairytale’s heteronormative patriarchal mythology is going to be tricky if that mythology is needed to sell the movie globally, and you wind up making some sort of accommodation. … This movie rather fudges that climactic moment, but has charm in its goofy way: a good-natured and easygoing revival. 3 out of 5 stars
The Hollywood Reporter (Lovia Gyarkye): Cinderella suffers from a host of problems, but its real curse is terrible timing. If this most recent reboot, with its heavy-handed feminist messaging, had been released decades ago, it might have stood a chance at being subversive. … Powerful lessons in self-confidence, perseverance and the power of imagination provide an alluring foundation for ambitious and visually stunning storytelling. It’s sad that, watching this version, you wouldn’t be able to tell.
IndieWire (Kristen Lopez): With the deck quite literally stacked against the film, it’s remarkable just how effervescent and charming Kay Cannon’s Cinderella actually is. … [Cannon] understands that there’s little that can actually be done to set the story apart from its predecessors, and thus decides to intensify the fun of it all. … The flaws in the narrative are nothing in comparison to the vibrancy and energy on display with each and every musical number, worth dancing for, maybe even in a pair of glass slippers. Grade: B-
Variety (Courtney Howard): While Cannon’s inspired creative approach and jukebox musical style all point to an elegant and empowering redesign of this most familiar of garments, her execution puts quite a few tears in the fabric. … Even though prior iterations of this tale … offered similarly enlightened, forward-thinking commentary, Cannon’s, for better and worse, is far more obtuse about its machinations. And while it’s a noble effort from a capable director, this glass slipper proves frustratingly ill-fitting.
Vulture (Jackson McHenry): The overarching tone of this new version of Cinderella is self-congratulation. The movie … takes it upon itself to reinvent the classic not-so-feminist tale of wish fulfillment for 2021 with grating results. … On top of all this, Cinderella is a musical, primarily a jukebox of the Moulin Rouge! variety, though the song choices are less than inspired. … A musical will make no sense if there’s no reason for these characters to sing at all. … There’s nothing under the surface here, just a girl trying to sell you a dress.
The Wrap (Yolanda Machado): This is a film for teenage girls, offering them a message of girl-boss feminism, and it makes no excuses about it. Structurally, Cannon composes the film almost like a lovingly curated stream of similarly styled TikToks. Bouncing from musical number to musical number, each scene showcases the incredible costume work but provides little substance or depth. … Cinderella has far less substance than [Cannon’s] other features, ultimately making this a one-time, forgettable watch.
New York auction house Bonhams will offer items from the estate of Adolph Green (1914-2002) and Phyllis Newman (1933-2019) in A Helluva Life, an online sale from September 2 to 14. Green and his collaborator Betty Comden wrote nearly 30 Broadway and MGM musicals, including the iconic Singin’ in the Rain. Newman was an award-winning stage and screen performer. “Our parents both had long and extraordinary careers and lives,” noted their children, Amanda and Adam. “Both were first generation Americans who came from the humblest of beginnings and went on to create artistic and personal lives for themselves beyond their wildest dreams. We are proud of their legacy and happy to share some of it.”
Among the sale highlights are six Tony Awards, including those won by Green for Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), Applause (1970), The Will Rogers Follies (1991), and On The Twentieth Century (1978) as well as the one Newman won for Subways Are for Sleeping (1961). Each award is estimated at $4,000 to $6,000. Other highlights include Green’s personal annotated 1952 script for Singin’ in the Rain ($800-$1,200), an Al Hirschfeld cartoon of the original 1944 Broadway cast of On theTown featuring Green ($3,000-$5,000), and Green and Newman’s 1960 wedding photos ($1,500-$2,000) by acclaimed photographer Richard Avedon.
On Sunday, PBS premiered Wicked in Concert, a musical celebration of the iconic theater score by composer Stephen Schwartz in reimagined musical arrangements especially created for the event. Original Broadway cast stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth hosted the concert, directed by Baayork Lee. Featured entertainers included Mario Cantone, Gavin Creel, Ariana DeBose, Cynthia Erivo, Stephanie Hsu, Rita Moreno, Jennifer Nettles, Alex Newell, Isaac Powell, Gabrielle Ruiz, Ali Stroker, and Amber Riley, whom you can watch below singing “Defying Gravity.” The full event is available now for streaming at the PBS website.
The Broadway League has launched This Is Broadway, a historic initiative to welcome theater audiences back to Broadway as productions begin to reopen this fall after 18 months of shutdown. “This is Broadway brings together the joy and excitement we all feel for this art form and the rebound of New York City. Broadway reopening means 97,000 workers returning to their jobs and the insatiable desire for live performance back on stage,” said Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin. “I am so thankful for all the work that went into creating this moment of unity, and I look forward to all theater fans seeing a show this fall!”
As part of the campaign, The Broadway League will run a contest in which one lucky winner will receive four tickets to every Broadway show in the 2021-22 season — 37 shows in all, valued at $18,000. The contest is free to enter and runs from September 1 to October 15. To enter, visit www.thisisbroadway.org and log in or sign up for Audience Rewards membership enrollment and opt into emails from Audience Rewards.
Below you can watch a short film, narrated by Tony-winning producer Oprah Winfrey, that kicked off the initiative. The video features stars such as Hugh Jackman, Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sara Bareilles, Billy Porter, Angela Lansbury, Ethel Merman, James Earl Jones, and Denzel Washington, among many others in footage from 99 shows that highlight the rich history of Broadway.
Sony Music / Legacy Recordings has released the original Broadway cast album of Girl from the North Country on multiple platforms, featuring 22 tracks from the show by Conor McPherson (book) and Bob Dylan (score). Set during 1934 in a time-weathered guesthouse in America’s heartland, the show concerns a group of wayward souls as they pass in and out of each other’s lives. The Broadway production began previews February 7, 2020, and opened March 5. One week later, the show shuttered due to New York’s pandemic restrictions, and it will finally reopen October 13, 2021.
The cast includes Todd Almond, Jeannette Bayardelle, Caitlin Houlahan, Robert Joy, Marc Kudisch, Luba Mason, Matt McGrath, Tom Nelis, Colton, Ryan, Jay O. Sanders, Austin Scott, Kimber Elayn Sprawl, and Mare Winningham, accompanied by the origianl Broadway band The Marouthas, which includes music director Marco Paguia (piano, harmonium), Andy Stack (guitars), Martha McDonnell (violin, mandolin), and Mary Ann McSweeney (bass), as well as Dean Sharenow (drums, percussion) and Erik Della Penna (harmonica).
The West End cast album was recorded at London’s Abbey Road in August 2017 and released that September. The Music Which Inspired Girl from the North Country, a collection from Dylan’s original studio albums, was released in January 2018. The Broadway cast album was recorded at New York’s Reservoir Studios and Steel Cut Audio, guided by producers Dean Sharenow, Simon Hale, and Conor McPherson. Below is a clip from those Broadway recording sessions.
Apple TV+ has just released the official trailer for its live recording of the 2017 Broadway musical Come from Away, which will be available for streaming September 10. The show recounts the true story of Gander, Newfoundland, which hosted the passengers of 38 flights grounded during the week of the September 11 attacks. The creative team for the film includes Irene Sankoff and David Hein (book, music, lyrics), Christopher Ashley (direction), Kelly Devine (musical staging), Ian Eisendrath (music supervision, arrangements), Beowulf Boritt (sets), Toni-Leslie James (costumes), Howell Binkley (lights), Gareth Owen (sound), and August Eriksmoen (orchestrations).
The film cast includes original Broadway cast members Petrina Bromley (Bonnie), Jenn Colella (Beverley, Annette), Joel Hatch (Claude), Caesar Samayoa (Kevin J, Ali), Q Smith (Hannah), Astrid Van Wieren (Beulah), and Sharon Wheatley (Diane), as well as De’lon Grant (Bob), Tony Lepage (Kevin T), Emily Walton (Janice), Jim Walton (Nick, Doug), and Paul Whitty (Oz).
The film adaptation of the 2017 Olivier-nominated stage musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, itself adapted from Jenny Popplewell’s 2011 TV documentary Jamie, has received generally favorable reviews from critics. The film’s creative team includes stage creators Dan Gillespie Sells (music), Tom MacRae (screenplay), Jonathan Butterell (direction) in his feature debut, and Kate Prince (choreography), as well as Anne Dudley (score), Christopher Ross (cinematography), Mark Everson (editing), Jane Levick (production design), Liz Simpson and Adam Tomlinson (art direction), Maxine Carlier (set decoration), and Guy Speranza (costumes).
The cast includes Max Harwood (Jamie), Sarah Lancashire (mom Margaret), Lauren Patel (Pritti), Shobna Gulati (Ray), Ralph Ineson (dad Wayne), Adeel Akhtar (Iman), Samuel Bottomley (Dean Paxton), Sharon Horgan (Miss Hedge), and Richard E. Grant (Hugo aka Loco Chanelle). The film premiered June 12 at Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco and will be available for streaming September 17 on Amazon Prime Video.
Deadline (Pete Hammond): I’m not exactly sure everyone will be talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, but this film adaptation of the London West End musical hit is heartfelt and winning in its own right. The terrific cast, including newcomer Max Harwood as the title character and a scene-stealing Richard E. Grant, is perfectly chosen to make this indie charmer something to see. … The filmmakers here should be proud of what they have accomplished, and this film is certain to become a welcome discovery with real word-of-mouth potential once its hits Amazon.
Hollywood Reporter (David Rooney): The tried-and-true template of the individualistic dreamer struggling to rise above the gray prospects of life in regional working-class England gets a glittery paint job. … The title character is played with vivacity, cheeky pluck and a touching undertow of vulnerability by talented discovery Max Harwood. … The fact that the story plays out almost entirely to expectations … while still maintaining its freshness is due in large part to the natural appeal of Harwood, who makes Jamie’s courage uplifting and even makes his self-absorption endearing.
Screen Daily (Tim Grierson): Max Harwood’s big-screen debut coasts on charm and touching vulnerability, turning Jamie into an endearing stand-in for no doubt countless adolescents who just want to be accepted for who they are. … The narrative moves along briskly enough, although the plot complications are fairly predictable, up to and including a big finale in which Jamie will have to face down those trying to deny his authentic self. But the performances are so modest and lovely … that it’s easy to be like most everyone else around Jamie and cheer him on during this journey of discovery. The happy ending is assured, and quite satisfying.
Theatrely (Juan A. Ramirez): Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a musical which, the further I get away from having seen it on stage, the more I appreciate it. … Its appeal lay mostly in its earned earnestness, infectious score and all-out performances by a hungry young cast. Hunger is what drives the character of Jamie. … It seems that in scaling down from stage to screen, his hunger has become mere fantasy. … But enough motherly patronizing, because Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is ultimately a pleasure to experience and features strong supporting turns from its cast. … I will be rewatching it for its dazzling numbers, if not for its dramatic value.
The Wrap (Carlos Aguilar): Giving a lesson on how to become a star in a single try, Harwood … commands attention from the initial defiant lines of the cheeky opening number, “And You Don’t Even Know It.” He juggles the fierce boldness the character puts on when performing and the tenderhearted predicament of a boy who yearns for his father’s acceptance. … The neatly wrapped ending is telegraphed from continents away. But even under those rules, Harwood’s already rarefied quality and Butterell’s adept choices … color Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a high-heeled and glossy romp that’s radical in its loving optimism.
Interscope Records has released the official video of the country cover version of “Only Us” from the upcoming Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, performed by Grammy winners Carrie Underwood and Dan + Shay. The full album will be released September 24, the same day that the film premieres. Other cover versions on the soundtrack feature Sam Smith, Finneas, and Tori Kelly. All tracks were written by the show’s original Tony-winning composing team, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, with the song “The Anonymous Ones” written in collaboration with actor Amandla Stenberg, who plays Alana Black in the film.
