The Kleban Foundation has announced the winners of its 32nd annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. The 2022 recipients are César Alvarez, named most promising musical theater lyricist, and Isabella Dawis, named most promising musical theater librettist. In recent years, the Kleban Foundation Board has set the prize at $100,000 in each category, paid in two annual installments to recipients. Richard Maltby Jr. and Maury Yeston will again host the ceremony, which will once more be held virtually, available for streaming from February 21 at 7 p.m. through February 28 on Broadway on Demand.
César Alvarez is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and performance-maker with a background as a jazz saxophonist, band leader, and sound artist. Alvarez is currently assistant professor of music at Dartmouth College and has written five full-length musicals: Futurity, The Elementary Spacetime Show, The Universe is a Small Hat, Noise, and The Potluck. Alvarez has also released four albums with The Lisps and composed the music for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon and The Foundry Theater’s Good Person of Szechwan. In 2015, Alvarez co-founded Polyphone, a festival of new and emerging musicals at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, serving as artistic director for five seasons. Below is “Practically Impossible” (music and lyrics by César Alvarez), performed by Alvarez as part of the 2018 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge.
Isabella Dawis is a performer and playwright. Trained as a classical singer and pianist, she collaborates with artists of all disciplines to create genre-crossing new works. With Tidtaya Sinutoke, with whom she received the 2021 Fred Ebb Award, Isabella wrote Half the Sky and Sunwatcher. Isabella holds a B.M. in piano performance from University of Minnesota and has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra, Dakota Valley Symphony, and Minneapolis Civic Orchestra. She recently starred opposite her sister Francesca in Jiehae Park’s Peerless at Theater Mu. When not performing, Isabella is an accompanist and piano teacher. Below is “Outside” from Half the Sky (book and lyrics by Isabella Dawis, music by Tidtaya Sinutoke), performed by Isabella Dawis and her sister as a part of Reclaiming Our Time at Joe’s Pub in 2019.
The North American premiere of the 2017 West End musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, inspired by Jenny Popplewell’s 2011 TV documentary about Jamie Campbell, has received generally positive review from theater critics. The creative team includes Tom MacRae (books, lyrics), Dan Gillespie Sells (music), Jonathan Butterell (concept, direction), Richard Weeden (music direction), Theo Jamieson (musical supervision), Kate Prince (choreography), Anna Fleischle (sets, costumes), Lucy Carter (lights), Paul Groothuis (sound), and Luke Hall (video). The cast includes Layton Williams (Jamie), Melissa Jacques (Margaret), Hiba Elchikhe (Pritti Pasha), Shobna Gulati (Ray), Roy Haylock (Hugo/Loco), and Gillian Ford (Miss Hedge). Below is the L.A. cast performing a medley of “Wall in My Head,” “And You Don’t Even Know,” and “Out of the Darkness” on The Late Late Show with James Corden. The production plays in Los Angeles at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre through February 20.
https://youtu.be/Oz7h8B4xgjo
Broadway World (Tracey Paleo): There are many critical points one could discourse upon with this production. The writing is clear but not always particularly compelling in and of itself. The musical score even-handed and nice although not explosive. … The set however is its most exciting aspect. The floor-to-ceiling illuminated and flashing panels really give that big-pop-concert feel and essentially the oomph that keeps the transitions from dragging. And you simply cannot beat the acting. … Although the material resonates with a slightly older time period, the teen drama really does put an exclamation point on today’s teenage experience. … It’s a beautiful story to which in some way or other we all can relate. Highly Recommended
Entertainment Weekly (Maureen Lee Lenker): The script … can veer a bit into after-school-special territory, leaning on tropes of intolerance, rigid administrators, and high school bullies a few times too many. … Still, there’s no fault in Williams’ performance. … But if everybody’s talking about Jamie, they should be talking about the supporting cast even more. … Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a glitter-coated tribute to living life loudly and proudly as your truest self, naysayers be damned. … Ironically, the show’s weakest moments often arrive when it tries to peel away the wigs and the bright-blue eyelashes to say something profound. Still, no one can say it’s a drag. B
Los Angeles Times (Charles McNulty): The genial musical wears its heart on its sleeve, and though it’s formulaic and sentimental, the force of good will coming from the stage is hard to resist. … The show is more of a commercial triumph than an artistic one. Agreeably effective rather than original, the musical has a generic score … that lays down an infectious groove without too much concern for lyrical precision. No matter: Familiarity breeds content in a theater audience eager to sway and shed a tear or two. … It’s far from a perfect show, but there’s a reason it’s found favor throughout the world. This heartening tale of extravagant individuality triumphing over claustrophobic conformity is made for the theater.
Theater Mania (Jonas Schwartz): Layton Williams is an unbridled force of nature. … His heartfelt performance, and support from a talented cast, elevate the US tour of this UK hit above its shortcomings. … MacRae’s 2021 screenplay had remedied quite a few problems with the bare-bones libretto. … This production sizzles because of its cast, but if the creators hope to keep this show alive in the future, through regional productions and tours, they may want to incorporate some of the enhancements made for the movie into a revised version of the play. Even with an iconic performer in the role of Jamie, all that is left is a thin play that doesn’t resonate.
Theatrely (Rachel Hsu): Step aside, Six: there’s a new queen in town. Layton Williams makes a regal US debut as the title role in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. … Composer Dan Gillespie Sells has a knack for the catchy, and his score makes way for strutting, dancing, and acrobatic feats in stilettos. But the show’s greatest strength may be how the fun elements all gravitate around a genuine emotional center, where pop gives way to rock and soul. … [The show] sets itself apart by centering effervescent joy. Jamie’s drag is never a punchline — it is beautiful and celebrated. It’s a queer story that is in no way a tragedy. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie preaches love and acceptance, and wants to put a smile on your face while doing so.
Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda saw another milestone this past week. His song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from the animated musical Encanto, peaked at #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, marking his first Top 10 appearance and only Disney’s fifth in the Top Five. The strength of the song’s popularity also sent the soundtrack to the top of Billboard’s album chart. The last Disney soundtrack single to reach this far on the pop chart was “Let It Go” from Frozen (#5 in 2014). Disney’s three other songs to break the mark were “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas (#4 in 1995), “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from The Lion King (#4 in 1994), and “A Whole New World” from Aladdin (#1 in 1993), the lone chart-topper. Miranda’s last chart appearance on the Hot 100 was “Almost Like Praying,” a charity single with Artists for Puerto Rico that reached #20 in 2017.
Unfortunately, the studio didn’t submit “Bruno” for Oscar consideration, choosing “Dos Oruguitas” instead, but the song has become not only Disney’s highest-charting tune in more than 25 years but also its highest charting song of the 21st century. You can listen to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” below.
The world premiere of The Hang, which plays a limited engagement at HERE through February 20, has received generally positive reviews from New York theater critics. Rooted in jazz and opera, the show imagines the last hours of Socrates, as he hosts a final inquiry about virtue. The creative team includes Taylor Mac (book, lyrics), Matt Ray (music, music direction), Niegel Smith (direction), Chanon Judson (choreography), Machine Dazzle (sets, costumes), Kate McHee (lights), Cricket S. Myers (sound), and Anastasia Durasova (make-up). The cast includes Taylor Mac (Socrates) with performers Kenneth Ard, El Beh, Ryan Chittaphong, Kat Edmonson, Queen Esther, Wesley Garlington, Trebien Pollard, and Synead Cidney Nichols, accompanied by Matt Rays (keys) and musicians Jonathan Beshay, Greg Glassman, J. Walter Hawkes, Jessica Lurie, Joel E. Mateo, Lisa Parrott, and Gary Wang.
El Beh, Garlington, and Mac (photo by Maria Baranova)
New York Times (Laura Collins-Hughes): Surrender to the glorious, glamorous muchness of the mystery that is The Hang, a show for which you will not have all the proper information — not in advance, not as you’re experiencing it, maybe not even afterward. … The Hang feels like a celebration of theater itself — a paean to collaboration and company, to rampant beauty and to the necessary balm of gathering together. … It is a pleasure. The Hang is a show that speaks to the restlessness and longing of this moment, and offers comfort in sensuous pleasure. At a time of loneliness and anxiety, it extols and exemplifies one of theater’s greatest virtues — communion.
Theater Mania (Zachary Stewart): The Hang depicts the final hours in the life of Socrates through 100 minutes of operatic jazz. … From the moment percussionist Joel Mateo strikes up a cymbal roll, The Hang grabs hold of your imagination and doesn’t let go. A huge part of that is the fantastical scenic and costume design. … It all feels like being invited to a secret party in a city ruled by killjoys. … The most daring aspect of The Hang is also its most heartening: About a man’s death from hemlock poisoning, it is unfailingly joyous, and never takes itself too seriously. It is a radical declaration of queer frivolity in our severe age, and it restores my faith that there is still room for dangerous ideas and weird people in the New York theater.
The Wrap (Robert Hofler): This blissfully bizarre new opera … dazzles immediately — with the cast of nine getting to wear fabulous outfits by Machine Dazzle. The designer also uses what tulle, sequins and crepe was left over to dress up the gaudy womb-like set. The jazz score, with detours into blues and gospel, is always arresting and often beguiling in its textured beauty, not to mention its variety. … The Hang delivers a half dozen endings after the hemlock should have done its work. The very good news: Repeatedly, just when another song is not needed, Mac’s lyrics and Ray’s music prove more seductive than ever. … Socrates’ very long demise here recalls a New Orleans jazz funeral complete with a marching brass band.
New York theater critics have given mixed reviews to the new musical Whisper House, which had its premiere in 2010 at San Diego’s Old Globe, played London in 2017, and is now being presented Off-Broadway by The Civilians at 59E59. The story follows young Christopher, a boy sent to a remote coastal Maine town during WWII to live with his aunt Lily in her haunted lighthouse home. The creative team includes Keith Powell (concept), Kyle Jarrow (book, lyrics), Duncan Sheik (lyrics, music, orchestrations), Steve Cosson (direction), Billy Bustamante (choreography), Simon Hale and Jason Hart (orchestrations), Wiley DeWeese (music direction, arrangements), Alexander Dodge (sets), Linda Cho (costumes), Jorge Arroyo and Jeff Croiter (lights), and Ken Travis (sound). The cast includes Wyatt Cirbus (Christopher), Samantha Mathis (Lily), James Yaegashi (Yasuhiro), Jeb Brown (Sheriff), and Alex Boniello and Molly Hager (Ghosts).
New York Stage Review (Elysa Gardner): In Sheik and Kyle Jarrow’s bleak, beguiling chamber musical Whisper House, two of the seven characters … address the others, and the audience, from beyond the grave, and they’re among the most alluring and spiteful spirits you’re likely to have encountered. … The air of doom and gloom that duly pervades Whisper House can generally seem overstated at times; it doesn’t help that Jarrow’s book offers only flashes of dry humor. … In the end, Sheik’s music alone makes you hope that Whisper House will enjoy another life; it has stuck around this long, after all, and a little editing never killed anyone.
New York Times (Alexis Soloski): The music haunts prettily. When the ghosts are singing, anyway. But none of the living characters feel precisely real, and the book scenes totter under the weight of metaphor. … The trouble with the story, conceived with Keith Powell, is that you have to abandon psychology to make it happen. … But the music is mostly lovely, if unvaried. … The ultimate theme of Whisper House is that we must love another or die, a comforting thesis in a moment that demands — in every auditorium — so much mutual faith and care. Then again, there are the paired, smirking ghosts to imply the contrary. Turns out you can love another and die.
Theater Mania (Zachary Stewart): A ghost could be a metaphor for lingering guilt or an actual spirit occupying the dark shadows of your home. … Composer Duncan Sheik and librettist Kyle Jarrow cleverly leave that question up for debate in their haunting chamber musical. … Sheik and Jarrow occasionally trade coherence for gothic atmospherics. … Luckily, Steve Cosson’s lucid direction keeps the story on track and makes us eager for more. … Whisper House manages to combine a gorgeous musical, a satisfying ghost story, and a cautionary tale. … Don’t let this show be one of those theatrical ghosts you wish you had seen when you had the chance.
Theater Pizzazz (Brian Scott Lipton): Jarrow’s book unfurls with the elegance of a finely crafted short story, as it details the changing lives of its central characters. … Jarrow’s story is compelling enough that the show’s score … could easily seem superfluous. In fact, only a few numbers are actually sung by any of the aforementioned characters. … We hear mostly from two gorgeous 1920s-era ghosts. … Their songs are definitely the catchiest in the score. … Theatergoers seeking the spectacle of Wicked, the novelistic approach of Les Miserables or the giddiness of Six may not find the show to their liking, but audiences seeking small-scale pleasure will want to make a visit to this House.
Time Out (Adam Feldman): Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow have been working on Whisper House for more than a decade, but it still seems oddly undeveloped. … The four living characters barely sing at all; instead, the vast majority of the score is assigned to a pair of attractive ghosts. … Whisper House works fine when the living characters are given room to breathe … and Sheik’s moody music, whose emotional pull transcends the libretto, is rendered well. … But there’s only so far the show can travel when it’s chained to the dead weight of those two drowned specters. … It may be time to give up the ghosts. 2 out of 5 stars.
The West End premiere of Moulin Rouge! has received mixed reviews from London theater critics. The musical began previews November 13 at the Piccadilly Theatre, but the pandemic forced the delay of its opening until last night. The creative team behind the show includes John Logan (book), Alex Timbers (direction), Sonya Tayeh (choreography), Justin Levine (music supervision, orchestrations, arrangements, additional lyrics), Derek McLane (sets), Catherine Zuber (costumes), Justin Townsend (lights), Peter Hylenski (sound), David Brian Brown (hair, wigs), and Sarah Cimino (make-up).
The cast features Liisi LaFontaine (Satine), Jamie Bogyo (Christian), Clive Carter (Harold Zidler), Jason Pennycooke (Toulouse-Lautrec), Simon Bailey (The Duke), Elia Lo Tauro (Santiago), Sophie Carmen Jones (Nini), Zoe Birkett (Arabia), Johnny Bishop (Baby Doll), and Timmika Ramsay (La Chocolat). Below are Bogyo and LaFontaine performing the show’ssignature song “Come What May.”
Evening Standard (Nick Curtis): What a shame. This long-awaited, much-delayed Broadway adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s high-camp 2001 film musical has razzle-dazzle style but precious little substance. The big numbers are ravishing, but the central relationship … is consumptively thin. … It’s not the fault of LaFontaine and Bogyo. … Logan’s adaptation robs Satine of her acting ambitions, sanitises the film’s feverish tone, throttles back on the slapstick, and simplifies the ending. … It seems frankly lazy to piggyback on an established and popular entertainment property, gussy up its best bits, and make its flaws somehow worse. 3 out of 5 stars.
Guardian (Kate Wyver): It’s never going to be easy staging Baz Luhrmann’s iconic musical … [but] this production gives it a good go. There is a lot to love. … The show’s downfall comes with its attempts to bring the music up to date. The 2002 musical is famous for its jukebox choices, blending genres, styles and cultures. For the stage, the creators have added in a chaotic new playlist of flatly popular songs. … Much about the show is sensational. Thick, luscious layers of fabric are draped around the theatre, and the auditorium is bathed in a sexy red light. There are pyrotechnics, glitter cannons, and ebullient ensemble dances. … The cast do a wonderful job at animating the frenetic cabaret. 3 out of 5 stars.
London Theatre (Suzy Evans): This, mon chérie, is an all-new, all-adrenaline rush of a show that leverages the movie’s magic and adds the secret ingredient: theatrical magic. … The leading lovers, played by Liisi LaFontaine and Jamie Bogyo, deliver a youthful energy that belies their characters’ weary struggles, and each is charming and well-sung. However, the standouts of the evening are in the supporting cast and the ensemble. … Watching a powerful show where despite trials onstage and off, the power and perseverance of the human spirit is what overcomes, is healing. And as soon as those snaps click into place at the top of “Lady Marmalade,” you know you’re safe to go along for the ride. Lemme hear y’all flow, sistas. 4 out of 5 stars.
London Theatre 1 (Chris Omaweng): The stage often becomes very busy, with all the glitz and glamour that one might expect from a grandly staged West End musical. The storyline, however, comes to a complete standstill. … The production is banking on a feast, or indeed an assault, on one’s senses being sufficient to see one through until such time as the narrative resumes. … It’s escapism of the highest order, playing to the gallery as it does with little (if any) subtlety. The plot may be rather insubstantial but at the end of the day, it’s fun, and just the tonic after all those difficult months in which the theatres were closed. … Don’t go expecting depth, nuance or a profound storyline. 4 out of 5 stars.
Theatre Weekly (Greg Stewart): This West End production of Moulin Rouge! certainly looks the part but fails to deliver in several key aspects. … The story of Christian and Satine, the composer and cabaret star who must conduct their love affair in secret to save the Moulin Rouge from certain closure, plays second (or even third) fiddle to an almost overwhelming onslaught of pop tunes. … Moulin Rouge! will make for a fantastic night out for most audiences, mainly because there’s just so much to catch your eye, and plenty of recognisable songs. A fantastically staged musical that’s more about the spectacle than the substance. 3 out of 5 stars.
Time Out London (Andrzej Lukowski): Timbers’s dementedly maximalist “remix” of Baz Luhrmann’s smash 2001 film is pure sensory overload. Frequently I found myself cackling hysterically at it, on my own, for no particularly good reason, other than how much it all is. … Moulin Rouge! is now bulked into a veritable behemoth of millennial pop bangers. … Beneath the songs we’re stuck with a generic plod through the romance. … LaFontaine and Bogyo are good, but … they’re just walking plot devices, killing time between songs. It’s a very fun night out … but for all its tongue-in-cheek chutzpah, when the music stops you’re not left with much. 3 out of 5 stars.
On Wednesday, Oscar nominee and SNL alum Bill Murray offered an impromptu performance under the arch of New York’s Washington Square Park, accompanied by cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Mira Wang, and pianist Vanessa Perez. The concert, in which Murray sang a selection of Broadway show tunes such as “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Porgy and Bess (which you can watch below), was part of the promotion for the upcoming concert documentary New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization, in which director Andrew Muscato captured the final performance of the quartet’s European “New Worlds” tour at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus overlooking Athens, Greece.
So far, the group has performed more than 65 shows around the world. Vogler told KTLA-TV that the project began when “I saw [Bill] singing in The Jungle Book and I saw him reciting poetry at a poetry gala, and I thought, ‘Wow! He can sing. He can recite poetry. … We can do a show and go around the world,’ and his answer was, ‘I would love that.’” Below is the trailer for the feature film.
Everett Lee, the first African-American to conduct a Broadway show, died January 12 in Malmö, Sweden. Born August 31, 1916, in Wheeling, W.Va., Everett began violin lessons at 8. His family moved to Cleveland in 1927, and he became concertmaster of the Glenville H.S. orchestra. After a chance meeting in the hotel where he worked, Lee was mentored by Cleveland Orchestra conductor Artur Rodzinski. He went on to study at Cleveland Institute of Music and, upon graduating in 1941, enlisted in the Army but was released after being injured during training. Below is an overview of Lee’s career, featuring a 2016 interview with him on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
In 1943, Lee moved to New York to join Oscar Hammerstein’s Broadway musical Carmen Jones, one of only two African-American musicians in the orchestra. He played the violin in the pit and the oboe onstage in one scene. As concertmaster, Lee was asked to take up the baton when conductor Joseph Lattau missed a performance. In 1944, Lee had another brief conducting opportunity with a New York City Center revival of Porgy and Bess.
When On the Town moved into a new theater, composer Leonard Bernstein (who saw Carmen Jones when Lee conducted) asked Lee to become the show’s new conductor, and in September 1945, Lee ascended the podium to lead the production’s all-white pit orchestra. In 1946, Bernstein then arranged a scholarship for Lee to attend Tanglewood, where he studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky. The following year, Lee founded the interracial Cosmopolitan Symphony Society orchestra.
Lee began the 1950s as director of Columbia University’s opera department and travelled to Europe on a Fulbright scholarship. In 1953, he became the first African-American to conduct a white orchestra in the South, when he served as guest conductor of the Louisville Orchestra. He was also among the first black conductors of a major opera company, conducting the 1955 New York City Opera production of La Traviata.
Despite such breakthroughs, racism still constrained his career, and Lee moved in 1957 to Munich, where he founded the Amerika Haus orchestra and opera company. He was soon offered guest spots with numerous orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic in 1960. In 1962, he became music director of Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, where he spent the next decade. In 1976, he conducted the New York Philharmonic for the first time, and he took his last bow with the Louisville Orchestra in 2005. Below is a concerto grosso for pop group and symphony orchestra, recorded live in 1971, with Lee conducting the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.
Deadline has debuted its Read the Screenplay series to celebrate “scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.” Among the first offerings are the screenplays for two musical feature films: the animated Encanto (with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda) and live-action West Side Story (with songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim). Encanto centers around Mirabel Madrigal, an outcast in a Colombian family where everyone has a unique gift except her. Co-directors and screenwriters Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith chose Colombia for its intersection of indigenous, African, and European cultures and visited the country in 2018 for inspiration and research. Disney released the film in November, and it has earned $216.3 million at the box office so far. It has also won awards as Best Animated Feature from the Golden Globes and National Board of Review and earned nine Annie nominations. You can read the script HERE.
West Side Story director Steven Spielberg asked Tony and Pulitzer winner Tony Kushner to reframe the story of the original 1957 Broadway production (from Arthur Laurents’s libretto) and Oscar-winning 1961 film (from Ernest Lehman’s screenplay). “I was moved by how many of our current struggles Steven felt could be explored in this 60-year-old masterpiece,” said Kushner. One key alteration was substituting Doc with his widow Valentina, who knows the challenges of mixed-heritage romance. The film premiered in cinemas last December and has earned $57.9 million at the box office so far. It has also won Best Picture at the Golden Globes and been named one of the year’s best films by AFI and the National Board of Review. You can read the script HERE.
Last night, the PBS-TV series Great Performances presented “Reopening: The Broadway Revival,” the 16th episode of its 49th season, which pulled back the curtain on some of Broadway’s most popular shows, revealing how the New York theater industry undertook the monumental process of turning the lights back on after its longest hiatus in history due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film offers exclusive behind-the-scenes access to shows including Wicked, Aladdin, Tina, Jagged Little Pill, The Phantom of the Opera, Waitress, and others, following each production’s journey as their casts and crews reunite, rehearse, and restage for their long-anticipated reopening nights. You can watch the entire episode below.
Hosted by NY1 journalist Frank DiLella, this music-filled, intimate production features the Broadway verterans who’ve been achieving the entertainment industry’s largest comeback, such as Tony winners Laura Benanti, Kristin Chenoweth, Chita Rivera, David Rockwell, Lea Salonga, Aaron Tveit, Adrienne Warren, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as Tony nominees Sara Bareilles, Norm Lewis, Andrew Rannells, and Elizabeth Stanley, with Michael James Scott (Aladdin), Alexandra Billings (Wicked), Sharon D. Clarke (Caroline or Change), Jawan M. Jackson (Ain’t Too Proud), Jeanna de Waal (Diana), and Rachel Tucker (Come from Away).
The Kleban Foundation has announced the winners of its 32nd annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. The 2022 recipients are César Alvarez, named most promising musical theater lyricist, and Isabella Dawis, named most promising musical theater librettist. In recent years, the Kleban Foundation Board has set the prize at $100,000 in each category, paid in two annual installments to recipients. Richard Maltby Jr. and Maury Yeston will again host the ceremony, which will once more be held virtually, available for streaming from February 21 at 7 p.m. through February 28 on Broadway on Demand.
