Sheik has been working on other shows over the past decade, and they’ve been given workshops and stagings here and there. The most noteworthy is American Psycho, his adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial and blood-drenched novel, which was mounted in London. It might still make it to New York. But maybe not before Spring Awakening.
The new staging is based on the Deaf West Theatre production that incorporates hearing and non-hearing actors. An Actors’ Equity notice lists Ken Davenport, David Kurs, Cody Lassen and Deaf West Theatre as producers. No theatre or preview date is listed, but the notice says rehearsals for the procession will being in early August. The notice doesn't specify Broadway, but says the production will happen in New York. A July 1 report on Deadline Hollywood story cited no source but said the revival will be a Broadway transfer of the recent production at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, CA.
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Opening this week in Chicago was Beaches, starring Shoshana Bean and Whitney Bashor. The show is a new musical based on the 1985 novel by Iris Rainer Dart, which was turned into a hit tearjerker starring Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler as best — but very different — friends who go through changes over the decades.
The stage production had its world premiere at Virginia's Signature Theatre in early 2014. Eric Schaeffer, Signature's artistic director, who helmed the musical's world premiere, again directs the Chicago production, which is considered a pre-Broadway gig.
The musical features a book by Iris Rainer Dart and Thom Thomas, lyrics by Dart and music by David Austin. Dates and a theatre for a Broadway production have not yet been announced.
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Jessica Hecht and Adam Kantor were announced this week as joining the cast of the upcoming Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, which will begin previews Nov. 12 prior to an official opening Dec. 17 at the Broadway Theatre. They join Danny Burstein, who is playing the central role of Tevye, the philosophical, beleaguered shtetl dairyman. Hecht will play the role of Golde, his wife, with Kantor as the tailor Motel, who weds Tevye’s oldest daughter.
The show will reteam Burstein and director Bartlett Sher, who worked together on South Pacific, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Golden Boy. Burstein was Tony-nominated for the first and last.
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Ever seen that series “The Walking Dead”?
Garth Drabinksy — the Canadian film and theatrical producer and entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection with the handling of his once mighty production company, Livent, and released from Canadian prison on parole last year — is seeking to revive his Broadway career. Seriously.
He plan to pull off this unlikely feat with a stage musical based on the Studs Terkel non-fiction book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, the New York Post reports. You remember The Great Depression, right? That decade-long economic crisis in which everyday workers suffered financial ruin due to the fast-and-loose ways of the moneymen at the top? Sound familiar?
The Post gave no source for the report, but said Drabinsky, the producer behind 1990s musicals Ragtime, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Fosse and the Show Boat revival, is trying to assemble a creative team that would include Tony-nominated An American in Paris director Christopher Wheeldon and librettist Craig Lucas.
One little problem for Drabinsky: though he has served time in Canada, he never faced the charges against him in the U.S. So he still faces possible arrest if he crosses the border. But Drabinsky has a plan for that technicality. The Post reported that the showman is hoping to petition President Barack Obama for a pardon.
