Chita Rivera is a living legend. It was just announced that the 85-year-old superstar will be awarded a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement at this June’s ceremony in New York. And no wonder. She originated the roles of “Anita” in West Side Story, “Rose Grant” in Bye Bye Birdie, “Velma Kelly” in Chicago, the “Spider Woman” and “Aurora” in Kiss of the Spider Woman and was most recently on Broadway as “Claire Zachannassian” in The Visit. To date she has two Tony Awards and 8 other Tony nominations. So what do you ask someone who has probably been interviewed more times than just about anyone else in the world?  I wasn’t sure either, so here goes…

In Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway Diary Volume 3, he quotes you as saying about him, “You’ve really got it, don’t you? Every fucking word you say is funny?” What makes him so funny and how does that humor influence the conversations you have with him in these shows?

I can guarantee I did not say the F word. I can guarantee that’s Seth! But it sounds better if you stick that in. I love when it comes back to me and my face twists. He does. He absolutely can’t help himself. He’s so funny and he’s so smart and he’s so interested that I think he’s sometimes more interested in people’s careers than they are. He describes situations and shows and he’s been in many an orchestra pit and he knows what it’s like to hear it and play it. He’s a great musician. I defy anyone to be as funny. He’s so -effing funny. (Yes, she really said -effing instead of dropping the F-bomb.)

In an interview prior to your 54 Below engagement in March, you said you get bored talking about yourself. How does your relationship with Seth make those conversations not boring for you?

Because he does things in an easy and jovial way so that I can enjoy it. When he tells a story or reminds me of something he’s not so serious. It’s a drag when you take yourself really terribly serious. It’s in the past now. I don’t live in the past, but I’m grateful for the past. Seth has a way of spinning things and making them fresh. I enjoy it. He celebrates it.

When I spoke to Seth about his book, I asked him which shows he would like to go back in time to see. He immediately said Funny Girl to see Barbra Streisand and West Side Story to see you as “Anita.”

He’s never said that to me before. That’s wild. That’s a good thing you told me, because I’m going to ask him what’s the thing about Anita. Of course West Side Story itself, the whole doggone piece is extraordinary and still is. It blows my mind that the story in West Side Story is still very…it’s still a serious problem. We even have more problems on top of it with what’s been happening with the ladies and all of that. The prejudices are just blowing my mind. It doesn’t seem as though people really understand what it is when they say they want us all to be equal. You really do have to care for a human being for who they are. That’s called love, affection, understanding. It blows my mind and makes me angry.

This appearance with Seth is tied to the celebrations surrounding the centenary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. What’s the one thing you think people should know about him that perhaps they overlook?

I think pretty much people appreciate he was an amazing teacher, forgetting about the God-given gift. He was the sweetest and warmest and most loving. This was man who really understood appreciating the difference between people and genders. He treated everybody the same and he had a great sense of humor. To see him conduct, from our point-of-view, the Quintet [in West Side Story] is just to drop dead. He pulled it out of us using his own energy and his own physical body. So much so he fell through the chair. He was pulling and tugging and making sounds and he suddenly disappeared and went right through  the chair. It was pretty funny.

I recently spoke with Tommy Tune with whom you sometimes tour. He quoted you as saying “nobody told me to stop.” Can you imagine yourself not dancing or singing or entertaining?

Oh gosh no. Because it’s a language to me. It’s a way to relate to each other. It’s a way to express myself. It’s just a part of my DNA. I can probably say more in a dance than I can with words. That’s probably stupid to say. If I had the words, I’d have to move my body to express it all. Without music, without dance, I can’t survive. I really can’t imagine it. I say to my audience during “Sweet Happy Life,” I tell them to move their body any way you want and let it go. Then I say to them, “How does it feel when your spirit says hello to your body.” When it does it turns to dance.

In Part 2 we continue our conversation with the legendary Chita Rivera and show some rare rehearsal footage from the original production of Chicago. To see part two of this interview, please go here.

Photo Credit: Laura Marie Duncan

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THIS IS THE THIRD OF OUR BEST OF 23 REVIEW OF INTERVIEWS: On April 19th of this year I spoke with Tony Award-winner Stephanie J. Block about her upcoming show with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis. She was on tour at that time with Into the Woods. But the show with Rudetsky was postponed. It has since been rescheduled for this Sunday at The Wallis. Instead of just one show there are now two.

I held the interview you are about to read until closer to the rescheduled shows. Which means some of the conversation we had is less timely now that it was in April. Discussions of Into the Woods, Funny Girl and her performance as Norman Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Kennedy Center aren’t as topical today as they were then.

But Block is not just a great performer – as her roles in Falsettos, The Boy From Oz and The Cher Show (for which she won her Tony Award) can attest – she’s also a great interview. So though slightly dated, this is one thoroughly entertaining conversation. What follows are excerpts from that interview that have been edited for length and clarity. I strongly encourage you to go to our YouTube channel to see the full interview.

You’ve sung on stage with Cher, you sung with Dolly Parton, and of course, you have your Tony Award. When you were tackling the very intense roles of Fifer, Belle, Ariel and Mary Poppins at Disneyland, is this what you imagined your career would be?

First of all, damn you! Secondly, as the story has it and it is true, my mother forged my birth certificate so that I could audition for the Disneyland Summer Parade. I wasn’t yet 16, so she had to forge my birth certificate. So that already tells you enough of what you need to know about the loving show mother that embraced me and encouraged me. But I was serious even back then.

I went to the Orange County, which was the High School of Performing Arts back then, and everything had that high level of stakes and intensity and discipline. So whether I was Fifer the Pig dancing down the parade route at Disneyland, I took as much pride in that as I did with doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

You were referred to at your church as the little Ethel Merman when you were seven years old. You have since had the opportunity to play Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, which is a role that Ethel Merman originated. Are there other Ethel Merman roles that you would like to do?

I think with a lot of the classic musical theater pieces there might have to be some reworking. Would I love to play Annie Get Your Gun? Absolutely. I’d love to play Annie. But I think someone like Larissa FastHorse might have to go in there and change a lot of the lines in the material. But does the music still hold up? Yes. Does the sort of crackle in her performance and the indelible performance that she’s left for us still hold true in my heart? Yes. Because in my heart, I’m an old MGM girl. You put on one of those old movies – anything with Judy Garland, anything with Ann Miller – and it just changes the whole course of my day.

I saw you in Falsettos, and frankly, I think you were robbed for the Tony Award because that performance, that whole show, was one I will never forget. I saw 9 to 5 in Los Angeles. I saw The Boy from Oz and I recently saw Into the Woods before it closed in New York. And the first time I saw you was in Crazy for You at La Mirada. 

Oh, my gosh.

Those shows, absent Crazy for You, are a mix of huge successes and less successful shows. Something Hal Prince said that I thought was really interesting was how much he learned more from the shows that weren’t successful than the ones that were. Is there a difference between the lessons you’ve learned on shows that were successful versus the ones that were not?

I think we just have to say that 75% of most Broadway endeavors would be defined as quote unquote, failures. So right off the bat, three quarters of every show that gets mounted is not going to last [long enough to] get their money back. I can’t speak to the producer end of it. I can only speak to the actor end of it. Yeah, I do learn a lot about myself when things don’t go as I hoped, prayed or wished. I will say I always enter a piece 150% because I think you have to love the project with that much in order to dive in.

When it starts falling apart, I’m also very much aware of that. I like to drink the Kool-Aid, but, all of the flags start going up. Or you go, Oh, this may not be going to Radio City to collect all the Tonys. But somehow I look at these artists that always start from scratch, begin again, are willing to put their vulnerable selves on the line for show after show after show. That, to me, is the biggest statement of most artists I know. That we really are willing to accept three quarters of it as failure and a small one quarter as success, and we keep jumping in headfirst.

Your performance in Falsettos of I’m Breaking Down, strikes me as a three-act play in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. What was the process of creating the ever increasingly intense breakdown over the course of that song?

You’re exactly right. You’ve got to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I find it so interesting that [composer/bookwriter] William Finn wrote essentially an 11:00 number in the first half hour of the play. That, in and of itself, is so out of form that it’s kind of wild. [Director/bookwriter] James Lapine said, I’m going to give you your space. I’m going to give you a couple days by yourself with our choreographer. I’m going to give you a whole host of props that you would find in your kitchen. I’m going to let you play and then I’m going to come in to see what you have created. For James, it’s very much simplicity defines mastery. Believe it or not, that epic song had more crap and props and movement to it than what you saw in its final version on Broadway. But I approached him and he said, How do you see this song? And I said, I think I see this song is like Carol Burnett having her own culinary show. And he goes, okay, well show me what you got.

This is Carol Burnett-slash-Trina trying to put on a very composed culinary show. Little by little, her inner voice, all of her demons, just start taking over. I actually went too far and he had to bring me back. Now we’ve got to find the balance between humor, angst and a conversation with the audience. So that was the balancing act.

Carol Burnett has to be a huge influence for you. While you were doing Sunset Boulevard you posted on your Instagram account a picture of Gloria Swanson side by side with Carol Burnett and said that your performance was going to be a combination of the two. How important is Carol Burnett in your life?

She’s wildly important to me. She, to me, being able to stand up as her and have a conversation with her audience to break that fourth wall and to be secure enough to say this is who I am as Carol, let’s banter and talk, then to embody a character in some of the most dramatic things I’ve ever seen. Then to embody humor and to not be so serious about herself that she could absolutely make fun of herself in the middle of a full skit. She’s a genius. I knew that if I could even do a fraction, if I could do one quarter of what Carol Burnett was doing, then there was a place for me in this world. 

Regarding Into the Woods, you said that was a dream role, 30 years in the making. What inspires you most about this show in general and more specifically about the role of the Baker’s wife?

In the beginning of my career I wanted to wear characters as like a costume and take on their shape, their form, their sound. Now as I get older, the goal is to bring myself to a character. To bring my story, my shape, my sound to these characters. The Baker’s wife is very much that. I am playing opposite my husband [Sebastian Arcelus]. So the baker and the baker’s wife couldn’t be more true than I feel is being portrayed now. My husband and I had quite a journey to get a child. It took us well over five years. As you can imagine, from Chinese herbs to shots to geriatric pregnancies, all of the above. When we tell that story, we are them and they are us.

The themes that are interwoven in this piece: it doesn’t matter if you’re in high school or you’re 80 years old or you’re a middle-aged woman, or you have a child, don’t have a child. Everybody’s journey personifies a different stage in someone’s life, and that’s what you’re going to hear. That’s what the audience is going to be attuned to. So right now, my journey as the baker’s wife and having a child is far different than me wanting to play the baker’s wife, like you said, 30 years ago.

You met Sebastian when you were in Wicked together. You got married before a performance, I think it was six years ago, and then you just went on stage. What do you remember most about that performance, particularly when you were singing As Long As You’re Mine?

Any time a couple, regardless of what stage it is in your relationship, when there’s a secret that just two of you hold, there is that sort of butterflies in the belly. There is sort of the giggle and the unspoken. We know something that nobody else knows. So that excitement certainly carried through. I’m sure we had smiles. [Elphaba] isn’t supposed to smile through the whole show, but internally I’m sure I had an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that was underneath that green make-up when we did As Long As You’re Mine. It was a defining moment, certainly in my career, because all of those words took on a completely different meaning as husband and wife.

I saw one of the interviews that you did around The Boy From Oz and you said you weren’t doing the Liza Minnelli that we all know and love. This is Liza who was 18. It was before her fame had come to her. If 30 or 40 years from now, somebody wants to do a musical about somebody with whom you collaborated and an actor was going to take on the role of the young Stephanie J. Block, how would you like that character to be portrayed?

I would like her to be hopeful. I would like her to be silly. I would like her to be brassy because I was big and brassy. And I think always kind. Always kind, but ready to play. Those would be the words that I would infuse into the actress. It would be, I think, much like Liza, very difficult to watch that portrayal. Especially if somebody was to play young me but span 35 years of me in 45 minutes. I would feel like there’s a lump in my throat going, Oh, but there’s more. Oh, but you forgot to add that. But I think I would also have an open heart and the grace to accept it and receive it and hopefully lovingly support it.

In a 2006 interview you did with BroadwayWorld, you called the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl your “favorite regional theater role.” You went on to say, “It’s time to bring her back to Broadway. What a powerhouse role for any actresses. Producers interested can call 555-Stef!” which I thought was terrific. Fanny is back on Broadway now in a production that has had more rollercoasters than Disneyland. What does this production tell you about the challenges of producing contemporary musical theater and the pitfalls that have to be avoided? 

If I’m going to answer this, my disclaimer is I am taking great liberties because I have no horse in the race as a producer. But what I would like to see happen is that we cast a part based on the merit and the truth and the marriage of an actor and a piece not based on what could possibly sell tickets because of the pedigree of one particular person or one particular thing. It is a collaboration and a marriage and they all have to meet up.

I think we also have to entertain the idea of thinking outside the box. Then step into rehearsal. And then if it doesn’t go as planned, that there is the open-heartedness and the grace that I just spoke about to say, okay, great. You are monstrously talented. Perhaps this is not the vehicle that we all thought it was going to be for you, and that’s not going to service you or the piece. Let’s rethink. How do you feel about that? Let’s re-engage the conversation.

Much like art, live theater, is a living, breathing thing that I wish the creation of a piece can continue to be that without looking at the bottom line. That something is being created for artistry’s sake, and that within that landscape or ecosystem, things change or mistakes were made or gosh, this isn’t working out the way we hoped, or my God, this is working out even better than we hoped, right? But that the conversation can still happen and that grace can surround that. That’s what I feel.

Reviews and audience response to the Kennedy Center production of Sunset Boulevard means you’re giving us all optimism that there might be a Broadway revival. Do you have any new ways to dream, shall we say, about a Broadway production in which you play Norma Desmond?

I have 25% chance, maybe 50% chance, that there will be new ways to dream. The timing is not the timing I would like. There is a project that is in the works for cinema for Sunset Boulevard. That is ALW’s [Andrew Lloyd Webber] focus. That’s The Really Useful Group’s focus. And I can understand that as a business woman. As the artist, I would have loved to have seen a momentum and a transfer.

When I was asked by [Broadway Center Stage] Artistic Director, Jeffrey Finn of the Kennedy Center, what would you like to do in the next year, and I came out with this, I had no idea that this part and I would embrace each other in such a way that it affected me. It affected the audience. It affected the whole piece to be looked at in a completely different way. That was not my goal. But that was one of those times where we were all jumping in headfirst with no expectations, just wanting to create something different. Timely. I am of the school now that if you are going to revive, there needs to be a why. So we shall see what the next couple of years might bring. I’d like to hope that there’s space for it back on Broadway. We’ll see.

There was a Tony Monday last year or the year prior where you posted a video saying to your friends who were or were not nominated, that regardless of that the story continues to be told. What’s the story that’s most important for you to tell through your work today and through these evenings you have with Seth Rudetsky?

For me, right now, the word that is screaming in my head is connection. Absolute connection. If you are putting something out there and it is not being received and then digested and something is being thrown back at you, that’s my ultimate goal. Whether I am playing a part, whether I’m myself, whether I’m beside ridiculous, monstrously talented and smart Seth Rudetsky, for me, the evening was not a win if I did not connect and communicate with my audience. So that’s always the goal.

I certainly think we’ll do that at The Wallis. These intimate nights and spaces, they’re a joy to me. They really fill up my artistic bank. And much like Carol Burnett, it does feel like I’m standing there in my own skin wanting to meet them and wanting them to meet the real me. 

To see the full interview with Stephanie J. Block, please go here.

Main Photo: Stephanie J. Block (Courtesy The Wallis)

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The Tony Award experience is a lofty one…particulalry when you win one. Jessie Mueller won her Tony Award for her portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. That was Mueller’s fourth Broadway show and her second Tony nomination.

She had previously been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for her turn as Melinda Wells in the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

She’s received two additional Tony Award nominations for her performances as Jenna in the musical Waitress and as Julie Jordan in the 2018 revival of Carousel. Most recently she appeared on Broadway in the play The Minutes by Tracy Letts. Not bad for someone who got their start singing The Wiggly Worm in a school production.

When Mueller takes to the stage of The Wallis in Beverly Hills on June 16th and The Smith Center in Las Vegas on June 17th with Seth Rudetsky, she’ll have plenty to talk about and to sing. I spoke with Mueller last week about various aspects of her career, new musicals on the horizon and finding a way to accept all that she’s accomplished. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which does include some singing), please go to our YouTube channel.

17 years ago when you were playing Lady Mortimer in Henry IV, a character that doesn’t have any printed lines. A character that only sings in Welsh that nobody can understand. What were your thoughts then about what your career might be from that moment and how much does your career look like what you expected or hoped it might be? 

That was 17 years ago. I’m still stuck on that. So I was only four. [She laughs.] I mean, it’s incredible. That is wild. 17 years. That is so fun that you brought that up. My experience of that show, I remember, because I got to do it at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago. And then we got to do it at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] in Stratford-upon-Avon. They were doing a festival of the whole [Shakespeare] canon and our show was chosen to represent the Henry IVs. 

It was just a magical experience for me personally. I remember feeling like I was starting to be treated like a real adult actor, because there were some folks in the cast that I knew because my parents are actors in Chicago. I’d seen them doing shows growing up, but I felt like everyone was treating me like a peer. I wasn’t the little kid of the actors, friends or whatever. 

I remember that really being a moment for me about thinking maybe I’m really doing this. But as far as what was in my mind of where my career might go, nowhere near what has occurred. I don’t think I could have imagined it. I don’t think I had that kind of scope. My model had sort of been a career in Chicago, which is what I was after. I wanted to be a working actor. Sometimes life takes you in different directions. It certainly did for me.

I know that Into the Woods has been published as your favorite Sondheim show. You’ve played Cinderella in that show. You played Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along and Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. You’ve done three Sondheim shows, but you have yet to do one on Broadway. Given that Into The Woods was just on Broadway, it’s unlikely that opportunity will present itself any time in the near future. So is there another Sondheim show that you would like to do on Broadway?

I feel like the music from Passion was going through my head the other day, but honestly, that’s not a show I know super well. Maybe I’ll have to wait until Into the Woods rolls around again. Maybe I could “witch” this time around. And then I could play Jack’s mother. That’s the thing about that show, you could just sort of cycle through all the roles. I don’t know. It’s very ironic that Sweeney is happening now. That’s one I’d like to do at some point.

Your career, for the most part in terms of musicals, has been revivals, re-imaginings of shows. Obviously Beautiful is a jukebox musical. But in terms of new musicals, with the exception of Waitress, most of your work in new musicals has been with recordings. You have the recording of My Heart Says Go that’s out right now. Upcoming is the recording for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. What do these recordings tell us about what your passion is for doing new work in addition to doing the work you’ve done already?

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for new stuff just because I guess I find it so exciting. I mean, it also can be infuriating when you’re working on it in the room. Yes, Beautiful was a jukebox. So you had the music already written. We knew that was golden. Working on something like Waitress was so exciting because it was a story that had been conceived, of course, from the film by Adrienne Shelly. But the music was original, so it had never been staged before. It was an adaption.

There’s just something exciting about being in that incubator, being in the process of trying to figure out what’s working, what might not be working. But that’s also the part that can be infuriating is you don’t know. Do we trust what we’ve got? Have we just not cracked it yet? Or is it that we’ve tried everything? I find that stuff exciting depending on who you’re working with. I’ve gotten to work with very generous people that are very open to what you bring to it. There’s that openness about bringing yourself and your perspective and I think it’s a real privilege to originate a role and put your stamp on it.

It’s not often that that an actor gets to revisit a role. Eleven years ago you first stepped into the shoes of Miss Adelaide in a production of Guys and Dolls. You got to do it again at the Kennedy Center last fall. How did your professional and life experiences inform who Miss Adelaide is more recently than who she was when you performed that role 11 years ago?

It’s funny because the process is so quick for the Broadway series at the Kennedy Center. So I think in all honesty I was relying a lot on what do I remember. What is in my muscle memory of who this gal is? But sure, I’m older now, I have more life experience. I’ve been in the business for a while. I’ve been an entertainer for a while. Miss Adelaide has been an entertainer and she takes pride in that.

Half the fun, too, is getting in the room with all the new people. This is how this changes this. This is who this Adelaide is because of James [Monroe Iglehart] being my Nathan and all this stuff. So that’s half the fun of it. But it was a joy to revisit it. I wasn’t sure I would ever get the chance to revisit it again.

Honestly, I felt like I was a little young the first time. But I was like, I’m game. Let’s do it. It was my buddy Matt Raftery who was directing that production in Chicago. I went in for Sarah initially. Then he was like, “Would you like to take a stab at Adelaide? Would you go look at the sides and come back?” I was like, sure. I just always wanted to be the character actress with the fun costumes and the big funny songs. I loved doing it again.

It’s been 14 years since Guys and Dolls has been on Broadway. So you know what the math says. It could be time for a revival. 

There was a lot of chatter after we did it in in D.C. We were so glad that it was so well received. And Philipa [Soo], Steven [Pasquale], James and I, we were totally game. We would explore this, but rights were tied up in the [Nic] Hytner production in London which I’ve heard incredible things about. It has just been so well received, so I don’t know what would happen. I don’t know if they’d bring that over here. I know that it might be a challenge just because of the space and with their immersive production which seems so cool. But if the opportunity came around again, I would totally float that idea, especially if I could do it with those three. We just had a ball. 

Most people associate with musicals, but you also got to do Tracy Letts’s play The Minutes. Is it a challenge for you to be seen as somebody who can act as well as somebody who can sing?

That the perception from the outside that hey, I can act too? That sort of thing?

When you come out singing the songs a lot of audience members, I would guess, don’t necessarily think that was also a great acting performance.

Because you’re supposed to make it look easy. It’s not. There’s a difference between someone who can sing and has a great instrument, which is amazing, but someone who’s also a communicator. Then you have those people who have both who have the glorious instrument and the communication tool. I feel like Hugh Jackman says it a lot. It’s the idea of in some ways it’s almost harder to act in a musical sometimes because you have to make it seem believable that you’re breaking into song. You have these very heightened experiences, which is why the characters are breaking into song. I think actors, especially musical theater actors who appear in musicals, don’t get the credence sometimes they deserve for the acting that they’re doing.

I actually do go to the acting first, which is funny when I’m working on something; when I’m learning something. Or as you spoke of earlier, working on something new. I have to remind myself you can’t act it yet. You don’t know it. You have to learn it. You have to do the technical stuff first of learning it and then you can do the acting work because then it’s in your body. Then you can really get inside of it to deliver. Then go back and fix the technical things and all of that again and kind of go back and forth between those processes.

One of the things I love most about your collaboration with Seth Rudetsky is the social impact component of it. You did What the World Needs Now after the pulse shooting in Orlando. You were involved with him with the Concerts for America. What do you feel is your role as an artist in helping to bring about social impact and social change?

If I’m going to be honest, I’m still figuring that out; coming to terms with the idea that I might have a platform that people might be listening to. So if that is the case, I might as well use it for good. I think I’m starting to crystallize this idea more. I really appreciate people like Seth and his husband, James Wesley, because they are doers. I feel like I’m a helper. I like to help. I like to be of service, but I’m not necessarily the first person who’s going to say I will lead the charge. I try to come in and do my thing and do what I can to help.

You did an interview with Patrick Healy of the New York Times just after winning the Tony Award for Beautiful. You said, “I thought I’d get wrapped up in all the wrong things” of your move to New York from Chicago. You continued to say, “Now look what’s happened. It feels like a wonderful accident.” I love that expression: wonderful accident. Nine years later, does your career still feel like a wonderful accident? Is there perhaps something more complex going on?

I think so. I don’t think it matters how quote unquote, successful you are, whatever the heck that means. It’s hard on your heart. It’s personal. Even when it’s not personal it is personal because the work is personal. You bring yourself. That’s the job. You’re supposed to feel and think and move and act and talk in front of strangers sometimes as someone else, sometimes as yourself, and hopefully create an exchange of meaning and maybe memory and maybe a spiritual flow and all these things. That is hard.

But I think it’s not an accident. I’m working on owning my achievements and I’m proud of them. But the moment you hook into that and give that too much meaning you are often very quickly reminded that it doesn’t hold in a storm. It’s this constant evaluation of what I put importance on and not diminishing an accomplishment or achievement or how hard I have worked. But acknowledging that it’s not the most important thing. God has been so good about where I’ve been led and who I’ve been led to and the opportunities that have been put in front of me. But also I’ve worked my ass off with the gifts I’ve been given.

I think also at that time in my life I was really trying to figure out where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I mean, I still am. What is humble? What is self-deprecating? Where are those lines? How do you stay true to yourself, who you are and what you believe in, but also have the grace and humility to just keep it real.

To watch the full interview with Jessie Mueller, please go here.

Main Photo: Jessie Mueller (Photo by Jacqueline Harris for The Interval/Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Jessie Mueller And Her Beautiful Career appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

So it was quite a surprise to me when in the late afternoon last Thursday I was asked if I could do an interview with White in advance of her appearance with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on November 3rd. I wanted to talk with her, but I was pleasantly surprised that it came about so quickly.

Two hours notice to interview her after that evening’s performance of Hadestown. There were no ground rules. Nothing was exempt from conversation. At 10:30 PM in New York and 7:30 PM in Los Angeles we connected via Zoom, each of us with a glass of wine at our side. She had white wine, I had red. Her dinner was cooking, mine would be afterwards.

Before we get into the interview, White has made a name for herself on stages around the world. In addition to her role as Sonja in The Life, White has appeared on Broadway as Effie White in Dreamgirls, Mama Morton in Chicago, Grizabella in Cats and Funmilayo in Fela! In Los Angeles she appeared in a production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in the title role.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. The interview was very enjoyable and I had hoped to post the video, but she asked me not to due to the incessant attention she was getting online. The end result is a slightly longer interview than I usually post, but hopefully an enjoyable one.

Since we’re doing this post-show, what are your post-show rituals?

Our post-show rituals depends on the night. Tonight is Thursday night. So we had an early show tonight. We had a 7:00 show. On Tuesday nights I come straight home because I have two shows on Wednesday. But on Thursday night I will have a glass of wine. And maybe not. And I cook something to eat. I feed and take care of my animals. I have a dog and a cat. I just relax and chill and maybe watch a movie, maybe watch something on TV. I try not to watch the news too much because it makes me sad. But I watch the news enough to keep up with what’s going on in the city and in the world.

My post-show rituals on other nights include coming home and getting something to eat, taking a bubble bath with candles lit and just kind of taking off the day and getting ready for the next day. When you’re in a Broadway show you pretty much live for the show. Everything you do is to prepare and to be prepared for the show the next day, over the next two days, over next week. So that’s what I do. I try to take care of myself. 

I saw Hadestown on Broadway before it won the Tony Award. When I first heard that you were taking on the role of Hermes it answered the question that I had as to whom could possibly replace André de Shields? I know that a friend suggested this part to you and said you should think about this. At what point did it make sense to you? What was your response when the producers said it makes sense to us, too?

Susan Davison and I were sitting right here at this table, I believe, and we had heard that André was leaving. I said I’ve got to do that role. I only said that because I’d seen the show opening night and I just thought it was a magnificent show. It was very moving. It was very timely. It has a lot of very important messages for the world that we’re living in today. I just thought, Oh, I’d love to do that role. I didn’t think anything else of it. I really just didn’t dream of it.

So Susan said, “Well, you should call your agent”. So I did and my agent said, “Wow, that’s a great idea, Lil. I’ll talk to the people.” They thought it was a great idea and that’s how it happened. 

That is the best possible example of going for what you want.

And positive thinking because the word “no” never came into my mind about this. It just didn’t. I’m not being egotistical or anything like that. I just thought it would be a great idea. 

You saw the show from the audience’s perspective. Now that you’re on stage and have been doing it for a number of weeks, has your perspective on why the show works as well as it does changed? Do you have new insights as to why Hadestown resonates as much as it does? 

As Hermes I get to see it a lot from my own perspective. And I think that it’s moving, it’s an emotional ride and it speaks to the times that we’re living in. Even though based on mythology, there’s a lot of truth in what’s being told on the stage in Hadestown. The actors are bringing it. They are giving you the truth of the story.

I keep saying it’s timely. They talk about building a wall. Why would somebody build a wall to keep other people out? Who are the people being kept out? It’s the love and the caring for someone and the self-doubts that we all have from time to time, maybe on a daily basis, maybe not. But we all have some doubts about what we can do to make our dreams fulfilled. And so there are lots of things that I see now because I’m on the stage.

I see and I hear that rumble of Hades voice every night. I see the love between the Eurydice and Orpheus every night. It’s really, to me, a demonstration of what our realities can be if we pursue them, if we pursue the right kinds of things. It’s a different perspective watching it every night, watching the workers every night sweating. I get to see that every night and I get to look at the audience. I get to watch them watch the show and it’s very telling. I mean, I saw a man in the audience and, to me, he could have been the devil because of the way he was responding to a particular moment in the show. It could be my imagination, but maybe not. 

You and André got to work together in a musical a lot of people don’t know about called Gotta Dance (2015). As the baton got passed from him to you did you have any conversations with your former stage mate or did he offer any advice to you?

We talked very briefly and he’s thrilled for me as I am thrilled for him to, too. He’s moving on to a wonderful show, Death of a Salesman. One of the things that he said to me that I really held on to was it’s a lot of work. When he said that I was just beginning rehearsals.

Now I really understand what he meant because the role is not just standing and reciting and telling the story and moving the story along, but it’s also remembering cues about props. Then where to stand and where to walk and when to say what. It’s a lot of mental work. What I’m finding is that this is not one of those shows where you can kind of walk through it. You have to really be in it and be aware of what’s happening in every second – which you should do anyhow.

I don’t like to walk through anything. I like to be in the moment, every moment, because that’s what translates to the audience. That’s how you get people to understand what the story’s about and to see the characters that you’re portraying. I think that you have to stand in them, go 50/50, because, of course, you have to be who you are – your personal self has to be in the mix there to portray the character. You have to give 100% every time because every night, every show, there’s someone there who’s never seen it before. 

I don’t want to rehash the challenges that you’ve been through in the last week and a half or two weeks. 

No, we’re not going to talk about that. 

But I want to know from an actor’s perspective what are the challenges of keeping all that noise outside and not let it impact the work that you want to do? 

I think the blessing of it is that I do have a character to portray. So I can throw myself 100% into that character and forget about all this other stuff. Because in the scheme of things, the people who come into the show to watch the show the next day and the next evening, they don’t want to know about any of that. They want to see the show. They want to know what happens to Eurydice and Orpheus. They want to know what Hades has to say. They want to see what Hermes is going to do.

So I don’t want to bring any of that into what I’m doing on a daily basis. There are certain things that are going to be addressed. And they should be. But that’s that. 

How do you, with all of the distractions, find happiness at this point? 

Listen, I am blessed. I’m a mother, a grandmother. I have pets. I have plants. I live in a beautiful apartment in New York City. I’m healthy and I’m loved. So that’s what keeps me going. I’m loved and I know that without a shadow of a doubt. So with all of this other stuff that has been happening, this is what I know for sure. That tiny little bit of people who don’t, don’t count. Because I’m only coming from love, you know? I think that’s one of the things that really keeps me going and keeps me grounded.

What excites you most about still being on stage at this point? 

Oh, it’s always the work. The play itself. The music. Listening to these wonderful musicians on stage and the audiences. During the lockdown I did some work here in my apartment with my music director and we did several performances that were videotaped and live streamed. It was fun and it was good, but there’s nothing like having people in the house or people in the audience.

Even if I had people here in my apartment it would be nice. It’s the people; the reactions and the interchange of energy. Whether you’re a jazz singer or blues player or an actor who does acting and doesn’t sing, or whether you’re somebody who only sings and doesn’t act, whether you’re a dancer or a painter or a sculptor, it’s about people witnessing what you do and their reaction to it. It’s tied to your heartstrings and that’s what does it for me.

it’s interesting that you said “whether you’re a jazz singer or not,” because I came home from running some errands today and I listened to TSF Jazz radio out of Paris. The first person that came on was Dinah Washington, whom I happen to love dearly. I was thinking, God, I would love to see a show about her. Then when I found out we were talking two hours ago and saw that you did Dinah Washington, I thought I have to ask you about her. 

She’s a heroine of mine. She was a force of nature. She was a business woman, she was a tough cookie and she demanded excellence from everybody around her. I loved playing her because I got to play an icon – a really wonderful iconic figure in Black music who didn’t stand for any mess. She did what she wanted to do in terms of the music. She spoke loudly about civil rights and she contributed to the success of the civil rights movement. She wanted things the way she wanted things and so she had it that way. I loved playing her.

In December of 2000 Stephen Holden in the New York Times wrote a review of your cabaret performance. He said, “Listening to this gifted theatrical pop soul singer, it is easy to wish that belters like Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin would show a similar sense of balance and sensitivity.” When you aren’t just reviewed favorably in their company, but set up as an example for them, what goes through your mind? 

That’s the first time I ever heard that quote from Stephen Holden. Stephen Holden has written me many love letters and I’m really very happy that he gets me. 

I’m speechless to be honest with you because these are the people that I grew up listening to. I think they’re brilliant, not just singers, but brilliant musicians in the way that they can turn a song and make it palatable and make it honest. I feel like that’s the best way to be as an artist – to be honest. If I’m honest with what I’m doing the audience is going to get it.

In August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom here in Los Angeles you acted more than you sang. What did you like most about that role and about being part of that production?

What I liked most was the acting, the ability to bring that character to life. I love to sing, obviously, but there are other aspects to my artistry and I like being able to explore that part of it. I felt very fortunate to have the brilliant cast that we had and to have Dr. Phylicia Rashad as the person leading the helm. She really helped me so much get into that character and make it real, make it truthful.

So let me ask you something about risk taking. I’ve been a longtime Fela Kuti fan and I when I saw Fela! in New York I thought it was a brave show for Broadway. The show ran 463 performances. In an environment where pre-sold entities are given top priority I love the fact that a show like Fela! could be on Broadway. Do you believe Broadway can be as equally brave today as it was when Fela! was put on stage? 

I absolutely do. I think it just takes brave producers who are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Fela! was something that made people a little bit uncomfortable. They stand up and dance a little bit. You had a man with his shirt off smoking weed on a stage. You had a man with 27 wives saying these are all my wives. And you had a woman, me, playing a ghost. She was literally a ghost of his of his mom coming back.

It wasn’t your typical Broadway show, but I think that that’s what makes the world go round. We can portray the sharp edges of humanity, of intelligence, of art. I think it’s important for us to view and experience all of it.

We have to open our minds because the world is so big now. It’s big and it’s small because we can travel from here to Japan in a day. People’s ideas change about marriage, about the feminine and masculine and all of that. There’s so many different things that are going on. We have to keep up. 

When you received the Tony Award for The Life I loved the dance that you did. I revisited this today and was moved when you thanked your grandmother for putting you on the table to show your family your talent. If your grandmother could see you on stage in Hadestown today, what do you think she would say about everything you’ve accomplished so far in your career? 

Oh. [She takes a minute before continuing.] I think she would say “You did good, baby.” I think that she would probably not love everything that I’ve done so far. I don’t suspect that my grandmother would have loved to have seen me in The Life, but my mother did and my Aunt Lillian did and my uncles and my aunts and my cousins. Everybody in my family who came to see it understood that this was my job to play this role. I don’t know that my grandmother would like that at all. But right now she’d be very happy. 

And what would you say to her? 

Grandma, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming, Grandma. Are you hungry? You want to eat something? Because she would do that for me. She’d say, “Baby, that was good. Baby, you’re hungry? You want to eat?” Yeah. She’d feed me and give me kudos – as with all of my elders in my family.

With that Lillias White’s dinner was just about done. Our planned thirty minute conversation had lasted over 45 minutes. To think, three hours earlier that day it wasn’t something either of us imagined doing.

Main Photo: Lillias White in Hadestown (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Update: In an earlier version of this story, we posted that Fela! 28 performances. That number was inaccurate. It has been updated to reflect the actual run of 463 performances. Cultural Attaché regrets the error.

The post A Post-Show Chat with Lillias White appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Our top pick this week is actually a twofer. Jazz vocalist Jazzmeia Horn, who has taken the world by storm since her 2017 debut album A Social Call, is featured in two concerts you’ll want to watch this weekend.

With several operas, a very wide range of dance, play readings and more, it will seem at first glance like a pretty intense selection of programs. However, nothing is what it seems this week. Read about each of these programs and you’ll find they almost all represent a new way of telling both familiar and new stories.

Here are the Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st.

*TOP PICK* JAZZ: Jazzmeia Horn – SFJAZZ – June 18th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT and Cal Performances on demand through July 21st

This week’s Fridays at Five offering from SFJAZZ is a 2019 performance from the 37th San Francisco Jazz Festival in support of her second album, Love and Liberation.

She rose to prominence after winning the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition.

In a 2017 review of a performance Horn gave at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York, Giovanni Russonello wrote in the New York Times after calling her one of the most talked-about jazz singers to emerge since Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter:

“…she’s possessed of some distinctive tools, all of which were on display: a pinched, sassy tone in the highest register; a fondness for unguarded duets with her bassist (at Dizzy’s, it was Noah Jackson); an array of rough, pealing nonverbal sounds that add drama to codas and interludes, hinting at meanings in the music that go beyond what fits on the page.”

Should you be unable to catch the streaming of this concert on Friday, there is an encore showing on Saturday at 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT. Tickets are $5 which includes a one-month digital membership to SFJAZZ.

If you want to explore more of what Horn can do (and perhaps see and hear how she evolved her performances and her set list almost two years later), you can check out a concert filmed at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge in February of this year for Cal Performances.

That concert is available for on-demand streaming with prices ranging from $5 for Cal students and $15 per non-student viewers up to $68 for those who have the ability to pay.

Horn is a force to be reckoned with. These two concerts allow you to chart her growth as, we hope, a new album will soon be on the horizon.

OPERA: Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex – LA Opera – Now – July 18th

Igor Stravinsky composed this opera/oratorio in 1927. Based on the tragedy by Sophocles, it is a work for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. If you believe you know well the story of Oedipus, I think you’ll be surprised at all the ultimately timely material to be found in this story.

For this filmed performance of Oedipus Rex, Los Angeles Opera has assembled a terrific ensemble.

Singing the title role is tenor Russell Thomas. The role of his mother, Jocasta, is sung by mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. Creon and the Messenger are sung by John Relyea. Tiresias is sung by Morris Robinson. The role of the Shepherd is sung by Robert Stahley. Serving as narrator is Stephen Fry (via video).

James Conlon conducts the LA Opera orchestra.

I attended a rehearsal of this production two weeks ago (prior to a live performance in Los Angeles – LA Opera’s first live performance back in their home at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Collaborating with them is Manual Cinema. They are the Chicago-based company that did a truly memorable production of A Christmas Carol that was streamed last December (and was also a Best Bet).

At 50 minutes, this is a terrific way to get some opera into your weekend. And it’s free; though donations to LA Opera are encouraged.

If you want to see more of what Thomas and Bridges have to offer, let us remind you of LA Opera’s Signature Recital Series which has recitals by each of them available for streaming through the end of the month. Check out our preview here.

PLAY READING: Dear Elizabeth – Spotlight on Plays from Broadway’s Best Shows – Now – June 21st

You don’t need to know who poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were. You don’t need to know that they became very good friends, mostly through the hundreds of letters they wrote to each other. Nor that they had an affair. You don’t even need to know that this play, which had its New York premiere in 2015, is written by award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl.

All you really need to know about this reading is that it stars Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep. The two famously appeared together in Sophie’s Choice. This was the film that earned Streep her second Academy Award. They also appeared as exes in Jonathan Demme’s Rikki and the Flash in 2015.

Not to be outdone, Kline won an Academy Award for his performance in A Fish Called Wanda.

They appeared on stage in the 2001 production of The Seagull and the 2006 production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theater as part of The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park series.

This seems like a pretty easy choice to make for your weekend plans. Why not see these incredibly talented actors together again? This is the final play in the Spotlight on Plays series. They are clearly going out on a high note.

Kate Whoriskey directs.

Tickets are $19 and allow for streaming through Monday, June 21st at 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT. Proceeds benefit The Actors Fund and The Acting Company.

OPERA/MINI-SERIES: desert in – Boston Lyric Opera – Now available

As befits a project from the mind of James Darrah, desert in does not fit easily into any one category. It is a mini-series. It is an opera. It contains nudity. There’s strong sexual content and adult language. It also comes from the minds of playwright christopher oscar peña and Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Ellen Reid.

In other words, it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.

The stories of multiple characters swirl around a lodge in the desert and its swimming pool. A combination of trysts, betrayals and shamanic ceremonies result in the lodge’s owners Cass and Sunny and new guests Ion and Rufus caught up in its mysterious ways.

Appearing in desert in are mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (for whom the project was written), soprano Talise Trevigne, Tony-nominated performer Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway), actors Carlis Shane Clark, Alexander Flores, Anthony Michael Lopez, Jon Orsini, Ricco Ross and Raviv Ullman with vocal performances by tenor Neal Ferreira, Tony Award-winner Jesus Garcia (La Bohème), baritone Edward Nelson, tenor Alan Pingarrón, soprano Brianna J. Robinson, mezzo-soprano Emma Sorenson and bass-baritone Davóne Tines.

Joining Reid in composing music for desert in are Michael Abels, Vijay Iyer, Nathalie Joachim, Nico Muhly, Emma O’Halloran, Wang Lu and Shelley Washington. Each one a truly fascinating composer.

Six of the eight episodes have been released and are available for viewing on operabox.tv. The final two episodes will be released in the next couple of weeks.

You have several options for viewing with varying price points. You can subscribe to operabox.tv, purchase on-demand streaming of the entire series or for individual episodes. Details can be found here.

CLASSICAL MEETS HIP-HOP: Common with the Los Angeles Philharmonic – Debuts June 18th

We’ve previewed the second season of the LA Philharmonic’s Sound/Stage series, but can attest from personal experience that seeing Common on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl with the orchestra is an event like few others. Frankly, it’s almost one of a kind, except that they created this 17-minute film available for free streaming that didn’t come from that concert.

Common is one of the most important and exciting performers in hip-hop. Gustavo Dudamel leads one of the most adventurous orchestras in this country. This pairing is going to please those who can’t imagine hip-hop with classical music institutions and those who can’t imagine a symphony orchestra with hip-hop.

Other episodes in this series are available for streaming and can be found at the link above.

OPERA: This Little Light of Mine – Kentucky Opera in collaboration with the Santa Fe Opera – June 19th – 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT

Here’s a great opportunity to see a work truly in development. The Santa Fe Opera commissioned this opera inspired by the story of Fannie Lou Hamer. She was a voting rights activist whose relentless efforts lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Chandler Carter is the composer of This Little Light of Mine. The libretto is by Diana Solomon-Glover.

The two had previously collaborated on No Easy Walk to Freedom about Nelson Mandela. Solomon-Glover portrayed Winnie Mandela in that work.

On Saturday they will be streaming a workshop of This Little Light of Mine that was filmed on Monday at Kentucky Opera. This opera had been scheduled for a workshop last fall, but was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Nicole Joy Mitchell sings the role of Fannie Lou Hamer. Aundi Marie Moore sings the role of Dorothy Jean Hamer and Heather Hill sings the roles of June Johnson and an Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Worker. The workshop is directed by Beth Greenberg.

There is no charge to watch This Little Light of Mine. It will be available on Kentucky Opera’s YouTube channel.

ONE-ACT PLAYS: Unmasked: A Theatrical Celebration of Black Women’s Liberation – The Wallis – Debuts June 19th

The Wallis collaborated with Black Rebirth Collective on Unmasked, one-act plays by four Black female playwrights that was filmed in the Lovelace Studio Theatre at The Wallis.

Those writers are: Ngozi Anyanwu, Jocelyn Bioh, Dominique Morisseau and Stacy Osei-Kuffour.

Anyanwu is best known for Good Grief, an award-winning play that was first performed at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2016. Her play is called G.O.A.T. which finds three close friends who try to determine who is the greatest of all time (hence the title) through a sacred ritual.

Bioh, best known for School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, has written White-N-Luscious. While appearing on a talk show a Nigerian pop star and an Afro-British scholar face issues of self-representation and beauty standards.

Morisseau, who was Tony nominated for writing the book for Ain’t Too Proud and also wrote The Detroit Project trilogy of plays, contributes Jezelle the Gazelle. As the title perhaps alludes to, the title character is a young female runner who is easily the fastest on her block. But does she have the skill set to navigate what life has in store for her and still remain on top?

Osei-Kuffour’s work is called Madness. While handling an issue at work on a phone call, the protagonist is offered a new way to address the situation by a new colleague whom she doesn’t know. Osei-Kuffour’s ANIMALS was recorded by the Williamstown Theater Festival and can be heard on Audible.

The ensemble cast – Kelly M. Jenrett, Masha Mthembu, Candace Thomas and Jonah Wharton – are accompanied by violinist Katherine Washington. Unmasked was co-drected by Kimberly Hébert of Black Rebirth Collective and The Wallis’ Camille Jenkins.

Tickets are $19 for all four plays. If you only want to watch one of the plays, you can purchase a single ticket for $5. Please go here for details on ticket sales. Unmasked will be available for streaming on demand through July 2nd.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Jenn Colella – SETH Concert Series – June 20th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

I’ve never been lucky enough to see Broadway star and Tony-nominated actor Jenn Colella in any of the shows in which she’s appeared (Come From Away, If/Then, Chaplin, High Fidelity and Urban Cowboy). But that last show did lead to a chance to see her early in her career and I realized how special she was immediately.

Colella was a guest at a concert by composer Jason Robert Brown in North Hollywood. (He music directed Urban Cowboy). When she sang a couple songs with him it was like the best possible hurricane just blew into and through the theater.

I can only imagine what Colella will do this weekend as Seth Rudetsky’s guest in his concert series.

If you’re unable to see the live stream on Sunday as scheduled, there will be a re-stream of the show at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM the same day. Tickets for either showing are $25.

DANCE: Broadway Bares: Twerk from Home – Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS – June 20th – 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT

Just as Broadway is on the cusp of coming back comes an annual tradition that is one of the toughest tickets in town. And because Broadway isn’t back yet…we all get a front row seat.

Broadway Bares is an annual dance/performance fundraiser, usually performed on a Broadway stage.

For the uninitiated, it is one where clothes become less necessary as each performance goes on. This year’s show is called Twerk from Home and it will debut on Sunday night.

Two-time Tony Award winning choreograph Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, the 2005 revival of La Cage Aux Folles), is the creator of Broadway Bares and once again he directs this year’s show. Joining this year as co-directors are Laya Barak and Nick Kenkel.

Over 170 dancers are participating in Twerk from Home. Joining them will be Harvey Fierstein, J. Harrison Ghee, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Robyn Hurder, Peppermint and Jelani Remy who make special appearances. This year’s Broadway Bares culminates in a finale extravaganza that was filmed outdoors in Times Square.

There is no charge to watch Twerk from Home, but donations are encouraged. This is one of their biggest fundraisers of the year. Last year’s virtual edition raised $596,504 for Broadway Cares. You can watch the show on BC/EFA’s YouTube Channel.

MODERN DANCE: Future Dance Festival – 92Y – June 21st – July 4th

From a pool of 185 applicants, seven panelists selected 21 choreographer finalists to be part of the 92nd Street Y’s first Future Dance Festival. The goal of the festival is to pair emerging choreographers and creators with working directors.

Beginning on Monday, those 21 finalists will have their work showcased in three different programs that will all be available for free streaming.

Program 1 features work by Annie Rigney, Max Levy, Madison Elliott, Leonardo Sandoval, Burr Johnson, Nicole von Are and Brian Josiah Martinez.

Program 2 features works by Barkha Patel, Adrienne Lipson, Jessie Lee Thorne, William Ervin, Vera Kvarcakova & Jeremy Galdeano, Brian Golden and Caroline Payne.

Program 3 features works by Taylor Graham, Baye & Asa, Patrick Coker, Charly and Eriel Santagado, Jamal Callender, Beatrice Panero and Nicholas Ranauro.

The panelists, who come from Ballet Hispánico, Dance Magazine, Martha Graham Dance Company and other organizations, will introduce each work.

Registration is required.

Here ends the Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st. But just a couple reminders:

The Metropolitan Opera celebrates Father’s Day with Verdi’s Rigoletto from the 1981-1982 season Friday; his Don Carlo from the 2010-2011 season on Saturday and his Luisa Miller from the 1978-1979 season Sunday. If you’re not a father, consider this the end of Verdi Week.

Next week the Met will be celebrating Pride Week. Monday that program gets launched with the 2017-2018 season production of Thomas Adés’ The Exterminating Angel. We’ll have the full line-up for you on Monday. We strongly recommend this opera.

Your last chance to watch A Tribute to John Williams from the Boston Pops Orchestra is Saturday. Film music fans, what are you waiting for?

On Monday South Coast Rep starts streaming the final production of their Pacific Playwrights Festival. It’s a concert performance of Harold & Lillian. You can find details here.

You’re now fully loaded with options to enjoy the performing arts this weekend. That’s all for this week’s Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st.

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: Jazzmeia Horn (Photo by Emmanuel Afolabi/Courtesy imnworld.com)

The post Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Also on tap are two great (and very different ballets); two great jazz concerts; a contemporary classical music festival; a celebration of playwrights and a reading of a rare comedy from the 17th century that seems as topical as ever.

Here are our Top Ten Best Bets: June 11th – June 14th

*TOP PICK* MUSICAL REVUE: Show of Titles – Broadway’s Best Shows – June 13th – 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT

What exactly is a Show of Titles? Simply put, a show featuring title songs from some of Broadway’s biggest musicals. For instance, Oklahoma has a well-known title song. Dear Evan Hansen does not. The Light in the Piazza does. Gypsy does not.

The cast of Broadway stars performing in this show, directed by Lonny Price, includes Annaleigh Ashford, Stephanie J. Block, Kerry Butler, Len Cariou, Glenn Close, Gavin Creel, Darren Criss, Dame Edna, Santino Fontana, Kelsey Grammar, David Alan Grier, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joshua Henry, Isabelle Huppert, Norm Lewis, Patti LuPone, Rob McClure, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Melba Moore, Jessie Mueller, Eva Noblezada, Kelli O’Hara, Laura Osnes, Steven Pasquale, Michael Rupert, Ernie Sabella, Lea Salonga, Phillipa Soo, Will Swenson, Aaron Tveit, Leslie Uggams, Vanessa Williams and Patrick Wilson.

There will also be special appearances by Debbie Allen, Broadway Inspirational Voices, Candice Bergen, Danny Burstein, Bryan Cranston, Tony Goldwyn, Adam Guettel, John Kander, Angela Lansbury, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Lindsay Mendez, Phylicia Rashad, Chita Rivera, Ben Stiller, Charles Strouse, Richard Thomas, Blair Underwood, BD Wong, and Florian Zeller.

The link to this event goes to Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. There are two options for tickets: a $29 ticket allows purchasers to view Show of Titles on demand for 96 hours. (An appropriate number with the film adaptation of In the Heights opening this weekend. A show that not only has a title number, but also a song called 96,000).

A $39 ticket will include a ticket to stream Sarah Ruhl‘s Dear Elizabeth which begins on June 17th and reunites Kevin Kline with Meryl Streep (they appeared on screen together in Sophie’s Choice and Rikki and the Flash). That ticket also allows you to stream it for, you guessed it, 96 hours.

JAZZ: Coltrane: A Love Supreme – Jazz at Lincoln Center – Now – June 16th

Many many years ago I attended the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. One of the concerts I went to – not on the fairgrounds – was a performance by Wynton Marsalis and his band. They were the last of several performers and concluded their main set around midnight. As an encore he announced they would be performing A Love Supreme.

I’m well-acquainted with John Coltrane’s masterpiece and assumed he meant they would perform one of the tracks (they all include A Love Supreme as part of their title). I was wrong. They performed the entire album from start to finish. It was exhilarating and one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended.

Marsalis will once again perform A Love Supreme with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as the final concert of their virtual season.

This performance will be feature big band arrangements with saxophonist Camille Thurman serving as guest soloist. Sherman Irby will lead the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Tickets are $20 and allow for streaming through June 16th. Tickets can be purchased here.

BALLET: Giselle of Loneliness – Ballez/The Joyce Theater – Now – June 23rd

Perfectly timed for Pride Month is this presentation of Giselle of Loneliness by Ballez. The decade-old dance company is comprised of queer, transgender, non-binary and gender non-confirming artists.

As you might imagine from the title, Giselle of Loneliness uses a key moment from that classic ballet as its inspiration.

The dancers in this work, choreographed and directed by Katy Pyle (founder of Ballez), are all auditioning to win the title role of Giselle. To do so, they have to come up with their own version of the insanely challenging mad scene from that ballet.

In what seems to be a bit of a nod to and a twist on A Chorus Line, the dancers have to come face-to-face in this work with their desire to perform within an industry that doesn’t welcome them. It begs the question, how much personal degradation and rejection of your identity will you undergo to continue to do what you love.

The dancers performing in Giselle of Loneliness are Charles Gowin, Meg Harper, Maxfield Haynes, Matthias Kodat, Deborah Lohse, MJ Markovitz, Janet Panetta, Ash Phan, Alexandra Waterbury, and Nat Wilson.

Tickets are $25 and allow for viewing through June 23rd at 11:59 PM ET/8:59 PT.

BALLET: Balanchine and Robbins – Royal Opera House – Debuts June 11th – 2:30 PM ET/11:30 AM PT

The Royal Ballet will live stream their June 11th performance of a trio of works under the title Balanchine and Robbins. Which means, of course, that the works were either choreographed by George Balanchine or Jerome Robbins.

The evening begins with a performance of Apollo by Balanchine set to the music of Igor Stravinsky.

Four dancers are featured in this work which had its world debut in 1928. In this performance the ballet will be danced by Matthew Ball, Claire Calvert, Melissa Hamilton and Fumi Kaneko.

Next up is another work by Balanchine entitled Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. No need to tell you who wrote the music. This short work had its world premiere in 1960. For this performance the dancers are Vadim Muntagirov and Marianela Nuñez.

The performance concludes with Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering. This hour-long work, set to the piano music of Frederic Chopin, had its world premiere at New York City Ballet in 1969. Reece Clarke, Teo Dubreuil, Benjamin Ella, James Hay, Fumi Kaneko, Mayara Magri, Yasmine Naghdi, Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Romany Pajdak are the dancers.

Tickets are $18.50. The performance will remain available for streaming through July 11th.

JAZZ: Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band – SFJAZZ – June 11th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

This week’s Fridays at Five concert from SFJAZZ features a 2016 performance by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band.

Drummer Blade formed this band in 1997 with pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Chris Thomas, saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler, guitarist Jeff Parker and pedal steel guitarist Dave Easley.

All but Easley join him for this show that features a five-song set featuring two traditional songs arranged by Blade and three original compositions by Cowherd.

Those songs are Landmarks found on the album of the same name from 2014; Duality from their 2017 album Body and Shadow and Return of the Prodigal Song from their 2008 album Season of Changes.

There is an encore showing of this concert on Saturday, June 12th at 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT. Tickets for either show require either a monthly digital membership ($5) or an annual membership ($50).

If you join to watch this Brian Blade concert you will also have access to a special matinee broadcast on Sunday featuring Marcus Shelby and His Orchestra in a tribute to Duke Ellington. That concert will stream at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT. You can find details about that show here.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Kronos Festival – June 11th – 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT

The renowned Kronos Quartet launches a virtual festival this year on Friday with a 45-minute concert. Included in this program are several world premieres and one classic work closely associated with Kronos.

Works by Nicole Lizée (Are You From Here Or Just Visiting?), Soo Yeon Lyuh (Tattoo), Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté (Wawani) and Mahsa Vahdat (Vaya, Vaya) are given their debut performances.

Stacy Garrop’s Glorious Mahalia; Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna; Jlin’s Little Black Book and Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone? are also being performed.

There is no charge to watch this, or any, performance. There is also a kids concert on Sunday, June 13th at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT.

The festival will continue with performances on Wednesday, June 16th at 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT and Friday, June 18th at 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT. The evening concerts are 45 minutes and the kids concert is 30 minutes.

All performances will remain available for viewing online through August 31st.

PLAY/FUNDRAISER: Connections – Ojai Playwrights Conference – June 12th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

The works of playwrights Luis Alfaro, Jon Robin Baitz, Father Greg Boyle, Bill Cain, Culture Clash, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Danai Gurira, Samuel D. Hunter, David Henry Hwang, Julia Izumi, James Morrison (with his son Seamus), Jeanine Tesori and Charlayne Woodard will be performed in this 90-minute celebration from the Ojai Playwrights Conference.

Liza Powel O’Brien is also contributing a piece.

Performing their work will be a mix of the playwrights themselves and some well-known actors: Brian Cox, Culture Clash, Eileen Galindo, Danai Gurira, Francis Jue, James and Seamus Morrison, Tony Okunghowa, Rose Portillo, Samantha Quan, John C. Reilly, Israel López Reyes, Nikkole Salter, Samantha Sloyan, Jimmy Smits, Phillipa Soo, A. Zell Williams and Charlayne Woodard.

The theme of the show, as the title would suggest, is human connections moving forward in a post-pandemic world.

This is a one-time only event. There is a requested donation of $20 to watch Connections.

Looking forward the Ojai Playwrights Conference New Works Festival will take place August 5th – August 15th.

PLAY: 1 Hour Photo – East West Players – June 12th – 11:00 PM ET/8:00 PM PT

Tetsuro Shigematsu’s 1 Hour Photo had its world premiere in 2017 at Vancouver’s The Cultch. The ostensibly one-man play tells the story of Mas Yamomoto, a man who owned and operated multiple Japan Camera stores which promised processing of film in one hour. (Remember those? Remember film?)

His conversations with Mas, a much older man, covered a lot of territory of personal and racial history of the 20th century. What starts as a humorous catch-up to outdated 1970s technology riff turns into a very personal and emotional story.

To help tell the story Shigematsu incorporates models, miniatures and some very interesting effects.

Shigematsu has now created a 75-minute film version of 1 Hour Photo and East West Players in Los Angeles will offer five virtual screenings of the film beginning on Saturday, June 12th. (Additional shows are on Sunday, June 13th; Friday, June 18th; Saturday June 19th and Sunday June 20th – times vary). Tickets are $34.99.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Matthew Morrison – Seth Concert Series – June 13th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

I’ve seen Matthew Morrison in three Broadway musicals: Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is that he appeared in all three.

For many people Morrison may be best known for his role as Mr. Schuester on Glee.

All four projects allowed him to showcase one thing he does very well: sing. As will this weekend’s Seth Concert Series with Seth Rudetsky.

Yes there will be some conversation sprinkled amongst the performances, but it will mostly be about the music.

If you are unable to see the live stream on Sunday at 3:00 PM ET, there is an encore showing at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT the same day. Tickets for either are $25.

PLAY READING: Volpone, or The Fox – Red Bull Theater – Debuts June 14th – 7:30 PM ET/4:30 PM PT

17th-century playwright Ben Johnson may not be the best-known writer today, nor are his works commonly performed, but time hasn’t dulled his quick wit and ability to skewer the foibles of human behavior.

Take for example Volpone, or the Fox. The title character loves nothing more than gold. And he will stop at nothing to get as much of it as he can. With the assistance of his servant Mosca, the men of Venice who should know better inevitable fall for his schemes and his charm. It seems as nothing can outwit Volpone.

André De Shields (who won the Tony Award for his performance in Hadestown) plays Volpone. He’s joined by Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, Peter Francis James, Hamish Linklater, Roberta Maxwell, Sam Morales, Kristine Nielsen and Mary Testa for this reading.

Jesse Burger, the Founder and Artistic Director of Red Bull directs. He and Jeffrey Hatcher have made some tweaks to Johnson’s play. (The press release calls them “emendations & elaborations.”)

After the live performance on Monday, June 14th, the show will be available for streaming through June 18th at 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT. There is a suggested donation of $25.

A small bit of trivia: Larry Gelbart, who co-wrote Tootsie and was instrumental in the long-running television show M*A*S*H, wrote an updated version of Volpone that went by the name Sly Fox. It had its Broadway debut in 1976 with George C. Scot in the title role.

That concludes our official Top Ten Best Bets: June 11th – June 14th. But a few reminders before we go:

The film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is now in theaters and streaming on HBO MAX.

Los Angeles Opera’s Signature Recital Series has now unveiled all five recitals for streaming with Russell Thomas, Susan Graham, Christine Goerke, Julia Bullock and J’Nai Bridges. They will remain available through July 1st. You can find details here.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has added a newly-announced episode for the second season of Sound/Stage. Debuting on June 11th is a performance by the LA Phil with the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and the band Weezer. They will be performing songs from their album OK Human. Rob Mathes leads the LA Phil and did the orchestrations.

This weekend’s offerings from the Metropolitan Opera are the 2012-2013 season production of Thomas Adés’ The Tempest on Friday; Verdi’s Falstaff from the 2013-2014 season on Saturday and the 2017-2018 season production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte on Sunday.

Monday the Met begins a week of operas to celebrate Father’s Day. The first production being streamed is Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra from the 1994-1995 season. We’ll have the full schedule and clips on Monday.

What inevitably follows another opening is another closing. Here ends this weekend’s Best Bets: June 11th – June 14th.

Update: This post has been updated to include newly announced participants in Connections

Photo: Jake Gyllenhaal in Sunday in the Park with George (Photo by Matthew Murphy/Courtesy IBDB.com)

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Our top pick this weekend is the voice of playwright Adrienne Kennedy whose play Ohio State Murders stars one of the greatest voices of our time: Audra McDonald.

The music of Adam Guettel, new experiments with voice, the voice of jazz’s future, the history-making voices of male ballerinas, Broadway stars galore and more are all available for your enjoyment.

So let’s get to it. Here are the Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th:

*TOP PICK* PLAY READING: Ohio State Murders – Spotlight on Plays – Now – June 7th

Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders is this week’s offering from the Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows.

The play is set at Ohio State University where Suzanne Alexander, an African-American writer, was a student in 1949. She returns to discuss the themes of violence in her writing.

The stories she tells and the violence she’s examining take viewers down a shocking path as the mystery slow reveals itself.

This reading will star six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Warner Miller, Lizan Mitchell and Ben Rappaport. Kenny Leon, who directed the 2014 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directs this reading. Of note, both he and McDonald won Tony Awards for work on that production.

Ohio State Murders had its world premiere in 1992 at the Great Lakes Theater Festival. In 2007 the play opened off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street.

Charles Isherwood, writing for the New York Times, said of the play:

“Like all truly scary horror stories, the tale told in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders leaves a lasting chill in the bones. Hours after seeing this short, sharp, quietly hypnotic play about an infanticide that ruptures a Midwestern winter in the 1950s, you might find yourself looking anxiously over your shoulder or starting awake with an unsettling thought or image in your head.”

Tickets are $19 with proceeds benefitting The Actors Fund. Tickets allow for on-demand streaming through Monday, June 7th at 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT.

CHORAL/VOCAL: Myths and Hymns: Chapter 4: FAITH – Now – June 30th

The fourth and final chapter of Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns from MasterVoices is now streaming.

In this last part of the series, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Jennifer Holliday, Mikael Kilgore, Theresa McCarthy, Miles Mykkanen, Kelli O’Hara, Larry Owens and Nicholas Phan give voice to the final five songs in this song cycle.

Costanzo also directed The Great Highway (which also features O’Hara and Phan). Ted Sperling, the artistic director of MasterVoices directed two of the segments and Tony Award nominated director Trip Cullman directed the final segment, Saturn Returns: The Return.

Joining them are, of course, the MasterVoices singers.

This episode and the entire series are available for viewing on MasterVoices’ YouTube Channel. I love all four chapters of this series. You will, too. Take a look.

There’s no charge to watch Myths and Hymns. Donations are encouraged.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Victoria Clark – Broadway Stories & Songs with Ted Sperling – June 4th – June 5th

As long as we’re on the subject of Ted Sperling, his guest for this weekend’s Broadway Stories & Songs is the Tony Award-winning Victoria Clark. She was named Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Margaret Johnson in Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza.

Her performance in that musical was extraordinary.

Clark’s additional Broadway credits include the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Titanic, Urinetown, Sister Act, Cinderella and more.

She and Sperling have been friends since college. Their personal and professional familiarity will make this a show that’s a must-see for all fans of Broadway.

Victoria Clark will be live on June 4th at 5:00 PM ET/2:00 PM PT. Tickets are $25 and allow for a second viewing (or a first viewing if you can’t watch the show live on June 4th) on Saturday, June 5th at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Tchaikovsky Serenade – Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra – Debuts June 4th – 9:30 PM ET/6:30 PM PT

The wildly ambitious and very successful series Close Quarters concludes what I hope will just be its first season with this final episode. Throughout all 14 episodes, James Darrah and LACO have redefined how classical music can be presented.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, composed in 1880, is being performed in this film.

Grant Gershon, Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, leads LACO in the performance. There are four movements in Tchaikovsky’s composition and in this particular film/performance, the running time is 30 minutes.

Darrah told me recently that this final episode reflects a summation of the entire series and a look at how Los Angeles weathered the pandemic.

You probably don’t need to have watched all previous thirteen episodes. But I can assure you if you just watch this one, you’ll be likely to want to watch all fourteen.

DANCE DOCUMENTARY: Ballerina Boys – American Masters on PBS – June 4th (check local listings)

This fascinating, amusing and moving documentary takes a look at Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks). They are an ensemble of male ballet dancers who take their dance seriously and present it with whopping doses of humor.

As the British might say, they take the piss out of the art form. But they do it with a absolute respect for the work.

Filmmakers Chana Gazit and Martha Barylick take a look at the 45-year history of The Trocks. Ballerina Boys features interviews with founding members and also current members as it charts its way through over four decades of entertaining audiences. And as their trailer says, “Changing the world one pirouette at a time.”

I’ve seen this film and it is wildly entertaining and, at times, deeply moving.

JAZZ: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet – Vermont Jazz Center – June 5th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

I’ve written several times about Immanuel Wilkins and how amazing he is. This Saturday is the best chance for you to see precisely what critics have been talking about.

Wilkins will be joined by Daryl Johns on bass; Kweku Sumbry on drums and Micah Thomas on piano.

This Tiny Desk concert for NPR should give you a good idea.

When I interviewed Wilkins last August as his album Omega was about to be released, he told me that he wrestled with releasing an album during the pandemic and not being able to tour behind it. Amongst the things he told me was:

“People need to hear it live. The band is a live band. It’s definitely something that should be played live and it would have been nice to have a proper release concert.”

Saturday’s concert will be a big step forward for Wilkins and for all of us to hear how dynamic this music is live.

There’s no charge to watch the concert; however, donations are encouraged.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Bang on a Can Marathon of Song – June 6th – 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT

Fans of contemporary classical music, particularly those works that showcase the human voice, will be keenly interested in this Sunday’s Bang on a Can Marathon of Song. Expect multiple uses of the human voice to be employed here.

There are eleven world premieres scheduled.

This streaming marathon runs for four hours. Here is the line-up:

1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT

Arlen Hulsko performs the world premiere of and there was by Mary Kouyoumdjian. Composer Peni Candra Rini gives the world premiere of her new work. Ken Thomson gives the world premiere performance of Zero at the Bone by Anna Clyne. Composer Albert Kuvezin gives the world premiere of Eremchick (The Spider).

2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT

Julian Otis performs Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan D’Arc by Julius Eastman. Composer Fred Frith gives the world premiere performance of his new work. Kyle Brenn’s Still/Exist will be performed. Taja Cheek, performing as L’Rain will perform. David Cossin will give the world premiere performance of RYB by Florent Ghys.

3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

This hour opens with the world premiere of witness by Matana Roberts. Mark Stewart will perform the world premiere of a new work by Trevor Watson. Composer Eddy Kwan gives the world premiere of his new work. The final performance is by Allison Russell.

4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT

Vicky Chow gives the world premiere of a new work by Sophie Cash. Robert Black gives the world premiere of Audible Autopsy by Charles Amirkhanian.

There is no charge to watch the marathon. Donations are encouraged.

CABARET: Alex Newell – The Seth Concert Series – June 6th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

You might know Alex Newell from Glee. You might have seen Newell in the 2017 Broadway production of Once on This Island.

Or you might have seen as Mo on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. (If you haven’t watched this NBC series, you’ll definitely need to make up for lost time.)

However you know Newell, there’s one thing you know for sure, he can sing!

Newell and Rudetsky will of course share plenty of music along with the kind of stories that only Broadway insiders know and fans of musical theater will want to hear. As June is Pride Month, what better way to spend some time this weekend than with Alex Newell and Seth Rudetsky.

If you are unable to watch the show at 3:00 PM ET, there is an encore showing at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. Tickets for either show are $25.

TRIBUTE TO BROADWAY: Curtain Up, Light the Lights – Roundabout Theatre Company – June 7th – 7:45 PM ET/4:45 PM PT

If you live in New York, you can join this 2021 Roundabout Theatre Company Gala live in Central Park. Luckily for those who don’t you can stream it live. Either way, here’s what you’ll get:

Tony Winner Jane Krakowski will perform live from Rumsey Playfield with the New York Pops.

Joining her for part of the concert will be Tituss Burgess (her co-star from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Just for good measure there are a few special guests: Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, Oscar winner Emma Stone (La La Land), Grammy and Emmy Award winner Blair Underwood and Tony Award-nominee Vanessa Williams. Those are the announced special guests. There is word of even more stars to be participating.

As the ghost lights will soon be relieved of 24-hour a day duty and the marquees of Broadway relit in anticipation of theaters re-opening, Curtain Up, Light the Lights will be a great way to welcome the return of Broadway.

Virtual tickets start at $25.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Pajama Cast Party – June 7th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

If I only said Kristin Chenoweth would that be enough? Certainly she’s popular enough. And maybe she’ll be wearing pajamas.

Yes, the three-time Tony Award nominee (and winner for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown) and star of Wicked is joining Jim Caruso on Monday for the 61st episode of Pajama Cast Party.

In addition to singing, she’ll be sharing some of the young talented performers who are participating in Broadway Bootcamp of which she is one of the directors.

Also joining is Ryan Silverman who appeared in the 2013 Classic Stage Company production of Passion and appeared on Broadway in the 2014 revival of Side Show.

There is no charge to watch the show. Donations are encouraged with a portion of the proceeds going to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors Fund.

Those are our Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th. Just a few reminders and on other note before we finish.

A few weeks ago we highlighted We Have to Hurry by Dorothy Lyman. It’s a moving play about two neighbors at a retirement community who fear time is not on their side during a quarantine. The play was so popular that a second live performance of the play is taking place this weekend with the playwright as Margaret and the enormously talented Alfred Molina as Gil. They have two performances (one Saturday and one on Sunday.) You can find details here.

Metropolitan Opera’s programming this weekend features the 2019-2020 season production of Porgy and Bess on Friday (highly recommended); the 2014-2015 season production of Macbeth on Saturday and the 2019-2020 season production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten on Sunday (also highly recommended).

On Monday the Met presents classic operas told in new ways. Monday’s offering is the 2012-2013 production of Rigoletto. We’ll have full details in Monday’s preview of the entire week.

That officially concludes all the offerings I have for you in our Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th. Have a great weekend. Enjoy the performing arts!

Main Photo: Audra McDonald (Courtesy her website)

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In addition to our top pick, Ballet Hispánico, which we announced yesterday, we have a few plays, some jazz, classical, Broadway music and opera for you.

Here are this Memorial Day Weekend’s Best Bets: May 28th – May 31st:

*TOP PICK*: DANCE – Ballet Hispánico 50th Celebration – May 28th – June 10th

Latin dance company Ballet Hispánico celebrates their Diamond Anniversary with the streaming presentation of three new works by Lauren Anderson, Ana “Rokafella” Garcia and Belén Maya and classic works from their repertoire by Graciela Daniele, Nacho Duato, the late Geoffrey Holder, Ann Reinking, Pedro Ruiz and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano.

The show willl feature several special guests.

Amongst them will be Tony Award-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and Academy Award nominee Rosie Perez (Fearless).

The show debuts at 6:30 PM ET/3:30 PM PT on May 28th and will remain available for two weeks. There’s no charge to watch this wonderful celebration.

PLAY: The LATRELL Show – IAMA Theatre Company – Now – June 20th

Brandon Kyle Goodman stars in and wrote this play about a talk show host, Latrell Jackson, whose perhaps best known for saying whatever he wants on any subject. He’s quick with the jokes and even quicker to share his opinions.

As a gay Black man, he’s been around the block a few times. As he embarks on filming a very special episode, Latrell is forced to reveal there’s more to his public persona than easy laughs and quick criticism.

Stefanie Black and Devere Rogers co-directed The LATRELL Show. This is definitely a show for those not afraid of frank talk, explicit language and the presentation of ideas that don’t remotely fall into the world of political correctness. In other words, recommended for mature audiences.

Tickets range from $15 to $100 depending on your ability to pay.

PLAY: Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose – TheaterMania – Now – July 18th

You don’t need to know who George Rose was to enjoy this one-man show. But it doesn’t hurt to have a few facts about this very likable and charismatic performer.

Rose was nominated for five Tony Awards: Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Coco; Best Featured Actor in a Play for My Fat Friend and Best Actor in a Musical for The Pirates of Penzance.

His two other nominations resulted in wins for the actor: Best Actor in a Musical for My Fair Lady (1976 revival) and for The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Ed Dixon, who as a young actor was cast in a production of The Student Prince with Rose, became friends with the older actor. Dixon was gay, but had never experienced someone who was as vocal about being gay as was Rose.

This is the starting point for Dixon’s one-man show that was named Best Solo Performance by the Drama Desk Awards. Throughout the 90-minute show, Dixon tells stories, impersonates not just Rose, but his famous friends like Richard Burton and Katharine Hepburn and offers up some song and dance.

This clip above is not from this film, but from promotional materials from the Signature Theatre.

Tickets are $25.

PLAY: Alice in Wonderland – A Noise Within – May 27th – June 20th

Enough of the adult material, here’s a play for the whole family. Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was adapted by Eva Le Gallienne & Florida Friebus for the stage. The show first opened on Broadway for a very short-lived run in 1982 (18 previews and 21 performances.)

Stephanie Shroyer originally conceived and directed this production. Erika Soto plays the title character.

The rest of the cast plays multiple characters with Susan Angelo as the White Queen; Rafael Goldstein as the Mad Hatter; Julanne Chidi Hill as the Cheshire Cat and Justin Lawrence Barns as The Queen of Hearts.

This is an 85-minute film staged by Julia Rodriguez-Elliot. Josh Grondin wrote the original score.

Tickets are $25 – $40. Unlike other productions where you can stream at your leisure, there are set times each day to watch Alice in Wonderland.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Resilience: Destiny Muhammad – San Francisco Symphony – Now Playing

Harpist/vocalist Destiny Muhammad has curated this episode of San Francisco Symphony’s Sound Box series. On her website she is described as representing a genre that ranges from Celtic to Coltrane. She’s well-known in the Bay Area which makes this collaboration with the SF Symphony an obvious fit.

The theme for her Sound Box is Resilience.

She came up with the theme after seeing all her professional engagements get cancelled due to the pandemic. As with most of us, it took both personal and professional resilience to navigate her way through it all.

Muhammad has put together a very impressive program for this filmed concert. The pieces being performed include Confessions to My Unborn Daughter by Ambrose Akinmusire; Tell Him Not to Talk Too Long by Mary Lou Williams; Serenade by William Grant Still and her own composition Hope on the Horizon.

What makes this program of particular note is that the harp is rarely a featured instrument. This won’t be like any other filmed concert you’ve seen recently.

Tickets are $15.

BROADWAY VOCALS: One Voice: The Songs We Share – PBS – May 28th (check local listings)

In this new PBS series, Luke Frazier leads the American Pops Orchestra in a celebration of the songs that have come from Broadway. Whether you know the songs because you saw the musicals themselves or heard them performed by popular singers and bands, you know the songs. By the way, did you know The Beatles recorded a song from The Music Man?

In this episode Tony Award winner Jessie Mueller is one of the performers. She originated the role of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Also on this show are Amber Iman (Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All that Followed); tap dancer Luke Hawkins; RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 top 5 finisher Alexis Michelle and Sam Simahk (2018 revival of Carousel).

These artists will be performing songs from Carousel, Damn Yankees, Funny Girl, Hello Dolly!, La Cage Aux Folles, The Roar of the Greasepaint The Smell of the Crowd and The Wiz.

A second episode, which immediately follows on most stations, will featured sacred music and includes Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child; American Idol’s Justin Guarini; soprano Maureen McKay and more.

DANCE: 21st Century Choreographers – Royal Ballet – May 28th – June 27th

Kyle Abraham, Crystal Pite and Christopher Wheeldon are the choreographers whose work is showcased in this program from The Royal Ballet in the United Kingdom.

Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, created for the San Francisco Ballet is up first. Abraham’s duet, a precursor to a longer work that was commissioned by the Royal Ballet for their 2021-2022 season follows.

The program concludes with Pite’s Statement and Solo Echo. The latter piece set to the music of Johannes Brahms.

Tickets are £16, which is being billed out as $18.50 on The Royal Ballet website.

OPERA: Gallup (Na’nízhoozhí) – LA Opera – Debuts May 28th

Gallup, New Mexico, is called Na’nízhoozhí in the Navajo language. It’s also the location of this digital short from LA Opera. What stands out about this particular piece is that it features new music composed by Matthew Aucoin. He is the composer of the opera Eurydice which had its world premiere at LA Opera in February of 2020.

Singing in this piece are Anthony Roth Costanzo and Davóne Tines. (Two other terrific reasons to watch Gallup).

Two men from the Navajo Nation are also involved: director Blackhorse Lowe and Jake Skeets whose poetry was set to music by Aucoin.

This isn’t a perspective we commonly get to see in the performing arts. I, for one, can’t wait to see and hear this work.

JAZZ: Curtis Taylor Quartet – Jazz at LACMA – Debuts May 28th – 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT

As restrictions start to get lifted, programming like Friday Jazz on the plaza at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art might return. Until that time, LACMA continues debuting filmed performances. This week’s features trumpeter Curtis Taylor.

Taylor, who originates from Ohio but calls Los Angeles home, is a bandleader and an in-demand musician. Amongst the artists with whom he has recorded and/or toured are Cyrus Chestnut, Billy Childs, Gregory Porter and Patrice Rushen. He’s also toured with the legendary James Carter as a member of his quintet.

His most recent album, Snapshot, was released in 2019.

This concert will also include an interview with Taylor. This concert will be available for viewing after its debut on LACMA’s YouTube Channel.

BROADWAY VOCALS: George Salazar – Seth Concert Series – May 30th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

The first show I saw George Salazar in was Here Lies Love at the Public Theater in New York. The other show I saw him in was Pasadena Playhouse’s Little Shop of Horrors in the fall of 2019. Between those two productions he made his Broadway debut in the 2011 revival of Godspell and starred in the musical Be More Chill.

I’m sure he’ll have plenty to talk about with Seth Rudetsky in this weekend’s Seth Concert Series. He’s also a good singer, which makes him a great guest.

I’m sure he’ll have plenty to talk about with Seth Rudetsky in this weekend’s Seth Concert Series. He’s also a good singer, which makes him a great guest.

If you can’t catch this show as it streams live on Sunday afternoon, there will be a rerun on Sunday at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. Tickets for either showing are $25.

There are no significant performing arts events on Monday’s holiday. So that completes this week’s Best Bets: May 28th – May 31st. But you know there are always going to be a few reminders:

JAZZ: Saturday is your last chance to watch the worldwide International Jazz Day 2021 Concert with performances by Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gerald Clayton, Andra Day, Herbie Hancock, Stefon Harris, Dianne Reeves and more.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Monday is your last day to catch Sutton Foster’s Bring Me to Light concert with special guests Raúl Esparza, Joaquina Kalukango, Kelli O’Hara and Wren Rivera.

OPERA: Last weekend’s Met Stars Live in Concert performance by Isabel Leonard, Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra is available on demand through June 4th.

VARIOUS: Monday is the final day to catch a multitude of performances that were part of the Voices of Hope Festival from Carnegie Hall. This includes performances by The Kronos Quartet, Ute Lemper, Jason Moran, Davóne Tines with Jennifer Koh and more.

PLAY: Christine Quintana’s Clean starts its week of streaming as part of South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival.

OPERA: The operas available this week from the Metropolitan Opera are the 1996-1997 season production of Giordano’s Fedora on Friday; the 2010-2011 production of Strauss’s Capriccio on Saturday and Rossini’s Le Comte Ory from the same season on Saturday. Monday is the start of Aria Code: The Operas Behind the Podcast (the Met’s collaboration with WQXR) and will feature the 2019-2020 season production of Puccini’s Turandot.

That should keep you pretty well occupied this weekend. With this much to see, who has time for a barbecue?

Enjoy your weekend! Enjoy the performing arts!

Photo: Ballet Hispánico in Línea Recta (Photo by Paula Lobo/Courtesy Ballet Hispánico)

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My top pick this week celebrates International Jazz Day. Another significant jazz event this weekend is a concert by Christian Sands. SFJAZZ offers a 2019 concert by Orquesta Akokán on Friday with a re-stream on Saturday.

If jazz isn’t your thing, we’ve got plenty of other options. There are several play readings, a very ambitious new film from the Colburn School in Los Angeles, a couple cabaret performances and a very unique fundraiser that realizes the first three letters in that word are FUN.

Here are my Best Bets: April 30th – May 3rd:

*TOP PICK* JAZZ: 2021 Global All-Star Concert for International Jazz Day – April 30th – 5:00 PM ET/2:00 PM PT

Yesterday we started revealing our Top Pick for the weekend in a sneak peek of the weekend’s Best Bets. So I won’t rehash everything from that column. You can read the full preview here.

Simply put, there aren’t many places where you’ll find performances by Dee Dee Bridgewater, Cyrus Chestnut, Gerald Clayton, Herbie Hancock, Stefon Harris, Angélique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, Antonio Sánchez, Ben Williams and many more from around the world.

The concert is free and can be found on the event’s website, their YouTube channel, Facebook page and more. International Jazz Day’s concert will remain available for viewing for 30 days.

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/DANCE: The Way Forward – Colburn School – Now – May 13th

Few projects would offer the opportunity to see and hear music and performances by Kris Bowers, Johannes Brahms, Aaron Copland, Gabriel Fauré, George Frideric Handel, Thelonious Monk, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Christoph Waltz, Eric Whitacre and thousands of singers, dancers and musicians.

The pandemic-era project was filmed in Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Spain and at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

This one-of-a-kind film and it will be available for free streaming. You do have to register on the Colburn School website. The Way Forward will only be available for two weeks.

For those in Los Angeles, there will be one in-person screening of the one-hour film. That screening will take place on Saturday, May 1st at 8:00 PM PT at Thayer Hall at Colburn. Capacity will be limited to 25%. Tickets for this screening are $25 and can be purchased here.

PLAY READING: The Baltimore Waltz – Spotlight on Plays on Broadway’s Best Shows – Now – May 3rd

When playwright Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz opened off-Broadway in 1992, it was immediately acclaimed as a unique way of addressing the AIDS crisis. The play went on to win three Obie Awards for Best New American Play, Best Director and Best Performance (Cherry Jones).

Vogel’s play depicts a real-life situation between a school teacher and her brother.

How the sister chooses to address that he is dying of a terminal disease is at the heart of The Baltimore Waltz. Vogel uses fantasy to take her characters on a journey that is both fanciful and heartbreaking in its inevitable return to reality.

For this reading the cast features Mary-Louise Parker, Eric McCormack and Brandon Burton. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs.

Tickets are $15 with proceeds going to The Actors Fund.

VIRTUAL MUSICAL: Working: A Musical – CATCO – Now – May 9th

When I was a much younger man I remember seeing Working on the PBS series American Playhouse. I was immediately taken in by this collage of interviews and songs. Based on Studs Terkel’s 1974 book  Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, the musical features songs by Stephen Schwartz, Mary Rodgers, James Taylor and more.

The musical received six Tony Award nominations when it opened on Broadway in 1978. It’s run, however, was short. There were only 12 previews and 24 performances.

CATCO in Columbus, OH is presenting a streaming version of the updated 2012 version of the musical that includes contributions from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

This is a perfect musical for the virtual format. I will be interested to see how the show holds up and how Miranda’s revisions help the show.

Working streams only Thursday – Sunday through May 9th. Tickets are $20.

PLAY READING: The Line – Public Theater – Now – June 21st

Great timing for this encore presentation of the Public Theater’s Zoom reading of Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s The Line. Their play was constructed by doing interviews with frontline medical workers in New York at the outset of the pandemic.

As restrictions start to loosen around the country, this is a great reminder of the heroism that was required (and still is) to get us through this crisis.

The Line also reflects the personal toll their actions took on their lives. This should be a wake-up call that there is still work to be done by all of us.

Thankfully The Line is thoroughly engrossing. Assisting the storytelling is music by Aimee Mann and Jonathan Coulter (which was produced by Michael Penn).

If you’ve ever experienced The Exonerated by Blank and Jensen you know what powerful storytellers they are.

There is no charge to stream The Line, but registration is required.

PLAY READING: Home – The Refocus Project at Roundabout Theatre Company – April 30th – May 3rd

New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company debuts the first of five readings of little-known plays from the twentieth century by Black playwrights. The first to be streamed is Samm-Art Williams’ Home.

The Negro Ensemble Company first performed the work in 1979. It was critically-acclaimed and it transferred to Broadway in 1980 and earned two Tony Award nominations including Best Play.

The central character, Cephus, tells two women stories from his life. He loves the idea of just staying…home. But circumstances require he travel from his country home to the big city.

The play is a fable that dabbles in elements of realism – like war and racism. Though there are only three actors (Rob Demery, Brittany Inge and Tony nominee Joaquina Kalukango), Williams has his cast perform dozens of characters.

Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon directs.

Mel Gussow, writing for the New York Times, raved about Williams’ writing:

“The play itself is a freshet of good will, a celebration of the indomitability of man, a call to return to the earth. In all respects — writing, direction and performance — this is one of the happiest theatrical events of the, season.”

He went on to say, “More often, with his gift for local language, Mr. Williams seems closer to the spirit of Mark Twain. If Twain were black and from North Carolina, he might have written like Samm‐Art Williams.”

There is no charge to stream Home, but RSVP/registration is required.

CUBAN JAZZ: Orquesta Akokán – SFJAZZ – April 30th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

Orquesta Akokán began as a one-time-only recording band to become a touring and live celebration of mambo. So for those who do not want to go gentle into their weekends, this show is for you.

Their performance at SFJAZZ is from June 2019. This big band will have you shaking your groove thing and burning down the house.

Pianist and arranger Michael Ekroth, vocalist José “Pepito” Gómez are joined by members of legendary Cuban bands Irakere and Los Van Van and more as they take to the stage for this show.

Tickets are $5 which allows for a one-month digital membership. If you’re unable to see the show on Friday, there will be an encore streaming on Saturday, May 1st at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. The show will then be available on demand from May 1st – June 30th.

JAZZ: The Christian Sands Trio – Just Jazz – April 30th – 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT

LeRoy Downs, host of Just Jazz on KCRW in Los Angeles, is celebrating International Jazz Day with an intimate concert by pianist Christian Sands, drummer Jonathan Pinson and bassist Ben Williams. The concert will be streaming live from Mr. MusicHead Gallery in Los Angeles.

The trio will be joined by special guest trumpeter Theo Croker.

Sands is one of the most exciting young musicians on the jazz scene. This is a concert you won’t want to miss.

If you’d like more information on Downs and his take on jazz in 2021, check out my interview with him here.

Tickets are $20.

CABARET: Chester Gregory: Celebrating the Motown Era – The Wallis Sorting Room Sessions – April 30th – May 2nd

Chester Gregory has been seen on Broadway in the musicals Hairspray!, Tarzan, Cry-Baby, Sister Act and Motown: The Musical where he portrayed Berry Gordy.

That last credit no doubt awakened Gregory’s appreciation for all things that Gordoy accomplished.

He’ll be Celebrating the Motown Era in this weekend’s first of The Wallis Sorting Room Sessions.

The show becomes available at 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT and will remain available through Sunday, May 2nd. Tickets are $20 and allow for 48 hours of streaming.

PLAY: The Importance of Being Earnest – L.A. Theatre Works – May 1st – May 31st

Residents of Los Angeles know that in addition to their fine radio play performances, LATW coordinates with HD Live to offer in person viewings of filmed productions from theater companies from around the world.

For the month of May they are making the 2011 Broadway revival of Oscar Wilde’s throughly delightful play available for streaming.

Certainly you know this very funny play about identity and marriage. And why a man would play a woman in it – as is done here.

This production was directed by and starred Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell. Dana Ivey, Paxton Whitehead and Santino Fontana are also in this production which was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Tickets are $15 and allow for viewing anytime within two weeks of purchase.

PLAY READING: We Have to Hurry – Broadway on Demand – May 1st – May 2nd

Elliot Gould and Kathleen Chalfant will perform this new play by Dorothy Lyman. We Have to Hurry is set in a retirement complex in Florida. Gil and Margaret cannot see each other because they and all the residents at the complex are forced to quarantine. They only communicate with each other from their respective balconies.

Gil has fallen in love with Margaret and realizes time is not on their side. Will they have a chance to get together and take a walk on the beach? Unsure of what the future holds for them, time is of the essence.

There are two ways to watch this show. The first is with a general ticket priced at $15. For $25 they have created a virtual stage door where ticket holders can submit questions in advance for Chalfant, Gould and Lyman. Those who purchase that ticket will get a separate Zoom link.

There is one performance on May 1st 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. A second performance takes place on May 2nd at 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT. The link above in the title takes you to purchase tickets for the May 1st performance. For tickets to the May 2nd performance, please go here.

PLAY: Shoot Me When… – San Francisco Playhouse – May 1st – May 22nd

I love the premise of Ruben Grijalva’s play. As the two daughters of a woman suffering from dementia, what do you do when you want to honor your mother’s wishes for end of life plans, but she forgets what she agreed to because of her condition?

Susi Damilano directs cast members Blythe de Oliviera Foster, Dan Hiatt, Lorri Holt and Melissa Ortiz.

Tickets are $15 – $100 based on your ability to pay and contribute to the San Francisco Playhouse.

OPERA: Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie – Nationaltheater Mannheim on OperaVision – May 1st – July 31st

Conducted by Bernhard Force; starring Amelia Scicolone, Sophie Rennert, Marie-Belle Sandis, Estelle Kruger and Charles Sy. This Lorenzo Fioroni production was filmed on April 21st and 24th of this year.

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera had its world premiere in Paris in 1733. The libretto is by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin and is based on Jean Racine’s Phèdre.

Gods and humans are involved in this story of Hippolyte, son of Thésée, the King of Athens and Hippolyte (not Thésée’s wife, that’s Phèdre). Hippolyte falls in love with the wrong woman, Aricie, who is the daughter of his father’s enemy, Pallas. You just know this isn’t going to end well.

I’ve included this production because I do not believe it has previously been available in other productions so far. Frankly it also looks quite interesting!

CABARET: Julian Ovenden: Can’t Help Singing – May 2nd – May 9th

Fans of Bridgerton will want to check out Sir Henry Granville singing. Okay, well it won’t actually be Granville, but it will be actor Julian Ovenden who plays him on the smash series. (Of course if you’re more of a Downton Abbey fan he played Charles Blake. And if you like The Crown, he played Bobby Kennedy in one episode.)

This concert will find Ovenden singing songs by composers and artists he loves including George Gershwin, Michel Legrand and Tom Waits.

Tickets are £12 which at press time equals approximately $17.

CABARET: Andrea McArdle – Seth Concert Series – May 2nd – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

Seth Rudetsky’s guest on this weekend’s Concert Series is the actress who originated the roles of Ashley in the US production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Starlight Express and Margy Frake in the 1993 musical State Fair. She’s also appeared in Les Misérables and Beauty and the Beast.

Of course, she’s best known for introducing the song Tomorrow to us through her Tony-nominated performance as the title character in the musical Annie. Her nomination made her the youngest nominee for Lead Actress in a Musical. (She lost to co-star Dorothy Loudon.)

Tickets are $25 for either this live stream or the replay at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet – The Phillips Collection – May 2nd – 4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw teams up with the Attacca Quartet for this performance from The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Their collaboration on the album Orange led to a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Recording.

This concert will feature the world premiere of Imago by composer inti figgis-vizueta. The work was commissioned by The Phillips Collection.

A selection of Shaw’s own compositions (both songs and works for quartet) will also be performed.

There’s no charge for this concert, but you do have to register to be able to see it. The event will remain available for seven days.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Calidore Quartet – Shriver Hall Concert Series – May 2nd – May 9th

Violist Jeremy Berry, cellist Estelle Choi and violinists Ryan Meehan and Jeffrey Myers make up Calidore Quartet. They were founded in 2010 at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

For this concert from Baltimore’s Shriver Hall, they will be performing the world premiere performance of Hannah Lash’s new quartet.

Also on the program is Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G Major and Antonin Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, nicknamed the American Quartet.

Tickets are $15. There is a Q&A after the performance.

BROADWAY FUNDRAISER: Broadway Acts for Women – A Is For – May 2nd – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

This fundraiser puts the fun front and center. This is the realization of a karaoke fantasy for all fans of Broadway.

Ticket holders get to bid on the songs the performers will sing. Martha Plimpton serves as the host.

Who are the performers in this year’s event?

Sara Bareilles, Elizabeth Banks, Annette Bening, Reed Birney, Ashley Nicole Black, Kathryn Brody, Danny Burstein, Ever Carradine, Ariana DeBose, Garret Dillahunt, Eden Espinosa, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Montego Glover, Kelli O’Hara, Josh Hamilton, Michelle Hurd, Jason Isaacs, Amy Landecker, Jenn Lyon, Lesli Margherita, Howard McGillin, Patton Oswalt, Mandy Patinkin, Harold Perrineau, Carrie Preston, Judy Reyes, Annabella Sciorra, Cecily Strong, Jessica Vosk, Steven Weber, Shannon Woodward, BD Wong and Karen Ziemba.

And if you’ve got deep pockets you can also bid on unique auction items that include a voice lesson with O’Hara, cooking class with Ferguson and a private zoom concert with Bareilles.

Broadway Acts for Women will be live streamed from 54 Below in New York. Tickets start at $75 and go up to $300 with different perks along the way.

A is For is a non-profit working to eliminate the stigma of abortion.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Taiwan Philharmonic – Los Angeles County Museum of Art – May 2nd – 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT

Works of four Taiwanese composers will be performed in this free streaming concert on Sunday. They are Tyson Hsiao, Yu-Shian Deng, Ching-Mei Lin and I-Uen Wang Hwang.

The concert will be performed by the Taiwan Philharmonic.

Within Taiwan they are as the National Symphony Orchestra. Music Director Shao-Chia Lü will lead the orchestra in this performance.

How often do you get to hear this music? There’s no charge to watch the concert, but you do need to RSVP on the website.

CABARET: Jim Caruso’s Pajama Cast Party – Cast Party Network – May 3rd – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

This week’s Pajama Cast Party guest list features Anjali Bhimani (Bombay Dreams); James Gish (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical); Alyssa May Gold (the upcoming revival of How I Learned to Drive); singer/bandleader John Malino (with family) and cabaret singer Sue Matsuki.

There is no charge to watch this always delightful show.

However, should you be so inclined, Jim Caruso and Pajama Cast Party accepts donations and makes weekly donations to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors Fund.

That’s the official list of Best Bets: April 30th – May 3rd, but there are a few reminders:

Covenant by York Walker concludes its run this weekend as part of South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival. For details on the show and the full schedule of plays, please go here.

Two-time Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster’s Bring Me to Light continues from New York City Center. Amongst her guests are Raúl Esparza and Kelli O’Hara. For full details, please go here.

Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope Festival officially ends on Friday, April 30th, but many of the programs will be available for viewing through May 31st. Take a look at my recommendations to see if something might appeal to you.

Sound/Stage from the Los Angeles Philharmonic debuts a new episode on April 30th. The orchestra will perform Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony with Gustavo Dudamel conducting.

This weekend’s offerings from the Metropolitan Opera are the 1980-1981 season production of Verdi’s La Traviata on Friday; the 2018-2019 season production of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur on Saturday and the 2008-2009 season production of Puccini’s La Rondine on Sunday.

Next week’s theme at the Met is Happy Mother’s Day and will start with the 2015-2016 production of Strauss’ Elektra. Not my idea of a happy mother, but this production is staggering. Do not miss it!

Do you have enough options for your weekend? Hopefully you have more choices than you have time to watch everything on this week’s Best Bets: April 30th – May 3rd.

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: Gerald Clayton, who is performing at the 2021 Global All-Star Concert for International Jazz Day (courtesy GeraldClayton.com)

The post Best Bets: April 30th – May 3rd appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Indirectly celebrating this natal day are multiple options that fall under the category of a line from Hamlet, “The play’s the thing.” Beyond the Shakespeare options are five other plays.

If you want funky jazz, contemporary classical music, operas from Europe or modern dance, I’ve got that for you as well. They’re all so good, I can’t make one of them the top pick.

In As You Like It, these famous words are said, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” So in this spirit of this weekend’s Academy Awards, the nominees for great players in Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th are:

THEATER: Neat – Manhattan Theatre Club – Now – April 25th

Charlayne Woodard’s one-person show Neat opened at New York City Center in a Manhattan Theatre Club production in 1997.

Lawrence Van Gelder, writing for the New York Times, said of Woodard’s play, “Ms. Woodard sings, she dances, but most of all she tells good stories, bringing them to life in ways that are poignant.”

Woodard revisits the work in this prevention as part of MTC’s Curtain Call series. The great thing is you can see this wonderful play and performance for free. All you have to do is register. But act quickly, the run ends on Sunday, April 25th.

DANCE: Digital Program 5 – San Francisco Ballet – Now – May 12th

Three archival performances make up this program from San Francisco Ballet. They include 7 for Eight from 2016 and Anima Animus and Snowblind from 2018.

Helgi Tomasson is the creator of 7 for Eight which is set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. David Dawson is the choreographer of Anima Animus which is set to music by Ezio Bosso. Cathy Marston is the choreographer of Snowblind which uses music by Amy Beach, Philip Feeney, Arthur Foote, and Arvo Pärt.

Tickets are $29 and allow for 72 hours of access to the program.

PLAY READING: Two Sisters and a Piano – New Normal Rep – Now – May 23rd ART IN AN EMAIL

Playwright Nilo Cruz is best-known for his Pulitzer Prize winning play Anna in the Tropics from 2002. Three years prior to that success he premiered Two Sisters and a Piano.

The play tells the story of two sisters under house arrest in Cuba in 1991. One sister is an author and the lieutenant keeping track of their case has fallen in love with her. The other is a pianist who finds her piano tuner falling head over heels for his client.

Cruz has directed a new reading of Two Sisters and a Piano with Jimmy Smits (Anna in the Tropics); Florencia Lozano (Rinse, Repeat), Gary Perez and Daphne Rubin-Vega (both of whom appeared in Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater.)

In A.D. Amorosi‘s review of this reading for Variety, he says, “Cruz’s playful poetic language, even at its most harshly politicized, and his easy direction allow his actors a delicious freedom. Even when its characters are not free, enclosed in one cramped apartment with nothing but mangoes, rice and the occasional rum shot (and despite the virtual limitations of a laptop’s viewing screen), Two Sisters and a Piano is as open as a Havana landscape, with all of its flavors, scents and sensory overloads at full tilt.”

Tickets are $25 with $10 tickets available for students.

PLAY: The Royale – Private Reels: From the LCT Archives on Broadway on Demand – Now – May 16th

Real life boxer Jack Jackson (the first African-American world heavyweight champion) serves as the inspiration for the story of Jay “The Sport” Jackson in Marco Ramirez’s 2016 play The Royale. (He was also the inspiration for The Great White Hope).

The story is told in six rounds.

Rachel Chavkin, Tony Award-winner for Hadestown, directed this production. Starring are McKinley Belcher III (the 2020 revival of A Soldier’s Play), Khris Davis (Sweat), Montego Glover (Tony nominee for Memphis), John Lavelle (Catch-22) and Clarke Peters (Five Guys Named Moe).

As Ben Brantley said in his rave New York Times review, “…the great subject of The Royale, which has been given such original and graceful theatrical form, is the selfish single-mindedness required of champions, and the repercussions such a focus has when it’s exercised by a black man in a white man’s world.” 

There is no charge to watch The Royale, but you will have to register with Broadway on Demand.

THEATER: An Iliad – A Noise Within – Now – May 16th

Easily one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I’ve had seeing a play was when I attended Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson’s An Iliad at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It’s a powerful work that is inspired by Homer’s Iliad.

This play, specifically called An Iliad because it isn’t the Iliad, calls for just one actor and a cellist and that actor has to be completely on top of his/her game.

A Noise Within is offering streaming performances of An Iliad with co-founder Geoff Elliott and actress Deborah Strang alternating performances. Joining them as both composer and cellist is Karen Hall. Julia Rodriguez-Elliott directs.

The link in the title will take you to the website so you can see which actor is performing in each performance. Tickets, which are $25 for an individual and $40 for a family, must be reserved a minimum of two hours before each performance.

To see what Denis O’Hare had to say about the show, check out my 2014 interview with him here.

OPERA: Jules Massenet’s Manon – Wiener Staatsoper – April 22nd – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM

Conducted by Frédéric Chaslin; starring Nina Machaidze, Juan Diego Flórez and Adrian Eröd. This Andrei Serban production is from 2019.

Massenet’s opera was composed in 1883 and had its world premiere in January of 1884 in Paris. The libretto is by  Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille.

They based the opera on the 1731 Abbé Prévost novel, L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

A young woman from a small town has an intense desire to lavish herself with all the riches and pleasures life has to offer her. But life doesn’t always work out the way we want. Sounds like a story that could be written today.

This is the first of Vienna State Opera’s productions I’ve included in our listings. Very much like the Metropolitan Opera, they offer a different production each day. There is no charge to watch the productions, but you do need to register on their website. Each production will be available for 24 hours.

MUSICAL: A Letter to Harvey Milk – Now – April 25th

The creators of this musical, Jerry James, Laura I. Kramer, Ellen M. Schwartz and Cheryl Stern were inspired by a short story of the same name by Lesléa Newman. A Letter to Harvey Milk opened off-Broadway in 2018 at the Acorn Theatre in New York.

The setting is San Francisco in the mid 1980s. Harry, a kosher butcher who has retired and is also a widower, is given an assignment to write a letter to someone who is dead. He chooses California politician Harvey Milk – the first openly gay politician elected in California who was later assassinated by Dan White in 1978. But why?

Members of the original cast has reunited for this streaming production. They include Adam Heller, Julia Knitel, Cheryl Stern who are joined by Michael Bartoli, Jeremy Greenbaum, Aury Krebs and Ravi Roth. Evan Pappas directs.

Tickets range from $10 – $50 with proceeds going to The Actors Fund and HIAS. All tickets purchased will allow viewing of the musical through Sunday, April 25th at 11:59 PM EDT/8:59 PDT.

SHAKESPEARE: Shakespeare Sonnet Slam – Gingold Theatrical Group – April 23rd – 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare. You don’t look a day over 450. The Gingold Theatrical Group is celebrating by holding a virtual open mic where Shakespeare’s sonnets or other material based on or inspired by the Sonnets will be performed. Everyone is invited to participate and you have three minutes to give it your all.

Joining in this celebration are Stephen Brown-Fried, Robert Cuccioli, Tyne Daly, George Dvorsky, Melissa Errico, Alison Fraser, Tom Hewitt, Daniel Jenkins, John-Andrew Morrison, Patrick Page, Maryann Plunkett, Tonya Pinkins, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders, Renee Taylor, Jon Patrick Walker and more.

You’ll have to come up with your own take on the Sonnets, but this is a free party! You can find the Shakespeare Sonnet Slam on Gingold Theatrical Group’s Facebook page.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Sonic Shift – Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra – Premieres April 23rd at 9:30 PM EDT/6:30 PM PDT

Composer Jessie Montgomery has curated this new episode of LA Chamber Orchestra’s Close Quarters series. On the program are works by composers Marcos Balter, Anna Meredith and Alyssa Weinberg. Each work explores the progression from acoustic music to electronic and electro-acoustic music with an emphasis on the wind section.

Will Kim provides the visuals that accompany the performance which is lead by Christopher Rountree of Wild Up! Nadia Sirota is the music producer.

This is the first of two Close Quarters episodes curated by Montgomery. I recently interviewed her about working with LACO. You can read that interview here.

There’s no charge to watch this performance. Donations are encouraged.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Neave Trio – Asheville Chamber Music Series – April 23rd – April 25th – Art in an EMAIL

Pianist Eri Nakamura, cellist Mikhail Veselov and violinist Anna Williams are the members in Neave Trio. Following on the heels of their 2019 album Her Voice, which featured female composers, their concert this weekend as part of the Asheville Chamber Music Series will also showcase female composers.

On the program is the Trio No. 1, Op. 33 by Louise Farrench; Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio and Cécile Chaminade’s Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 11.

Perhaps none of these composers is familiar to you. They aren’t to me. But Neave Trio’s passion for this lesser-known music makes this concert utterly compelling.

There are three performances: Friday, April 23rd at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT; Saturday at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT and Sunday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT.

You can watch this concert for free, but donations are encouraged.

JAZZ: Sun Ra Arkestra – SFJAZZ – April 23rd – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

The name Herman Poole Blount probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But if told that was the birth name of Le Sony’r Ra who would later become known as Sun Ra, you might have a better idea who he was.

Experimental, free and avant-garde jazz was his specialty. It was always performed best by the Sun Ra Arkestra.

After Sun Ra’s death in 1993, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen starting leading the ensemble. As he does in this concert at SFJAZZ from 2017.

To get a sense of what might be in store for you in this Fridays at Five concert, here are some of the songs being performed: Space Loneliness, Saturn, Angels and Demons at Play and Space is the Place. It’s going to be trippy.

And you can take that trip for $5 (which offers one full month of digital membership or $60 (which includes a one year digital membership.)

There is an encore showing on April 24th at 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT.

PLAY: Romeo and Juliet – Great Performances on PBS – April 23rd – Check Local Listings

You don’t expect just some stand-up sonnets for Shakespeare’s birthday, do you? Of course not. Let’s throw in some tragedy. As in the tragic love story of them all – Romeo and Juliet.

The National Theatre created this film which maneuvers its way from rehearsal into and around the Lyttleton Theatre. The cast are stuck in a theater that has shut down and act out the story of the Capulets and the Montagues.

Starring as the title characters are Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley. The cast also includes Fisayo Akinade, Ella Dacres, Deborah Findlay, Tamsin Greig, Ellis Howard, Lloyd Hutchinson, David Judge, Adrian Lester, Lucian Msamati, Alex Mugnaioni, Shubham Saraf and Colin Tierney. Simon Godwin is the director.

As with any show on PBS, I’d advise checking your local listings for exact airdate and time in your part of the country.

OPERA: Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte – Wiener Staatsoper – April 24th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Adam Fischer; starring Benjamin Bruns, Olga Bezsmertna, Íride Martínez, Markus Werba and Annika Gerhards. This Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier production is from 2015.

Mozart’s opera premiered in September 1791 in Vienna a mere two months before the composer died. It features a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder.

Prince Tamino is asked by the Queen of the Night to free her daughter Pamina from Sarastro. Tamino, however, is impressed with Sarastro and the way his community lives in the world and wants to be a part of it. Both alone and together Tamino and Pamina endure multiple tests. If they succeed, what will happen to them? To the Queen of the Night?

MONOLOGUES: Whispers International – April 24th – 2:00 PM EDT/11:00 AM PDT

As you know, there was a massive blast in Lebanon on August 4th of last year. Almost 200 people were killed and over 6,000 people were injured.

Whispers International was created to raise money for the victims and to help in the rebuilding of the area around the blast site.

British playwrights Geraldine Breenna, Mike Elliston, Kim Hardy, Angela Harvey, John Jesper and Kate Webster have made their writing available to a company of Lebanese actors to perform.

Those actors are Nadine Labaki, Georges Khabbaz, Nada Abou Farhat, Talal El Jurdi, Bernadette Houdeib, Rita Hayek, Badih Abou Chacra, Dory Al-Samarany, Bshara Atallah, Sany Abdul Baki, Josyane Boulos, Agatha Ezzedine and Hagop Der Ghougassian 

Tickets are £13.52 which at press time equals approximately $18.75.

OPERA: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel – Weiner Staatsoper – April 25th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Christian Thielemann; starring Ileana Tosca, Daniela Sindram, Adrian Eröd, Janina Baechle, Michaela Schuster, Annika Gerhards

The Grimm brother’s fairly tale about a brother and sister who are lured to a house with sweets and candies only to find a witch who wants to eat the duo is the basis for this opera that had its debut in 1893 in Weimar. Richard Strauss conducted the premiere. A second production the next year in Hamburg was conducted by Gustav Mahler. Adelheid Wette, Humpderdink’s sister, wrote the libretto.

Hansel and Gretel has the distinction of finding much of its popularity not just through opera houses, but on the radio. It was the first opera broadcast on the radio in Europe when a 1923 Covent Garden production was heard over the airwaves. Eight years later in 1931, it became the first ever opera broadcast in its entirety by the Metropolitan Opera.

The opera is commonly seen and heard during the Christmas season. An odd choice, but librettist Adelheid Wette did soften some of the harsher elements found in the original Grimm tales for her brother’s opera.

CABARET: Mandy Gonzalez – Seth Concert Series – April 25th – 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT

With the upcoming film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, it’s a great time to check in on one of the musical’s original cast members: Mandy Gonzalez, who originated the role of Nina.

Gonazalez is an insanely talented singer and actress.

I saw her in In the Heights. She’s also appeared in Wicked, Lennon, Dance of the Vampires and as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton.

I’ve also seen her perform her cabaret act and it is impossible to express the amount of pure joy that comes out of her when she’s singing. (And she does a killer version of Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.)

She is Seth Rudetsky’s guest in his concert series this weekend.

Tickets are $25 and you can watch the live performance at 3:00 PM EDT or the replay of the concert at 8:00 PM EDT. Whichever you choose, you will certainly have a good time.

IN PERSON: DANCE: Uniting in Movement – American Ballet Theatre – Segerstrom Center for the Arts – April 25th – 1:30 PM PDT

You could be ambivalent about the Academy Awards and go see a rare live performance of ballet in Costa Mesa. ABT has been creating a program of three different works that were filmed this week. On Sunday, they are opening up Segerstrom Center for the Arts for a limited number of people to see the performance live.

The works are Let Me Sing Forever More by choreographer Jessica Lang and set to the recordings of Tony Bennett (clearly the title comes from Fly Me to the Moon); La Follia Variations by Lauren Lovette set to music of the same name by composer Francesco Geminiani and Indestructible Light by Darrell Grand Moultrie which is set to music by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Neal Hefti and Billy Strayhorn.

Hefti, by the way, composed the theme for the television series Batman.

At press time the only available tickets were $80 each. There are Covid-protocols in place for this performance.

For those willing to wait, Uniting in Movement will be available for streaming through Segerstrom Center for the Arts from May 12th – May 26th for $25.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Argus Quartet: noise/Silence – Five Boroughs Music Festival and The Noguchi Museum – April 25th – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT (Art in an email)

Cellist Audrey Chen, violinists Clara Kim and Gioncarlo Latta and violist Maren Rothfritz make up the Argus Quartet. Though they perform music from across all eras of classical music, they seem to excel in contemporary works.

This concert was filmed at one of my favorite museums in New York, The Noguchi Museum. It is being presented by the Five Boroughs Music Festival. The Argus Quartet will perform works by composers John Cage (String Quartet in Four Parts); Dorothy Rudd More (Modes for String Quartet), Rolf Wallin (several selections from Curiosity Cabinet) and Paul Wiancko (Vox Petra).

The concert will be available for free streaming on the Five Boroughs Music Festival YouTube channel through December 31st.

OPERA: Bizet’s Carmen – Weiner Staatsoper – April 26th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada; starring Anita Rachvelishvili, Piotr Beczala, Erwin Schrott and Vera-Lotte Boecker. This Calixto Bieito production is from 2021.

Georges Bizet collaborated with librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy on this immensely popular opera. It was based on Propser Mérimée’s novella of the same name. 

When Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875 it was considered both shocking and scandalous. 

Set in Seville, Spain, Carmen is a gypsy who has caught everyone’s eye. A soldier, Don José, plays coy and gives her no attention. Her flirtation causes troubles for both when Don José’s girlfriend, Micaëla arrives. Tensions escalate between the two women and after a knight fight, José must arrest Carmen. When she seduces him it sets off a series of events that will not end well for the gypsy woman.

PLAY: Measure for Measure – Goodman Theatre – April 26th – May 9th

Here’s another opportunity to celebrate the bard. But this isn’t going to be your standard production of a Shakespearean play.

Director Robert Falls has transported this play from Vienna to New YOrk City circa the late 1970s (or as I like to describe it, before Disney moved into Broadway).

The story is still the same. Claudio is sentenced to death under an arcane law invoked by Angelo who has taken over for the Duke who has left rather than have to deal with morality issues in (originally Vienna). Claudio’s crime? Getting his girlfriend, Juliet, pregnant.

The Duke returns in disguise and becomes aware of the decisions Angelo has been making. Deception, bargains, bartering, love and death are all on the table in this fairly convoluted play.

Justin Hayford, in his review for the Chicago Reader, had mixed feelings about the production:

“It’s rare for one of Shakespeare’s plays to be ripped from its original setting, transplanted across centuries and continents—and still end up feeling vital, urgent, and utterly contemporary. At least for a while. If Falls and his stellar cast could maintain that vitality past intermission, they’d have a masterpiece on their hands.”

Nonetheless, I think the concept sounds interesting and worth checking out. What else are you going to do on a Monday night? (Of course, I have another option for you…)

Tickets are free, but require registration.

AUDIO PLAY: Brother, Brother – New York Theatre Workshop – Live Premiere April 26th – 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT Art in an email

New York Theater Workshop is offering up a twist on audio plays. This will feature visuals, but not of the performers. Rather, artists Ibrahim Rayintakath​ and Liang-Hsin Huang have created imagery that will accompany Aleshea Harris’ play.

Brother, Brother tells the story of two brothers sharing a bicycle while making their way through Appalachia. They are actors headed to Tennessee. They start getting followed by a mysterious man in a maroon suit. At this moment the dreams they have for their future are confronted by the acts from their past.

Starring in this audio play are Amari Cheathom (terrific in August Wilson’s Jitney), André De Shields (Tony Award-winner for Hadestown), Gbenga Akinnagbe (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Owen Tabaka (Ratatouille: The Tik Tok Musical). Shayok Misha Chowdhury directs.

Tickets are $10. Brother, Brother will remain available for streaming through July 25th.

Those are my Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th. But a few reminders (and a preview):

MasterVoices has debuted the 3rd part of Myths and Hymns, a series of short films set to Adam Guettel’s song cycle. For details about the series, go here. For my interview with MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling, go here.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Gala 2021 is available for streaming through Sunday. For details about the program and how to get tickets, go here.

Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope series continues with multiple new shows available for free viewing. For details go here.

The Metropolitan Opera streams Philip Glass’ Satyagraha on Friday (highly recommended); Beethoven’s Fidelio on Saturday and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites on Sunday (also highly recommended). For details and previews go here.

Here’s a preview of next week at the Met where the theme is City of Light (all the operas take place in Paris). Monday’s opera is, what else, La Bohème by Puccini.

That truly is the full and complete list of Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th. Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: William Shakespeare (By BatyrAshirbayev98/Courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

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