Broadway’s Sassy Season

Here she is, world. The event of the Broadway season is upon us. Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald is starring in the classic Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical fable, Gypsy (Majestic Theatre, opening December 19, open ended). 

Any production featuring the most celebrated musical theater performer of our time is noteworthy, but this one is especially of interest in that it’s the first time a major production of this quintessential American musical will feature a Black actress in the leading role of Rose. 

Some have balked that this is somehow inappropriate as the piece, inspired by the memoirs of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, chronicles non-fictional characters in situations that may historically have been inhospitable to people of color. Apparently, that’s part of McDonald’s fellow six-time Tony winner, director George C. Wolfe’s (Angels in America, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk) concept for the production. As McDonald told Good Morning, America, “Some of these lines and some of the situations that the characters find themselves in, it’ll hit in a different place coming from a Black woman.”

I’m all for it. Gypsy has already been revived on Broadway four times (with casts led by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, and Patti LuPone) since its original production starring Ethel Merman in 1959. It’s considered by many to be the greatest American musical and by that logic, it should be open to new interpretations and visions, like Shakespeare or Sophocles. Let’s see what other angles this show can be approached from, what else can be revealed in its rich text. Maybe it won’t work, but I can’t wait to see the attempt either way.

There is no director I’d rather see at the helm of a new production of Gypsy than George C. Wolfe. Certainly, he’s an excellent choice to mine these words and music for everything they have to say on the Black experience in America at the end of the vaudeville era. But even beyond that, Wolfe is the ideal person to navigate the show’s dichotomy of psychological drama and show business razzmatazz. Curtain up, light the lights. 

Here for a good time, not a long time, the seasonal revival of the holiday movie musical stage adaptation, Elf (Marquis Theatre, closes January 4), looks especially fun this time around thanks to the casting of everyone’s favorite gay sassmaster in both Shucked and Mean Girls, Grey Henson, as Buddy. Add in a cast led by Mary Poppins’s Ashley Brown, Tina’s Kayla Davion, Carousel’s Michael Hayden, and The Lord of the Rings legend Sean Astin as Santa, and the yuletide just got a whole lot jollier.

Zachary Quinto proved himself as comfortable on stage as he is on screen with such Broadway successes as The Boys in the Band and The Glass Menagerie. Now he returns in Emmy nominated TV writer Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love (Hayes Theater, opening December 12, closes February 2), also starring Molly Bernard, Roberta Colindrez, Barbie Ferreira, Rebecca Henderson, Christopher Lowell, David Rasche, Christopher Sears, Mare Winningham, and Shailene Woodley, and directed by Trip Cullman (Lobby Hero, Significant Other, Choir Boy, Six Degrees of Separation).

If you just want to laugh your way through Valentine’s Day, perhaps the answer is All In: Comedy About Love (Hudson Theatre, previews December 11, closes February 16). It’s written by SNL scribe Simon Rich and Lorne Michael is one of the producers. Alex Timbers (Oh, Hello, Moulin Rouge) directs a rotating cast of the some of the brightest names in comedy including John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Renée Elise Goldberry, Richard Kind, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Aidy Bryant, David Cross, Jimmy Fallon, Chloe Fineman, Tim Meadows, Andrew Rannells, and Sam Richardson. 

As always, if the intimate entertainment found in small cabaret clubs is what you’re looking for, New York City remains the unparalleled capital of the world. Here are some of the highlights of what’s playing at the various venues around town.

The Café Carlyle

• Adrienne Warren December 3-7

• Tony Danza December 10-14

Joe’s Pub

• Justin Vivian Bond December 12-22

• Murray Hill December 12-20

• Dan Fishback  December 14-15

• Sandra Bernhard December 26-31

• Martha Graham Cracker January 17-January 18

The Green Room 42

• Joe Serafini December 1

• David Raleigh December 2
• A Motown Christmas December 2

• Samuel Vincent Aubuchon December 3

• Anne Steele December 4

• The Twisted Christmas December 4-7

• Pissi Myles December 7

• Edmund Bagnell December 10

• Rep Book Roulette December 11 & January 14

• Zachary Clause December 11

• Reeve Carney December 15

• The Randy Andys December 19

• Melody Betts December 20

• Nathan Brewer December 21

• Richard Skipper December 27

• John Hill January 7

• Lady Bushra January 11

• Bligh Voth & Joel de Candio January 16

• Patty Lohr & Ruthie Ann Miles January 20

• Charity Angél Dawson January 27

54 Below

• Lorna Luft & Andrea McArdle December 5-7

• Storm Large December 11-12

• Joe Iconis December 13-15

• Norm Lewis December 18-24

• Carole Bufford December 19-20

• Ari Shapiro January 2-4

• Derek Klena January 8-10

• Lea DeLaria December 8 & January 12

• Lee Roy Reams January 24-25