Gypsy will be back on the Broadway stage in 2008 staring Tony Award Winner Pattie LuPone.

According to a casting notice, the revival of the musical will open at a theatre TBA on March 27, 2008 with rehearsals beginning at the end of January.

Gypsy ran a limited engagement this past summer at City Center in the Encores! Summer Stars series that also started Pattie LuPone and has now found its way back to the Broadway stage.

Arthur Laurents, Gypsy co-creator, will direct the Broadway production. It has been noted that the entire cast of the Encores! Production has been offered the chance to repeat their roles on Broadway, but only LuPone has currently been cast.

Gypsy features a score by Jule Styne (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrpics) and a book by Arthur Laurents. Ethel Merman created the role of Rose in the original production of Gypsy which closed on Broadway in May 1959 after 702 performances.

Broadway is back in business today as the 19-day stagehand strike comes to an end and actors, musicians, producers and of course stagehands return to work. A spokeswoman for the League of American Theaters and Producers said all the shows that had been idled by the walkout would have performances this evening (November 29).

New opening dates for shows that had been schedule to open during the strike have been announced. Most will be in previews until the official opening. The Farnsworth Invention will open Monday December 3, The Seafarer is schedule to open Thursday December 6, Is He Dead will be opening Sunday December 9 and a new opening date for The Little Mermaid had not been determined at this time. In addition to these openings August: Osage County is set to open on Tuesday December 4.

It was announced at 10:30 on Wednesday night to the cheering stagehands, almost 100 had gathered outside the law offices where the negotiations had taken place. Around 10:45PM the executive director of the League, Charlotte St. Martin, officially announced that “Performances begin tomorrow night”. In a later statement she said “The contract is a good compromise that serves our industry.”

This was the first strike in the stagehands union history, which goes back 121 years. It affected 27 shows on Broadway as well as one Duran Duran concert, which ended up moving to another location.

According to the city comptroller’s office the strike reportedly coast the city $2 million a day, which would mean a lose of almost $40 million over the course of the 19 day strike.

A resolution could not have come at a better time. After losing serious revenue last week with the Thanksgiving holiday, which usually brings in droves of people to New York, it is clear no one wanted this to continue on into the busy Christmas holiday season.

Laura Linney will be making her return to the Broadway stage in the upcoming revival of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the American Airlines Theatre tentatively schedule to run April 11-June 29 2008.

Linney has also been seen on the stage in Sight Unseen, The Crucible and Uncle Vanya. Her film career includes movies such as “Mystic River”, “You can Count on Me”, “Love Actually”, “Breach”, “Kinsey”, and “The Truman Show”.

On Sunday November 25 there will be a free run-through of the upcoming revival of the Broadway show The Homecoming will take place at the New World Stage located on 340 West 50^th Street. The show is free but they will be accepting donations at the conclusion of the performance for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

The production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming is schedule to open on December 13 at the Cort Theater. The show will be directed by Daniel Sullivan and has a cast that includes Ian McShane, Eve Best, Raul Esparza, Michael McKean, James Frain, and Gareth Saxe.

The Homecoming is set in North London at a family gathering. Teddy (James Frain) has brought his wife, Ruth (Eve Best) home to meet her in-laws. The Homecoming won the Tony Award for Best Play during its premiere in 1967.

Performer’s form several Off-Broadway shows will be performing live in Union Square. The shows will take place Fridays at 4PM starting on November 30, and then running December 7, 14, 21. Each set will be 30 minute longs.

Cast members from Altar Boyz, The Fantasticks, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, and Stomp will be performing with additional shows expected to participate.

The Off-Broadway performances will be running in conjunction with the Holiday Market which features 100 red and white booths in
Union Square and is open from November 23-December 24.

By Heather Parks 

It should be said from the outset and with no reservation that THINGS WE WANT is not one of Jonathan Marc Sherman’s best efforts. A claustrophobic piece, centered around three brothers who share a cramped New York City apartment and grapple with their parents suicides (through the living room window, years ago), the play ultimately fails to transcend the superficial.   

The three brothers, as played by Josh Hamilton, Peter Dinklage and Paul Dano, are a prickly lot.  To a man, the characters possess at their core nothing smaller than a gaping hole of want.  Each tries in vain to fill this space – through alcohol, through love, through spirituality or through some combination of the three.  These are souls bent on self-abnegation and intent of following the short path to get there.  The addition of Zoe Kazan, a lovely young actress with a powerful presence, provides little relief from the zany embrace of gloom that overwhelms the entire piece.  She is an alcoholic, herself, with her own reasons for and tendencies toward self-obliteration. 

What Sherman fails to provide us with is a means by which to connect with these slick-talking, tortured souls.  They come across as flimsy straw men, performing a Sartre-esque dance of psychological musical chairs in a cluttered space so difficult to bear that (by play’s end) the open window through which their parents jumped begins to look rather fetching. 

Of the three actors, Hamilton – a Sherman veteran who starred in the 1988 production of Women and Wallace, the playwright’s first full-length play – seems to be having the best time.  As a paying acolyte of the self-styled self-help guru Dr. Miracle, Hamilton is the most functional of the brothers at the outset; however, one pyramid-scheme-gone-wrong later, he undergoes a largely unearned (but incredibly fun to watch) shift in character.  Dinklage does the same, only in reverse (and with more clothes).  Only Dano is left to perpetuate his status quo – and what a whining, pining status quo it is.    

There is some good dialogue – the play is littered with the clever turns of phrase specific to Sherman.  And, the direction is spot on.  Ethan Hawke, who does the honors, should be commended for doing his most with the extremely limiting material provided.  He can’t help it that by the time the Joni Mitchell song plays we want to clap for the effort and race for the exit.   

On a positive note there is this: the return of Sherman to the New York stage is something to be celebrated by anyone interested in theater.  He is an undoubtedly strong playwright whose decade long absence, due to a much-publicized bout with alcoholism, left a hole in the fabric of what we expect from the best of off-Broadway.  If nothing else, THINGS WE WANT serves as a baseline for what we as an audience might expect as Sherman‘s work, in its new incarnation, matures.  The talent is there – the raw emotions rippling to the surface, the tightly controlled dialogue and the intense male characters, whose animalistic displays of repressed grief are uniquely Sherman.

THINGS WE WANT opened November 7^th at the Acorn Theater.  A production of the New Group, the play is directed by Ethan Hawke and stars Josh Hamilton, Peter Dinklage, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan.  It continues through December 30^th. 

As the strike presses on in NYC shutting down 27 Broadway productions one show decided to do something about it.

According to NY1, Supreme Court judge Helen E. Freedman granted an injunction filed by the producers of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas that will allow the musical to reopen at the St. James Theatre.

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which has been closed since November 10 along with 26 other Broadway productions, will reopen just in time for the busy holiday weekend on November 23.

According to David Waggett, the general manager for Grinch, the picket lines have moved from the St. James Theatre and the stagehands union has agreed to work this show. After making this major stride they still needed to gain approval from Jujamcyn Theaters which was not granted. That is when they decided to go to court to get the injunction that would require Jujamcyn to reopen its doors. James Sanna, the producer of the show filed the injunction on November 20 and the ruling to reopen the theater was announced today, November 21.

This should bring joy and happiness to many people this holiday season. Unlike most of the shows that are affected by the strike Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas is running for a limited engagement which concludes its run on January 6, 2008.

For a list of Broadway shows affected by the current strike click here.

The Off-Broadway show Things We Want which is directed by Ethan Hawke has extended its current run through December 30. The show began previews on October 22 and had its opening night on November 7.

Things We Want is playing at Theatre Row’s Acorn Theater and added the additional shows due to popular demand. The recent stagehands strike has probably helped increase ticket sales for this show as well as other Off-Broadway productions since they are not affected by the strike.

Things We Want is a dark comedy about three brothers that live together and are trying to deal with the death of both of their parents. They face their own personal obstacles and changes come when a sexy young neighbor come into their lives.

The cast includes Paul Dano, Peter Dinklage, Zoe Kazan and Josh Hamilton.

 To see what other Off-Broadway shows are playing during the strike click here.

On Saturday November 17^th the League of American Theatres and Producers and the Stagehand’s union, Local One, met for negotiations at the Westin Hotel on West 43^rd Street.

The meeting started around 10:00AM and went until after 11:00PM. This was the first time the two groups met since November 8. Currently 27 shows are affected by the strike with only 8 Broadway shows running.

The mood of the strikers was very somber on Saturday after the death of Frank J. Lavaia. Lavaia was a 57 year old stagehand who worked at the Minskoff Theater and died on Friday after suffering a heart attack on the picket line. Picketers wore black armbands made by the wardrobe union and a memorial was held in front of the Minskoff on Saturday.

Our Sinatra will be returning in the Off-Broadway Songbook Theatre today November 16 for an open-ended engagement. The show is set to have an official opening night on November 20.

The cast of Our Sinatra includes Christopher Gines, Harmony Keeney and Elliot Roth. The show will be directed by Kurt Stamm, the production supervisor is Richard Malby Jr. and the lighting designer is Rich Latta.

Over 50 of Sinatra’s most famous songs are featured in the show, including “Fly Me to the Moon”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “All or Nothing” and “Night and Day”.

Our Sinatra previously had success on 2 national tours and numerous regional productions.