#six-the-musical

#six-the-musical

For all its historical trappings, 1776 isn't a pageant, and it doesn't behave like one. It's a talky, funny, occasionally cranky chamber piece about a group of men stuck in a room, led by the stubborn, relentless John Adams, arguing their way toward independence.

MarcAurele knew he had to strike while the iron was red-hot, so he got to writing, and in just three short weeks he was bringing the show to life, complete with a number that explored the inherent musicality of that bike scene and another that featured a chorus lauding 'gay hockey players with big butts' as if they were singing a church hymn.

Lily Allen's 'West End Girl' is an excoriating concept album about the failure of her second marriage, filled with vivid details of betrayal and personal turmoil.

Evan's misery goes far deeper than the typical pop-culture depiction of a struggling teen. His despair is so palpable, we can't be certain he'll emerge from it.

Forty years ago, Webber was absurdly popular, Britain's number one cultural export of the '80s. It was an Ed Sheeran-ish popularity: an insanely prolific hitmaker, yes, but he never commanded a fraction of the critical adulation of, say, Stephen Sondheim or Kander & Ebb.

As Broadway heads into the busy spring theater season, a wave of new productions and high-profile revivals is arriving across Midtown. This year's lineup leans heavily on recognizable titles including revivals of classics and stage adaptations of familiar screen properties as well as star casting.

YAY BROADWAY! so happy my bway debut is playing a fellow polarizing woman in this perfect musical next month I hope you will all come watch me live my dream I am SO HAPPY I CANT STOP SMILING.

While Miranda was hailed as a genius for creating the show, the actual breakout star was Leslie Odom Jr, who played Hamilton's nemesis Aaron Burr. Hugely praised for his magnetic, devilish performance, he pipped Miranda to the best actor in a musical gong at the 2016 Tony Awards.

From Yes Minister co-writer Jonathan Lynn comes I'm Sorry, Prime Minister - the final act between Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey. Jim Hacker (Griff Rhys Jones) is back - older, no wiser, and still gloriously out of his depth. Dreaming of a peaceful retirement at Hacker College, Oxford, Jim instead collides with a very modern nightmare: being cancelled by the college committee.

Mr. Darcy is its stern romantic lead. He has a massive income from his estate - 10,000 pounds a year - and, according to the novel's witty protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, just as large of a stick up his ass. Jane Austen was not one to go for lengthy physical descriptions of things, but we do know that when he enters a room, he draws people's attention with a "fine, tall person, handsome features," and a "noble mien."

If City Center Encores! was originally founded as a kind of musical-theater seance devoted to raising the dead, or at least the long-forgotten then High Spirits is about as literal a mission statement as you could ask for. The rarely revived 1964 musical opens with a seance and arrives at City Center like a theatrical ghost itself: long unseen, mostly forgotten, and faintly glowing with the promise of pleasures from another era. That alone makes High Spirits worth summoning.

Three middle-aged women may be all you need for anything. To run a business, raise a village, end a war, retool a civilisation, empty the loft. Even more usefully, you can make a great murder-mystery caper with them, as Lisa McGee (a fourth woman! If it ain't broke, don't fix it) has done with her new series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

"Heated Rivalry," a low-budget Canadian series that began streaming on HBO Max late last year, quickly made the leap from unexpected word-of-mouth success to full-blown cultural phenomenon. The show, which follows a pair of professional hockey players who fall for each other, has been name-checked by everyone from the N.H.L. commissioner to Zohran Mamdani; its two young leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, just served as Olympic torch-bearers.

The Donmar's programme is as eclectic as ever, with the opening play being (Apr 18-Jun 6). US actor-writer-director Fran Kranz's adaptation of his own hit indie film is about two sets of couples - the parents of the victim of a high school shooting, and the parents of the shooter - who attempt a painful reconciliation years after the event. Carrie Cracknell directs a top cast that includes Adeel Akhtar, Amari Bacchus, Monica Dolan, Paul Hilton, Lyndsey Marshal, Rochelle Rose and Susie Trayling.

In the case of his latest film, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, there's a scene in which a character tries in vain to close a door on Gail (Zoey Deutch) and her ragtag group of friends over and over and over again. At the movie's Sundance Film Festival premiere at the Eccles, laughter rippled across the room. It was funny, but then it kept going, and then it got funnier and funnier, the enthusiasm contagious.

The Shitheads is part period piece, part family drama and part allegorical epic. It unfolds at some time in prehistory (10,000 - 50,000 BC, to be exact). Nomadic hunter-gatherers coexist with a family of cannibalistic cave dwellers who justify their eating habits by dehumanising their human prey. Hunter-gatherers are 'shitheads', they say - inferior, stupid, without expansive interior lives. One of these cave-dwellers, a straight-talking fighter named Clare (Jacoba Williams - Vera), meets Greg (Jonny Khan - Statues), an endearing, simple-minded gatherer.

The first time around, Andrew Lloyd Webber's train-tastic musical opus Starlight Express ran for a walloping 18 years, one of the most successful theatre productions in West End history. The second time around, its first major revival has lasted under two years: it's just been announced that Luke Sheppard's 2024 production will be heading to the great train shed in the sky (it's actually going on tour) in early May.