Curtain Call: Ato Blankson-Wood and Natascia Diaz to Join Broadway’s Upcoming ‘Cabaret’
Natascia Diaz -Walter McBride
Broadway: Tony Award nominee Ato Blankson-Wood and Natascia Diaz have joined the cast of the upcoming Broadway revival of Cabaret along with Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin. Blankson-Wood will play the role of “Cliff,” while Diaz is set to play Fraulein Kost/Fritzie. Blankson-Wood was most recently nominated for a Tony Award in 2020 for his portrayal of Gary in Slave Play and Diaz won her third Helen Hayes Award in 2019 for her portrayal of Fosca in Passion at Washington, DC’s Signature Theatre.
The revival, officially titled Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, begins previews at the August Wilson Theatre on Monday, April 1, 2024 with their opening night scheduled for April 21, 2024. The production will be directed by Rebecca Frecknall and designed by Tom Scutt with additional casting being announced in the coming weeks.
Brody Grant, Brent Comer, and Jason Schmidt will make their Broadway debuts in the upcoming musical adaptation of The Outsiders, set to begin previews on Saturday, March 16, 2024. Sony Masterworks Broadway plans to release a Broadway cast recording in 2024. The first track, “Great Expectations,” featuring Brody Grant, is available now on all streaming services. The musical is based on the 1967 novel by S.E. Hinton and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation.
The Black Theatre United’s (BTU) inaugural gala raised an incredible $1.2 million on October 30, 2023. The funds were raised to support BTU’s Mentorships, Student Internships, Annual Advocacy Summit and Education program. The gala celebrated the impact that Black culture had and continues to have on Broadway.
Justin Cooley - WWD
Off Broadway: Academy Award-winning singer and songwriter Mitski has been set to compose the score to the upcoming musical adaptation of The Queen’s Gambit, which is currently in development. She joins the team after releasing seven albums, with credits including co-writing “This Is a Life” for the Academy Award-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once. The production, based on the 1983 novel that inspired the 2020 Netflix adaptation, was first announced in 2021. Eboni Booth is set to pen the script and Obie-Award winner Whitney White is set to direct.
Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise, a theatrical adaptation of his breakthrough 2005 album Illinois, will make its Off-Broadway premiere in March at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory. The production will include music and lyrics by Stephens, direction and choreography by Tony Award-winner Justin Peck, and story by Peck and Pulitzer-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury.
Illinoise will run from March 2 to 23, 2023.
Tony Award nominee Justin Cooley has signed to Stewart Talent. Cooley was nominated in 2023 in the Best Featured Actor/Musical category for his portrayal of Seth in Kimberly Akimbo. For his Off Broadway performances, he has received nominations for Antonyo, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel awards.
Anna Deavere Smith - Monica Schipper
Regional: The Atlantic magazine is set to publish a new play: The Ghost of Slavery by Anna Deavere Smith, for the first time in almost a century. The play will debut across 32 pages of The Atlantic’s December issue and was posted on the publication’s website on November 13. Set in Baltimore and Annapolis in the 1860s and present, The Ghost of Slavery explores the power of historical trauma and how it persists for generations.
Matthew Xia - Darren Bell
International: The Donmar Warehouse has announced its new season for 2024 which includes Adeel Akhtar and Matthew Xia. Akhtar is set to star in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, playing Liubov Ranevskaya and Ermolai Lopakhin. Xia will direct Eboni Booth’s Off-Broadway hit Primary Trust, which runs from June 28 to August 24, 2024.
Additional names have been announced for the My Favorite Things: The Rodgers & Hammerstein 80th Anniversary Concert including Lucy St. Louis. She will join the previously announced multi-Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Marisha Wallace, Tony Award nominee Ashley Park and Daniel Dae Kim.
The two-performance gala event, presented by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, will take place on December 12, 2023 at Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
The Gillian Lynne Theater has announced the initial casting for the West End transfer of Sheffield Theatres’ musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge. The cast includes Elizabeth Ayodele as Joy, Sharlene Hector as Grace, Mel Lowe as Connie, and Baker Mukasa reprising their role as George. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
The cast for the Australian tour of the multi-Tony Award winning musical by Jonathan Larson, Rent, has been announced. Among the cast is Martha Berhane as Mimi, and THNDO as Joanne, Nick Afoa as Collins, Carl De Villa as Angel, and Tana Laga’aia as Benny. Additionally, Josslynn Hlenti, Chad Rosete, and Theodore Williams shall be joining.
Rent will play at the Playhouse, QPAC, Brisbane on January 17, 2024, then State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne on February 17, 2024, Newcastle’s Civic Theatre from March 15, 2024, His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth from May 11, 2024, and Canberra Theatre from June 6, 2024.
The National Theater Company of Korea has brought back The Orphan of Zhao: Seeds of Revenge for its sixth run at the Myeongdong Theater in Seoul which started on November 30, 2023 and will end on December 25, 2023. Premiering in 2015, The Orphan of Zhao is a reinterpretation of the Chinese "Zaju" drama script of the same title, written by playwright Ji Junxiang.
Tirupur Subramaniam, Tamil Nadu Theater and Multiplex Owners Association president, has resigned as president for personal reasons. After the Tamil Nadu government sent a notice to Subramaniam’s theater for violating restrictions by showing special morning screenwings of Tiger 3, Subramaniam told reporters that he’d be resigning.
