New York Spotlight: February 2011

The Broadway season is kicking into high gear. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe returns to the Great White Way in the musical revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Al Hirschfeld Theatre, beginning February 26), about a wily window washer’s rise up the corporate ladder. The cast also features Tammy Blanchard, Christopher J. Hanke, Rose Hemingway, John Larroquette, and Michael Park, with Emmy-winning journalist Anderson Cooper as the voice of the narrator.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have teamed up with Tony winning composer Robert Lopez for The Book of Mormon (Eugene O’Neill Theatre, beginning February 24), a musical about a pair of mismatched Mormon boys on a mission. The principal cast includes Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells, Nikki M. James, Rory O’Malley and Michael Potts. Another highly anticipated musical event is Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical (Palace Theatre, beginning February 28), based on the popular 1994 movie about a trio of Australian drag artists. Tony Sheldon, Will Swenson, and Nick Adams star, and the score is made up of well-known dance-floor songs.

Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Noth, Jason Patric, and Kiefer Sutherland comprise the starry Broadway revival cast of Jason Miller’s 1972 Pulitzer Prize winner, That Championship Season, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (February 9-May 29). Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Estelle Parsons star in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (February 8-April 24). The work focuses on a woman, who, after being fired, turns to an old flame. Daniel Sullivan directs a cast that also includes Becky Ann Baker, Patrick Carroll, Tate Donovan, and Renée Elise Goldsberry.

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (Barrymore Theatre, February 25-June 19), set in a stately home in two different time periods, is revived by renowned British director David Leveaux. Billy Crudup, who starred in the original Broadway mounting, returns in a different role, joined by the likes of Margaret Colin, Raúl Esparza, Grace Gummer, Byron Jennings, and Lia Williams. John Leguizamo brings his latest solo show, Ghetto Klown, to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, February 21-June 22. The piece takes audiences from the writer/performer’s adolescent memories in Queens, to his work in the 1980s avant-garde theater scene, and then on to his Hollywood career.

There’s plenty happening Off-Broadway as well. Academy, Emmy, and Tony Award winner Geoffrey Rush returns to New York in The Diary of a Madman (BAM Harvey Theatre, February 11-March 12), adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s darkly comic short story. Daniel Breaker, Kieran Campion, Chuck Cooper, Quentin Earl Darrington, Stephen Kunken, Patina Miller, James Rebhorn, John Douglas Thompson, and Sharon Washington are among the cast members of the Encores! concert presentation of the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson musical Lost in the Stars at City Center, February 3-6.

Mandy Patinkin heads the cast of Rinne Groff’s Compulsion (Public Theater, February 1-March 13), inspired by the story of Meyer Levin and the diary of Anne Frank. Meanwhile, Emmy Award winner Richard Thomas plays the title role in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, also at The Public, February 15-March 6.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre presents Adam Rapp’s ambitious Hallway Trilogy (February 6-March 20), three full-length plays set in the same Lower East Side tenement, fifty years apart. Among the cast members are Guy Boyd, Louis Cancelmi, Maria Dizzia, Logan Marshall Green, Danny Mastrogiorgio, Julianne Nicholson, Jeremy Strong, and Katherine Waterston. At New York Theatre Workshop, Adam Chanler-Berat, Christian Borle, and Celia Keenan-Bolger head the cast of Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher (February 18-April 3), adapted from the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, and investigating how Peter Pan became “The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up.”

Chris Chalk, Neal Huff, and David Patrick Kelly are among the cast members of Nathan Louis Jackson’s When I Come to Die, presented by Lincoln Center as part of its LCT3 initiative at the Duke on 42nd Street, through February 26. The play tells the tale of a death-row inmate who struggles to find faith and hope after surviving a lethal injection. Cassie Beck, Erin Gann, and Allison Mack are featured in The Women’s Project’s Apple Cove (through March 6), about newlyweds who move into a gated community. Reed Birney, Matt Dellapina, and Alexandra Socha are cast in the Roundabout Underground production of The Dream of the Burning Boy (February 25-May 8), involving the sudden death of a high school overachiever.

Donna Bullock, Scott Drummond, Daniel Oreskes, and Michael T. Weiss star in the world premiere of A Perfect Future (Cherry Lane Theatre, beginning February 4), in which a dinner and a few too many expensive bottles of wine lead to the revelation of long-buried secrets. LAByrinth Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Thinner Than Water, by Melissa Ross, in The Cherry Pit (February 8-March 6). The play focuses on a debt-ridden, gambling-addicted man who is dying and his three estranged children.

Also of note: Brooke Shields’ cabaret, In My Life (Feinstein’s, February 1-12); F. Murray Abraham as Shylock in Theatre for a New Audience’s The Merchant of Venice (Michael Schimmel Center, February 27-March 13); The Wooster Group’s multimedia staging of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré (Baryshnikov Arts Center, February 2-27); Zach Helm’s tribute to Spalding Gray, Interviewing the Audience (Vineyard Theatre, February 3-27); and Varla Jean Merman’s The Loose Chanteuse (Ars Nova, February 17-27).