Theater News

Photo File

Mercedes Ruehl, Rob Marshall, Kathleen Turner, Hugh Jackman, Melanie Griffith, and Toni Braxton star in our latest photo feature.

New York City

Last weekend’s gorgeous weather made for a great time in the Hamptons. The Bay Street Theatre’s Summer Gala Benefit Bash in Sag Harbor on Saturday, July 26 was a huge success. Among the many notables present were Mercedes Ruehl…











…Rob Marshall, director and choreographer of the Oscar-winning film version of Chicago, pictured here with legendary Broadway choreographer Patricia Birch…

…producer Martin Richards (center), who also won an Oscar for Chicago, pictured here with Emma Walton Hamilton (co-artistic director of the Bay Street Theatre) and John DeLuca (who is choreographing the company’s upcoming production of The Boy Friend, directed by Emma’s mother, Julie Andrews)…

…the beloved, quintessential theatrical couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson…

…music man John McDaniel with the beauteous restaurateur B. Smith…

…actors Annie Golden and Jonathan Freeman…









…and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson with his house guest for the weekend, marketing consultant Tracey Mendelsohn.



Meanwhile, back in the Big Apple, the new season is really gearing up — even though Labor Day is several weeks away. On July 21, Hugh Jackman said “g’day” to photographers on the first day of rehearsal for The Boy From Oz, the musical about the life of Peter Allen in which Jackman and company are soon to open on Broadway.






Elsewhere on the Rialto: Toni Braxton celebrated her Broadway opening in the title role of Disney’s Aida at Laura Belle on July 17…













…Melanie Griffith officially bowed as Chicago‘s new Roxie Hart on July 20…




…and Jeff Calhoun, director/choreographer of the Roundabout/Deaf West Theatre production of Big River, partied with celebrity attendee Marlee Matlin at Laura Belle on July 24, the night of the show’s press opening.





Even stars like to go to the movies. Jennifer Jason Leigh turned up at a VIP screening of The Secret Lives of Dentists at the Walter Reade Theater on July 29…










…as did Stephen Baldwin (an old high school “chum” of Seth Rudetsky)…






…while Kathleen Turner attended a private screening of
The Magdalene Sisters at the Lighthouse International Building on July 22.

We leave you with a shot of Brett Somers and Jack Klugman — a couple that has been separated for years but never divorced — following a performance of Somers’s smash-hit cabaret show at Danny’s Skylight Room on July 28. Somers continues at Danny’s through August 8.