New York Spotlight: October 2004

September was packed with shows, as most New York-based theater companies started their seasons and the New York Musical Theatre Festival made its inaugural bow. But for many, the season doesn’t really seem underway until Broadway gets going in earnest. And that it does this month, with no fewer than four openings:

• October 14, Reckless, Biltmore Theatre — This co-production of Manhattan Theatre Club and Second Stage of Craig Lucas’s 1988 play about a woman whose husband takes out a contract on her life stars Mary-Louise Parker (Proof), Rosie Perez, and Debra Monk.
• October 21, Brooklyn The Musical, Plymouth Theatre — This new musical by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson is a sidewalk fairy tale about a young girl named Brooklyn who comes to the United States to learn about the father she never knew. Big River‘s Jeff Calhoun directs.
• October 24, Laugh Whore, Cort Theatre — Actor and comic Mario Cantone’s solo show, directed by Tony winner Joe Mantello, and featuring original songs by Cantone, Jerry Dixon, and Harold Lubin.
• October 28, Twelve Angry Men, American Airlines Theatre — The Broadway premiere of Reginald Rose’s classic jury room drama will star Tom Aldredge, Philip Bosco, Larry Bryggman, Boyd Gaines, Peter Friedman, and James Rebhorn, and be directed by Scott Ellis.

One of the month’s earliest openings (October 1) is Off-Broadway — way Off-Broadway, but it’s going to be a big event for musical theater lovers: A rare revival of Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 ghetto musical Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death by the Classical Theatre of Harlem. The offerings might not get more unusual than that, but there are plenty of other reasons for musical fans to be excited in October. There’s also the Musicals Tonight production of Jubilee, the 1935 Cole Porter/Moss Hart musical that introduced “Begin the Beguine”; Rick Crom’s topical review Newsical starring Kim Cea, upstairs at Studio 54; and People Are Wrong, a new rock musical at the Vineyard Theatre.

There are also some big stars on the boards this month. Of course, Brooke Shields recently stepped into the starring role of Ruth Sherwood in Broadway’s Wonderful Town, but Off-Broadway’s seeing some major star power as well. One of Broadway’s greatest musical stars will be back in a play: The New Group’s production of Sin: A Cardinal Deposed, about Boston archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law and his role in the area’s Catholic church sex scandal, will star Broadway veteran John Cullum. Broadway and Hollywood veteran Judith Ivey will also be Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, as Martha Mitchell, the woman who helped bring down the Richard Nixon administration, in John Jeter’s new play Dirty Tricks.

There are plenty of other new plays Off-Broadway as well: White Chocolate, at the Century Center, tells the story of two society patrons who find one morning that their skin color has changed overnight; Last Easter, the latest play by Bryony Lavery (last season’s Frozen), is a highly theatrical tale about a dying woman and the friends on a quest to save her, and opens at the Lucille Lortel on October 7; Neal Bell’s Spatter Pattern, in a production at Playwrights Horizons directed by Michael Greif, is a comic whodunit about a screenwriter and the college professor with whom he becomes entangled; and in Jewtopia, which opens at the Westside Theatre on October 21, authors and stars Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson tell the hilarious story of a man whose Jewish friend helps him shed his gentile-ness so he can marry a nice Jewish girl and never have to make another decision.

Not enough for you? Well then, how about the Bard? Two of William Shakespeare’s most revered tragedies are also being performed this month. First, Peter Dinklage stars in the title role of Richard III at The Public Theater, under the direction of Peter Dubois, and the Jean Cocteau Repertory opens their production of Romeo and Juliet on October 17.

Finally, there are a couple of one-night-only events you won’t want to miss. Friends in Deed is presenting a 10th anniversary concert of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Passion at the Ambassador Theatre on October 20. Michael Cerveris, who starred in the show in Washington, D.C. and at the Ravinia Festival, joins original stars Donna Murphy, Marin Mazzie, and other original Broadway cast members in a concert production that will be directed by James Lapine. And on October 25, Amas Musical Theater will present a special concert presentation of the 1973 musical Raisin, with a score by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan and a book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg based on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Scheduled to appear are Tony winners Chuck Cooper and Lillias White, as well as Norm Lewis, John Hillner, Tamara Tunie, Eugene Fleming, Curtis Cook, Kenita Miller, Venida Evans, and Alexander Mitchell.