Something Old, Something New…

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NEW MUSICALS:

Dressing Room
A musical comedy about outrageous happenings in the dressing room of a successful Off-Broadway musical. Opens April 11 at the Soho Playhouse.

The Wild Party
This daring new musical by Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe, based on Joseph Moncure March’s jazz-age poem, revolves around an all night, sin-and-gin party thrown by a troubled vaudevillian couple, Queenie and Burrs, for their dilettante and delinquent friends. Toni Collette, Eartha Kitt, and Mandy Patinkin head a stellar cast. Opens April 13 at the Virginia Theatre.

The Green Bird
Julie Taymor’s adaptation of a 1765 fable by Carlo Gozzi unmasks royal scandal and forbidden love. Original music by Elliot Goldenthal. Opens April 18 at the Cort Theatre.

Postcards On Parade
Postcards come to life in a new musical by Kenward Elmslie and Steven Taylor about the quirky, colorful, fantastic journey of two couples on a cross country tour. Opens April 20 at the York Theatre.

Abie’s Island Rose
This four-character musical comedy by Doug Katsaros, Richard Engquist, and Frank Evans concerns the romance between Abie, a young Jewish medical student, and Rose, an Afro-Caribbean nurse. Starring Heather MacRae, Steven Rosen, and Carla Woods. Previews begin April 29 at the Jewish Rep, Playhouse 91.

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MUSICAL REVIVALS:

Jesus Christ Superstar
This new production of the seminal rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice,
based on the last seven days in the life of Jesus Christ, stars Glenn Carter and features a cast of 36. Opens April 16 at the Ford Center.

The Music Man
Craig Bierko and Rebecca Luker lead this revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 Tony Award-winning musical full of Iowa corn, about the unlikely romance between a traveling con man and the town librarian. The show comes complete with a miraculous marching band. Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Opens April 27 at the Neil Simon Theatre.

Wonderful Town
Encores! final production of the season is a concert revival of this 1953 Leonard Bernstein/Comden & Green musical, all about a pair of naïve sisters from Ohio trying to adapt to life in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the ’30s. Performances May 4-7 at City Center.

NEW PLAYS:

Moving Bodies
Arthur Giron’s comic story of an iconoclastic young physicist with the Manhattan Project who confronts the mystery of the Challenger disaster. Opens April 5 at Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Family Week
Beth Henley’s play stars Carol Kane as the free-spirited sister of a mental patient coping with impending divorce and the loss of a child; aided by her family, Kane’s character comes to terms with her troubled past. Opens April 10 at the Century Theatre.

Copenhagen
Michael Frayn’s new play stars Philip Bosco, Blair Brown, and Michael Cumpsty, and is directed by Michael Blakemore. German physicist Werner Heisenberg makes a trip to Copenhagen in 1941 to see Niels Bohr, a friend and collegue with whom he has an estranged relationship; previously, the men had performed ground-breaking work with the atom. Opens April 11 at the Royale Theatre.

Cobb
A look at baseball’s first Hall of Famer, the Detroit Tigers’ Ty Cobb, whose complex, allegedly racist character

is examined by playwright Lee Blessing. Opens April 17 at the Melting Pot Theatre.

Taller Than a Dwarf
Elaine May’s comedy about an average American couple facing the millennium’s new rules for the American Dream. Directed by Alan Arkin. Opens April 24 at the Longacre Theatre.

Jitney
August Wilson’s decade-by-decade chronicle of the 20th century African-American
experience continues with this play, set in Pittsburgh in 1977, about a gypsy cab
station that’s about to be torn down. Opens April 25 at Second Stage Theatre.

Naked
Mira Sorvino plays a woman who is hounded by the press after the death of a child entrusted to her care. An updated version of a play by Pirandello, adapted by Nicholas Wright. Opens April 30 at Classic Stage Company.

The Pope and the Witch
The controversial Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo’s satire on the Catholic Church, abortion, and the legalization of drugs, in which a Pope is healed by an unconventional nun. This production of the Irondale Ensemble opens May 3 at Theatre for the New City.

When They Speak of Rita
An unfulfilled wife and mother shatters the walls of her domestic New Hampshire prison. Starring Hallie Foote as Rita; written by Daisy B. Foote, and directed by Horton Foote. Opens May 17 at Primary Stages.

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REVIVALS:

Noël Coward’s Suite in 2 Keys
Hayley Mills, Judith Ivey, and Paxton Whitehead in the American premiere of Coward’s final, short works for the stage, “A Song at Twilight” and “Shadows of the Evening.” Opens April 10 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

The Real Thing
A revival of Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed play about a successful writer whose preoccupation with marriage, love, emotional fidelity, and integrity–both onstage and off–blurs the lines between his personal and professional life. Opens April 17 at the Barrymore Theater.

Uncle Vanya
Sir Derek Jacobi, Laura Linney, Brian Murray, and Roger Rees bring you Chekhov’s classic of unfulfilled dreams and unrequited love, via the Roundabout Theatre. Opens April 30 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

The Way of the World
These plays by Congreve and Aeschylus are being performed in rotating repertory by the Pearl Theatre Company. Performances now through May 28.

The Man Who Came To Dinner
Nathan Lane and Christine Baranski star in a revival of the classic Moss Hart/George S. Kaufman comedy about a pompous writer/critic’s disruption of a Midwestern family, with whom he is forced to spend the winter. Previews begin June 27 at the American Airlines Theater.

SOLO PERFORMANCES:

Rose
Olympia Dukakis plays a feisty woman who looks back on her life’s journey from a tiny
Russian village to the Warsaw ghetto to Atlantic City. Opens April 12 at the Lyceum Theatre.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
Eric Bogosian delivers monologues and speed-raps on Jesus, celebrity, the perils of air travel, and other subjects. Opens May 4 at the Jane Street Theatre.

Almost Famous
Hollywood insider Bruce Vilanch recounts his adventures in the world of movie
openings, flak attacks, “big deals”, exclusive parties, and agent fallout. Opens May 11 at the Westbeth Theatre Center.

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FOR YOUNG PEOPLE:

Mamet for Kids
“The Frog Prince,” a delightfully updated Brothers Grimm tale about a prince who turns into a frog; “The Poet and The Rent,” a farcical fable about a young poet who must come up with $60 to pay his rent. Performances April 8-22 at Atlantic Theater Company.

Do Jump!
Extremely Physical Theatre, a six-member troupe, propels audiences into a world fusing athletics and aesthetics in a kaleidoscope of comedy, beauty, and soaring music. Performances April 14-30 at the New Victory Theater.

Questionable Quest
A new musical about a medieval romance thrust into the future, written by 12-year-old William Fox and Cinda Fox. Featuring a 36-member cast (all students, ages 8-15) plus a 14-piece Salsa band. Proceeds will go to rebuild Puerto Rico’s Palmas Academy. Performances April 26-30 at the Beacon Theatre.