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Set inside the Studio 54-esque Club Millennium, Here Lies Love — the Broadway musical from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim — is already a party. Now, the revelry will continue even after curtains close with a series of post-show DJ sets happening after select dates. Called the People Power Disco Hour in homage to the […]
A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
During Friday’s (Sept. 29) sentencing of Lauren Pazienza for manslaughter, Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin said she was unconvinced that the 28-year-old Long Island woman took responsibility for her actions on March 10, 2022, when she pushed the vocal teacher, Barbara Maier Gustern, to the ground.
Gustern, whose students included Blondie singer Debbie Harry, lay bleeding on a sidewalk. She died five days later.
Pazienza pleaded guilty on Aug. 23. She could have been sentenced to 25 years had she been convicted during a trial.
Pazienza, a former event planner originally from Long Island, has been locked up at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex since a judge revoked her bail in May 2022.
According to prosecutors, Pazienza attacked Gustern after storming out of a nearby park, where she and her fiance had been eating meals from a food cart.
Gustern had just left her apartment to catch a student’s performance after hosting a rehearsal for a cabaret show, friends told The New York Times.
Gustern’s grandson, A.J. Gustern of Colorado, called Pazienza’s apology “contrived.”
“I curse you, Lauren Pazienza,” he said as he read from a statement in court, Newsday reported. “For the rest of your days, may you be miserable.”
Pazienza encountered Gustern on West 23rd Street and shoved her to the ground in what police called “an unprovoked, senseless attack.”
Gustern worked with singers ranging from the cast members of the 2019 Broadway revival of the musical Oklahoma! to experimental theater artist and 2017 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Taylor Mac, who told the Times she was “one of the great humans that I’ve encountered.”
It’s a busy week on Billboard’s Cast Albums chart (dated Sept. 30), as the original cast recordings of StarKid’s Nerdy Prudes Must Die., Disney and Marvel’s Rogers: The Musical and the world-premiere complete studio cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! debut at Nos. 1, 2 and 8 respectively. Meanwhile, New York, New York: A New Musical re-enters at No. 4 (a new peak) after its release on CD.
With the arrivals at Nos. 1, 2 and 8 on Cast Albums, it’s the first time at least three albums have debuted in the top 10 in the same week in more than four years. It last happened on the June 22, 2019-dated list, when the original Broadway cast recordings of Beetlejuice and Tootsie launched at Nos. 2 and 6, while the 2019 Broadway cast recording of Kiss Me, Kate! bowed at No. 8.
Billboard’s Cast Albums chart ranks the top-selling musical cast recordings of the week in the U.S., based on traditional album sales, as tracked by Luminate.
Nerdy Prudes Must Die. is “a teen slasher comedy about a group of geeks and their ghostly tormentor.” The show, with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim, had a brief run at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, Calif. in February. It’s the third No. 1 on the Cast Albums chart for the StarKid production team, following Black Friday (in 2020) and Starship (2011). In total, Nerdy Prudes is the 17th charting effort on Cast Albums from StarKid, with 13 having reached the top 10. StarKid’s first entry on the tally was Me and My Dick, which peaked at No. 11 in 2010.
Rogers: The Musical – an abridged version of the life of the first Avenger, Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) – had a limited run at Disney California Adventure Park’s Hyperion Theater in Anaheim, Calif. from June 30-Aug. 31. Rogers’new original songs were written by composer Christopher Lennertz, with lyrics by Jordan Peterson, Lennertz and Alex Karukas. The new tunes were joined by earlier-penned songs like “Save the City” (music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman) and “Star-Spangled Man” (by Alan Menken and David Zeppel).
Rogers: The Musical is the first cast recording from a Disney Parks-presented stage show to chart on Billboard’s 17-year-old Cast Albums ranking. Previous musical shows staged at the Hyperion include Frozen: Live at the Hyperion (2016-20) and Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular (2003-16). (The Broadway versions of Aladdin and Frozen saw their companion cast recordings hits Nos. 1 and 2 on the Cast Albums chart.)
Both Nerdy Prudes Must Die. and Rogers: The Musical were only available to purchase as digital download albums. The third debut in the Cast Album chart’s top 10, the new studio cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, was available as a download and on CD and vinyl.
The studio cast recording of Oklahoma! was released by Chandos Records and is the first recording to boast the complete score performed with Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations. Oklahoma! was the first musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and it premiered on Broadway in 1943. It was later adapted into a film in 1955, which won two Academy Awards and launched a soundtrack that spent four weeks atop Billboard’s Best Selling Popular Albums chart in 1956. Oklahoma! has been revived on Broadway four times, most recently in 2019, when it won two Tony Awards, including best revival of a musical.
Finally, the original Broadway cast recording of New York, New York: A New Musical, re-enters Cast Albums at No. 4, having previously spent one week on the list at No. 7 (on the July 8-dated chart). The album returns to the list following its Sept. 15 release on CD, as the set was only previously available to purchase as a digital download. New York, New York played for three months at the St. James Theatre in New York earlier in 2023 and garnered nine Tony Award nominations, winning one for best scenic design of a musical.
For nearly the past six years, singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson has been working on-and-off on a momentous new project — but it’s not a new album. Michaelson is the composer and lyricist behind one of the most highly anticipated new musicals coming to Broadway next year: The Notebook, based on the bestselling novel by Nicholas Sparks […]
Michael McGrath, a Broadway character actor who shined in zany, feel-good musicals and won a Tony Award for Nice Work If You Can Get It, has died. He was 65. McGrath died Thursday (Sept. 14) at his home in Bloomfield, New Jersey, said his publicist, Lisa Goldberg. No other details were announced. “Michael McGrath was […]
Once Upon a One More Time, Broadway’s Britney Spears jukebox musical, will come to a close in less than two weeks. Playbill confirmed the news Monday (Aug. 21) and revealed that the musical’s final performance will take place at the Marquis Theatre on Sept. 3. “We could not be prouder of this beautifully joyous and […]
Broadway actor/singer Chris Peluso, star of beloved musicals such as Mamma Mia! and Elton John’s Lestat has died at 40. Playbill reported that Peluso’s family confirmed that he died on Tuesday (Aug. 15), a year after he took a break from theater work to seek treatment for schizoaffective disorder; Billboard was unable to independently confirm Peluso’s death at press time.
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The actor’s alma mater, the University of Michigan, posted a tribute on the school’s musical theater department Instagram that read, “The Michigan Musical Theatre family is heartbroken as we announce the passing of our dear family member/alum, the loving, charismatic, and divinely gifted Chris Peluso… Our hearts go out to his family.”
Peluso first gained attention on Broadway as an understudy in the 2004 Tony-winning revival of Assassins and as understudy for the roles of Louis and Nicolas in Lestat. He went on to join the ensemble for the original touring company of Wicked in 2005 and take on the role of Fiyero in a 2009 national tour, as well as Sky in Mamma Mia!, Marius in Les Miserables and Tony in West Side Story.
The versatile actor also also appeared in a number of musicals in London’s West End, including playing Gaylord Ravenal in a revival of Show Boat in 2016 and Sir Percival Glyde in The Woman in White in 2017, as well as appearing in Miss Saigon and Death Takes a Holiday.
The versatile actor/singer also took on three lead parts in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2014, understudying for the roles of Gerry Goffin, Don Kirshner and Barry Mann.
Peluso is survived by his wife, Jessica Gomes — who he married in 2018 — and two young children. A GoFundMe was started in Sept. on Peluso’s behalf, seeking contributions to help the actor pursue treatment for the serious mental health disorder, which reportedly caused him to experience “debilitating paranoia” that kept him from performing in recent years.
The Mayo Clinic defines schizoaffective disorder as a mental health “marked by a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions, and mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania.”
The funding page noted that Peluso lacked health insurance in the U.S. and had left his wife and children to seek treatment at an inpatient mental health rehab center in Tennessee.
A Nov. update to the funding drive, which raised more than $25,000, contained a note from Peluso, who said he had completed treatment and was “stable and doing well.” At the time, he wrote, “The new medication I’m on works well to keep my symptoms in check and has minimal side effects. I’m able to hold down a job again and even began taping some auditions. It’s going to be a life long process of going to therapy and working with doctors but I’m so much better than I was before treatment. It really means the world to me to have such incredible support from you all. None of this progress would have been possible without you.”
Check out rehearsal footage of Peluso in Show Boat and see the UM tribute below.
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If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
Tom Jones, the lyricist, director and writer of The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical in history, has died. He was 95.
Jones died Friday (Aug. 11) at his home in Sharon, Connecticut, according to Dan Shaheen, a co-producer of The Fantasticks, who worked with Jones since the 1980s. The cause was cancer.
Jones, who teamed up with composer Harvey Schmidt on The Fantasticks and the Broadway shows 110 in the Shade and I Do! I Do!, was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1998.
The Fantasticks, based on an obscure play by Edmond Rostand, doesn’t necessarily have the makings of a hit. The set is just a platform with poles, a curtain and a wooden box.
The tale, a mock version of Romeo and Juliet, concerns a young girl and boy, secretly brought together by their fathers, and an assortment of odd characters.
Scores of actors have appeared in the show, from the opening cast in 1960 that included Jerry Orbach and Rita Gardner, to stars such as Ricardo Montalban and Kristin Chenoweth, to Frozen star Santino Fontana. The show was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1991.
“So many people have come, and this thing stays the same — the platform, the wooden box, the cardboard moon,” Jones told The Associated Press in 2013. “We just come and do our little thing and then we pass on.”
For nearly 42 years the show chugged along at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances — a victim both of a destroyed downtown after 9/11 and a new post-terrorism, edgy mood.
In 2006, The Fantasticks found a new home in The Snapple Theater Center — later The Theater Center — an off-Broadway complex in the heart of Times Square. In 2013, the show celebrated reaching 20,000 performances. It closed in 2017, ending as the longest-running production of any kind in the history of American theater with a total of an astonishing 21,552 performances.
“My mind doesn’t grasp it, in a way,” Jones said. “It’s like life itself — you get used to it and you don’t notice how extraordinary it is. I’m grateful for it and I’m astonished by it.”
Its best known song, “Try To Remember,” has been recorded by hundreds of artists over the decades, including Ed Ames, Harry Belafonte, Barbra Streisand and Placido Domingo. “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” and “They Were You” are also among the musical’s most recognized songs.
The lyrics for “Try to Remember” go: “Try to remember the kind of September/ When life was slow and oh, so mellow/ Try to remember the kind of September/ When grass was green and grain was yellow.”
Its longevity came despite early reviews that were not too kind. The New York Herald Tribune critic only liked Act 2, and The New York Times’ critic sniffed that the show was “the sort of thing that loses magic the longer it endures.”
In 1963, Jones and Schmidt wrote the Broadway show 110 in the Shade, which earned the duo a Tony Award nomination for best composer and lyricist. I Do! I Do!, their two-character Broadway musical, followed in 1967, also earning them a Tony nomination for best composer and lyricist.
Jones is survived by two sons, Michael and Sam.
“Such a good guy. I truly adored him,” wrote Broadway veteran Danny Burstein on Facebook.
After a successful 2022 run in Chicago, The Notebook’s next chapter will be on Broadway. The musical, based on Nicholas Sparks’ wildly successful 1996 novel, features music and lyrics from Ingrid Michaelson and a book by Bekah Brunstetter. Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Grey Gardens) and Schele Williams (Aida) will direct, with choreography by Katie Spelman (Moulin […]
Fans of Broadway’s Britney Spears musical Once Upon a One More Time demanding “gimme more” just got lucky — or, more specifically, “Toxic.” The team behind the show – which finds fairy tale princesses singing Spears’ pop classics while discovering their own agency beyond “happily ever after” – is offering up a new cast performance clip from the production. This OUAOMT video shows the play’s antagonists, Stepmother (Jennifer Simard) and Narrator (Adam Godley), singing a twisted update on “Toxic,” Spears’ Grammy-winning top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
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In case you haven’t seen the Britney-approved Broadway musical yet, brace yourself for this take on “Toxic.” Yes, the unforgettable strings are present, but the song’s delirious dance-pop energy has been subverted into an unsettling, disorienting electronic abyss, making this a villainous vocal showcase for Simard and Godley, both two-time Tony Award nominees.
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If you think this version brings to mind the moody music of a Grammy-sweeping “Bad Guy,” you’re not wrong. “We love ‘Toxic’ as it was originally created, but tonally, it was too inherently playful for a musical narrative that needed to darken and take a turn,” Keone & Mari Madrid, the directors and choreographers of OUAOMT, tell Billboard. “So, we decided to take inspiration from some of our old work with Billie Eilish. Basically asking ourselves, ‘If Billie covered “Toxic,” what might that sound like?’ Our cast and creative team all leaned in to that dark, monochromatic tone.”
“It’s an honor and responsibility to try and do justice to Ms. Spears, and the song for which she won her first Grammy. There is only one Britney, and I think it would be a mistake to try and do an impression,” Simard tells Billboard. She adds that a total re-imagining of the song was a necessity for the storytelling arc of the musical. “It is a real turning point in the show where we illustrate that fairytales are, in fact, dark. If that moment doesn’t work, the entire show doesn’t work. No pressure! But I think we did it,” she says. (You can watch the video above for proof of that.)
“We all realized early on that it was vitally important that ‘Toxic’ shows these two characters, Stepmother and Narrator, undergoing a complete transformation. Story-wise, it is a crucial turning point, as the Stepmother takes matters into her own hands and transforms Narrator into something – that by the end of the number – even she can’t control,” says Godley, who joins Simard during the mind-bending “Toxic” performance. “At the heart of it, of course, is Jennifer’s unmatched ability to sing the number in such an incredibly powerful, extraordinary, and unexpected way. “
“This is undeniably a huge hinge moment for the show. Narrative-wise. Energy-wise. It’s the ‘dark night of the soul’ and if we’re not delivering here, the rest of the story truly suffers,” Keone & Mari Madrid tell Billboard. “Jennifer and Adam helped us find such a delicate yet sensual dance of power that happens between their characters. They bring so much to the table – and are incredible humans, as much as they are artists. One example is Jennifer’s wild-siren-song-note at the end of the number. It was something she was keeping in her pocket, that we didn’t know she had, and when she brought it forward that moment really brought the number to a crescendo. That vocal absolutely nails everything home.”
You can check out Simard’s eyebrow-raising note beginning at the 3:15 time stamp. Be sure to catch Liv Battista’s eerie back bend at the 1:40 mark — keep in mind she’s doing that move eight times a week.
“All our company and our departments came through for this moment,” the directing-choreography duo tell Billboard. “And when all the elements are firing together, it’s really something.”
Once Upon a One More Time is currently running at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway in New York City.