Latest in Broadway

Philip J. Smith, who as the longtime chairman of Broadway’s Shubert Organization was one of the most influential and powerful forces in American theater, died today in New York City of complications of Covid-19. He was 89. Smith’s death was confirmed by daughters Linda Phillips and Jennifer Stein. Smith retired from…

Nationwide Covid surges and a disappointingly slow vaccine rollout notwithstanding, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci reiterated over the weekend his belief that live theater venues could reopen during fall 2021. Participating in a virtual conference held Saturday by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, Fauci said…

Martin Markinson, a producer and theater owner who took Torch Song Trilogy to Broadway and returned the venue now known as the Hayes Theatre to theatrical use, died Thursday, January 7 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 89. Arlena Markinson, his wife of 58 years, said the cause of death was cancer. The…

The Broadway premiere of Skeleton Crew, written by Tony Award nominee Dominique Morisseau (Ain't Too Proud) and directed by Tony winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson (August Wilson's Jitney) will begin performances on Broadway during the winter of 2022, producer Manhattan Theatre Club announced today. The production joins MTC…

Mean Girls won’t be back when Broadway reopens, producers announced today. The musical based on Tina Fey’s 2004 film suspended production when Broadway went dark due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The musical, with a book by Fey, music by Jeff Richmond, lyrics by Nell Benjamin and direction and choreography by Casey…

EXCLUSIVE: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has a warrant out, in a manner of speaking, for Broadway actors. Next week’s episode features Tony-nominated Hadestown actor Eva Noblezada and Beetlejuice himself Alex Brightman, and showrunner Warren Leight tells Deadline that’s just the beginning. Last night, after the…

Lee Breuer, a cofounder of New York’s groundbreaking experimental theater company Mabou Mines and writer of Broadway’s Pulitzer Prize finalist The Gospel at Colonus, died Sunday at his home in New York. He was 83. His death was announced by Mabou Mines. A cause was not specified, but the company noted that Breuer died…

When Broadway producer Greg Nobile heard Gayle King singing the words to “Ode To Remy” on The Morning Show some weeks ago, he knew a sort of leap had been taken. “I thought this thing that started online has not only become pop culture,” he recalls, “it’s become, like, culture culture.” “This thing,” of course, is…

Last spring, in the early days of Broadway’s Covid-19 pandemic shutdown, news reports and industry chatter referred to an eventual (and, it seemed, imminent) reopening as if a light switch would be flipped and the marquees of all 41 theaters would light up the Midtown night. Actors had left their dressing rooms full…

Arthur P. Siccardi, a longtime Broadway production supervisor whose five-decade career included work on such notable original and revival stagings as Sweeney Todd, Whose Life is it Anyway?, Sunday in the Park with George, Gypsy, The Heidi Chronicles and Sunset Boulevard, to name a few, died December 23 of…

Roger Berlind, the 25-time Tony-winning producer of more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals ranging from Amadeus, City of Angels and Doubt to The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen and Mean Girls, has died. He was 90. His family said he died December 18 in Manhattan of cardiopulmonary arrest. During his stunning…

Lee Wallace, who starred in several Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, died Dec. 20 in New York after along illness. He was 90. Born Leo Melis in Brooklyn on July 15, 1930, he moved with his family to the Lower East Side. He later attended New York University and studied with Lee Strasberg, and Canada Lee, then joined…