This Week on Broadway for December 1, 2024: Room 1214 @ 59e59

BROADWAYRADIO

12/1/24

James Marino,Michael Portantiere,Peter Filichia

This Week on Broadway for December 1, 2024: Room 1214 @ 59e59

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Peter Filichia, James Marino, and Michael Portantiere talk about The Merchant of Venice @ Classic Stage Company, SHIT. MEET. FAN. @ MCC Theater, Room 1214 @ 59e59, Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now @ New World Stages, Bad Kreyòl @ The Irene Diamond Stage (Signature Theatre), and Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway: New York State of Mind @ 54 Below

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Panel:

Peter Filichia | [email protected] | Facebook
PETER FILICHIA is a playwright, journalist, and historian with a number of books. Peter’s new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – will be released soon, but is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Peter also has columns at Masterworks Broadway, Broadway Select, and many other places.

Michael Portantiere | [email protected] | Facebook
MICHAEL PORTANTIERE is a theater reviewer and essayist. He is the founder and editor of CastAlbumReviews.com. He is also a theatrical photographer whose photos have appeared in The New York Times and other major publications. You can see his photography work at FollowSpotPhoto.com.

Gavin Creel Memorial Celebration To Be Livestreamed In The U.S. And UK by Greg Evans

James Marino | [email protected] | Facebook
BroadwayStars

Note: This week we had listeners join us while recording. These listeners are Patreon members who support BroadwayRadio. If you would like to join us in the future, become a supporter at Patreon.com/BroadwayRadio.

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PF: The Merchant of Venice @ Classic Stage Company, through December 22, 2024
a comedy, performed nightly for a live audience
written by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
adapted & directed by IGOR GOLYAK
Starring Richard Topol as Shylock, Alexandra Silber as Portia & T.R. Knight as Antonio
Featuring Gus Birney, Tess Goldwyn, José Espinosa, Stephen Ochsner, Delilah Napier, Noah Pacht, Elan Zafir

Special Episode: Alexandra Silber on Theatre Mirroring Real-Life Trauma and Booty Dancing Shakespeare (November 7, 2024)

PF + MP: SHIT. MEET. FAN. @ MCC Theater, through December 15, 2024
written and directed by ROBERT O’HARA
based on the Lotus Production and Medusa Film PERFECT STRANGERS by PAOLO GENOVESE

Room 1214 Annabelle Gurwitch

PF: Room 1214 @ 59e59, through December 8, 2024
By Michelle Kholos Brooks
Directed by Sarah Norris
With Annabelle Gurwitch, Thyme Briscoe, Ben Hirschhorn, Kleo Mitrokostas, Andrea Negrete, and Alessandro Yokoyama

Inspired by real interviews with a history teacher who experienced the **************** firsthand, this stirring memory play, by the playwright of the critically acclaimed H*tler’s Tasters, follows as she returns to the school to teach one final lesson, asking what if you could rewrite history?

She reunites with her students as they were – playful, funny, and full of life and potential – real kids with bright futures. Equal part memorial and essential history, Room 1214 overflows with truths both uncomfortable and necessary, offering a moving reminder that the best way to honor the past is to learn from it.

MP: Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now @ New World Stages, through December 21, 2024
Tony Award Winner Marissa Jaret Winokur (Hairspray), Tony Nominee Kerry Butler (Xanadu), Tony Nominee Laura Bell Bundy (Legally Blonde) Celebrate 20 Years of Broadway Hits, Motherhood, And Lifelong Friendship.

PF: Bad Kreyòl @ The Irene Diamond Stage (Signature Theatre), through December 21, 2024

Signature Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club present the world premiere co-production of Dominique Morisseau’s Bad Kreyòl, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, October 8 – December 1 on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W 42nd St).

Bad Kreyòl kicks off Signature’s 2024-25 season with this work commissioned by the organization, which concludes the playwright’s critically acclaimed Premiere Residency. Morisseau’s work at Signature has, throughout her residency, burrowed into the fault lines of America’s stratified socioeconomic landscape. In this play set in Port-au-Prince, Morisseau turns her knack for meticulous social anatomization—her ability to “craft realistic depictions of marginalized people inextricably caught in the tide of history” (The New York Times)—outward.

Manhattan Theatre Club is thrilled to be working with Morisseau again following their 2021 Tony Award-winning, sold-out run of Skeleton Crew, which received three Tony nominations and earned Phylicia Rashad her second Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play.

Bad Kreyòl follows Simone, first-generation Haitian American, and her cousin Gigi, Haitian born and raised, who reunite to honor their grandmother’s dying wish for them to reconnect. Simone’s pilgrimage back to her ancestral homeland forces both cousins to confront their differing world views, the presence of NGOs in Haiti, and the plagued dynamic between Haiti and the U.S.

Morisseau, whose father was Haitian, traveled with him to the country in 2014 to write what she thought would be “a post-earthquake play,” having not visited since childhood. As her father’s health began to decline, she “realized [she] was writing a very different play”—one that took six years to untangle, and that she didn’t complete until after her father’s death in 2020. Though the characters and their circumstances are fictionalized, Morisseau says, “so much of what’s here is a very real and lived experience for me and my family — the places characters go are the places we went.”

MP: Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway: New York State of Mind @ 54 Below, November 26 – 30, 2024

Discussion:

Joel Grey wrote a guest essay for The New York Times
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Next Week:

Peter’s Brainteaser:

He wrote a number of hit plays and a few hit musicals.

His first name is the same as the leading character in a ‘90s musical that won Best Score.

Who are these two with the same first names? What was the Best Score winner?

Michael’s Musical Moments

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Music Opener: