News

Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are set for a “The Bear” reunion in the Big Apple. Both actors are set to make their respective Broadway debuts in a stage play adaptation of “Dog Day Afternoon.”

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis will adapt Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning 1975 film starring Al Pacino and John Cazale. Rupert Goold will direct the production, which is expected to open on Broadway in spring 2026. Bernthal will take on Pacino’s former role of Sonny Amato. Moss-Bachrach is starring as Sal DeSilva, first played by Cazale. Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures confirmed the play to Deadline; the WB group recently brought “Good Night, and Good Luck” with George Clooney to the stage, as well as “The Outsiders,” “Real Women Have Curves,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” and “Elf.”

The synopsis for the “Dog Day Afternoon” play reads: “Step back into the sweltering summer of 1972, New York...

A stage version of 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon from the theatrical arm of Warner Bros. is headed to Broadway, with The Bear actors Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in starring roles.

Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis adapted the film about a bank heist gone awry for the live stage, with Rupert Goold directing. Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures will open the play on Broadway in the spring of 2026.

Bernthal will play Sonny Amato and Moss-Bachrach will perform the role of Sal DeSilva. The Oscar-winning film Dog Day Afternoon was set in summer 1972 in New York City and followed one man’s desperate act with a Brooklyn bank hold up that quickly went wrong and generated national attention. In 1975, Al Pacino and John Cazale starred in Sidney Lumet’s Academy Award-winning hostage drama.

Bernthal is a veteran of 30 theatrical productions, including Martyna Majok’s Ironbound, and Rogue Machine Theatre’s production of Small Engine Repair.

Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will make their Broadway debuts next year in Dog Day Afternoon, a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis (Between Riverside and Crazy) based on the true crime that inspired Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning 1975 motion picture starring Al Pacino and John Cazale.

The play will be directed by two-time Olivier Award winner Rupert Goold (King Charles III). Bernthal will play Sonny Amato, the character played by Pacino in the film, and Moss-Bachrach will portray Sal DeSilva, John Cazale in the movie. (The surnames were different in the film.)

The play is expected to open on Broadway in spring 2026. Additional casting was not disclosed.

The synopsis: Step back into the sweltering summer of 1972, New York City—a time when the Vietnam War looms large, Watergate headlines flood the news, and one man’s desperate act captivates the nation. A Brooklyn bank holdup quickly goes wrong,...

Before she sets foot in Radio City Music Hall this Sunday, actor Kara Young will have already made Tony Award history by becoming the first Black person to receive Tony acting nominations in four consecutive years, and only the second person overall. If she wins this Sunday, she will be the first Black person to win two consecutive Tonys.

And yet, the records don’t do Kara Young justice. The treasure is in each performance, one as different, complex and unfailingly compelling. In Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s (2022) she played a former criminal who finds redemption as, of all things, a cook in a truck stop diner. The following season in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living, she played Jess, a broke young woman who becomes a caregiver to a young man with cerebral palsy; and in 2024 she received a Tony Award for her featured role as Lutiebell Gussie Mae...

The world premiere production of The Balusters by Kimberly Akimbo writer David Lindsay-Abaire has been added to Manhattan Theatre Club’s 2025-2026 season, joining the previously announced Broadway premiere of James Graham’s acclaimed Punch.

The Balusters, to be directed by Kenny Leon, will open at Mtc’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in spring 2026 (Punch opens there in the fall). Lindsay-Abaire won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole, a Manhattan Theatre Club production.

Mtc today also announced an Off Broadway addition to its 2025-2026 season: A newly imagined version of Queens by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living), to be directed by Trip Cullman with an opening in fall 2025 Off-Broadway at NY City Center Stage I. Queens joins Mtc’s spring 2026 Off Broadway production The Monsters, written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu in a co-production with Two River Theater.

Additional productions for Mtc’s 2025-26 season will be announced soon.

Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire is bringing a new play to Broadway next season.

The play, The Balusters, will make its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in spring 2026. Kenny Leon, who directed Our Town and Othello on Broadway this season, will helm the production.

The Balusters follows the neighborhood association in a small community which is upended by a newcomer who suggests installing a stop sign on the community’s most beautiful block.

Lindsay-Abaire’s previous plays at Manhattan Theatre Club have included the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole, the Tony Award-nominated Good People, Ripcord, Wonder of the World, Fuddy Meers and Kimberly Akimbo. Lindsay-Abaire later adapted the play version of Kimberly Akimbo into the Tony Award-winning musical, alongside Jeanine Tesori.

“Manhattan Theatre Club has been my artistic home since I was a baby-playwright, so of course I’m thrilled to be back with The Balusters,...

Concord, considered to be the world’s leading independent music company, has acquired Broadway Licensing Global and its imprints Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, and Stage Rights.

All of the imprints will now become part of Concord Theatricals. The acquisition does not include Stageworks or the Broadway On Demand streaming service.

Concord Theatricals was formed in 2018 and has since become one of the world’s most significant theatrical companies, comprising the catalogs of Rodgers & Hammerstein Theatricals, Tams-Witmark, Samuel French and The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, in addition to dozens of new signings each year. The firm provides comprehensive services to creators and producers of plays and musicals, including theatrical licensing, music publishing, script publishing, cast recording and producing. In all, the company supports more than 125,000 artists and songwriters whose works are licensed, marketed, and performed globally.

Concord’s catalog includes 1.3 million songs, compositions, sound recordings, films, plays, and musicals.

Just four days after earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Play and five more citations for its cast members, Purpose has just won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Today's announcement of the finalists and winner by Columbia University described Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' work as "a play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper-middle class African American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement. A skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage."

Cole Escola's Oh, Mary! also received recognition as a finalist for the Pulitzer. Columbia described the play as "a zany portrait of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln's family life, whose outrageous humor also serves as an empathetic celebration of anyone who's been marginalized or misunderstood." Escola's riotous spoof took off-Broadway and now Broadway by storm and earned Tony nominations for Best Play,...

Latanya Richardson Jackson will return to Broadway in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new play Purpose.

Jackson, who has previously appeared on Broadway in the 2018 production of To Kill A Mockingbird and the 2014 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, will star alongside Kara Young, who won a Tony Award last season for her role in Purlie Victorious, Harry Lennix (The Blacklist), Jon Michael Hill (Pass Over), Glenn Davis (King James) and Alana Arenas (The Bluest Eye).

Phylicia Rashad directs the new play from Jacobs-Jenkins, who wrote last season’s Tony Award-winning revival Appropriate.

The play follows the Jasper family, which has created a powerful dynasty in Black American politics. However, when the family’s youngest son, Nazareth, comes home with an uninvited friend, the family must contend with faith, their own legacy and the cracks beneath the surface.

Purpose is scheduled to play a limited 19-week run at the Helen Hayes Theater,...

A new stage adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is in development, with Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok attached as the playwright.

Glass Half Full Productions (Potus, Betrayal) and Aaron Glick (Kimberly Akimbo, What the Constitution Means to Me) are producing the adaptation, which is in early stages of development and aiming for Broadway. Majok comes to the project after winning the 2018 Pulitzer prize for drama for her Broadway play, Cost of Living.

In addition to writing Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, Majok wrote the libretto for the new musical Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett, which premiered last summer at the American Repertory Theater.

“The relevancy of mind domination and the end of the world in our current age needs no words; what struck me most in Fahrenheit 451 was its lens on our loneliness. How our yearning for connection and...

The Great Gatsby musical, the highest grossing show in Off-Broadway theater Paper Mill Playhouse’s history, will be coming to Broadway this spring.

The musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel will debut at The Broadway Theatre on April 25, the show’s lead producer Chunsoo Shin announced on Tuesday. Directed by Marc Bruni, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada are set to reprise their Off-Broadway roles as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, with previews beginning March 29.

“I am passionate about producing this show because it provides a modern audience with the true essence of idealism that is expressed eloquently in the novel and now on stage,” said Shin in a statement. “The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece that grows and changes as it’s experienced by each new generation, in every culture, and people — and yet, still maintains its uniqueness, with its fascinating characters that burst with vitality.

André Bishop will conclude his 33-year leadership tenure at Lincoln Center Theater in June 2025 at the conclusion of the non-profit theater company’s 40th anniversary 2024-25 season.

Bishop, whose celebrated tenure as Lct’s Artistic Director and more recently Producing Artistic Director included the premieres of such acclaimed new works as Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia and Arcadia, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, and The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel, to name a very few, announced his intended departure today.

“My years at Lincoln Center Theater have been happy ones,” he said in a statement, “and I will miss working with all my friends and colleagues. But the time has come, as it inevitably does, for the next generation to step in and step up. I look forward to that. Lct has...

André Bishop will step down from his role as producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater next year, after having worked at the nonprofit theater company for 33 years.

Bishop will depart at the end of the theater’s 2024-2025 season and the board of Lincoln Center Theater will launch a search for his successor “in due course.” The move from Bishop, who has held the position of producing artistic director at the Lincoln Center theater since July 2013, after serving as artistic director since January 1992, marks the latest shake-up in Broadway’s nonprofit realm, which consists of four theater companies.

On Wednesday, Second Stage founder Carole Rothman announced she would leave the company after 45 years. Longtime Roundabout Theatre Company CEO and Artistic Director Todd Haimes died in April, and Manhattan Theatre Club Executive Producer Barry Grove announced his departure in January after 48 years with the organization.

Chris Jennings, who had previously...

On Sunday night, Broadway honored the best live theater of the year at the 76th annual Tony Awards.

At a time of the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, it was a possibility that the ceremony would not happen this year, but the WGA and the Tony Awards’ organizers reached an agreement where the show would not be picketed and the writers would not work on the telecast. The previous time this occurred was in 1988 when Phantom of the Opera and Into the Woods competed for Best Musical.

The Tonys was the first major ceremony to take place amid the current writers’ strike. While other awards shows need a host and numerous presenters to say written remarks about the competitors and provide good ratings, the Tonys already have a built-in fan base that only requires around a dozen performances and winners’ speeches to succeed.

Ariana DeBose returned as the host,...

The 76th annual Tony Awards were handed out Sunday night.

Kimberly Akimbo won best musical, Leopoldstadt was named best play, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog won best revival of a play, and Parade won best revival of a musical.

In the lead acting categories, Jodie Comer won best performance by an actress in a play for Prima Facie, while openly nonbinary actor J. Harrison Ghee made history (along with Alex Newell) for winning best performance by an actor in a musical for Some Like It Hot. Sean Hayes won best actor in a play for Good Night, Oscar, while Victoria Clark won best actress in a musical for Kimberly Akimbo.

Oscar winner and Tony nominee Ariana DeBose returned to host the ceremony, which this year moved to the new location of the United Palace in New York City’s Washington Heights. See the red carpet arrivals here.

The show was split into two parts,...

Tony Awards nominations were announced on Tuesday, May 2 by Lea Michele and Myles Frost. While the nominations for the 76th annual Tony Awards were determined by 40 theatre professionals, winners were decided by over 750 members of the Broadway community.

A whopping 38 shows were eligible for consideration by the nominating committee. On the play side, there were 17 original works and six revivals in the running for nominations. Over on the musical side, nine new tuners were in contention for bids as were six musical revivals. The cutoff date for eligibility was April 27.

The Tony Awards are set for June 12 at United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights and will be hosted for the second year in a row by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose. The earlier “Act One” ceremony will be hosted by Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin.

Musicals

Best Musical

& Juliet

X — Kimberly Akimbo

New York, New York

Shucked

Some Like It Hot...

For the first time in the 76-year history of the Tony Awards, three Pulitzer Prize-winning original dramas have been nominated in the Best Play category in the same year. Only five of the 17 new plays from the 2022-2023 season made the cut in the extraordinarily competitive race, and three of the five had previously received the prestigious honor of the Pulitzer: James Ijames’ “Fat Ham,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Between Riverside and Crazy,” and Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living.”

This historic result was not a guarantee. Indeed, according to our final official odds, only two of the plays were anticipated to break through: “Fat Ham,” which ultimately nabbed five nominations, and “Between Riverside and Crazy,” which landed two. “Cost of Living,” which closed back in November, was ranked seventh, but its odds were bolstered by three of our Editors and two of our Experts correctly predicting it to break through.

Tom Stoppard and the late Terrence McNally have won the most Tonys for a playwright taking home four each. The 85-year-old Stoppard is a strong contender to pick up his fifth Tony for his latest (and perhaps final) play “Leopoldstadt.” The acclaimed drama revolves around a wealthy Jewish family who had fled the programs in Eastern Europe and settled in Vienna. In an interview, Stoppard noted that the play “took a year to write but the gestation was much longer. Quite a lot of it is personal to me but I made it a Viennese family so that it wouldn’t seem to be about me. “ Stoppard, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, lost all four of his grandparents in the Holocaust.

“Leopoldstadt” earned six nominations on May 2 including Best Play and best director for Patrick Marber. It will be vying for the top prize against Jordon E. Cooper’s...

Some Like It Hot, the musical comedy based on the classic MGM film, topped the Tony Awards nominations list with 13 nods.

The musical, which features a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, was nominated for best musical, best original score, best book of a musical (written by Matthew López & Amber Ruffin) and best direction of a musical, as well as in the acting categories, with nominations for both Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee in the category of best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical and for Kevin Del Aguila and NaTasha Yvette Williams in the featured roles categories.

The plot, which has been revised from the 1959 film, sees two struggling jazz musicians, Borle and Ghee, on the run after witnessing a mob hit. The two disguise themselves within an all-female band and, as they travel across the country, they explore their own identities,...

Refresh For Udpates: The nominations for the 76th Annual Tony Awards will be announced on CBS Mornings today by Funny Girl star Lea Michele and Mj‘s Tony Award winner Myles Frost. The complete list of nominations will be posted here at 9:10 a.m. Et./6 a.m. Pt.

The nominations announced so far:

Best Musical

& Juliet

Producers: Max Martin & Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Jenny Petersson, Martin Dodd, Eva Price, Lukasz Gottwald, 42nd.club, Independent Presenters Network, Jack Lane, Library Company, Shellback, Shivhans Pictures, Sing Out, Louise!, Kim Szarzynski, Taylor/Riegler, Tenenbaum/Keyes, Barry Weiss, John Gore Organization

Kimberly Akimbo

Producers: David Stone, Atlantic Theater Company, James L. Nederlander, Lachanze, John Gore, Patrick Catullo, Aaron Glick

New York, New York

Producers: Sonia Friedman Productions, Tom Kirdahy, Wendy Federman & Heni Koenigsberg, Crossroads Live, Playing Field, Stephanie P. McClelland, Ambassador Theatre Group, Waiting in the Wings Productions, Colin Callender, Gilbert and DeeDee Garcia/Sue Vaccaro,...

The 2023 Tony Awards nominations were announced on Tuesday, May 2 by Lea Michele and Myles Frost. The reveal of the roster of contenders was carried on the Tonys YouTube channel. While the nominations for the 76th annual Tony Awards were determined by a few dozen theater professionals, winners will be decided by upwards of 800 members of the Broadway community.

A whopping 38 shows were eligible for consideration by the nominating committee. On the play side, there are 17 original works and six revivals in the running. Over on the musical side, nine new tuners were in contention as were six musical revivals. The cutoff date for eligibility was April 27.

The Tony Awards are set for June 12 at United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights and will be hosted for the second year in a row by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose.

The 2023 Tony Awards nominations list below includes all 26 competitive categories.

Musicals

Best Musical

& Juliet

Kimberly Akimbo

New York,...

The Drama League today announced the nominations for the 2023 Drama League Awards. Honoring achievements on and Off-Broadway, the nominations were announced this morning by Roger Bart (“Back to the Future: The Musical”) and Justin Guarini (“Once Upon A One More Time”) at the New York Library for the Performing Arts. Winners will be revealed at the 89th Annual Drama League Awards ceremony at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Friday, May 19, 2023.

“I don’t think I’ve experienced a theater season in New York ever like this one,” noted Artistic Director Gabriel Stelian-Shanks. “There’s been a range, a breadth, an expansion of possibility that has been truly astonishing to witness. Theater makers have inspired not only with their creativity, but also with their drive and determination to serve audiences with vision and talent. These nominees reflect the promise and greatness inherent in the work of theater folk, and I can’t help but be deeply proud.

“When I write plays, I hope that they’re useful,” confesses “Cost of Living” playwright Martyna Majok. “I write them partly to feel less alone myself. And I hope that in going to the theater and experiencing it, that people can feel less alone in their circumstances.” She won the Pultizer Prize for drama for this script, which transferred to Broadway this season at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Using her own life as a guide, she crafted a story where four characters search for connection and hope. Watch the exclusive video interview above.

Majok describes the play as “a time capsule for a period of a lot of uncertainty and precarity in my life. As well as a particular kind of American loneliness.” Having just moved to New York after completing her graduate degree, she didn’t have enough money to afford a security deposit on an apartment.

The Tony Awards contest for the top honor of Best Play is the most crowded it has been in at least a decade. A whopping 17 new dramatic works will vie for only five slots that recognize the most stellar productions and playwrights on Broadway. This season, the plays in contention hail from renowned dramatists like Tony winners Tom Stoppard for “Leopoldstadt” and David Auburn for “Summer, 1976,” and past nominee Sharr White for “Pictures From Home.” Notably, there are also three winners of the Pulitzer Prize eligible this season: James Ijames’ “Fat Ham,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Between Riverside and Crazy,” and Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living.” If all three of these works land nominations, the Tonys will set a record for the most Pulitzer winners nominated for Best Play in one year in history.

According to our current combined odds, it is very possible that history will indeed be made this year.

He has been testing the waters for some time now in terms of fiction (with Chinks in active development) but Minding the Gap docu-helmer Bing Liu‘s fiction debut will be the book-to-film adaptation of the prize-winning novel Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish (his debut novel). Plan B’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Pastel’s Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak, MGM Studios, and Orion Pictures are all getting behind the project. Production is set for this coming fall in New York city. They are currently casting the film.

Written by Polish-born American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok, this is about a Chinese Muslim refugee who is smuggled into the country in a truck and is determined to survive whatever America throws at her.…...

The Broadway-bound comedy Fat Ham and Shakespeare in the Park’s Merry Wives are among this year’s recipients of the 66th Obie Awards honoring Off and Off-Off Broadway productions.

Presented by the American Theatre Wing, the Obies will be handed out Monday evening in a ceremony at Manhattan’s Terminal 5 venue. Sustained and Lifetime Achievement winners will accept their awards during the ceremony, while remarks of all other winners will premiere on the the American Theatre Wing’s YouTube channel.

The most recent Obies ceremony was virtual and premiered on the Wing’s YouTube channel on July 14, 2020.

“For this Obies, the judges reviewed over 400 productions over the last three seasons including digital and audio works made during the pandemic,” said Heather Hitchens, President & CEO, in a statement. “We look forward to finally gathering in person to celebrate the artistic excellence and resilience of the amazing artists and theatre companies...

Florence Welch’s Broadway-bound musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby is ready to make its theatrical stage debut next year.

Simply titled Gatsby, the musical will premiere at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2024. Welch is collaborating with producer Thomas “Doveman” Bartlett to write the lyrics and music for the project.

The book for Gatsby was created by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok (Cost of Living), with Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin attached to direct and fellow Tony winner Sonya Tayeh providing choreography.

“This book has haunted me for a large part of my life,” said Welch in a statement when the musical was announced. “It contains some of my favorite lines in literature. Musicals were my first love, and I feel a deep connection to Fitzgerald’s broken romanticism. It is an honor to have been offered the chance to recreate this book in song.

Florence Welch, who has always embraced a certain Jazz Age chic and joie de vivre, will bring her interpretation of the Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby, to theatrical stages next year.

The artist is collaborating with Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, on music for a show simply called Gatsby. She is also writing the production’s lyrics which feature a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living). Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin is attached to direct, and another Tony winner, Sonya Tayeh, will provide choreography. Gatsby will...

Gatsby, the Broadway-aimed musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby first announced a year into the Covid pandemic shutdown, will make its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in 2024.

Featuring music by by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett, lyrics by Welch and book by Martyna Majok, Gatsby will be directed by Tony-winning Hadestown director Rachel Chavkin, with choreography by Moulin Rouge!‘s Sonya Tayeh.

The musical will be produced by American Repertory Theater at Harvard University by special arrangement with Amanda Ghost and Len Blavatnik for Unigram/Access Entertainment, with Jordan Roth, president of Broadway’s Jujamcyn Theaters, in association with Robert Fox, joining the lead producing team. Hannah Giannoulis serves as co-producer.

The musical was first announced in April 2021. Additional information, including casting and productions dates, will be released at a later date.

Welch is the Grammy-nominated leader of rock band Florence + the Machine,...

Barry Grove will step down as the Executive Producer of Manhattan Theatre Club, a major Broadway and Off Broadway institution, at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 season.

In his 48 years collaborating with Mtc’s founder and Artistic Director Lynne Meadow, Grove has been a driving force in the production of nearly 450 American and world premieres, earning Mtc 28 Tony Awards, 7 Pulitzer Prizes, 50 Drama Desk Awards and numerous Obie, Outer Critics Circle, and other honors.

Among the productions staged by the subscription-based non-profit company in the decades under Grove and Meadow are seminal works by playwrights Alan Ayckbourn; Richard Greenberg, Harvey Fierstein, Paula Vogel, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Charlayne Woodard and Matthew Lopez, to name a few. Pulitzer Prize and Tony winners include Cost of Living by Martyna Majok (Pulitzer); Crimes of the Heart (Pulitzer) by Beth Henley; Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (Pulitzer and Tony); Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony) by Terrence McNally; Rabbit...

“Every aspect of my life is completely different from the day that I was sent the script,” says Katy Sullivan, star of Manhattan Theatre Club’s limited Broadway run of Cost of Living, while wiping under her eyes.

It’s not the only time the actress, producer and four-time U.S. Paralympic champion has become emotional while discussing her multi-year journey with Ani, a quadriplegic and the ex-wife of an unemployed truck driver played by David Zayas. Speaking just days after her final performance as a character she’s owned for literal years — originating the role from its Williamstown Theatre Festival world premiere along with co-star Gregg Mozgala — Sullivan acknowledges it’s hard to let go of something that has not only become part of her but literally changed her life.

“We had the most lovely, generous audience ready to laugh and cry with us — just a glorious group of humans came.

A Pulitzer Prize can be a burden, one must assume, trumpeting expectations and pumping reputations from a distance. Martyna Majok‘s Cost of Living won the trophy in 2018, and that victory has been mentioned often in the lead-up to the play’s opening on Broadway tonight in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

An often moving, not quite as often cloying but generally disappointing quadruple portrait of two “differently abled” people — the term is loathed by at least one of them — and the not-quite-prepared caregivers enlisted to assist them, Cost of Living does better as character study than workable play. Still, it has more than a few moments of grace — and a fine cast — that combine to raise it beyond the well-meaning exercise it might otherwise have been.

Cost of Living, directed by Jo Bonney, begins with an out-of-chronology monologue that contributes little but confusion,...

The Piano Lesson led the pack of Broadway’s recent arrivals at the box office last week, with the August Wilson revival starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington and Danielle Brooks grossing 795,306 for its first seven performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Coming in a close second, in terms of gross receipts, was Leopoldstadt, the Tom Stoppard play previewing at the Longacre, taking 753,157 for seven performances.

The newcomers added to Broadway’s overall tally of 26,367,421 for the week ending Sept. 25, a jump of about 6 from the previous week. Attendance was up the same percentage, to 214,085, reflecting a strong 93 of available seats filled.

Other productions in previews, and playing seven performances, included 1776, the non-profit Roundabout’s all-female/transgender/nonbinary revival of the classic musical, grossing 342,777 for seven performances; and Cost of Living, the non-prof Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of the Martyna Majok’s play, taking in 137,796. Death of a Salesman,...

A slate of four new productions and renewed interest in a couple of old ones pushed Broadway box office up by 20 last week, with total receipts for the 24 shows reaching 24,954,517 and attendance climbing 14 to 201,321 for the week ending September 18.

Among the newcomers: Death of a Salesman, 1776, Cost of Living and Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt. Waving goodbye was Dear Evan Hansen and announcing its upcoming departure was The Phantom of the Opera.

First, Hansen. The musical closed September 18, selling out for its final week and grossing a big 1,251,593. A run that began November 14, 2016, ended after having played 1,678 performances. It won the Tony for Best Musical.

And while it was too soon to see much of the Phantom hubbub on the week’s chart — the musical announced its February 18 closing on Friday, bringing an imminent end to 35 years of music of the night — the production saw a noticeable uptick in receipts: 964,172, up 96,175 from the previous week.

A new Broadway season has started, and there are currently 11 productions of plays set to open this fall. Could we be seeing any of them contend at next year’s Tony Awards? Below is an overview of the plot of each play as well as the awards history of its author, cast, creative team, and the opening and (where applicable) closing dates.

“Death of a Salesman”

In the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s 1949 drama, Willy Loman is a traveling salesman whose illusions of picture-perfect business and family life cave in on him. He and his family are caught up in the pressures and delusions of living the American dream.

The original production directed by Elia Kazan won six Tony Awards (including Best Play) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This staging follows a successful run on London’s West End back in 2019, where it received five Laurence Olivier...

Cost of Living, Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, will begin Broadway previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Tuesday, September 13, ahead of an official opening on Monday, October 3.

The Manhattan Theatre Club announced the dates today, along with the addition of cast members Kara Young, a Tony nominee for her performance in last season’s Clyde’s, and David Zayas, best known to TV audiences for his long-running role as Angel Batista on Showtime’s Dexter.

Young and Zayas join the previously announced Gregg Mozgala and Katy Sullivan, who reprise their performances from the play’s acclaimed 2017 Off Broadway production.

Also as previously announced, Jo Bonney directs.

Cost of Living won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and follows the relationships between a graduate student with cerebral palsy and his female caregiver, and between a quadriplegic woman and her ex-husband. The Pulitzer committee described Cost of Living as an “honest, original...

The Collaboration, Anthony McCarten’s hit London play about artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, will make its American premiere on Broadway this winter, with Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope as the two painters.

The Manhattan Theatre Club production will begin previews at Mtc’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Tuesday, November 29, with an opening night set for Tuesday, December 20. Kwame Kwei-Armah directs.

The production will be the second Broadway production of Mtc’s 2022-2023 season, following the fall premiere of Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living.

The Collaboration, which made its world premiere in a critically acclaimed production by London’s Young Vic Theatre in January, is set in the summer of 1984, when longtime superstar Warhol and wunderkind Basquiat agreed to work together on what would become one of the most famous exhibitions in the modern art history. As the official synopsis puts it, “But can these two creative giants co-exist,...

Fat Ham, playwright James Ijames’ comedy-drama reinvention of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, received the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama today, just days before the acclaimed play is to make its New York debut at the Public Theater Off Broadway.

“A funny, poignant play that deftly transposes Hamlet to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility and honesty,” said Pulitzer Prize Administrator Marjorie Miller in announcing the prize. Fat Ham took the honor over two other finalists, Selling Kabul by Sylvia Khoury and Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord by Kristina Wong.

Fat Ham, which premiered last year in a filmed production for the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, begins its New York engagement at the Public Theater on May 12, running through June 12. A co-production with National Black Theatre, Fat Ham will be directed by Saheem Ali.

Watch a trailer for the Wilma Theater production of Fat Ham above.

Cost of Living, Martyna Majok’s play that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, will be getting its Broadway premiere this fall, the Manhattan Theatre Club announced today.

The announcement follows an acclaimed Off Broadway run of the play by Mtc. The director Joe Bonney and stars Katy Sullivan and Gregg Mozgala will resume their roles for the Broadway staging at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Additional casting, creative team, and other information including preview and opening dates will be announced later.

Cost of Living premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016 and appeared Off Broadway the following year. The play follows the relationships between a graduate student with cerebral palsy and his female caregiver, and between a quadriplegic woman and her ex-husband. The Pulitzer committee described Cost of Living as an “honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs...

Prentice Penny (Insecure, Uncorked) has signed on to direct an adaptation of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel New Kid for Universal Pictures, tapping Eli Wilson Pelton to adapt the script. His production company A Penny For Your Thoughts Entertainment has also come aboard to develop and produce the film alongside The SpringHill Company.

New Kid tells the story of Jordan Banks, who experiences culture shock as one of the few kids of color when his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school, struggling both to start over and to fit in. The graphic novel from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft was published by HarperCollins in 2019 and subsequently became the first to win the coveted Newbery Medal, as well as the Coretta Scott King Award.

Universal Pictures acquired the rights to New Kid in 2020 as part of its four-year, first-look deal with The SpringHill Company, which optioned...

FX announced that the pilot based on Octavia Butler’s 1979 science fiction novel “Kindred” has cast Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan as series regulars.

They join previously announced cast member Mallori Johnson, who will play the lead role of Dana, a young Black writer who finds herself transported back and forth between the present and a 19th century slave plantation.

Stock is primarily known for his stage work, including his Tony-nominated performance as Gus in Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play.” He will also star in John Slattery’s upcoming film “Maggie Moore(s)” alongside Jon Hamm and Tina Fey. His other credits include Netflix’s “Bonding,” Disney Plus’ “The Right Stuff,” and Paul Downs Colaizzo’s film “Brittany Runs A Marathon.” Stock is repped by ICM, Anonymous Content and ID.

From 2008 to 2014, Kwanten starred as Jason Stackhouse in HBO’s True Blood.

FX has rounded out the series regular cast for drama pilot Kindred, based on an adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s influential novel. Joining newcomer Mallori Johnson, who stars, are Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan.

The project hails from writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), Courtney Lee-Mitchell (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Darren Aronofsky and his Protozoa Pictures, Joe Weisberg (The Americans) and Joel Fields (Fosse/Verdon). FX Productions is the studio.

Johnson plays the central character Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own. But, before she can get settled into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time to a nineteenth-century plantation with which she and her family...

Exclusive: As HBO’s Insecure heads into its fifth and final season, showrunner and executive producer Prentice Penny has lined up his latest project at HBO. The premium cabler has put in development a single-camera half-hour comedy from Penny and his A Penny For Your Thoughts Entertainment and Janine Nabers (Atlanta).

Written by Penny and Nabers, in the Untitled Prentice Penny/Janine Nabers Project, convicted felon T.R. “The Brick” Johnson who once was one of America’s most beloved athletes, grovels at the feet of America and charms his way back into our hearts.

Penny and Nabers executive produce with Chris Pollack (Upscale with Prentice Penny). Alex Soler (Queens) is co-executive producer.

Penny’s A Penny For Your Thoughts Entertainment is behind the upcoming late-night talk series Pause with Sam Jay, which premieres on HBO on May 21. It’s also wrapping up the Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated series Insecure at HBO,...

Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch will write the music and lyrics for an upcoming musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Welch will compose the music alongside Thomas Bartlett. Bartlett makes music under the name Doveman and previously earned an Oscar and Grammy nomination for his collaboration with Sufjan Stevens, “Mystery of Love,” from the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack.

“This book has haunted me for a large part of my life,” Welch said in a statement. “It contains some of my favorite lines in literature.

A new stage musical adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald masterpiece The Great Gatsby is headed for Broadway, with music by Florence + the Machine’s Florence Welch and Oscar-nominated “Mystery of Love” song producer Thomas Bartlett.

The musical, announced today by producers Len Blavatnik and Amanda Ghost for Unigram in association with Robert Fox, will feature a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, with Welch writing lyrics. Olivier Award nominee Rebecca Frecknall (the West End’s Summer and Smoke) will direct.

“This book has haunted me for a large part of my life,” Welch said in a statement. “It contains some of my favorite lines in literature. Musicals were my first love, and I feel a deep connection to Fitzgerald’s broken romanticism. It is an honor to have been offered the chance to recreate this book in song.”

Bartlett, a singer and pianist who has released four solo...

Dramatists Play Service, the theatrical licensing and publishing agency formed in 1936 that represents scores the stage’s most prominent playwrights, has been acquired by Broadway Licensing in what the companies are calling a landmark agreement.

Broadway Licensing, a full-service theatrical licensing partner specializing in the development, production and worldwide distribution of new and established theatrical properties, will now house Dps under its slate of brands. Among the dramatists now represented under this newly formed umbrella are Ayad Akhtar, Edward Albee, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, Richard Greenberg, Katori Hall, Beth Henley, George S. Kaufman, Tracy Letts, Martyna Majok, Donald Margulies, Terrence McNally, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Eugene O’Neill, Susan-Lori Parks, John Patrick Shanley, Alfred Uhry, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, and Doug Wright.

The deal was announced today by Sean Cercone, CEO/President, Broadway Licensing, and David J. Moore, Acting President, Dramatists Play Service.