Broadway buzz at the Oscars, Andrew Keenan-Bolger’s sex dreams & Sondheim gets a dancy remix

Welcome to The Callboard, Queerty’s curtain-raising theater news, where we share the latest news from Broadway and beyond. From casting announcements and openings to viral moments with our favorite stars, here’s a front-row seat to all the drama happening onstage and off!

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The 96th annual Academy Awards didn’t quite shape up to be the total Barbenheimer that some anticipated. The atomic biographical thriller managed to snag seven awards, including Best Picture, while Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell were Barbie’s sole winners for the Best Original Song, “What Was I Made For?” Broadway alums, meanwhile, relished the red carpet and took home some honors, along with an opulent appearance by Wicked‘s Cynthia Ervio and Ariana Grande.

Ghost the Musical vanished shortly after it arrived on Broadway in 2012, but critics and audiences alike were impressed with Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s performance as Oda Mae Brown, a role originated by Whoopie Goldberg in the 1990 film of the same name. Randolph earned a Tony nomination, and although she didn’t win, this year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for The Holdovers resurrected our hope that Randolph would get due recognition for her years on stage and screen. 

Emma Stone, meanwhile, took home statuette #2 for her role in Poor Things. And while we knew she could carry a tune since her 2017 win for La La Land, Broadway theatergoers may remember her performance as Sally Bowles in the Sam Mendes-directed Cabaret revival. What’s old is new again when Cabaret returns to Broadway this spring, this time starring Eddie Redmayne as The Emcee and Gayle Rankin as Sally Bowles. Keep an eye out for Marty Lauter (aka RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Marsha Marsha Marsha) as one of the Kit Kat boys.

‘If this upsets you, kick rocks’ — Jeremy O. Harris claps back

Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris heads to the West End this summer, starring Games of Thrones’ Kit Harrington, out English actor Fisayo Akinade, and four of the original Broadway cast members. Harris, who was a producer on Euphoria and appeared as eccentric fashion designer Grégory Elliot Duprée in Netflix’s Emily in Paris, announced that the production intends to hold Black Out nights to encourage a diverse audience despite British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s concerns that the move was “wrong and divisive.” 

Harris wasn’t having it and quickly bounced back on X, writing he was in “a slight rage over the moral panic” and “If this upsets you, kick rocks.”
Noel Coward Theatre, London. June 29-September 21, 2024.

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In a slight rage over the moral panic that that a certain aspect of the British public have frothed up around Black Out Nights, two nights out of over a hundred, that have seen audiences members of all race in attendance over the last four years since its inception on Broadway.

— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris) February 29, 2024

Sunday dance party in the park with George

While Broadway audiences are reveling in the Tony-winning revival of Sweeney Todd (now co-starring Heartstopper’s Joe Locke), a theater company across the Hudson River in New Jersey is putting a fresh spin on Sunday in the Park with George. The Axelrod Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with Grind Arts Company, presents a “dance-forward” reimagining of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. 

“My dance-forward vision of Sunday In The Park With George began twenty years ago,” says director-choreographer Eamon Foley. “I was nine years old, appearing as a newsboy in the Broadway revival of Gypsy with Bernadette Peters. All of us child actors would watch the PBS recording of Sunday on VHS during the second act while waiting for our curtain call. Then, I’d listen to the cast album on my commutes to and from the theatre, and the score really inspired me, as it has so many others. To me, it sounded like color swirling around you, and I believed that this complex and beloved musical had untapped potential to dance.” 

‘Say gay’ Off-Broadway

While this season’s Broadway offerings are relatively lean from an LGBTQ+ perspective, head Off-Broadway to discover emerging playwrights, queer themes, and some of our favorite stars up close and personal.

BATHHOUSE.PPTX: Not the kind of PowerPoint presentation you’d expect in an English Literature class, playwright Jesús I. Valles riffs on the history of bathing and cleanliness, referring to the play as “somewhere between lecture, re-enactment, and cruising ground.”
Flea Theater, New York City. March 19-April 22, 2024.

Orlando: Playwright Sara Ruhl adapts Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel about a gender-expansive courtier who lives for centuries. Taylor Mac stars in the title role, surrounded by a who’s who of queer theatermakers, including Nathan Lee Graham (A Strange Loop) and Lisa Kron (Fun Home playwright).
Signature Theatre, New York City. April 2-May 12, 2024. 

Scarlett Dreams: If you thought AI was merely an easy way to revamp your LinkedIn photo or VR an excuse to wear sweats all weekend, strapped into a Meta Quest 3 headset, think again. Playwright S. Asher Gelman (Afterglow, We Are The Tigers) returns with another modern, sexually charged work, this time exploring what happens when a virtual trainer comes between husbands Milo (Borris Anthony York) and Kevin (Andrew Keenan-Bolger). 
Greenwich House Theater, New York City. April 3-May 26, 2024.

Related:

Andrew Keenan-Bolger talks yay or nay on biting, couch-squealing, & the show that changed his life

Actor Andrew Keenan-Bolger returns to the stage in the queer-tinged “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors.”

Messing around with Bob Fosse

You, too, can move like a Bob Fosse dancer, thanks to a series of YouTube videos produced by Broadway’s Chicago, which will soon welcome back Jinkx Monsoon in the role of Matron “Mama” Morton (June 27-July 12). In the meantime, “mess around” with this classic Fosse move.