News

Ain’t No Mo’, the Broadway debut of author and star Jordan E. Cooper, opened at the Belasco Theatre on Dec. 1 to the sort of reviews producers and playwrights dream about. Even the few critics who weren’t completely won over couldn’t help but point out a singular brilliance at work here, not to mention a stars-in-the-making cast and more laugh-out-loud moments than most of the rest of Broadway combined. A celebrity-packed opening night, with producer Lee Daniels greeting a crowd that included Gabrielle Union, Dwayne Wade and C. J. Uzomah – who happen to be among the starry cohort of co-producers – as well as Matthew Broderick, Tamron Hall, Deborah Cox, Stephanie Mills, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Susan Kelechi Watson, Camryn Manheim, Tony Kushner, Tituss Burgess, Gayle King, Pat Williams, Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Colton Ryan, Ari’el Stachel and Timothy Olyphant suggested nothing less than the buzzy arrival of Broadway’s next big thing,...

Broadway’s Ain’t No Mo’ producer Lee Daniels announced today that NBA champ Dwyane Wade, actor Gabrielle Union and Drag Race star RuPaul will join the co-producing team of the comedy that begins previews tonight at the Belasco Theatre.

Wade will produce under his production company 59th and Prairie Entertainment, and Union will produce under her I’ll Have Another Productions. Ain’t No Mo’ officially opens on Thursday, December 1.

The production, which blends sketch comedy, satire and avant garde theater to pose the question “What if the U.S. government attempted to solve racism by offering Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa?” premiered at The Public Theater in a twice-extended 2019 run.

Written by, and starring, Jordan E. Cooper, Ain’t No Mo’ also features Fedna Jacquet, Marchánt Davis, Shannon Matesky, Ebony Marshall-Oliver and Crystal Lucas-Perry.

The production is directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, in his Broadway debut.

Update: Broadway’s upcoming production of Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ is the latest New York staging hit by Covid: The comedy has delayed its first week of previews due to Covid within the company, moving the first performance at the Belasco Theatre November 3 to November 9.

The official opening is Thursday, December 1.

The play, which blends sketch comedy, satire and avant garde theater as it asks the incendiary question, “What if the U.S. government attempted to solve racism … by offering Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa?” stars Cooper, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Fedna Jacquet, Marchánt Davis, Shannon Matesky and Ebony Marshall-Oliver, and is produced by Lee Daniels.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ain't No Mo' (@aintnomobway)

Previous, Oct. 20: Covid isn’t done with New York’s theater scene just yet. At least four Broadway and major Off Broadway productions have either canceled or...

Crystal Lucas-Perry, Fedna Jacquet, Marchánt Davis, Shannon Matesky and Ebony Marshall-Oliver will join the previously announced Jordan E. Cooper in the cast of Cooper’s upcoming Broadway play Ain’t No Mo’, produced by Lee Daniels.

Daniels made the casting announcement today.

The comedy, which received a critically acclaimed Off Broadway production at New York’s Public Theater in 2019, begins previews at the Belasco Theatre on Thursday, November 3 ahead of an official opening on Thursday, December 1.

Ain’t No Mo’ blends sketch comedy, satire and avant garde theater as it asks the incendiary question, “What if the U.S. government attempted to solve racism … by offering Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa?”

Understudies announced today are Nik Alexander, Jasminn Johnson, Michael Rishawn, Kedren Spencer, Brennie Tellu and Emma Van Lare. The creative team includes director Stevie Walker-Webb making his Broadway debut, and the design team is Scott Pask (scenic design...

With 34 productions eligible for this year’s Tony Awards, there were plenty of names missing when nominations were announced on Monday morning. Among the most surprising 2022 Tony Awards nominations snubs was Katrina Lenk, who plays Bobbie in Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of the late Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.” The production merited nine nominations, including Best Musical Revival, Best Director, Best Featured Actor (Matt Doyle), and Best Featured Actress. Lenk previously won a Tony Award for her performance in Best Musical-winner “The Band’s Visit.”

See the complete list of 2022 Tony Awards nominees

Original musical “Flying Over Sunset” also underperformed. Even though the shuttered production scored four nominations, including Best Actress (Carmen Cusack) and Best Score, it missed out on the top category of Best Musical and Best Book for librettist James Lapine.

The star-studded revival of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” also missed out on a number of key nominations. Director Sam Gold...

“It’s been a great season for Black playwrights,” Sam Eckmann says as he introduces Gold Derby’s first slugfest of the 2022 Tony Awards season. A whopping 20 new plays and play revivals are eligible this season, with many of those written by, directed by, and starring Black artists. Sam and I met six weeks ahead of the nominations – which will be announced on May 3 – to debate which productions, actors, and directors will make the shortlists. Watch the full video above.

From the jump, we tackle one of the biggest categories of the ceremony with Best Play but choose different frontrunners. While I have “The Lehman Trilogy” in first place for now since so many of the contenders have not yet even started previews, Sam warns, “You have to go back to 2007 with ‘Coast of Utopia’ to find a play that was closed by the time of the Tony ceremony that won.

The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for the first time during the 2021-2022 Broadway season to discuss eligibility of twelve productions for the 75th Annual Tony Awards in 2022. The Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.

The productions discussed were: “Girl from the North Country,” “Pass Over,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “Six,” “Chicken & Biscuits,” “Is This A Room,” “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” “The Lehman Trilogy,” “Dana H.,” “Caroline, or Change,” “Diana, The Musical” and “Trouble in Mind.” No word yet on when the ceremony will take place, nor was there any announcement of a firm eligibility cut-off date.

The following determinations were made:

Jay O. Sanders and Mare Winningham will be considered eligible in the Lead Actor/Actress in a Musical categories for their respective performances in “Girl from the North Country.”

Colin Bates will be considered eligible in the Featured Actor in a Musical...

The sextet of queens of Six and each of the three Lehman Brothers – or rather the performers in the Broadway roles – may compete in the Tony Awards’ lead acting categories this year, Tony administrators announced today.

The decision to consider the individual members of those ensemble casts was among the first set of eligibility rulings made for the 2021-2022 season. The Tony Awards Administration Committee met yesterday in the first of the several eligibility meetings the group will have before the end of the season next spring.

This round of decisions mostly addresses acting category decisions, determining whether various cast members of often large ensembles fall into the lead slots.

A decision was also made on Trouble in Mind, the Alice Childress play originally staged Off Broadway in 1955 that had never been produced on Broadway until this season. As it did several seasons ago with Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band,...

After several canceled performances due to an undisclosed number of breakthrough Covid cases among the cast or crew, Broadway’s Chicken & Biscuits will close permanently at the end of the month, producers announced today.

“Due to the significant financial impact of the show cancellations, Chicken & Biscuits will need to play the final performance of its Broadway engagement on Sunday, Nov. 28,” the producers said in a statement. “We make this decision with a very heavy heart, as this production has brought so much joy into our lives during a very challenging time.”

On Tuesday, the production at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre announced that it had canceled performances through tonight, but the suspension was extended today through next Thursday, with performances set to resume on Friday, Nov. 19. The comedy will now stage its final performance on Sunday, November 28; it had originally been scheduled to end its limited engagement on Jan.

The Broadway production Chicken & Biscuits has canceled its next three performances, starting tonight, due to breakthrough cases of Covid.

“Through our regular testing process and protocols, breakthrough Covid-19 cases have been detected within the company of Chicken & Biscuits,” producers said in a statement. “As the health and safety of our cast, crew, and audiences are most paramount, we will be cancelling the next three performances starting tonight, Tuesday, November 9 through Thursday, November 11.”

The producing team – which includes Pamela Ross, Hunter Arnold, E. Clayton Cornelious, Leah Michalos, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas – said all tickets for the canceled performances will be refunded at the original point of purchase.

“The risks of mounting a play in this environment have always been clear to us,” the statement continues. “Yet every challenge we’ve faced is outweighed by the absolute thrill and joy of this play being performed on Broadway – with 30 debuts on...

Ten years after making his Broadway debut as an actor in “The Book of Mormon,” Douglas Lyons just took his first bow as a playwright with “Chicken & Biscuits,” which opened at the Circle in the Square Theatre on Oct. 10. The comedy centers on the funeral of a pastor, which brings together two at-odds sisters and raises a whole host of family foibles.

Directed by Zhailon Levingston, “Chicken & Biscuits” features an eight-person ensemble, with the majority of the cast making their Broadway debuts. Cleo King and Ebony Marshall-Oliver play sisters Baneatta and Beverly, respectively, and are joined by Broadway stalwarts Norm Lewis, Michael Urie and NaTasha Yvette Williams.

See ‘Lackawanna Blues’: Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s ‘vibrant’ play and performance are a ‘master class’

In a rave review, Ayanna Prescod (Variety) calls the play “a portrait of Black joy, love and laughter” that features “a brilliant script that’s fresh, relatable and laugh-out-loud funny.

The dish that gives this play its title was, we’re told more than once, a specialty of the late patriarch whose death has occasioned a very rocky family reunion, a get-together where the only consensus seems to be that grandpa’s traditional culinary contribution was beloved more for sentimentality than flavor.

And so we’re handed an apt metaphor for Chicken & Biscuits, the new play by Douglas Lyons, directed by Broadway newcomer Zhailon Levingston. Chicken & Biscuits, opening tonight at Circle in the Square Theatre, is one of seven Broadway productions written by Black playwrights set to open this fall, and for that alone worth celebrating.

But new voices doesn’t always equal fresh voices, as this safe, cozy comedy makes clear. Like grandpa’s biscuits, stale is the word that comes to mind.

Lifting every last detail from Tyler Perry’s recipe book, this family comedy is brimming with stock characters,...

Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra Jonas have joined the producing team of Douglas Lyons’ Broadway comedy Chicken & Biscuits, currently in previews at Circle in the Square Theatre.

On Sunday, Nick Jonas visited the cast and creative team at the theater – a team that includes two from Jonas’ upcoming 2022 Jersey Boys Live! streaming project: producer E. Clayton Cornelious, and Chicken & Biscuits cast member Michael Urie, who also appears in the Jersey Boys project and co-starred with Jonas in the 2011 Broadway revival of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.

Chicken & Biscuits cast member Norm Lewis appeared with Jonas in the 2010 Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary.

“Broadway has always had a special place in my heart,” Jonas said in a statement, “it helped launch my career. And after the last year and a half, Broadway is exactly what we need in this world. This play highlights the importance of love,...

Update, with full casting Chicken & Biscuits, the new comedy written by Douglas Lyons heading to Broadway this fall, has announced its full cast.

Joining the previously-announced Norm Lewis and Michael Urie are Cleo King (Deadwood) in her Broadway debut; NaTasha Yvette Williams (Waitress) and Devere Rogers (Ok Boomer) in his Broadway debut.

Reprising their roles from the play’s world premiere at Queens Theatre, and making their Broadway stage debuts, are Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Aigner Mizzelle and Alana Raquel Bowers. The casting announcement comes from producers Pamela Ross, Hunter Arnold, E. Clayton Cornelious and Leah Michalos.

Previous, June 24 Chicken & Biscuits, a new comedy written by Black playwright Douglas Lyons, with a largely Black cast and directed by Zhailon Levingston, who at 27 becomes the youngest Black director in Broadway history, will have its Broadway premiere this fall.

Beginning previews at Circle in the Square Theatre on Thursday, September 23, Chicken & Biscuits – which was...

New York’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production this summer of Merry Wives, a comedy adaptation by Jocelyn Bioh of the Bard’s Merry Wives of Windsor, will feature an all-Black cast including Jacob Ming-Trent (HBO’s Watchmen), Gbenga Akinnagbe (Broadway’s To Kill A Mockingbird), Shola Adewusi (CBS’ Bob Hearts Abishola) and Susan Kelechi Watson (NBC’s This Is Us).

The Public Theater announced the complete casting today, along with new dates for the staging in Central Park’s Delacorte Theater: Performances will begin Tuesday, July 6 (instead of the previously announced July 5) and run through Saturday, September 18 (an extension of three weeks from the previously announced engagement). The official opening night is Tuesday, July 27.

The extension is designed to compensate for current social distancing procedures that will require limited audience capacity of 428 at the 1,800-seat Delacorte. The audience capacity could be expanded if state requirements for small- and medium-sized venues change before July.