Theater newly on tape at TOFT – New York Theater

These ten titles are newly out there to observe free of charge on the Theatre on Movie and Tape Archive (TOFT), within the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Middle, which since 1970 has recorded some 5 thousand reside theatrical productions, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theater.  Many of the new recordings of those exhibits are listed as formally “restricted to certified researchers” or “permission required,” however in a current article, the library’s Alex Teplitzky wrote: “Every one is out there for anybody to observe, and all you want is a library card!”

None are nonetheless operating on Broadway or Off-Broadway, and never all have been acclaimed productions (Most have been!) All are value watching.

Every title, listed alphabetically, is linked to the web page within the library’s analysis catalogue for the present (which explains, amongst a lot else, get permission to observe.) I’ve added an outline of the manufacturing excerpted from my evaluate

Camelot

(from my evaluate): There are vivid shining moments aplenty within the newest Broadway revival of “Camelot,” the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical concerning the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Spherical Desk.  These are largely discovered within the tuneful rating, which is performed by a luxurious 30-piece orchestra (with three trumPets — sufficient for a fanfare!) and sung by a proficient solid led by three interesting younger stars, who’re the principle draw after the rating: Andrew Burnap (Tony winner for The Inheritance) as King Arthur; Phillipa Soo (who made a splash in Hamilton and has confirmed herself one in all New York theater’s go-to main women within the decade since) as Guenevere, Arthur’s at first reluctant Queen; and Jordan Donica (who sang the swoon-worthy “On The Road The place You Reside” within the final revival of “My Honest Girl”)  as Lancelot du Lac, a knight who reveres Arthur however falls in love with Guenevere, singing the swoon-worthy “If Ever I Ought to Depart You” to her.

Videotaped on the Vivian Beaumont, July 21, 2023.

Days of Wine and Roses

(from my evaluate) Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara return to Broadway for the primary time collectively since 2002 to painting a pair who fall in love with alcohol as a lot as with each other on this musical adaptation of a darkish story that was first a tv drama within the Fifties, then a film.  They final carried out collectively on Broadway in a musical adaptation of one other darkish film set within the Fifties, “Candy Odor of Success.” They have been relative newcomers then. It’s thrilling to see them again collectively for his sixteenth and her thirteenth function on Broadway. The 2 stars carry “Days of Wine and Roses,” their beautiful voices bringing out the brilliance of Adam Guettel’s jazz-iNFLected, usually operatic rating, and investing the characters’ rocky emotional journeys with a credibility that few different performers may match. They justify bringing to Broadway an adaptation of a narrative that feels dated.

Videotaped at Studio 54 on March 27, 2024

Fats Ham

(from my evaluate) Fats Ham” gained the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the play is impressed by “Hamlet,” loosely adopting the plot and even utilizing some verbatim soliloquys from Shakespeare’s tragedy. However I may neglect concerning the expectations that have been raised (and dashed) by these status signifiers the primary time round [Off Broadway], and now on Broadway relish the foolish, horny and surreal moments that director Saheem Ali make pop in James Ijames’s raunchy, freewheeling comedy. Even the intense considerations, peeking out from beneath the playfulness, have extra iNFLuence.

Videotaped on the American Airways Theatre, June 27, 2023.

Humorous Woman

(from my evaluate) Humorous Woman is meant to be a musical about Fanny Brice, the singing comedienne who was a star of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway for some twenty-five years after which starred in a radio collection that she created because the beloved brat Child Snooks. However let’s face it: “Humorous Woman” has at all times actually been about Barbra Streisand…
(Word: My evaluate is of the manufacturing earlier than Lea Michele took over the starring function — which makes it value little or no, since Michele modified the present round, and is the one offered on the videotape at TOFT)

Videotaped on the August Wilson Theatre, August 25, 2023.

Right here Lies Love

(from my evaluate) Some will see “Right here Lies Love” in the beginning because the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, former First Girl of the Philippines. …Some will deal with it primarily because the return to Broadway of  71-year-old eclectic, creative musical expertise David Byrne (Speaking Heads frontman and star of “American Utopia”)  13 years after “Right here Lies Love” started as an idea album in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, and a decade after it was was a pop opera Off-Broadway….Or one can welcome “Right here Lies Love,” as I do, because the closest Broadway will most likely ever get to immersive theater, a dozen years after that style first ignited in New York

Videotaped on the Broadway Theatre November 16, 2023.

Right here We Are

(from my evaluate) Stephen Sondheim’s first new musical in twenty years, produced two years after his dying,..is a world-premiere manufacturing at The Shed directed by the much-esteemed Joe Mantello and carried out by eleven of New York’s most enjoyable stage actors,  with a guide by skilled playwright David Ives impressed by two of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s most acclaimed surrealist movies — “The Discreet Allure of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” — and a rating by Sondheim of beneath a dozen songs marked by his characteristically intelligent lyrics.

Recorded at The Shed December 14, 2023.

How one can Dance in Ohio

(from my evaluate)

“How To Dance in Ohio” is a musical adaptation of a 2015 documentary movie of the identical identify a couple of group of autistic younger adults at a counseling middle in Columbus, Ohio, who, as a part of their social abilities remedy group, spend months getting ready for a proper prom-like dance. The manufacturing, which opens tonight at Broadway’s Belasco Theater, has some tuneful melodies, some touching moments and, above all, an exhilarated and exhilarating solid, that includes seven performers who’re themselves autistic younger adults making their Broadway debuts portraying the autistic characters…

Videotaped on the Belasco Theatre, New York, N.Y., February 8, 2024.

New York, New York

(from my evaluate) New York, New York” the musical is thrilling in ways in which transcend simply “New York, New York” the music, which was first sung by Liza Minnelli within the 1977 film of the identical identify… This model new however vintage-feeling musical presents an eclectic and electrical rating — a dozen of the greater than thirty songs are from Kander and Ebb, the songwriting duo that created “Chicago” and “Cabaret,” however most are newly composed by 96-year-old John Kander, who’s outlived his writing accomplice by twenty years. (He has a brand new lyricist, at the least for a number of numbers on this present: Lin-Manuel Miranda.)…Beowulf Boritt’s spectacular units, enhanced by a first-rate design staff, add as much as a three-dimensional Travelogue of New York Metropolis, from Instances Sq., Central Park and Grand Central Terminal to the neighborhood stoop and hearth escapes filled with kibitzers

Videotaped on the St. James Theatre, New York, N.Y., July 29, 2023.

Parade

(from my evaluate) The 1998 Broadway musical is impressed by the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish supervisor of a pencil manufacturing unit in Atlanta, Georgia who was lynched in 1915.  Twenty-five years in the past,  the musical, which was directed and co-conceived by the legendary Harold Prince, gained Tony Awards for each its composer Jason Robert Brown and its librettist Alfred Uhry, however was critically dismissed as “extra podium-thumping screed than compelling story,” and ran for simply 85 common performances. Now starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, the revival has been extensively heralded as riveting and rapturous. 

Videotaped on the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, July 26, 2023.

Shucked

(from my evaluate) “Shucked” is corny. Corn is what the corn-growing townsfolk of Cob County sing about from the opening variety of this new country-flavored Broadway musical; it’s the topic of the “farm to fable” plot, involving a con man masquerading as a “corn physician.” Above all, lots of its jokes are corny…What would possibly come as a shock in “Shucked” is the sheer quantity and number of jokes — corny, positive, but additionally intelligent, crass, questionable and surreal: foolish one-liners, artful wordplay, groan-inducing puns, borderline soiled jokes

Videotaped on the Nederlander Theatre, September 1, 2023.

 Search the analysis catalog for different exhibits on tape or movie, utilizing the filters “Title” and “Shifting Picture.”