Playbill Onion

 Playbill Onion is the preeminent destination for all things Broadway and theatre and has become an internationally known symbol of the arts since 1884.  

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Dave Malloy: ‘I Haven’t Read War and Peace’

“That book’s long as shit, dude,” said the composer when I visited him in his New York apartment where he was sitting in a paisley patterned bean bag on the floor watching the 2011 Ethan Hawke Moby Dick miniseries.

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Don’t Wish For Trump to Be Assassinated Without Thinking About the Possible Ramifications for Sondheim’s Assassins

The internet isn’t a vacuum: Before you send out a tweet saying you hope newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump gets assassinated during his first few months in office, be cautious that there are consequences for doing so. For instance, Stephen Sondheim’s 1999 musical Assassins, which tells the story of historical figures who killed or attempted to kill the president of the United States, would certainly suffer from the event.

There are better, more productive ways to deal with your anger than by saying you want the president to be taken out by an assassin without even giving a thought as to how such an event would date the musical, which was a collaboration between Sondheim and John Weidman and won 5 Tony Awards in 2004. Sure, it would still be a well-constructed show, but it would no longer pack the same punch if there was a more recent presidential assassination that didn’t appear in the musical.

You might think one comment in which you confess a fervent hope that the president will be assassinated wouldn’t do much harm, but how would the scene near the end of the musical, in which various characters gather around Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository and advise him to kill President John F Kennedy, be affected if Trump had been recently assassinated? It would undeniably feel less significant. Instead of a flippant tweet expressing your wish for the president to be shot and killed, spare a thought for Sondheim and Weidman and write your representatives instead.

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Tragic Revelation: If Honeymoon In Vegas Had Run For One More Week, Jason Robert Brown Was Going To Buy A Piano

Jason Robert Brown hasn’t had the best of luck on Broadway, but he tells us he had a good feeling about his most recent show, Honeymoon in Vegas, before it closed last April–in fact, if it had run for just one more week, he was planning on fulfilling a longtime dream of his and purchasing his own piano.

“I’m pretty good at playing the piano, like probably the best person I know, so it would have been nice to be able to own one,” said Brown. “If only the seats of Broadway theatres weren’t filled by tourists who would rather see Les Mis or Phantom for the third time than experience a high-quality, racist show about two men who treat a woman as a bartering object.”

“Maybe I’ll have better luck with the next one. I should go work for Disney,” he added, laughing scathingly.

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Newsies Fandom Probably Made Up All Those Background Characters

How many newsies do you count in the above photo? Forty-five? Forty-six? Count again. New information reveals that beloved characters such as “Specs,” “Elmer,” and “Sniper” are likely fabrications of Newsies fans themselves and “might not even be real names,” according to one actor who wished to remain anonymous.

“I’m not…I don’t know what that is,” Harvey Fierstein reportedly said when eagerly asked by a fan at stage door about the development of the character ‘Buttons.’ “You might want to talk to someone in costume design? I don’t…”

At this time, no one outside the cast, crew, and creative team has been allowed access to the Newsies libretto, so the exact number of characters in the show cannot be identified.

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There Were So Many Options In Front Of This High School Theatre Director And He Chose To Do West Side Story With All White People

James Armstrong, 48, head of the theatre department of Green Valley High School in Wisconsin, fulfilled a lifelong dream of his last spring when he directed a school production of West Side Story, instead of a show like The Music Man or Beauty and the Beast, with an all-white cast.

“Our school is in a very white area, and I knew primarily white people would show up to audition, but I really felt that we could put our own spin on this show,” said Armstrong, despite the fact that he could have easily produced Urinetown or Into the Woods,and wouldn’t have had to cast white people as Puerto Rican characters.

He continued, “Some people said, ‘Why don’t you do Guys and Dolls or The Wizard of Oz or My Fair Lady? Those are musicals with no roles that require people of color, and since your theatre department is made up of overwhelmingly white people, it would make more sense for you to do one of those shows.’ It makes me sad that so many people don’t understand art.”

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Seth Rudetsky Will Revive Chess By Any Means Necessary

Radio personality Seth Rudetsky announced his plan earlier today to revive the Tim Rice musical Chess during the 2016/2017 season, no matter what the cost.

Although Rudetsky has not found a producer or director to work with him on this project, as far as we know, he did hint that Josh Groban might be interested in reprising his role as Anatoly. “I called him up and explained how passionate I was about this and at first he wasn’t sure it would work but then he was like, ‘Oh, Seth, we’ve gotta do this,’” Rudetsky posted on his blog, adding that he is aiming to open in the fall of 2016.

“I truly think this is one cause I would be willing to die for,” Rudetsky continued. “In my opinion, Chess is the most important musical ever written and I will bring it to Broadway no matter what I have to sacrifice.”

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New Fan of Musical Theatre Was Pretty Fucked Up By Next To Normal

Southern Ohio is usually a hub of activity. But sixteen year-old Kyle Hays’s house was quiet last night after he finished watching a bootleg of the 2010 Broadway cast of Next to Normal for the first time.

“It just hit me really hard. I don’t know what I was expecting,” the young man said. “It wasn’t really like Grease. But it wasn’t really like Phantom of the Opera, either. It kind of fucked me up.”

He paused before adding: “Did you know her son was dead the whole time? Oh man. That fucked with me so much.”

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In John Doyle’s Reconceived Production of Once, Actors Play Instruments Onstage

Tony Award-winning director John Doyle is aiming for Broadway once again, this time with a radically reimagined and reinvented production of Enda Walsh, Glen Hansard, and Markéta Irglová’s musical Once. Under Doyle’s direction, the actors in this production of the musical (winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2012) provide their own orchestral accompaniment. The actor who portrays Guy, for instance (Tony nominee Raul Esparza,) plays guitar throughout the show as he delivers much loved songs such as “Falling Slowly,” while the actress who plays Girl accompanies him on piano.

“It’s time,” says Doyle, “to bring back much loved hits that the audiences yearn and crave for. But to wrap them in a familiar package would be heinous.” According to Doyle, Once is set to move to Broadway within the next few months. Official dates yet to be announced.

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Audience Members Responsible For Heckling Something Rotten! Actors During The Performance Hired To The Show’s PR Team

When Ashley Martin, 32, and Jennifer Harris, 33, stood up and hurled insults at the actors in the middle of the first act of Something Rotten! at the St. James theatre last Wednesday, they weren’t looking to change their careers–just to have some good, mean-spirited fun. “People keep asking us if it was a publicity stunt,” notes Harris. “But in reality, we just thought it was a shitty musical.” Others who attended the same performance disagree as to whether Martin and Harris standing on their seats and throwing rotten tomatoes at the stage while screaming “MAKE IT STOP! OH MY GOD! MAKE IT STOP!” added to or detracted from the quality of the performance.

The two women, who remained quietly in their seats throughout the entire second act, were approached after the show and quickly signed on to be the new heads of the show’s PR team. “They understand the show so well, it’s astonishing,“ a representative told us. “That tongue-in-cheek mockery–that’s what we’ve been trying to achieve all along.”

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Alison Bechdel Talks Fun Home, Reveals She Can't Actually Draw A Circle

“I went to an early reading of the show and it was incredible to see my life played out in front of me. But they got to “Maps” and it was this instant moment of, oh, that’s not right...I’ve just never been able to draw a circle. It’s possible my father lived his life inside one. I’m not really sure. I’m still not clear on exactly what they are. I never told Lisa and Jeanine about it, though. I thought it might be awkward.”