It’s Friday, so let’s do a quick round-up of some of the theater stories people are talking about his week:
- Golden Globe Nominee and “It Girl” Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt, The Tree of Life, Coriolanus, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields in 2011 alone) will take aim at Tony next when she heads to Broadway as The Heiress in the fall. Julliard-trained and boasting some serious theater credits (Al Pacino’s Salome, “Desdemona” in Peter Sellar’s Othello), she has the stage chops…but she’ll have to compete with the memory of Cherry Jones’ transcendent performance in the role as well as figure out how such a strikingly beautiful woman can play a character described as incredibly plain. Perhaps it’s time to bring Donna Murphy’s Passion mole out of retirement.
- The casting of the Les Miserables film hit its first major red flag with the announcement that pop-songbird Taylor Swift is circling the role of Eponine. I’d write about it on my own but Nathaniel over at the Film Experience dissects the current cast list with such insight, I’ll let him take it from here.
- It’s January and that means two things on Broadway: leg warmers and shows start closing. This week’s casualties are the delightful new musical Lysistrata Jones and the evening of one-act comedies by Woody Allen, Elaine May and Ethan Coen, Relatively Speaking. Hang on to your mufflers because there’s sure to be more before the slow season ends.
- Finally, it looks like snow days aren’t just for schools anymore. The producers of Jersey Boys are offering a “winter weather ticket guarantee” by which you can exchange tickets for another performance if mother nature intrudes. The offer is good on performances from now until March 25, 2012 and tickets must be exchanged by noon on the date of the performance for which the audience member is currently holding tickets. Very cool…when it’s cold.
