Theatre News Roundup: 6/29-6/30

Sorry about skipping last night's TNR and being late with this one. I have a recap to write for another site on Monday's and I was out on a date tonight.

Another Op’nin, Another Show (OPENINGS)

•  Patti LuPone stars in the Off-Broadway world premiere of Douglas Carter Beane's play Shows for Days, which also features Michael Urie. The production officially opens June 29 at Lincoln Center Theater.

The Party’s Over (CLOSINGS)

• It Shoulda Been You will end its Broadway run Aug. 

I Wanna Be A Producer (IN DEVELOPMENT)

• (Keep an eye on this one!) Producers have announced initial casting and creative team for Gotta Dance, a new musical based on the acclaimed 2008 documentary of the same name, which will make its pre-Broadway world premiere beginning Dec. 13 at Broadway In Chicago’s Bank of America Theatre. The cast will include Lillias White, Andre De Shields, Georgia Engel, Haven Burton, Lori Tan Chinn and Stefanie Powers. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, the production will continue through Jan. 17, 2016, before heading to Broadway in spring 2016. Gotta Dance features a book by Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin, original music by Matthew Sklar and the late Tony and Oscar winner Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde).
• My Paris, a new musical about artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, will star Bobby Steggert, Mara Davi, Donna English and John Glover. One of three new musicals being produced this summer by Goodspeed Musicals at The Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, CT, My Paris begins performances July 23 and runs through Aug. 16. It will feature a score by Charles Aznavour with lyrics translated by Jason Robert Brown (also music arranger). The libretto is by Alfred Uhry, who collaborated with Brown on Parade.
• Amy Spanger will appear in No One's Sonata by Seven Sater, librettist and lyricist of Spring Awakening. His collaborator on the show, Duncan Sheik, has joined the No One's Sonata creative team.
• A musical based on Ian Fleming's suave super spy James Bond is being prepared for Broadway. Executive producer Merry Saltzman (daughter of legendary Bond film producer and impresario Harry Saltzman) told Playbill.com that her company, Placeholder Productions, had secured the rights to mount a stage show. She said the show, concisely titled James Bond: The Musical, will have a book by novelist Dave Clarke and music and lyrics by country composer Jay Henry Weisz.

I Hope I Get It (CASTING)

•  Jessica Hecht and Adam Kantor have joined the cast of the upcoming Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, which will begin previews Nov. 12 prior to an official opening Dec. 17 at The Broadway Theatre (1681 Broadway). Hecht will play the role of Golde with Kantor as Motel. 
• Joaquina Kalukango and Talene Monahon have replaced Ciara Renée and Kimiko Glenn, respectively, in the Encores! Off-Center staging of Andrew Lippa's Wild Party, which will feature Sutton Foster as Queenie. Kalukango will play Kate, and Monahon will play Mae.
• Casting has been announced for the eight new plays being developed this summer at the annual National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. 
• Judy Blazer joins the cast of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder June 30 in the role of the mysterious Miss Shingle.
• Casting has been announced for the Lexington Theatre Company's inaugural production, the Tony-winning musical 42nd Street, which will play the Kentucky venue July 23-26 at the Lexington Opera House. Karen Ziemba will head the cast as Dorothy Brock with Matthew Shepard as Julian Marsh, Nicolas Dromard as Billy Lawlor and Darien Crago as Peggy Sawyer.
  

Come to the Cabaret (CABARETS/CONCERTS/ETC)

• Cast members from the long run of the Broadway musical Newsies will hold a pair of reunion concerts Aug. 24 at 54 Below nightclub in New York.
•  Michael Cerveris and Judy Kaye, as well as Matt Doyle,Morgan James and Randy Harrison, will join the stripped-down musical duo The Skivvies for their Aug. 1 show at Joe's Pub.
• The lineup continues to grow for Broadway Unplugged, which will feature a host of theatre favorites performing without amplification and will return to The Town Hall stage July 20 at 8 PM.

One Song Glory (ALBUMS)

• The original Broadway cast album of The Visit, the final musical by the Tony-winning team of Kander and Ebb, is available for digital download June 30. The dark musical starred two-time Tony-winning legend Chita Rivera. (While I didn't find it nearly as memorable as their past scores I definitely want to get my hands on this and I recommend listening to it at least once.)

A Foggy Day in London Town (UK NEWS)

• The Spitfire Grill, a musical based on the 1986 film of the same name that was seen Off-Broadway in a production by Playwrights' Horizons at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street in 2001, is to receive its U.K. premiere at London's Union Theatre.
• The Stephen Sondheim Society has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for an evening celebrating the acclaimed composer's 85th birthday at the Royal Drury Lane Theatre in London. The theatre has been reserved for Oct. 25. The project, however, will be funded only if a minimum of £110,000 is pledged by July 5 at 5 PM ET.

Let Me Be Your Star (TV NEWS)

• Anthony Mackie will play Dr. Martin Luther King in HBO's TV adaptation of the 2014 Tony-winning Best Play All the Way.

Stop! Wait! What?! (EVERYTHING ELSE)

• The 52 high-school students who make up the finalists of the National High School Musical Theatre Awards/Jimmy Awards are performing at a ceremony at the Minskoff Theatre in New York City on June 29 (This hopefully means that the performance videos will be posted on the youtube page soon.)  Michael Cerveris has replaced the previously reported Sutton Foster as host.
• The 17th annual Broadway Barks fundraiser — the star-studded dog and cat adoption event to benefit New York City animal shelters and adoption agencies founded by Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore — will be held July 11 in Shubert Alley (located between 44th and 45th Streets, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue).
• Something Rotten! leading lady Heidi Blickenstaff and her husband Nicholas Rohlfing are organizing a Broadway Bikes fundraising event Oct. 4 in New York City, to benefit Bike MS: New York 2015, a charity that fights multiple sclerosis.
• Following the June 26 landmark decision by the Supreme Court that gives gay and lesbian citizens the right to marry in all 50 states, two Broadway stars gave passionate curtain-call speeches following their Friday-night performances.
• Tickets go on sale June 30 to members of the general public for the upcoming Broadway revival of The Color Purple, starring Jennifer Hudson, Cynthia Erivo and Danielle Brooks.
• The Williamstown Theatre Festival 2015 summer season
• A new biography about Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II will be published in 2018. The New York Times reports that Todd S. Purdum's book, which is simply titled "Rodgers and Hammerstein," will be published by Henry Holt.
• Voices for the Voiceless: Stars For Foster Kids, a one-night-only concert event that was held June 29 at Broadway's St. James Theatre to help older foster kids find permanent adoptive families, raised more than $500,000.
• Playbill editor-in-chief Blake Ross will join NY1's Frank DiLella July 6 in hosting a special "15 Under 30" night celebrating Gay Pride at Off-Broadway's Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village. The Twentieth-Century Way, Tom Jacobson’s two-person play about homosexual entrapment in Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century, will cap this historic Gay Pride month with a one-night-only special performance and talkback.