‘Parade’ Broadway Review: Ben Platt & Micaela Diamond Lead Exceptional March Through History

Puns grow knee-high – and in bawdier moments a bit higher – in Shucked, the new musical comedy that combines the winking hayseed humor of Green Acres and Hee Haw with the decidedly urban, gently subversive camp that peppered the Off Broadway scene in the ’90s with kitschy fare like Ruthless!, The Real Live Brady Bunch and Theatre-A-Go!-Go!’s Valley of the Dolls parody.

Paul Mescal celebrated his Olivier Award win with a late night trip to McDonald's. The Irish actor, 27, who recently went viral after being interviewed on the BAFTA red carpet in Irish, reigned supreme after picking up the award for Best Actor for his role as Stanley Kowalski in the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. He beat the likes of David Tennant and Tom Hollander to the achievement.

Jaime and Gabriela Jaquez are the first brother and sister duo to make it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. Commonly known as March Madness, this tournament is a favorite amongst many, highlighting the talent of young players from various colleges all over the country. Vanessa Bryant visits Lakers Arena for the first time since Kobe memorialThe Brooklyn Nets dropped an exclusive collab with Kari CruzJaime and Gabriela both play for their respective basketball teams at UCLA and come from a Mexican-American family.

When a character promises a life story so inspirational it’ll make a believer of an atheist, the tale better come through on some big-time convincing. Life of Pi, Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaption of Yann Martel’s heart-tugging 2001 novel opening tonight at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, won’t likely be churning out any religious converts, but renewed faith in the art of puppetry is all but guaranteed.

In a Broadway season that might be remembered for a lovely, pared-down minimalism – the intriguing starkness of A Doll’s House with Jessica Chastain, the less-is-more near-concert-style presentations of Into the Woods and Parade – director Thomas Kail’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will stand out for, among many other attributes, its full-on, unabashed ambition. A prodigious theatrical event that aims for greatness and achieves it, this revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece is not to be missed.

Naveen Kumar The cannibalist startup in “Sweeney Todd” kills two birds: For Sweeney, the ruined barber who holds a grudge as steadily as he does a blade, it means turning enemies into actual mincemeat. For Mrs. Lovett, who laments that alley cats were too quick and meager to carve up anyway — well, it’s a living, innit love?  Slitting throats and baking bodies into pies is a wild and wicked business. But in the stately and star-filled revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s macabre 1979 musical that opened on Broadway Sunday night, the people-to-pastries pipeline quickly assumes a grim air of mundanity.  For its stars Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, this lushly orchestrated and opera-scale production, from “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail, proves a magnificent showcase for their respective, jaw-dropping talents. Groban’s weighted-blanket baritone makes the prospect of reclining in his company and never waking up again seem like a great way to go. And Ashford’s fleet, agile instinct for comedy, which earned her a Tony Award for “You Can’t Take It With You,” is like a dippy bird for dopamine. But only one of them is a genuine thrill.

A dramatization of the life of Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan/Renault CEO who escaped from arrest hidden in a music case, is in the works from Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón and This England’s Michael Winterbottom.

Your first thought after seeing Bad Cinderella, the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is, well, she isn’t that bad. For better and worse.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While she retired prematurely at the age of 39, Brigitte Bardot has left an indelible mark on France’s popular culture in the 1960’s and 1970’s. With her wild blonde mane, smoky eyes and pouty lips, Bardot became a symbol of a modern and effortlessly sexy French woman, and a style emblem that continues to inspire current trends. The event series “Bardot,” which is penned and directed by Daniele Thompson (“The Queen Margot”) and Christopher Thompson (“La bûche”), world premiered at Series Mania Festival to unanimous praise and has been pre-sold by Federation nearly worldwide. “‘Bardot’ is like the French ‘The Crown’ because Bardot embodied France, and through her journey we reminisce about many parts of France’s history and popular culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s,” Federation’s boss and “Bardot” producer Pascal Breton told Variety.

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are reflecting on some of the issues in their marriage.

Leaving it in the past. Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos did not hold back about the challenges they faced at the start of their relationship.

Broadway’s old and new teamed up last week to boost total box office nearly 20%, with The Phantom of the Opera (the old) posting a best-ever $3 million weekly gross and The Jonas Brothers (the new, to Broadway anyway) taking in $1.6 million for their five-concert residency.

EXCLUSIVE: Olga Kurylenko (Black Widow), Jenny Seagrove (The Guardian), Anna Friel (Marcella) and Ben Miles (The Crown) have wrapped shoot on under-the-radar psychological thriller My Sister’s Bones, whose first look images we can reveal today (scroll down for more).

Emma Heming Willis shared an emotional update with fans Sunday as she celebrated Bruce Willis' birthday. The "Die Hard" actor received a frontotemporal dementia diagnosis last month after previously battling aphasia. Heming told her Instagram followers that she deals with "sadness" and "grief" every day, but was especially overcome with emotions on Bruce's 68th birthday.

Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond are back on Broadway and getting glowing reviews for their work in the revival of Parade.

Broadway revival of “Parade,” Jason Robert Brown’s sorrowful if flawed musical about the 1915 anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank, is youth.Playing husband and wife Leo and Lucille Frank, Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond come across strikingly young (and at 23 years old, Diamond really is), like a faded photo of your great-grandparents that you discover in a drawer. The subjects neither smile nor frown, but behind their neutral stares is so much promise and fear.2 hours, 30 minutes, with one intermission.

Frank Rizzo Traveling from the relative calm of the Clinton era to more perilous, contemporary times of mobs, mendacity and political mayhem, the much-admired but short-lived musical “Parade” has now found its moment in a brilliant Broadway revival. A decade after its Broadway bow in 1998 under the direction of Harold Prince, when the show received awards but not a lengthy run, a significant re-do directed by Rob Ashford at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2007 gave the challenging show and its dark subject matter a stronger structure and new life. Last fall’s acclaimed gala presentation at New York City Center built on that work, offering a stark and searing passion play of a production, complete with broad strokes, moral lessons and harsh indictments. It also revealed the work as an essential American epic that resoundingly speaks to our times. Now on Broadway, it boldly fills in a vast national canvas, from its Civil War prologue to its modern-times coda.

Room, the stage adaptation of the bestselling novel and 2015 film, will not come to Broadway this spring as planned: Producers announced today that the show has been postponed indefinitely “due to a shortfall in capitalization” following the withdrawal of a Lead Producer.

Amanda Holden is known for her risque outfits and cheeky appearances so her latest social media post is no different. The Britain's Got Talent judge was seen slapping her bum as she revealed the secret to making her derrière appear 'perky'.

A pilot scheme allowing bicycles on board Metrolink trams across Greater Manchester is now being drawn up, it's been revealed. The city region's new active travel commissioner, former Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey, has revealed she's working with transport bosses and the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to devise a trial.