Greg Evans Associate Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticUPDATED with timeline: The 73rd annual DGA Awards, which will take place on April 10, 2021 much later than usual because of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed back the annual awards season, has unveiled its key dates and timelines for its 2021 edition.It comes after the Directors Guild settled on the ceremony’s 2021 date back in July.For the Television, Commercial, and Documentary categories, nominees will be announced on March 8, the guild’s

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSandy Dvore, the Emmy-winning graphic artist whose whose opening credit designs for such programs as The Young and the Restless, The Partridge Family and The Waltons are among TV’s most recognizable images, died Nov. 20 after a recent diagnosis of bone cancer.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticDespite what you may have read, The Right Girl is not a musical about Harvey Weinstein.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticRobert Garland, a Hollywood screenwriter who began his writing career with episodes of such popular sitcoms as That Girl and Sanford and Son before going on to write the big-screen hits The Electric Horseman and No Way Out, died Nov. 21 in Baltimore.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe first Actors’ Equity diversity and inclusion report since 2017 finds “modest improvement” in the hiring of actors and stage managers of color in the last three years, but describes the slight shift as “extremely gradual, inconsistent and not enough to change longtime problems in the industry.”In fact, the increased representation of people of color in the nation’s theater industry can be attributed solely to multiple productions of Hamilton, the

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSony Music Masterworks has announced a strategic investment in Seaview, the theater production company behind Broadway’s by Jeremy O.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticA wrongful death lawsuit was filed today in Ventura County Court on behalf of the four-year-old son of drowning victim Naya Rivera, claiming the county failed to adequately warn swimmers of the dangers at Lake Piru.The suit comes four months after the July 8 death of the Glee actress, who was swimming in Ventura County’s Lake Piru with her son, Josey, when the incident occurred.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEncores!, the acclaimed series of concert-style theatrical productions founded to rediscover overlooked Broadway gems of years past, announced plans to stage Into The Woods, the beloved Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical that is anything but overlooked.Into The Woods, which has been staged, revived and filmed many times over (including the 2014 feature film starring Meryl Streep and James Corden), will be the first of a new Encores! mission to

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticTina Fey will host NBC’s One Night Only: The Best of Broadway, a two-hour special on Dec.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Dylan McDermott and Phylicia Rashad will headline a streaming performance of the Tennessee Williams classic The Night of the Iguana, directed by Emily Mann and benefitting the Actors Fund.A presentation of La Femme Theatre Productions, the pre-recorded performance will stream December 2-6 and feature McDermott as Reverand Shannon and Rashad as Maxine.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThoughts of a Colored Man, the critically lauded new play by Keenan Scott II and directed by Steve H.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticToday show cohost and weatherman Al Roker plans to be back on the NBC morning show next Monday, he told viewers today while also sharing news that his prognosis after last week’s prostate surgery is “excellent.”The 66-year-old Roker underwent the five-hour surgery Nov.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe Roundabout Theatre Company says it will resume production in Fall 2021 with two much anticipated shows – the COVID-delayed Jeanine Tesori/Tony Kushner musical Caroline, Or Change and Alice Childress’ Trouble In Mind. The planned musical revival of 1776 will now begin performances in Spring 2022.The nonprofit theater company does not have a date for its postponed production of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles starring Debra Messing.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe Broadway premieres of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive have been set for 2022 and 2021, respectively, with producers at the Manhattan Theatre Club expressing “hopes high that we will be able to return to live theatre.”The nonprofit MTC announced the target openings today, along with plans to present an Off Broadway production of Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun starring Edie Falco and the American premiere

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticTony Award-nominated actor Chad Kimball, among Broadway’s first wave of performers to contract the coronavirus last spring, is finding little support among his Broadway colleagues after he pledged to “respectfully disobey” Washington State COVID-19 guidelines limiting religious services and participation.Kimball, a Seattle native, star of the hit, now-suspended, Broadway musical Come From Away and Tony-nominated for his performance in 2011’s Memphis,

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticPete Wright, the 54-year-old Broadway stagehand who fell to his death last Thursday from a ladder on the fly floor above the Winter Garden Theater stage, is being remembered as “a force of nature, often doing the work of three men when he ran load ins and load outs” of theatrical sets.In an online tribute posted by friend and coworker Dylan Foley, Wright was called a “legendary flyman” and mechanic with “a dry wit, an unstoppable work ethic and a

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSteppenwolf’s Broadway production of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes is exiting the Cort Theatre, its pre-COVID home, with plans to re-open in 2022 at another Broadway venue.The move signals yet another way the pandemic shutdown has impacted Broadway’s shuffle of theater tenants and reopening schedules.The Minutes, a political comedy directed by Anna D. Shapiro and starring Ian Barford, Blair Brown, Cliff Chamberlain, K.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: “You thought you knew Scrooge,” an ominous voice intones.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticA 54-year-old stagehand fell to his death from scaffolding inside Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre this morning as workers were removing props from the Beetlejuice musical in preparation for the arrival of the revival of The Music Man.A representative for the Shubert Organization, which owns and operates the venue, confirmed the incident.“At 8:45 a.m.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticPlaywright Israel Horovitz, whose Off Broadway productions provided early stages for such soon-to-be-stars as Al Pacino, Marsha Mason, John Cazale and Richard Dreyfus but whose later career was severely damaged by repeated accusations of sexual assault, died at his Manhattan home of cancer on Nov. 9.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Isaac Powell, the star of Ivo van Howe’s 2020 Broadway revival of West Side Story, has joined the cast of Universal’s Dear Evan Hansen.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe slimmed down Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will include some of its traditional Broadway dazzle, with parade organizers announcing that four stage productions will be included in the broadcast event on NBC.Performances by the casts of Hamilton, Mean Girls, Jagged Little Pill and Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations will be filmed prior to the Thanksgiving Day special but aired during the Nov. 26 parade.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticActor Lawrence Clayton, who made his Broadway debut in 1981 in Dreamgirls and most recently starred in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple, died Nov. 2 following a two-year battle with glioblastoma cancer.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticIn a rant bizarre even by Jon Voight standards, the Ray Donovan actor gives voice to evidence-free allegations that the victory of now-President-Elect Joe Biden was “a lie.”Seated and seeming to read from cue cards to his left, Voight says in a tweeted video, “My fellow Americans, I stand here with all the feelings I do, disgusted with this lie that Biden has been chosen. As if we all don’t know the truth.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticLuis Gerardo Méndez, Alberto Guerra, Luisa Rubino and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny) are joining the Season 3 cast of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico.Additional new cast series regulars include: Alejandro Furth as Ramon Salgado, Lorenzo Ferro as Alex Hodoyan, José Zúñiga as General Rebollo, Diego Calva as Arturo Beltran Leyva, Kristen Lee Gutoskie as Dani, Beau Mirchoff as Steve Sheridan.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticStand Up for Heroes, the annual New York comedy event hosted by Jon Stewart honoring veterans and their families, will go virtual for the first time in its 14-year history.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticNBC is inviting the Grinch to share its holiday season: The network will air a two-hour production of Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical! on December 9.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBert Belasco, who starred on BET’s 2011-14 sitcom Let’s Stay Together and appeared in Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here and Fox’s Pitch, has died at the age of 38, Deadline has confirmed with his agency. His body was discovered Sunday in a Richmond, Virginia hotel room.Belasco was in Virginia filming a movie role, and was staying inside the hotel under required quarantine prior to joining the film set.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBroadway’s Jagged Little Pill cast will reunite for a one-night-only special concert performance next month, bringing the musical’s stars together for the first time since the pandemic shutdown last March.Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert will feature cast members Elizabeth Stanley, Celia Rose Gooding, Sean Allan Krill, Derek Klena, Lauren Patten, Kathryn Gallagher, Antonio Cipriano, and others, live from the stage of Shubert Studios in New

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticJeremy Stevens, a three-time Emmy Award winner – including two as a writer and executive producer on Everybody Loves Raymond – died of renal failure on October 27 at his home in Northridge, California, surrounded by his family. He was 83,A Brooklyn native, Stevens earned a degree in theater at Brooklyn College before studying at New York’s HB Studio under Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSpencer Davis, the Welsh rhythm guitarist and songwriter who lent his name to one of the most popular and influential British Invasion groups of the 1960s with hits including “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man”, died Monday of pneumonia in Los Angeles.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticNot since Chuckles the Clown’s funeral has a giggling fit seemed harder to contain: Sara Haines couldn’t get through today’s The View discussion about Jeffrey Toobin’s recent Zoom blunder without a real tears-down-the-cheeks guffaw, even as her cohosts looked on with mostly straight faces.Toobin, of course, is the New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst who was suspended from the magazine and took a leave of absence from the network yesterday after he

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticOriginal cast members of Broadway’s Hamilton have joined the line-up of performers for the annual Arthur Miller Foundation Honors celebrating public school arts education.The third annual gala celebration is set to stream virtually on November 16, and will include performances by husband-and-wife duos such as Hamilton‘s Leslie Odom, Jr.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe Right Girl, a new musical based on (and co-written by) the real-life story of former screenwriter Louisette Geiss and the sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein she says ended her film career, will be presented in a film version to a live audience for the first time next month.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticRacist imagery and cultural stereotypes in six Disney animated classics including Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, Dumbo and Swiss Family Robinson are being flagged on the Disney+ streaming site with warnings and detailed explanations of the “negative depictions” in each title.“These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” reads an explanation on Disney’s Stories Matter website regarding the new advisory

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe state of California will appeal the Trump administration’s decision to reject a disaster relief request for damage caused by the six fires that burned 1.8 million acres of land.“The request for a Major Presidential Disaster Declaration for early September fires has been denied by the federal administration,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the governor’s office of emergency services, yesterday, adding that the state will appeal the decision.The