Greg Evans Associate Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBlame the coronavirus for this year’s drastically reduced roster of eligible Tony Award nominees, and Tony nominators for overlooking at least a few possibilities.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticRefresh for updates Acknowledgements, thank yous, laments for shuttered theaters, pleas for racial justice and get-out-the-vote plugs (for one presidential candidate, anyway) are being offered by this year’s crop of Tony Award nominees.“The closing of Broadway theatres (indeed almost all American theatres) this year has left us without a vital resource to gather together and examine ourselves and our nation and has reminded us just how important live

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticRefresh for updates…The nominations for the 2020 Tony Awards will be announced virtually at noon ET by actor James Monroe Iglehart. Deadline will keep you up to speed on the nominations as they happen.For How To Watch the nominations, go here.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticDavid Byrne’s American Utopia will return to Broadway next fall. Producers announced today that the critically lauded production will hit the stage Sept.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticKent L. Wakeford, a cinematographer who served as Martin Scorsese’s director of photographer on the groundbreaking 1973 film Mean Streets and the following year’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, died Oct.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticProducer and recording artist Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is partnering with Eli Roth and entertainment studio 3BlackDot for a three-picture feature film deal. The deal expands Jackson’s G-Unit Film & Television in the horror film space.Jackson’s G-Unit will team with the Arts District Entertainment, Roth’s banner with Roger Birnbaum and Michael Besman.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe Beverly Hills City Council has banned trick-or-treating – whether house-to-house or car-to-car – and shaving cream blitzes for this year’s Halloween due the the coronavirus pandemic.Specifically, giving candy, toys or treats to anyone outside one’s household is prohibited, no matter if the hand-outs pass through a front door or the trunk of a car (the latter known now as “trunk-or-treating”).The city also banned “spraying shaving cream on others,”

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Bedlam, the small, critically acclaimed Off Broadway theater company known for its clever, spare and unconventional stagings of classics like The Crucible and Saint Joan, is developing Bedlam: The Series, an eight-episode New Media mash-up of Shakespeare plays using the Bard’s own language.The series, to be released on an as-yet-unannounced platform, begins filming this month in New York City and New York’s Hudson Valley.Written by Bedlam

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticWith Broadway’s shut down at least until June, some producers who had been hoping to open shows this spring are re-setting their sights on fall or even 2022, while others have announced no plans whatsoever.The latest to announce a new schedule is Lincoln Center Theater’s much anticipated production of Flying Over Sunset, a new musical with book and direction by James Lapine, music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Michael Korie, and choreography by Michelle

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Here’s the story of how the Brady Bunch might reclaim the now ubiquitous, Zoom-era Brady Bunch-style screen squares.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticJoe Morgan, the Cincinnati Reds second baseman who powered the team’s legendary Big Red Machine era of the 1970s before coanchoring with Jon Miller ESPN’s must-watch Sunday Night Baseball for 21 seasons, died Sunday at his home in Danville, California. He was 77.A family spokesperson told The New York Times that the cause of death was nonspecified polyneuropathy.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticWith no fewer than three acclaimed Broadway productions of plays written by Kenneth Lonergan to his credit – This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero and The Waverly Gallery –actor Michael Cera seems the playwright’s ideal, go-to stand-in, an embodiment of the confusion, awkwardness, deadpan humor and sly charm that helps give Lonergan’s work its punch.This Sunday, Cera adds another Lonergan work to his resume with a livestream table read of Hold On To Me Darling,

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticAudiences moved to tears – actually, moved to sobs – were commonplace throughout last year’s nine-week Broadway run of Sea Wall/A Life, the pair of solo one-act plays starring, respectively, Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: With Broadway dark at least until next summer, The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman has set a new opening night for 2022.The highly anticipated musical revival, costarring Sutton Foster, now will begin previews at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre on Monday, December 20, 2021, with Opening Night scheduled for Thursday, February 10, 2022.The new dates fall eight months past the most recent targets of Spring 2021.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBroadway will remain closed through at least May 30 2021, the Broadway League announced today. The four-month extension beyond the most recent January date will force producers hoping for a Spring opening to come up with new plans.The Broadway League announced the continued suspension of all ticket sales for Broadway performances through May 30, 2021.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticJack White will perform as musical guest on this week’s Saturday Night Live, replacing country star Morgan Wallen, who was dropped from the show earlier this week after video surfaced of the singer partying maskless at a crowded house party.SNL creator Lorne Michaels said this morning on NBC’s Today, that White, formerly of The White Stripes, would perform on tomorrow night’s show, along with possible surprise guests.“It has to be somebody who is ready

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticTommy Rall, the actor and dancer who brought Broadway skills to Hollywood films like Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Girl and Pennies From Heaven, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure in Santa Monica. He was 90.His death was announced by friend Cynthia Wands on Facebook.“A hospice nurse was by Tommy’s bedside,” Wands wrote, “and found a box that held the cards and letters that had been sent to him in the last few weeks.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticUPDATED: The MDA Kevin Hart Kids Telethon, a reboot of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s longtime signature event the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, will stream live on Hart’s Laugh Out Loud (LOL) Network, organizers said Thursday.The news comes as the event added to its roster of guests who are participating in the live two-hour telethon October 24, with Garcelle Beauvais, Aloe Blacc, Bryan Cranston, Adam Devine, Fat Joe, Liz Gillies, Aldis Hodge, Edwin

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Broadway’s annual I Put A Spell On You concert-slash-party event to raise funds for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, will go virtual this year due to the pandemic. The concert event, hosted by characters spoofing the 1993 film Hocus Pocus, will feature performers from such productions as Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Waitress, Mrs.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticMorgan Freeman, Laurie Metcalf, John Malkovich, Zachary Quinto, Vanessa Williams, David Alan Grier, Elizabeth Ashley, Matthew Broderick, Lucas Hedges and Paul Mescal are among the actors who’ll take part in a benefit series of new, livestreamed stage reading productions of works by such major playwrights as Gore Vidal, David Mamet, Kenneth Lonergan and Donald Margulies.Producer Jeffrey Richards announced the new line-up of the weekly Spotlight On Plays,

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticA one-night-only Halloween benefit concert presentation of the Tim Burton/Danny Elfman spooky 1993 classic The Nightmare Before Christmas is drawing top-notch Broadway talent, including James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin), Adrienne Warren (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical), Danny Burstein (Moulin Rouge!) and Rob McClure (Beetlejuice), for starters.Iglehart, who won a Tony Award for his performance as the Genie in Disney Theatricals’s Aladdin, is presenting the

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSir Tim Rice has written lyrics for some of the most beloved and successful musicals of the past century, from Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to Chess, Evita, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, but these days he’s doing a lot of talking.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticPaul McCartney’s 50-year-old hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” gets a whole new lease on contemporary life in James Corden’s parody version “Maybe I’m Immune,” performed on The Late Late Show last night.Sung from the perspective of President Donald Trump, “Maybe I’m Immune” contains lyrics like “Maybe I’m immune to the way the polls are looking” and “Maybe I’m immune to all the lies that I have made/I shouldn’t have downplayed/Maybe I’m afraid of the way that I

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticValerie Bertinelli, who met and married guitarist Eddie Van Halen when she was still starring in the sitcom One Day at a Time, says she and the ex-couple’s son Wolfgang were with the rock great when he died yesterday.The actress and the rock star married in 1981, separated in 2001 and divorced six years later, but remained close. Van Halen reportedly attended Bertinelli’s 2011 wedding to financial planner Tom Vitale.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticTyra Banks apologized, more or less, for the end-of-show flub on last night’s Dancing with the Stars. “Wowzers,” she tweeted after the ABC broadcast, “Live TV.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticMötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx remembers Eddie Van Halen as “the Mozart of rock guitar,” and Jimmy Kimmel writes that a conversation with the groundbreaking guitarist were “two of the bewst hours of my life.” Van Halen’s ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli, simply tweeted a row of broken heart emoji.Actors, musicians, rock critics and fans of all sorts today are praising and mourning Van Halen, whose innovative, lightning-quick and tap-tap playing took him to the top

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticAmanda Kloots, the former actress who chronicled her late husband Nick Cordero’s painful decline from COVID-19, has responded to Donald Trump’s Don’t let COVID dominate your life advice, calling the president’s words sad, hurtful and disgraceful.Yesterday Trump, hospitalized over the weekend for COVID treatment, announced his departure from Walter Reed Medical Center with instantly divisive tweet, “Don’t be afraid of Covid.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticSelena: The Series, the Netflix biographical drama about Tejano music legend Selena Quintanilla, will premiere Dec. 4.The announcement was made today on Netflix social media.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticLos Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine will soon step down from the position, with the newspaper set to launch a search for his replacement.Pearlstine, 78, made the announcement at a morning staff meeting with top editors, and then followed with a note to staff, according to an article on the Times’ website.“It has been an honor to serve as your executive editor since Patrick and Michele Soon-Shiong acquired the Los Angeles Times in June

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticAlec Baldwin yesterday defended Saturday Night Live‘s inclusion of jokey references to President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, saying the show likely would not have gone near the subject if “there was ever the suggestion that Trump was truly, gravely ill.”In an Instagram video posted yesterday, Baldwin, who plays Trump on the NBC sketch show, said, “If there was ever the suggestion that Trump was truly, gravely ill, if people said, ‘Oh, Trump is

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticArmelia McQueen, who rose to Broadway stardom with her debut in 1978’s Ain’t Misbehavin’ and played the sister of Whoopi Goldberg’s haunted character in 1990’s Ghost, died Saturday. She was 68.Her death was confirmed by her friend Dorian Hannaway in a Facebook post Sunday.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticMurray Schisgal, whose writing brought a 1964 Tony Award nomination for the Broadway play Luv and a 1982 Oscar nomination for the hit Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie, died Oct. 1 at a nursing home in Port Chester, New York.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticJim Carrey and Maya Rudolph got the first promo of the week for their upcoming turns as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but guest host Chris Rock and musical guest Megan Thee Stallion have also gotten their shot.In a couple quick hosting announcement promos, Rock and Megan poke some fun at mask-wearing and COVID safety precautions.“Show’s gonna be great, we’re not even worried,” Rock says.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticRefresh for updates With a mix of sincere best wishes, karma-is-a-bitch snark, stunned disbelief and saw-it-coming hindsight, Hollywood and the Beltway responded quickly to the late-night news of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump testing positive for COVID-19.“I am very surprised by the twist ending of ‘2020: Episode 3’ and I don’t see how they will be able to wrap this all up in one more episode,” tweeted actor Sean Gunn.John Cleese

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticEXCLUSIVE: Great Performances has set its fourth annual “Broadway’s Best” November line-up on PBS, including the world premiere of Lea Salonga in Concert featuring the Tony Award-winner singing her signature songs from Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Aladdin and Mulan.The Broadway’s Best programming, running on Fridays from November 6 to Nov.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBroadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS provided a record $18.1 million in grants to a pandemic-slammed industry during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2020, the most ever awarded in the organization’s 32-year history.Cautioning that “any enthusiasm” about the record is “tempered with the recognition that continued fundraising is essential to ensure healthy meals, lifesaving medication and emergency assistance are still available as the country faces an