New and Upcoming Releases For the Week of June 8 - Nick Blaemire's A LITTLE MORE ALIVE, ROYALTIES With Darren Criss, and More!
By: Stephi Wild Jun. 10, 2020
Need something new to listen to, read, or watch? Check out this week's list of new and upcoming releases, including Nick Blaemire's A Little More Alive, Royalties with Darren Criss, and more!
Music Now Available
A Little More Alive: Nick Blaemire
Musical by Nick Blaemire. The cast includes Damon Daunno, Gabriel Ebert, Molly Hager, Van Hughes, Brian d'Arcy James, Daniel Jenkins, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Katie McManus, Annemarie Milazzo, Alexander Sage Oyen, Hunter Parrish, Nicolette Robinson, Michael Rupert, Michael Tacconi, Allie Trimm, and Emily Walton.
Boca Bound
Original cast recording of score by Richard Peshkin. Featuring Gail Byer, Steve Carroll, Philip Chaffin, J.R. Coley, Justin Figueroa, Peter Librach, Missy McArdle, Janna Morrison, Colleen Pagano, Neva Rae Powers, Troy Stanley, and Ashley Wilcox. Produced by Michael J Moritz Jr.
Purchase on Amazon, iTunes, or BroadwayRecords.com.
Upcoming Music Releases
Royalties soundtrack
Soundtrack from new Quibi series starring Darren Criss, which features original songs and ten music videos by Darren Criss, featuring performances by Jordan Fisher, Julianne Hough, Jackie Tohn, Bonnie McKee, Jennifer Coolidge, Lil Rel Howery, Mark Hamill, Rufus Wainwright, and Sabrina Carpenter, and Criss.
Rags: The Musical
Release Date: July 17, 2020
London cast recording of Stephen Schwartz / Charles Strouse score. Recently played a limited run at Park Theatre, London. Cast includes Carolyn Maitland, Dave Willetts, Sam Attwater, Debbie Chazen, Alex Gibson-Giorgio, Rachel Izen, Samuel Jones and Jude Muir, Martha Kirby, Oisin Nolan-Power, and Jeremy Rose, Arthur Boan, Angela Caesar, Adam Crossley, Drew Dillon, Matthew Gent, and Natasha Karp.
Executive-produced by Stephen Schwartz. Nick Barstow, music producer and orchestrator. Joe Bunker, musical director. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Joe and Nikki Davison at Auburn Jam Music.
Purchase on Amazon.
Our Table: A New Musical
Score by David Shire and Adam Gopnik. Recorded live at Melissa Errico, Constantine Maroulis, Andy Taylor. Music Director: Deniz Cordell. Concert based on original production at Long Wharf Theater.
Films Now Available
Deanna Durbin Collection I
Three musical films starring Deanna Durbin: 100 Men and a Girl, Three Smart Girls Grow Up, It Started with Eve. Extras: audio commentary by film historian Stephen Vagg (100 Men and a Girl); audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan (It Started with Eve); theatrical trailers.
Purchase on Amazon.
Victor and Victoria (Viktor und Viktoria)
1933 musical film that was the basis for the 1982 American musical film and 1995 Broadway musical Victor/Victoria. Starring Renate Müller and Hermann Thimig. Produced in the final days of the Weimar Republic. Extra: audio commentary by film historian Gaylyn Studlar.
Purchase on Amazon.
Books Now Available
August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone (The Fourth Wall)
by Ladrica Menson-Furr
This book gives readers an overview of the work from its inception through revisions and stagings in regional theatres and Broadway, exploring its use of African American vernacular genres - blues music, folk songs, folk tales, and dance - and 19th Century Southern post-Reconstruction history. Ladrica Menson-Furr presents Joe Turner's Come and Gone as a historical drama, blues drama, American drama, great migration drama, and the finest example of Wilson's gift for re-locating the African American experience in urban southern cities as the beginning and not the end of the African American experience.
Purchase on Amazon.
Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century: How They Happened, When They Happened (And What We've Learned)
A historical narrative of a group of musicals that cost millions, were created by world-renowned writers and directors, and that had spectacular potential... but bombed anyway.
Purchase on Amazon.
Plays Worth Remembering - Volume 1 and Volume 2: A Veritable Feast of George Ade's Greatest Hits
Two-volume set of 14 plays and two silent film screenplays by turn-of-the-20th century American playwright George Ade. Many of these works have never been published before and some do not exist in complete form anywhere else. Ade's plays offer a valuable and funny commentary on politics, community and social norms in the late 1800s/early 1900s.
Purchase on Amazon.
Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel
Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging-last seen in The Serpent of Venice-washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool.
Purchase on Amazon.
The Summer Set: A Novel
by Aimee Agresti
Charlie Savoy was once Hollywood's hottest A-lister. Now, ten years later, she's pushing forty, exiled from the film world and back at the summer Shakespeare theater in the Berkshires that launched her career-and where her old flame, Nick, is the artistic director.
Purchase on Amazon.
Upcoming Book Releases
American Utopia
Features the words and lyrics from David Byrne's recording and subsequent theatrical concert, with artwork by Maira Kalman (who designed the art for the Broadway show's curtain). Edited and designed by Alex Kalman/What Studio?
Purchase on Amazon.
Break an Egg!: The Broadway Cookbook
by Tara Theoharis
55 recipes inspired by favorite musicals from The Sound of Music to Hamilton, including Eggrolls for Mr. Goldstone served with a side of Too Darn Hot Sauce; Another Vodka Stinger, The Wizard and Ice, Schnitzel With Noodles, Mama's Well-Peppered Ragu, Angel (Food Cake) of Music. With illustrations and photographs.
Purchase on Amazon.
Magic Time: A Memoir - Notes on Theater & Other Entertainments
by Edwin Wilson
The memoir begins with Wilson's earliest foray into playwriting, then on to Yale where he was a student and a professor. He was assistant to producer Lewis Allen and had a hand in the production of Big Fish, Little Fish and the film version of Lord of the Flies, directed by Peter Brook. Wilson taught at Hunter College and later at the CUNY Graduate Center for more than forty years. He was theatre critic for the Wall Street Journal from April 21, 1972, through the next twenty-three years, and the author of numerous books about American theatre.
Purchase on Amazon.
Les Misérables and Its Afterlives
by Kathryn M. Grossman and Bradley Stephens
Offers analysis of both the Victor Hugo novel itself and its adaptations: more than 60 international film and television variations, numerous radio dramatizations, animated versions, comics, stage plays, and the world's longest running musical, which itself has generated a wealth of fan-made and online content. Draws together essays from across a variety of fields, combining readings of Les Misérables with reflections on some of its multimedia afterlives, including musical theater and film from the silent period to today's digital platforms. The contributors offer new insights into the development and reception of Hugo's celebrated classic, deepening our understanding of the novel as a work that unites social commentary with artistic vision and raising important questions about the cultural practice of adaptation.
Purchase on Amazon.
My White Best Friend: (And Other Letters Left Unsaid)
by Jasmine Lee-Jones. Rachel De-Laha, editor.
Originally commissioned by The Bunker Theatre as a festival that ran in 2019. 23 letters that engage with a range of topics, from racial tensions, microaggressions and emotional labour, to queer desire, prejudice and otherness. Includes work from Zia Ahmed, Travis Alabanza, Fatimah Asghar, Nathan Bryon, Matilda Ibini, Jammz, Iman Qureshi, Anya Reiss, Somalia Seaton, Nina Segal, Tolani Shoneye, Lena Dunham, Inua Ellams, Rabiah Hussain, Mika Johnson, Jasmine Lee-Jones, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Shireen Mula, Ash Sarkar, Jack Thorne and Joel Tan.
Purchase on Amazon.
Oklahoma!: The Making of an American Musical, Revised and Expanded Edition
by Tim Carter
Revised edition of 2007 book which tells the full story of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Now, Carter draws further on recently released sources, including the Rouben Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress, with additional correspondence, contracts, and even new versions of the working script used-and annotated-throughout the show's rehearsal process. Carter also focuses on the key players and concepts behind the musical, including Lynn Riggs's "Green Grow the Lilacs," and The Theatre Guild's Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner, who brought Rodgers and Hammerstein together for their first collaboration. Part of Oxford's "Legacy Series."
Purchase on Amazon.
The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities
by Eamonn Jordan
Offers a detailed and engaging critical analysis of the plays and films of Conor McPherson, considering issues of gender and class disparity, violence and wealth in the cultural and political contexts in which the work is written and performed, as well as the inclusion of song, sound, the supernatural, religious and pagan festive sensibilities through which initial genre perceptions are nudged elsewhere, towards the unconscious and ineffable. Supplemented by a number of contributed critical and performance perspectives, including an interview with Conor McPherson.
Purchase on Amazon.
The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape
With notes by Professor Knowlson. Samuel Beckett directed Krapp's Last Tape on four separate occasions: this volume offers a facsimile of his 1969 Schiller-Theater notebook.
Purchase on Amazon.
The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: The Shorter Plays
With notes by Professor Gontarski. Completes this series of notebooks, with Play, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Footfalls, That Time and What Where.
Purchase on Amazon.
Understanding Tracy Letts
by Thomas Fahy
First book dedicated to the writing of Tracy Letts. An introduction to his plays and an invitation to engage more deeply with his work. Part of Understanding Contemporary American Literature series.
Purchase on Amazon.
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