Broadway is heading into the holidays with a little nostalgia, a lot of star power and several intriguing returns to the past.

Speaking of Broadway voices, apparently even The Gilded Age cannot resist Christmas.

Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, Kelli O’Hara, Donna Murphy and other members of HBO’s lavish period drama have joined songwriter and producer Desmond Child for Voices of The Gilded Age: The Christmas Album, arriving November 6 through Concord Theatricals Recordings.

Among the more intriguing tracks is Stephen Sondheim’s exquisite “I Remember” from Evening Primrose, performed by McDonald, Murphy and O’Hara—a combination of voices that alone makes the album worth noticing. Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector narrate Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” throughout the recording. Child has also contributed two original songs: “The World Needs Some Christmas,” sung by Ben Ahlers, and “It’s Been Real,” performed by Murphy.

Lisa Rinna, Harry Hamlin, Megan Hilty, Andrew Rannells and Tituss Burgess are all Broadway-bound in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, making its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre. Performances begin November 4, with opening night set for November 18, and the limited engagement running through January 3.

Directed by Jerry Zaks, Joe Landry’s 1996 play takes Frank Capra’s beloved Christmas story and returns it to the era in which George Bailey first captured America’s imagination. Rather than recreating Bedford Falls literally, the production unfolds inside a 1940s radio studio, where five actors, a Foley artist, holiday music and the mechanics of old-fashioned broadcasting bring the story to life.

Rannells takes on George Bailey, with Hilty as Mary Bailey, Burgess as Clarence, Hamlin as the formidable Mr. Potter and Rinna as Violet. It is an unusually delicious collection of personalities for material that has become nearly sacred Christmas territory, and Zaks certainly knows his way around both comedy and Broadway stars.

The play was inspired by Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story The Greatest Gift, which became the basis for Capra’s 1946 film. The Broadway production features sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto, lighting by Kenneth Posner and sound by Palmer Hefferan, with Andy Einhorn serving as musical director.

Stella Cole

Meanwhile, Maybe Happy Ending is getting a temporary new resident at the Belasco. Jazz vocalist Stella Cole will make her Broadway debut as Gil Brentley from October 20 through November 15, stepping in during original cast member Dez Duron’s month-long absence. Duron returns November 17.

Cole is an interesting choice precisely because Gil is not simply another musical-theatre role. The character belongs to the romantic world of classic jazz, and Cole has built her career interpreting exactly that repertoire. Her recordings and online performances have introduced standards to a younger audience, while her live appearances have taken her from Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden to TODAY, Live with Kelly and Mark and Tamron Hall. Her third album, Imagination, arrives October 30, right in the middle of her Broadway run.

The Tony-winning musical currently stars Zachary Noah Piser as Oliver and Hannah Kevitt as Claire, with Marcus Choi as James. For one month, however, audiences will get the rather charming collision of a young singer devoted to an earlier musical era appearing inside one of Broadway’s most technologically imaginative contemporary musicals.

Finally, a musical that has always seemed to deserve another look is getting one.

Ben Levi Ross

Asolo Repertory Theatre is developing a newly revised My Favorite Year, the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens-Joseph Dougherty musical based on the wonderful 1982 film. Josh Rhodes is directing a New York workshop featuring Chris Hoch as Alan Swann, Ben Levi Ross as Benjy Stone, Julie Benko as Alice Miller, Marina Kondo as K.C. Downing, Brad Oscar as King Kaiser and Beth Leavel as Belle Carroca Steinberg.

The company also includes Orville Mendoza, Briana Carlson-Goodman, Robert Anthony Jones, Lyrica Woodruff, Stuart Zagnit and Rob Tucker.

Set in 1954, My Favorite Year follows young television comedy writer Benjy Stone, who receives the assignment from hell disguised as the opportunity of a lifetime: keep drunken, swashbuckling movie idol Alan Swann sober, functioning and out of trouble long enough to appear on a live television broadcast.

The musical originally opened at Lincoln Center Theater in 1992 and, despite a score by Ahrens and Flaherty and a Tony-winning performance by Andrea Martin, had a brief Broadway life. More than three decades later, Ahrens, Flaherty and Dougherty have returned to the material with new work developed in collaboration with Asolo Rep, which previously premiered the team’s Knoxville, later retitled All the Way Home.

There is something rather appealing about My Favorite Year getting another year. Broadway history is filled with musicals that weren’t quite finished with us when Broadway decided it was finished with them. Sometimes the most interesting second act happens decades after the first one closed.

The vista that opens “A Long Winter” is sublime, deep, and rugged as Mikey walks toward the top of the mountain, carrying a weight in his gaze that we can somehow see from far away. The enormity of the environment and the heaviness that hangs in the air are evident and almost overpowering. We feel his isolation, but maybe we don’t understand his connection to the terrain that surrounds him. It might be a big city boy projection, but soon after, the family sits down for one of the quietest dinners imaginable. It’s a tight, wounded moment that registers layers upon layers of what this family is coping with. But there is something there that stays hidden for a long while after.

Fred Hechinger and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in Andrew Haigh’s “A Long Winter“.

As the two brothers engage before turning out the light in their bedroom, the younger brother Tommy, portrayed beautifully and almost unrecognizably by Kit Connor of “Heartstopper” fame, asks the recently returned, older brother, “What did you miss?” And here is where my mistaken projection steps in. Mikey, we are somewhat surprised to hear, is glad to be back home after exploring the world and getting a glimpse of what it has to offer him. Still, there is something in his eyes that suggests a need he cannot quite grasp. And it is in that heaviness that Andrew Haigh’s moody 1950s drama settles into that vast sky. There is a deep uncertainty inside Mikey, and with extraordinary patience, we begin to get a glimpse of what exists inside this young man, back home on a remote Colorado mountain where love, loneliness, grief and desire exist in the same small space.

Adapted by Haigh and Colm Tóibín from Tóibín’s 2006 short story, “A Long Winter” follows Mikey as his world alters unexpectedly after his mother Louise is lost to the first brutal blizzard of the season. Caitríona Balfe gives Louise an extraordinary presence, even as an absent figure whose disappearance becomes the centre of everything that follows. We see a woman who has quietly indulged in her secrets, a woman whose husband knows her deeply while also understanding the loneliness and despair surrounding the life she has been living. There is intense love in this family, but there is also the ache of a life that has not unfolded in the way Louise wanted. Mikey and his brother share this ache, although the ways they carry it are not immediately apparent. But before the snow arrives, dancing and alcohol briefly fill the house with the feeling that everything might be all right. “Things are moving in the world,” we are told, and for a moment the music makes that mountain-top existence feel almost cosy and content. Then the spirits are poured away as winter approaches, and Louise is left looking out the window at that same view but with a much more complicated understanding of what waits ahead.

Caitríona Balfe and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in Andrew Haigh’s “A Long Winter“.

After Louise disappears, Lester and Mikey are left on that mountaintop under the weight of tremendous guilt and anger. They must deal with the quiet, destructive pang of grief and the practical demands of survival. Ebon Moss-Bachrach delivers a tense and beautifully controlled performance as Lester, a man whose emotions are rarely expressed directly but seem to exist in every movement and pause. The relationship between Lester and Mikey is one of the film’s great strengths, particularly in the way father and son speak to one another. Their conversations feel deeply lived in, revealing affection, frustration, dependence, hostility, and a bond that neither quite knows its name. Fred Hechinger delivers a quietly extraordinary lead performance, bringing a fragile sensitivity to Mikey. The film allows us to watch a young man begin to understand himself while the world around him is being buried under snow, silence, and his own set of secrets. Yet there is a strength in Mikey, and an endurance that can climb cliffs and traverse snow-filled valleys. He wants to be there on that remote mountain, protected from the larger world, yet his fantasies and sexual impulses are never far away. His attraction to men quietly becomes part of the story, particularly in his fascination with the young policeman played handsomely by Anthony Timpano. And even though we may expect that dimension of Mikey’s story to become more prominent, it doesn’t overwhelm the film’s larger examination of loneliness, grief, and a family trying to understand what has happened to them.

Connor is wonderfully grounded as Tommy, the younger brother preparing to leave the mountain and discover the world that Mikey has already experienced. Connor gives Tommy a youthful energy that sits naturally within the family dynamic, and his presence helps sharpen Mikey’s own complicated relationship with the outside world. D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai is exceptional as the young helper Lester brings in from town to take on some of the chores usually handled by Louise. There is something quietly affecting in the way this new presence enters the boys’ bedroom and begins to occupy a space that had belonged to Mikey’s brother, creating a different connection for them both at a time when Mikey’s world has become increasingly isolated. Martin Freeman also appears as Louise’s brother, bringing a wonderfully nuanced layer to the family and to the complicated history surrounding her disappearance.

Fred Hechinger in Andrew Haigh’s “A Long Winter“.

The arrival of winter gives Haigh an extraordinary physical language for everything happening inside this family. When the snow comes, it really comes, blanketing the mountain in a crisp white glow that is breathtaking and deadly when it is not respected. Set in the Colorado Rockies but filmed in Alberta, Canada, André Turpin’s cinematography, shot on 35mm film, captures the depth and rugged beauty of the landscape while maintaining the sense that these characters are surrounded by something far beyond their control. The town, with its closed storefronts and cinema, carries a different kind of loneliness, with its ruddy light providing a small human warmth against the cold outside. Inside the cabin, Emmanuel Fréchette’s production design, shaped with art direction from Amanda Nicholson, creates an authenticity that makes every bedroom, table, and corner feel inhabited, while Carol Case’s costumes quietly root these people in the period and their circumstances. Paul Haslinger’s score works within the same restrained physical world, allowing the music to support the landscape and the silences rather than overwhelm them. The loneliness and discontent seem to hang in the air, particularly when the family gathers together, and there is so much they cannot say.

Haigh’s greatest strength here may be his restraint. There isn’t the immediate, devastating emotional wallop of Haigh’s previous film, “All of Us Strangers“. “A Long Winter” works as a slow-burn meditation on loss, family friction, and self-discovery. He allows long pauses, environmental sounds, and small gestures to carry scenes that could easily have been pushed toward larger dramatic explosions. The film sits quietly with grief while also exploring Mikey’s emerging sexuality, his fantasies, and his understanding of what he wants from the world beyond the mountain. Each of these things becomes part of the same uncertain awakening, as Mikey tries to understand himself while the world around him becomes increasingly difficult to navigate. Desire never feels like an isolated plot device. It exists alongside everything else, alongside the family’s secrets, the mother’s disappearance, the father’s grief, and the uncertainty of what adulthood will bring. “A Long Winter” occasionally teeters on the edge of being too emotionally distant or slow, holding the audience at arm’s length, yet Haigh manages to hold onto our hearts carefully enough that the distance becomes part of the experience. We are asked to sit with these people, to listen to their silences, and to watch the landscape close in around them.

What makes the film so affecting is the way Mikey’s journey remains tied to that enormous mountain world. He is a young man who has seen something beyond the horizon and still finds himself drawn back to the place he calls home. He wants the security and safety of the mountain while trying to understand desires that cannot remain buried in the snow forever. Lester is trying to survive the disappearance of the woman he loved as Louise’s absence fills every room even when nobody speaks her name. The snow keeps falling, the world outside keeps revolving, and Mikey is left standing somewhere between the life he knows and the life he is beginning to imagine. Haigh gives that emotional uncertainty room to breathe, and by the time the winter has finally begun to thaw around the family, the mountain no longer feels like simply a setting. It has become the place where Mikey must finally look at himself and begin to understand the person waiting beneath all that silence.

By Rick Ruiz/ Photo by Robert Farber

Times are scary. The economy, our politics and even our culture all seem to be teetering on the edge of an abyss that obscures our view of what lies ahead. Propaganda is everywhere and the truth is almost impossible to find.

Cindy Marinangel photo by Sylvia Hoke

And then I saw DIETRICH, a solo play-with-music, featuring a powerhouse performance by Cindy Marinangel as Marlene Dietrich, the sexy and iconic international film star and chanteuse of the 1930’s through the 1970’s.  Although the play is a walk through history, the story of the play feels very familiar to anyone who watches the news today.

Cindy Marinangel photo by Sylvia Hoke

Based on real events, the show unfolds from Dietrich’s dressing room at the Titania-Palast Theatre in Berlin on May 3, 1960. This was to be her first performance in Germany since she fled the country in the 1930’s to avoid Hitler and his fascist government. But even fifteen years after the end of World War II, many old Nazis still considered Marlene Dietrich a traitor. Current Nazi sympathizers organized protests, threatened to kill her right on stage or even blow up the theater, if she performed.

Cindy Marinangel photo by Sylvia Hoke

Entering her dressing room after a walk to the theater through a crowd of noisy protestors, an angry Dietrich realizes there is a reporter in the room; a U.S. Army sergeant working for Stars and Stripes, the military’s newspaper of record. The interview that follows (the sergeant is unseen and voiceless) weaves back and forth from those “damn Nazis” to her film career and her legendary roster of lovers, of both sexes. Seven songs (expertly coached by  the  legendary  chanteuse Lainie Kazan) weave through the piece as Marinangel accurately offers renditions that reflect the artist’s evolution through her craft.

Cindy Marinangel photo by Sylvia Hoke

Most who remember Dietrich know the films: “The Blue Angel,”” Morocco,”” Destry Rides Again,”” Witness for the Prosecution” and many others. Usually with big-name co-stars like Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Orson Welles.

Fewer know she put her superstardom on pause during the war in order to entertain thousands of American troops over several years for the USO.  She showed little fear for her own life, often insisting that she sing as close to the front lines as possible.  She tells of being near the front when the Battle of the Bulge was launched by the Germans in December 1944. She was rescued, she says, by General James Gavin, commander of the 82^nd Airborne (and the youngest General in the army), who landed at her feet after parachuting from a Flying Fortress and whisked her off to safety and a love affair, of course.

Infamous for her many affairs with various officers during the war, including top generals like George Patton, when asked if she had slept with General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Force, she says in the play, “Of course not … he was never that close to the front.”

Marinangel moved around the simply furnished stage as Dietrich in lingerie and robe (Oh, those legs!), with the star’s ever-present glass of Dom Perignon and a vial of Dexedrine to help keep her going. We follow Dietrich on a trip through time, from being discovered by famed Austrian director Josef von Sternberg for “The Blue Angel” in 1930, moving to California to make six movies with von Sternberg in five years, and mentioning some of the love affairs that constantly swirled around her. Tales told of Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, Jean Gabin, Edith Piaf, Greta Garbo and millionairess Mercedes de Acosta are brought to life. Members of the Sewing Circle’s secret society are mentioned.

Marlene Dietrich’s bisexuality was evidenced in her love for dressing in men’s clothing. In the movie “Morocco”, Dietrich’s character, dressed in a tux and top hat, was filmed initiating the first woman-on-woman kiss in a major motion picture. “I was the best dressed man in Hollywood,” she jokes in the play. Dietrich was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role.

Dietrich could not be controlled- she broke all the rules. She did as she pleased and what she thought was right. She helped nurse her friends from illness, donated her entire film salary from “A Knight Without Armor” to rescue Jews from Germany to bring them to America. She said she did it “aus anstadt”, out of decency.

Her efforts won her the U.S. Medal of Freedom, France gave her the Legion d’ Honneur, and Belgium the Order of Leopold. Israel bestowed its Medal of Valor for her work saving refugees and her support of Israel- she was the first woman to be so honored.

So, yeah, if you need a little inspiration to help you through these difficult and confusing times, Marinangel’s convincing performance DIETRICH wouldn’t be a bad choice. In fact, seeing the next performance of the play would be a wonderful place to start.

DIETRICH had a limited engagement at the Santa Monica Playhouse’s Other Space Theatre this past weekend.  The play was written by Willard Manus (with supplemental script amendments by Cindy Marinangel and Glenda Morgan Brown); Directed by Glenda Morgan Brown; Produced by Richard Gordon and Sea Angel Productions, LLC, and was Executive Produced by Brian Cooney, Pascual Rodarte and Jim and Kathy Marinangel.

To view the play’s trailer and bring DIETRICH to your theatre, please visit:  Dietrichplay.com.

If you love your musical theater packed with rafter-shaking singing, sexual tension, and deadly thrills, you are probably already a “Jeckie,” or ardent fan of the  musical, Jeckyll and Hyde. Its original concept album, featuring the score by multi-Grammy and Tony-nominated Frank Wildhorn and double Oscar and Grammy-winning Leslie Bricusse, which included the now well-known song “This is the Moment,”, built the fan base that leveraged the Broadway production.

After fifteen years without a Chicago production, Jeckyll and Hyde returned last year in a non-Equity presentation by Kokanday Productions at the off-Loop Chopin Theater, which completely sold out and extended.  It was such a huge popular success that Kokandy was able to negotiate a rare transfer of his Off Loop hit to a mainstream commercial venue, the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, operated by Broadway in Chicago.  This remount of that production, which opened Wednesday night to rapturous applause, is every bit as magical as it was at the more intimate Chopin Theate, although I confess to preferring having it so close to my face that it pinned my ears back initially. The same brilliant cast bring their thrilling performances to this remounting, under the direction of Kokandy Producing Artistic Director Derek Von Barham, choreographer Brenda Didier, and  musical director Nick Sula.

Chicago producer Scot Kokandy has made a career out of mounting eye-opening, non-Equity productions of both established and lesser known musicals in Chicago. They also have a fine production of Sunday in the Park with George running at the Chopin now, which is also on everybody’s hot list.

Simply put, this Jeckyll and Hyde is a triumph all around. While producers have been bemoaning that audiences aren’t going to the theater as much as they used to do, this production of Jeckyll and Hyde, as well as the sold out Kokandy production of Sunday in the Park with George now playing at the Chopin Theatre, prove that theatrical success is still within reach if you do things right.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s story, Dr. Henry Jeckyll (David Moreland) is a doctor bent on separating the evil from the good within man.  He tries to get the medical community onboard with his experiments, and asks the hospital’s stuffy board of governors to allow him to experiment on a human subject.  When they refuse, he takes the potion himself, unleashing his evil, sadistic, and murderous mirror image, Henry Hyde, to terrible effect.

Amy Boyle Photography 2026

All this is unknown to Jeckyll’s devoted fiancée, Emma Carew (Emily McCormick).  She is passionately committed to stand by her love, and sings her heart out to prove it.

Amy Boyle Photography 2026

Equally in the dark is a young prostitute Jeckyll meets and befriends, Lucy Harris (Ava Lane Stovall). The impact of the show rests squarely on the shoulders of the performers in these three roles, and this production soars because these singing actors are such powerhouses of thrilling vocals, smart acting, and smoldering sexuality.

As Jeckyll, Mr. Moreland sings and acts with a sweet voice and touching lyricism.  His transition to the heartless Hyde is vocally and emotionally chilling.  He effects all this change in his voice and manner entirely without the aid of the special wig most Jeckylls wear to indicate the difference between the two characters.

As Emma, Ms. McCormick brings a fiery passion that matches Mr. Moreland toe to toe. No withering Victorian ingenue is she.

But there’s no denying that the standout performance in this production is Ava Lane Stovall as Lucy. Hers is the most unabashedly intimate and vulnerable presentation of this role I’ve ever seen. She owns her sexuality, powerfully and unashamedly, and displays it proudly under Mr. Van Barham’s no holds barred direction. Ms. Stovall is a  remarkably talented young actor-singer, whose voice  can swing from a subtle whisper  to a volcanic explosion in an instant. Yet it’s always about the acting moment for her. So, as with all this cast, the music is always paired with the most real and compelling acting choices, which makes for an unforgettable theatrical experience.

Although Jeckyll tries to keep his secret from everyone, ultimately he must confide in his friend and lawyer, John (Kevin Webb). Webb only performs a half week in this show, because the rest of the time he’s busy giving the best and most tortured performance I’ve ever seen as George in the concurrent production of Sunday in the Park with George. Here, he’s the stalwart friend and righteous voice of reason that he is meant to be.

Director Van Barham has made especially good use of the ensemble, who traditionally just appear as stuffy Londoners singing about Jeckyll. In this production they play multiple roles and blend with the main action, sometimes commenting on it, and sometimes extending it. In one particularly interesting sequence in Jeckyll’s lab, they stand behind him and mirror his actions, like endless reflections would do when two mirrors face one another. Together with some gender fluid casting, this ensemble delivers deliberate decadence like one might see in a production of Cabaret, and contributes greatly to the delicious enjoyment of this production.  That seemless movement is the triumph of Ms. Didier’s choreography.

One rarely speaks of non-Equity theater and Broadway caliber musicians in the same breath. But as always, Musical Director Nick Sula brings us an orchestra that is utterly professional and a show that is perfectly played.

Shout outs go as well to violence director Charlie Baker, and to the entire design team.

I have some issues with the staging of the end of the show, which was far too ambiguous about what happens to Jeckyll, and which flies in  the face of what I understand to be the intentions of the authors.  But I don’t want to give away too much on that point. So all I’ll say is that Mr. Von Barham’s staging left me very confused about what actually was happening to Jeckyll in the end. That can’t be a good thing for word of mouth.

That said, everyone in the city knows that this production is the event of the season, regardless, and  not to be missed.  So get your “Jeckie” on, and go see Jeckyll and Hyde, if you can get a ticket.