New Broadway Openings for Spring 2023
This Spring, we are highlighting a couple of recent show openings on the Broadway scene we think our members will love – DANCIN' and FAT HAM. Both shows are already receiving a lot of attention and amazing reviews. Demand is increasing, so inform your Four Hundred team of any preferences so we can work to gather best possible options for you and your group to attend DANCIN, FAT HAM, or any other Broadway show this Spring.
ABOUT DANCIN’
Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’, which opened recently at the Music Box Theater, announces from the get-go that “there is no story, no messages, and is almost plotless”. 21/2 hours later you understand exactly what that means, but you just don’t care. Mostly because you are as breathless as the performers after watching 22 of the best dancers on Broadway work their way through Wayne Cilento’s re-imagined production of the original 1978 show he starred in.
Much has been written about Fosse over the years, but forget everything you think you know, and just go watch this cast make the best case ever for everything you’ve ever heard. The dancing is simply sublime. From the opening “Crunchy Granola Suite”, on through “Mr. Bojangles”, “Dancin’ Man”, and the simply astonishing “Sing, Sing, Sing” you will be as moved as the dancers themselves.
DANCIN’ is playing at Music Box Theatre until September 17th, 2023
ABOUT FAT HAM
As for the other stunning opening this season, the New York Times Critic’s Pick of James IJames’ FAT HAM, based on his Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name, is a retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a story of intergenerational trauma among a Black Southern family. As one of the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language, Shakespeare’s HAMLET, while certainly humorous at times, is not exactly a barrel of laughs. Set in Denmark and depicting Prince Hamlet’s attempts to exact revenge on his uncle for murdering his father to seize the throne and marry his mother, it just doesn’t lend itself to comedy.
In FAT HAM however, the reinterpretation of this tragedy, held during a last-minute, make-shift barbeque in the South, to celebrate the marriage of Juicy’s mother to his uncle mere days after the murder of his father, is ripe for far-out comedy. But the expressive humor and slap-stick jokes, often playing like a sit-com and delivered directly to the audience by breaking the fourth wall, never waiver from the underlying themes of violence, desire, and scrutiny over the nature of existence. If Shakespeare were alive today, this is exactly the kind of play he’d be writing.
FAT HAM is playing at the American Airlines Theatre until June 25th, 2023.
Contributor — Janie Weber