.jpg){kind=logo}
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
%20copy.webp)
Bronco Billy — The Musical is releasing its cast album Friday Oct. 24. The album was recorded live in performance during its critically acclaimed 2024 run at London’s Charing Cross Theatre.
Bronco Billy is a new musical comedy based on the 1980 Warner Bros film, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Dennis Hackin, by special arrangement with Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures. The musical features a book by Hackin, with music and lyrics by Chip Rosenbloom and John Torres, with additional lyrics by Michele Brourman. Orchestrations, arrangements and musical supervision are by David O.
Theatrely has an exclusive first listen to “Mama’s Done with Sweet.”
The album features original cast members Emily Benjamin as Antoinette Lily, Tarinn Callender as Bronco Billy McCoy, and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt as Constance Lily, Gemma Atkins as Dee Dee Delaware, Jonathan Bourne as Sam Lily, Josh Butler as Lasso Leonard, Alice Croft as Mitzi Fritts, Chris Jared as Sinclair St. Clair, Karen Mavundukure as Doc Blue, Henry Maynard as Lefty Lebow, Alexander McMorran as Edgar White Lipton, Aharon Rayner as Joe Eagle, Helen K Wint as Lorraine, and Silas Wyatt-Barke as John Arlington, with swings Kalisha Amaris and David Muscat.
To pre-order the album on Apple Music, visit here.
.png)
Alive Forever can only last so long! Today, Universal Theatrical Group announced that Tony Award nominee Betsy Wolfe will join the company of Death Becomes Her as Madeline Ashton beginning January 16, 2026.
Wolfe was previously seen this summer in Joy The Musical, and last on Broadway in & Juliet.
Megan Hilty, who earned a Tony nomination for originating the role of Madeline Ashton, will depart the production on January 4, 2026. Tickets are currently on sale through June 7, 2026 and a North American tour will hit the road beginning Fall 2026, laughing at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH.
Madeline Ashton is the most beautiful actress (just ask her) ever to grace the stage and screen. Helen Sharp is the long-suffering author (just ask her) who lives in her shadow. They have always been the best of frenemies… until Madeline steals Helen’s fiancé away. As Helen plots revenge and Madeline clings to her rapidly fading star, their world is suddenly turned upside down by Viola Van Horn, a mysterious woman with a secret that’s to die for. After one sip of Viola’s magical potion, Madeline and Helen begin a new era of life (and death) with their youth and beauty restored…and a grudge to last eternity. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Or not!
Death Becomes Her features direction and choreography by Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli, a book by Tony Award Nominee Marco Pennette, and an original score by Tony Award Nominees Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, and currently stars Tony Award nominees Megan Hilty (Madeline Ashton), Jennifer Simard (Helen Sharp), Christopher Sieber (Ernest Menville), and Grammy® Award winner Michelle Williams (Violet Van Horn) with Taurean Everett (Chagall) and Josh Lamon (Stefan). The cast also features Marija Abney, Sarita Colón, Kaleigh Cronin, Alexa De Baar, Natalie Charle Ellis, Michael Graceffa, Neil Haskell, Ximone Rose, Bethany Ann Tesarck, Mitch Tobin, Sir Brock Warren, Bud Weber, Ryan Worsing, Warren Yang, Kyle Brown, Kristine Covillo, Alex Hartmanm, Lakota Knuckle, McKinley Knuckle, Johanna Moise, Justin O’Brien, Amy Quanbeck and Dee Roscioli.
.png)
Last fall’s New York City Center gala presentation of Ragtime ran before, during and after the 2024 Presidential Election, a purposeful timing that lent outgoing artistic director Lear deBessonet’s concert staging an uncommon power. Arriving at a charged hour, this two-week concert staging became that rarest of things: theater legitimately of the moment. This Ragtime was entertainment, yes—but more than that, it allowed a genuine space of processing for painful questions around our nation’s future.
A year later, Ragtime has returned, now on the vast Vivian Beaumont stage and marking deBessonet’s debut production as artistic director at Lincoln Center Theater. If the experience feels not nearly so momentous, that is perhaps inevitable. How could it be? That moment, a very specific one, has passed; all our grand questions have given way to patent evil and mind-numbing stupidity. Now some of Ragtime’s flaws are showing, not helped at the Beaumont by a weaker staging. Yet this revival remains expertly cast, gorgeously sung and, for all its imperfections, still deeply powerful.
In so many respects, Ragtime still resonates. A grand work, lavishly premiered on Broadway in 1997, it chronicles early 20th century American life across the social castes with impressive ambition. In each narrative strand lives both the glorious promise and constant disappointment of the American experiment. When it works, book writer Terrence McNally’s sweeping narrative, composer Stephen Flaherty’s ambitious score and Lynn Ahrens’ soulful lyrics all combine to devastating effect.
Yet outside the haze of an election, Ragtime’s seams are starting to show. Coalhouse Walker (Joshua Henry) and his love Sarah (Nichelle Lewis) are the story’s beating heart, but also suffer its thinnest characterizations. Sarah’s motivations feel especially underexplored, particularly around her devastating end. The two are ultimately tragic archetypes, for better and for worse.
.png)
It is left to Henry and Lewis to fill Coalhouse and Sarah with a complex humanity not always found on the page. Thankfully, both are more than up to the task. Lewis has deepened her performance impressively since City Center, finding a steely strength under Sarah’s simple demeanor. And Henry remains a powerhouse, sweetly charismatic and fiercely strong. His is an astounding performance.
Arguably, all the characters of Ragtime are archetypes, each representing one aspect of the American experience. Yet it is hard not to feel that Cassie Levy (as Mother), Brandon Uranowitz (as Tateh), Colin Donnell (Father) and Ben Ross (Younger Brother) have more nuance to work with in McNally’s text. All are superb, just faultless. Ross is leaning more into a sly humor that delights, while Levy and Uranowitz’s easy chemistry feels lived-in and real—watching the two together is a delight.
Sadly, deBessonet’s physical staging has not grown alongside these performers. David Korins’ sets are disappointingly basic, too often marooning the performers in a vast and empty darkness. Wanting to avoid vulgar lavishness is understandable—yet the Beaumont stage demands to be filled by something. Of the set pieces that do float through, many look a bit cheap; one of Korins’ few grand gestures, a vaguely cloud-like decoration that hangs overhead during “Back to Before,” resembles a massive duvet.
Yet through it all, there is that music—and those voices. Playing the rich original orchestrations of William David Brohn, music director James Moore’s 28-piece orchestra sounds tremendous. The production’s vocals, arranged by Flaherty, are astonishing. “New Music” stirs like no other; “Wheels of a Dream” is heartstopping.
One year ago, seated at City Center, I cried at both numbers and left the theater deeply shaken. If that same power hasn’t quite held, it is perhaps no fault of a broadly first-rate production. Hope is of less interest right now—it can feel like an almost irrelevant emotion. But when that finale arrived, and the voices joined gloriously as one, I felt it stirring once again. Not as strongly as before, perhaps. But still, that stirring of hope.
Ragtime is now in performance at Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
