Dan Lauria

Best known to TV audiences for playing the father on the ABC series The Wonder Years, Dan Lauria is finishing his stint on Broadway portraying famous football coach Vince Lombardi in the very entertaining and poignant play Lombardi. After a successful run (it opened last September), the show just announced its closing date on May 22. The production received only one Tony nomination for Lauria’s co-star Judith Light, who was outstanding as Lombardi’s wife, Marie. Light was nominated in the featured actress category. Neil Patrick Harris will be the Tony Awards host again this year.

Also nominated for a Tony in the same category, Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley for her role in the comedy La Bete. Josephine Hogan will be playing that part in the Irish Classical Theatre Company production coming up in September. She will be joined by Vincent O’Neill and Brian Mysliwy.

In the meantime, Hogan will reprise her 1995 Artie-nominated performance in the upcoming revival of The Playboy of the Western World. Directed by Derek Campbell, the ICTC production will open June 2, also starring Patrick Moltane, Vincent O’Neill, Dan Walker, Cassie Gorniewicz, Gerry Maher, and Christopher Standart. O’Neill won the Artie for his direction in the original ICTC production, which also starred Artie winner Brian LaTulip and Artie nominees Kristen Gasser and Shaun Sheley.

And in a current season with several reprises, Lisa Ludwig returns to the Kavinoky to recreate her 2006 Artie-nominated performance in Always, Patsy Cline. The show opens on June 16 and will also star Artie Award winner Kelly Ann Krupski recreating her role as Patsy Cline. Tom Makar once again directs. Ludwig is now also recreating her performance as Nessa in Fit to be Tied.

The Kavinoky will pay another visit to the world of A. R. Gurney next season with his latest play, Black Tie. The season will kick off with the Broadway musical 42nd Street (directed by Norm Sham, we hear) and will also include the recent Broadway hits God of Carnage and Time Stands Still, and the timeless classic Blithe Spirit. Not to worry, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play will also be back in December.

Next for Torn Space, a production in association with Irish Classical Theatre, Caryl Churchill’s Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, directed by Dan Shanahan. The show will run at the Andrews Theatre for three Sundays only (June 12, 19, 26) at 7pm, starring Dechen Dolkar, Justine Brooke Rodriquez, Kristen Tripp Kelley, and Jim Maloy.

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Congratulations to two of my favorite people: Theatre for Change’s Darleen Pickering Hummert and Ujima’s Lorna C. Hill! Pickering Hummert was honored by Everywoman Opportunity Center at the awards dinner on May 5. Hill will be honored at the 13th annual Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theater in New York on May 22.

Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis will be in town this weekend to attend a performance of his play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, as part of Road Less Traveled Productions annual Spring Gala on May 14. The show is at 7:30pm with a reception following the performance. Guirgis’s latest play, The Motherfucker With the Hat, just opened on Broadway and has been nominated for a Tony award. Congratulations!

Don’t forget, the 21st annual Artie Awards, Monday, June 6, at the Town Ballroom!