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Theater

Stagefright

by Javier

The fabulous Cynthia Nixon returns to the big screen this summer, starring in the movie Sex and the City which opens on May 30. Nixon, who turned 42 last month, will be reunited with all her co-stars from the popular HBO series. Nixon will be back on the New York stage in February 2009 starring in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Lisa Loomer’s Distracted, a funny look at attention deficit disorder. Nixon was last seen on Broadway in the 2006 production of Rabbit Hole, for which she won a Tony award. The play, written by David Lindsay-Abaire, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Cynthia Nixon

Speaking of Rabbit Hole, the play will be the season opener for the Alleyway Theatre next September. Directed by Todd Warfield, the production will star Joyce Stilson in the role created by Cynthia Nixon. By the way, the Alleyway is accepting submissions for its annual Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition in the full-length and one-act categories. Submission deadline is July 1.

Another Pulitzer Prize winner, the 2005 play Doubt, will no longer be part of the upcoming Kavinoky season. The script had been scheduled for the opening slot. The theater will now open the 2008-09 season with the previously announced Mauritius, a brilliant play by Theresa Rebeck which played on Broadway last October-November (it should be a favorite contender for this year’s Tony award). The lineup will now also include the New York premiere of Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, which deals with a fictionalized meeting between Freud and Dali. One slot remains to be announced. The Kavinoky will also offer a holiday performance of It’s a Wonderful Life, performed as a 1940’s radio broadcast, for one week in December.

Doug Weyand will direct Musicalfare’s summer production Mid-Life: The Crisis Musical, which will run July 16-August 9.

The two-character play Collected Stories by Donald Margulies and the classic Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets will be part of the Jewish Repertory Theatre of WNY 2008-09 season. Margulies is the author of Brooklyn Boy and the 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Dinner with Friends. Awake and Sing! had a very successful revival on Broadway in 2006, at the same theater where it first opened back in 1935, the Belasco. The JRT season will also include the musical Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.

On Friday, May 9, the Buffalo Infringement Festival will be holding a fundraiser/concert/party at Nietzsche’s (248 Allen Street) starting at 10pm; $5 cover at the door. All proceeds go towards this summer’s festival, which will run July 24-August 3.

Theatre Helden returns to the ALT Theater to present Edgar Allan Poe’s Hop-Frog. The production will be directed by Drew McCabe and will run May 23-June 7.

Frank Canino received a citation from the F. G. Bressani Literary Prize [Canada] which awarded a special mention “hors de concours” to his play The Angelina Project. The play was presented earlier this season at the Alleyway in a production directed by Tom Dooney. Canino’s play The Altar Boys’ Picnic was a semi-finalist in the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild-Julie Harris Playwright Award Competition. The play had a staged reading mounted by Road Less Traveled Productions last year.

Nathan Matthews will be making his local directorial debut with the classic On the Town as part of UB’s Department of Theatre & Dance 2008-09 season. The season will also include Twelfth Night, The Cherry Orchard, and the musical Drood. Zodiaque Dance Company will be celebrating its 35th anniversary in the fall.

The previously announced US premiere of Maltby and Shire’s Take Flight at the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey has been canceled until further notice. The state’s proposed budget, which reduced cultural dollars by nearly 30 percent, was cited as one of the reasons for the cancellation of this ambitious new musical. In its place, B.D. Wong will appear in the one-person show, Herringbone.

Len Cariou, the original Broadway Sweeney in Sweeney Todd, will star as Richard Nixon in the Canadian Stage production of Frost/Nixon which will run October 13-November 8 at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto.

Having a very busy season this year, Jeffry Denman will be in the Cape Playhouse’s upcoming production of A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. The show will be directed by James Brennan, who directed the current production of Kiss Me Kate at Paper Mill Playhouse, which is brilliant and features another glorious performance by Buffalo’s Michele Ragusa in the title role. Denman is currently at the Alley Theatre in Houston, starring in the world premiere of The Gershwins’ An American in Paris.

May 21 will be the final performance of O’Connell & Company’s Diva by Diva at the Cabaret in the Square. Western New York’s longest-running show will go on hiatus, until further notice.

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