Starry Night goes to Tony Awards with Best Musical and Best Revival of a Play nominations

At the 2014 Tony Awards - Craig Saavedra (left) and Michael Shulman bookend their CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN star Daniel Radcliffe. The Martin McDonagh play was nominated for 6 Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play.

 

OPENING NIGHT: "HENRY V" Starring Jude Law Completes the Michael Grandage Season of Plays at Noel Coward Theater in London

Starry Night Entertainment toppers Craig Saavedra (left) and Michael Shulman (right) chat with HENRY V star Jude Law at the Opening Night party following a performance that won praise and rave reviews. 

AFTER MIDNIGHT OPENS TO RAVE REVIEWS

Craig Saavedra and Michael Shulman arrive on the red carpet at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre for the star-studded Opening Night of AFTER MIDNIGHT.

NEW YORK - It was a star-studded affair Opening Night as a packed audience that included luminaries such as Hugh Jackman, Stephen Schwartz, George C. Wolfe, k.d. lang, Tyne Daly, Barbara Walters, Clay Aikens, Norm Lewis, Mary-Louise Parker, Rosie Perez and Wynton Marsalis settled in to watch the Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars rock the house with the legendary sounds of Duke Ellington.

The sets, costumes and large cast of singers and dancers won praise across the board as Broadway's newest musical garnered rave reviews:

“HOT, SWEET AND ALTOGETHER GLORIOUS! This SPARKLING and JUBILANT show has A SUPERABUNDANCE OF TALENTED PERFORMERS who sing, slide, scat, cartwheel and generally raise a ruckus in front of the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars – sixteen musicians who rollick through the music of Duke Ellington and others with a verve that almost CAPTIVATES THE EYE AS MUCH AS IT DOES THE EAR. The music gleams, shimmers, dances and sings with an eloquence that ENTHRALLS. YOU'LL BE IN SEVENTH HEAVEN.” - The New York Times

“★★★★★! RAUCOUS, JOYOUS & WHITE-HOT. It’s a JAZZ PHANTASMAGORIA that shifts from head-spinning tap to silken crooning by MC DULÉ HILL and tender standards by the DIVINE FANTASIA BARRINO.” - Time Out

“Some of the best dancing, costumes and singing in some time. YOU MAY WANT TO GO BACK WEEKLY!” - The Wall Street Journal

“PURE JOY! AFTER MIDNIGHT  IS AN UNMITIGATED PLEASURE. Opulent yet tasteful, wild but disciplined, kinetic and sexy but smart, smart, smart. The result is one of the best revues in recent memory and A FLAT-OUT SUCCESS on any terms. When the bandstand slides toward the apron of the stage, bringing the sound almost into your lap, AFTER MIDNIGHT  achieves AN APOTHEOSIS OF PURE JOY. THIS IS ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS!” - New York Magazine

“EXQUISITE! Packs more than two dozen numbers into 90 BOUYANT, TALENT-RICH MINUTES. The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, a sixteen-piece onstage big band organized by Wynton Marsalis, GORGEOUSLY PERFORMS many of Duke Ellington’s original arrangements. DULÉ HILL speaks Langston Hughes’s poetry beautifully, looks cool, and impresses as a singer and dancer. The vocalists are EXCELLENT and the dancers are THRILLING!” - The New Yorker

“SMOLDERING! A sleek, elegant tribute to Duke Ellington and the glory days of the Cotton Club that brings class back to Broadway. You can’t help but THRILL!” - New York Post

“★★★★ DAZZLING! 90 minutes of uninterrupted pleasure!” - Bloomberg News

“JAW-DROPPING! The best choreography I have ever seen on the Broadway stage! Director and choreographer WARREN CARLYLE smoothly transports audiences to the golden age of the Harlem Renaissance with over 25 STUNNING musical and dance numbers. INFECTIOUSLY JOYFUL and BEAUTIFUL!” - BET

“EXHILARATING! 90 minutes of honest, vital entertainment delivered with breezy wit and giddy energy. A SHOWCASE FOR GREAT ARTISTS PAST AND PRESENT.” - USA Today

“DAZZLING! IT LEAVES YOU FEELING LIGHTER THAN AIR! The show re-creates the ENERGY and FUN of Harlem’s famous Cotton Club nightclub in the 1920s and 30s, when Duke Ellington and his band made everything cool. FANTASIA BARRINO IS THRILLING!” - AP

“ROOF-RAISING, DOWNRIGHT DAZZLING and PACKED WITH TRAFFIC-STOPPING TALENTS! By the time the JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ALL-STARS close the show with one last, GLORIOUS BURST OF BRASS, NOBODY WANTS TO GO HOME!” - Variety

“THERE ARE SHOWSTOPPERS APLENTY in the ebullient new musical AFTER MIDNIGHT, a CELEBRATION of classic jazz and swing numbers with some of the MOST ASTOUNDING AND SPIRITED CHOREOGRAPHY CURRENTLY ON BROADWAY!” - Entertainment Weekly

“SPECTACULAR! Drop everything and head to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. For pure entertainment, AFTER MIDNIGHT  is worth every penny. YOU ABSOLUTELY MUSTN'T MISS IT!” - The Huffington Post

“The big cast – GORGEOUSLY COSTUMED BY FASHION DESIGNER ISABEL TOLEDO – overflows with talent, individuality and winning attitude in this 90-minute song-and-dance entertainment with an INTOXICATING 16-PIECE BAND.” - Newsday

“You’re in for SOMETHING SPECIAL. AFTER MIDNIGHT is jam packed with some of FINEST, JAMMIN’ musicians this side of the Hudson and beyond. A THRILLING showcase of some very GIFTED and ALTOGETHER INSPIRED TALENTS! JARED GRIMES and SORMESHIA SUMBRY-EDWARDS are PHENOMENAL tap dancers. KARINE PLANTADIT delivers with UNRIVALED ELEGANCE. ADRIANE LENOX BRINGS DOWN THE HOUSE! ISABEL TOLEDO’S SENSATIONAL costumes deserve a bow all to themselves. WILDLY ENTERTAINING!” - NY1

BROADWAY'S HOTTEST NEW MUSICAL "AFTER MIDNIGHT" STARTS PREVIEWS OCTOBER 18

Starry Night producers Craig Saavedra, (left) and Michael Shulman outside the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York, the home of the new Duke Ellington musical starring Fantasia, Dule Hill and k.d. lang. 

NEW YORK -- Grammy Award winner Fantasia (The Color Purple) makes her highly anticipated return to the stage alongside Emmy® Award nominee Dulé Hill (“The West Wing”) in AFTER MIDNIGHT, the Broadway production of Encores’ critically acclaimed Cotton Club Parade. With 25 sensational singers and dancers and an exciting roster of Special Guest Star headliners, this heart-pounding new musical brings the sexy, smoky glamour of Harlem's Golden Age to a whole new generation.



At the heart of AFTER MIDNIGHT is The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, an orchestra of 17 world-class musicians hand-picked by nine-time Grammy Award winner Wynton Marsalis. The timeless songs of Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, Cab Calloway and their contemporaries–woven together by the prose of Langston Hughes–come to life in an evening of cutting-edge song and dance.



This thrilling experience puts you at the center of one of Harlem’s legendary nightclubs, in a hotbed of Jazz–its intoxicating rhythms, its innovative style, its unpredictable danger and fun. Award-winning fashion designer Isabel Toledo reinvents the distinctive looks of the era with dazzling, one-of-a-kind costumes. And, as directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, AFTER MIDNIGHT blurs the line between past and present to prove that Jazz is more than music...it's a state of mind.

"PETER AND ALICE" OPENING NIGHT IN LONDON

Craig Saavedra, (left) and Michael Shulman attend the Opening Night After Party with Dame Judi Dench who stars as Alice in John Logan's PETER AND ALICE.

Outside the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End theatre district, Starry Night toppers Craig Saavedra and Michael Shulman attend the opening night performance of John Logan's PETER AND ALICE starring Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.

LONDON -- The stars were out for Michael Grandage's brilliant production of John Logan's newest play, PETER AND ALICE and Starry Night's Craig Saavedra and Michael Shulman were not only thrilled to be part of the evening's festivities, but also about being involved with the entire season of five plays that began with PRIVATES ON PARADE last year and concludes with Jude Law in HENRY V in November.

The playbill's description for the show reads:

"When Alice Liddell Hargreaves met Peter Llewelyn Davies at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the original Alice in Wonderland came face to face with the original Peter Pan. In John Logan’s remarkable new play, enchantment and reality collide as this brief encounter lays bare the lives of these two extraordinary characters.  Judi Dench plays Alice, and Ben Whishaw plays Peter in Logan’s first new play since Red, which went on to win six Tony Awards in 2010."  

HIT THE WALL To Begin Releasing Memes Across The Internet

NY Times calls HIT THE WALL "an exciting visceral charge" that's "fierce and funny" and "deeply affecting"

NEW YORK --  “Hit the Wall” is being staged at the Barrow Street Theater, just a stone’s throw from Christopher Park in Greenwich Village where the events depicted occurred. That amplifies the historical echoes of truncheon blows and flying trash cans as angry drag queens, gay men and lesbians pushed back during a routine police raid on a sweltering June night.

"Watching the characters strut through a liberating dance that erupts into chaos and violence when police lights pierce the smoky haze gives the sense of being caught up in that momentous clash. Mr. Hoff’s adroit use of the playing space, J. David Brimmer’s balletic fight direction, Keith Parham’s atmospheric lighting and Dan Lipton’s galvanizing live music — from psychedelic guitars to primal bongos — combine to summon a raw emotional power." 

Read the entire New York Times review here.