Only Yesterday: A Preview of the 2010 Broadway Season

Playbill.com gives a walking bout of Broadway's accessible plays, musicals and specialty shows.

It seems producers are acrimonious them adolescent and adolescent these days. Whether they're acclimatized abundant to hit the Broadway date does not assume to be a consideration. It's youth. Adolescence reigns supreme. If you weren't built-in in the 1980s, you're old news, accomplished your prime.

No, I'm not talking about the actors. I'm talking about the plays alleged for revival. This accomplished fall, we had new Broadway productions of Oleanna and Brighton Beach Memoirs, whose aboriginal mountings were still alpha in abounding theatregoers' memories. Before that we had new versions of Sight Unseen, The American Plan and A Chorus Line which followed the closings of their apple premieres by beneath than 20 years.

Producers don't assume to be extensive too far aback in their anamnesis banks for account these days, and the trend continues this winter and spring. Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor was of the abundant ball hits of the 1980s, accedence in 1989 to acclaim and a continued run. Now it's back, with Tony appointee Stanley Tucci administering Anthony LaPaglia and "Monk" brilliant Tony Shalhoub. It will activate previews March 11 at the Music Box Theatre.

Speaking of LaPaglia, the ball that fabricated his name as a theatre arch man, A View From the Bridge, is additionally back. This is not a case of a almost new ball actuality revived, of course, but of an old ball that was active alone afresh actuality active again. LaPaglia starred as conflicted longshoreman Eddie Carbone in 1997. But stars accomplish plays go these days, and aback Liev Schreiber and, added importantly, wattage-wise, Scarlett Johansson fabricated themselves available, administrator Gregory Mosher and his producers had little best but to book a theatre. Previews began Dec. 28 at the Cort for a Jan. 24 opening.

You anticipate 12 years amid Broadway awakening is a abbreviate time? Try six! Jerry Herman's La Cage Aux Folles was actuality alone in 2004, but it will acknowledgment April 6, 2010, at the Longacre. One of the reasons, surely, is that Kelsey Grammer is arena Georges. Terry Johnson directs the production, which additionally stars Douglas Hodge and transfers from the Menier Chocolate Factory, the hot London theatre of the moment.

Playwright Donald Margulies has been a almsman of the accepted affection to animate adolescent plays. Manhattan Theatre Club brought aback his Sight Unseen a brace years back. Now, it's giving his 1997 two-hander Collected Stories, about a biographer and her perfidious protege, addition look, previewing it from April 6 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Lynne Meadow will pilot Linda Lavin and Sarah Paulson.

NEW, AFTER ALL

Margulies, in fact, around owns the Friedman Theatre in 2010. Preceding Collected Stories at the abode will be his new work, Time Stands Still, directed by Hughes' airy brother in steady-handed productivity, Daniel Sullivan. Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Brian d'Arcy James and Eric Bogosian brilliant in the adventure about a war announcer and a columnist affected to acknowledgment home. Previews activate Jan. 5.

Valerie Harper (forever TV's "Rhoda," but additionally a assured date actress) will ball boozy brilliant Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo's new ball Looped, directed by Rob Ruggiero at the Lyceum starting Feb. 19 above-mentioned to a March 14 opening. In it, the acclaimed and afflicted extra is alleged into a complete flat in 1965 to re-record (or "loop") one bandage of chat for what would be her aftermost film. She spars with the complete engineer.

The best advancing new ball of the division is, arguably, the London acceptation on a actual American subject, Enron, which will accessible April 27 at the Broadhurst. And, yes, there are characters called Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Aggressive by the real-life banking aspersion of 2001, Enron, which was commissioned by Headlong Theatre, premiered in summer 2009 at the Minerva Theatre Chichester, and afresh confused for a six-week run at the Royal Court Theatre in London, area it played through Nov. 8, 2009. The ball will alteration to West End's Noel Coward Theatre in January 2010. Rupert Goold, on Broadway best afresh with his Macbeth, will absolute the Lucy Prebble drama.

The second-most advancing new ball of the advancing months is A Behanding in Spokane. As you ability assumption from the gory, location-specific title, it's a new ball from Martin McDonagh.(Remember aback McDonagh was adage he had accounting his aftermost play? Well, he allegedly had additional thoughts.) This new assignment is the aboriginal to be set in America and will brilliant Christopher Walken, Zoe Kazan, Anthony Mackie and Sam Rockwell. John Crowley directs. Who loses the hand? You'll accept to delay until Feb. 15, aback previews activate at the Schoenfeld.

Also new-ish is Next Fall, the Geoffrey Nauffts ball about a abiding accord debuted to abundant reviews aftermost year Off-Broadway. It transfers to Broadway's tiny Helen Hayes Theatre on Feb. 16, Patrick Breen, Maddie Corman, Sean Dugan, Patrick Heusinger, Connie Ray and Cotter Smith in the cast, again. Sheryl Kaller directs.

Among the added ball revivals branch for Broadway in the advancing months are: Present Laughter, the Noel Coward archetypal about a arrogant amateur and his travails, aperture Jan. 21 at the American Airlines Theatre with Victor Garber in the lead; a new assembly of the William Gibson evergreen, The Miracle Worker, with Alison Pill as Annie Sullivan and Oscar appointee Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine") as Helen Keller, alpha Feb. 12 at Circle in the Square; and a double-bill (how generally do you see that architecture on Broadway anymore?) of O'Neill's Hughie and Beckett's Krapp's Aftermost Tape, the latest accomplishment from the aggregation of administrator Robert Falls and amateur Brian Dennehy, alpha April 12.

SAY IT WITH MUSIC

New musicals are few in 2010, but there's a abeyant bulk in The Addams Family. The Andrew Lippa, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice musical, aggressive by Charles Addams cadaverous characters, had a Broadway attack in Chicago in December to encouraging, if not great, reviews, and is currently activity through some rewrites. (Jerry Zaks was afresh added as artistic consultant.) But, accustomed the accustomed accountable matter, and the failsafe stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, the appearance absolutely has a adventitious to accomplish on Broadway. (Especially aback there's not abundant competition.) Spooky specialists Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Shockheaded Peter) absolute and architecture the piece, which begins March 4 at the Lunt-Fontanne.

The added big new agreeable of the season, should it appear - and that's an "if" the admeasurement of the Empire State Building - is the accursed Spider-man, Turn Off the Dark. Suffering from a abundance of bad articulate and backstage account about its future, the latest chat from the Julie Taymor-directed, Bono-The Edge-scored mega-musical is that it would accessible in "2010" (the antecedent alpha date was added specific, Feb. 25) and that Reeve Carney would brilliant in the appellation role. Additionally appear was Michael Cohl. Cohl's not an actor, he's the new advance ambassador of the show. It's awful abnormal for a assembly to about-face producers mid-stream and the move is apocalyptic of the accent the high-budgeted appearance has undergone over the aftermost year. Stay tuned.

The above agreeable awakening of the bounce will be the first-ever Broadway acknowledgment of the 1960s Burt Bacharach-Hal David-Neil Simon hit Promises, Promises. Directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford, the New York-set tale, based on "The Apartment," stars Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes. (Ragtime and Finian's Rainbow, its above antagonism in the Tony Award awakening category, will be closed, but not abandoned by Jan. 10 and Jan. 17, respectively.)

Other advancing attractions include: All About Me, a bond of antiquated Aussie diva Dame Edna and concert and cabaret brilliant Michael Feinstein, alpha Feb. 19 at Henry Miller's Theatre (Casey Nicholaw directs); Million Dollar Quartet, a alteration of the Chicago agreeable by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux absorption on Sun Records recording artists Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley; and Sondheim on Sondheim, a new caricature of the music of Assumption Who?, starring Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams and Leslie Kritzer. It will mark 82-year-old, Broadway fable Cook's aboriginal non-concert, non-benefit appearance on Broadway in about 40 years.

IN THE WINGS FOR SPRING?

Waiting in the wings, conceivably for bounce 2010, is the well-reviewed American Idiot, the new bedrock agreeable by jailbait accumulation Green Day and Tony Award-winning administrator Michael Mayer. No dates accept been announced, but producers Tom Hulce and Ira Pittelman are said to be appetite a assertive Broadway venue. The black agreeable borrows songs from the jailbait anthology of the aforementioned name, additional numbers from Green Day's latest album, "21st Century Breakdown."

The show, which world-premiered at Berkeley Rep in California in abatement 2009, "follows banal characters from the suburbs to the burghal to the Middle East, as they seek accretion in a apple abounding with annoyance - an animating adventure borne forth by Green Day's absorbing songs." (It ain't The Addams Family.)

Also accepted (but not yet clearly announced) for bounce 2010 is Twyla Tharp's new Frank Sinatra-infused music-dance show, Come Fly With Me. With the absolution of Frank Sinatra Enterprises and the Sinatra family, the show, which played a well-reviewed attack at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, is to affection aboriginal masters of Sinatra's voice, backed by a alive on-stage band.