‘A Bronx Tale’ heading to Broadway
NEW YORK (AP) – Robert De Niro is coming back to Broadway, but you won’t find him onstage. The Oscar winner will be co-directing “A Bronx Tale,” this time as a musical.
Chazz Palminteri’s coming-of-age story, which was a one-man play off-Broadway in 1989 and was turned into a movie starring De Niro four years later, now arrives with songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater.
The story centers on a young kid from the Bronx who is torn between two worlds and two men: a local mobster and his straight-and-narrow bus-driver father. The musical version played the Paper Mill Playhouse earlier this year.
The show will start performances Nov. 3 at the Longacre Theatre. No casting was announced. Jerry Zaks will direct with De Niro, with choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
NEW YORK (AP) – The bluegrass musical “Bright Star,” which failed to win a Tony on Sunday, is going into the Broadway sunset.
The complex love story set against the American South written by comedy god Steve Martin and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Edie Brickell will close June 26. It will have played some 140 performances.
The show earned five Tony nominations but hasn’t set the box office alight, earning less than 60 percent of its $912,000 weekly potential.
Martin and Brickell have recorded two albums together, including the Grammy-winning “Love Has Come for You,” but “Bright Star” is their first musical. The idea was sparked by the common love they share for musical theater.
The musical introduced Broadway audiences to Carmen Cusack, who made a tremendous debut and earned a Tony nomination for lead actress.