‘Schmigadoon!’
Stream it on major music platforms.
“Schmigadoon!” — which won best new musical, best book and best score at the 2026 Tony Awards — finally gets a cast album on Aug. 21. While the production is a hoot, the recording allows listeners to fully take in the intricate thousand-layer cake that Cinco Paul concocted with his music and lyrics. It’s perfectly possible to appreciate the songs, all of them very funny, at face value, especially if you enjoy the Broadway style of the first half of the 20th century. But as Alexis Soloski put it in The Times, “Every number is a homage to at least one classic musical, and often two or three.” So if you know your “Carousel” from your “Music Man” from your “Oklahoma!,” your enjoyment will be decupled here.
‘Six the Musical Live!’
Watch it at select movie theaters near you.
The musical “Six” gives each of Henry VIII’s wives a turn in the spotlight and the opportunity to reclaim the narrative. It’s the Tudors, but set to vibrant R&B and pop, and it’s drenched in knowing, irreverent humor. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s concert-like show is “gleefully anachronistic,” as Jesse Green put it in The York Times. “Mixing 16th-century marital politics with 21st-century selfies and shade,” as Green put it, is a recipe for success; “Six” has been running in the West End since 2019 and on Broadway since 2021.
Now you can watch a professionally shot production on a big screen. The director Liz Clare captured Moss and Jamie Armitage’s staging at the Vaudeville Theater of London in 2022, with the original West End queens — Aimie Atkinson, Alexia McIntosh, Millie O’Connell, Natalie Paris, Maiya Quansah-Breed and Jarnéia Richard-Noel.
‘Chekhov for Children’
Stream it on Cineverse or Vimeo.
Why is this wonderful documentary not better known? In 1979, a rather unusual production of “Uncle Vanya” played at Symphony Space in Manhattan. It starred fifth and sixth graders from nearby P.S. 75, under the direction of the writer Phillip Lopate. Three decades later, the show’s assistant director, Sasha Waters, who was 10 at the time, revisited the experience in “Chekhov for Children” (2010). She splices incredible archival footage with testimonies from the grown participants.
The film offers a thoughtful exploration of the relationship between art and life, which is not any less complicated when it involves tweens,. And many viewers will relish its evocation of 1970s New York, followed by a wistful look at the changes the city underwent in the years following
‘Sell/Buy/Date’
Stream it on Prime Video or Tubi.
Since the writer-performer Sarah Jones is bringing her new piece, “America, Who Hurt You?,” to the Polonsky Shakespeare Center next month, now is a good time to get reacquainted with (or introduced to) her work. A point of entry is her movie “Sell/Buy/Date” (2022). It is not a straightforward capture of her successful solo show of the same title, which was about sex work. Rather, the film deals with criticism Jones, who is not a sex worker, faced when the film was announced, and features her interviewing people from that industry as well as activists. She also still deploys her gift for portraying varied characters, which is at the heart of her work. The Times’s review of Jones’s Broadway production, “Bridge & Tunnel” (2006), described her as “an astonishing mimic with an uncanny ability to alter the texture, color and volume of her voice and even the shape of her body,” and praised her writing as “lively, compassionate, mildly sardonic and smart.”
‘The Winter’s Tale’
Rent or buy it on Prime Video.
If you can’t make it to the Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Winter’s Tale” (at the Delacorte Theater through Aug. 23), check out this 1999 staging from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Set at the turn of the 20th century, Gregory Doran’s production beautifully handles the play’s abrupt tonal shifts. Antony Sher as Leontes, the king of Sicilia, is downright frightening as he spirals into paranoid and raging jealousy. You think you’re in for some “Othello”-level tragic ending, but after a somber start, the action lightens up as it moves to pastoral Bohemia, land of shepherds, high jinks, romance and song. This is an excellent take on the play, no matter the season.
‘Murder at the Gates’
Let’s hear it for livestreaming, which keeps appointment viewing going! Last month, Steven Sater (who wrote the book and lyrics for “Spring Awakening”) and James Bourne (a member of the British pop-punk band Busted and a busy songwriter for various artists) released a concept album of their rock musical “Murder at the Gates” — in which a murder-mystery party gets a little too real. The record features a choice roster: Isa Briones, Ramin Karimloo, Casey Likes, Gaten Matarazzo, Milo Manheim, Mason Alexander Park, Helen J Shen and Joy Woods. It’s hard not to assume at least one of them could turn up at 54 Below for a concert preview of the musical on Sept. 4. It will be streamed live, but won’t be available on demand afterward.
The post A ‘Schmigadoon!’ Cast Album and More Theater to Stream appeared first on New York Times.
