This Week in Broadway History: June 22 - 28

 This Week in Broadway History:

June 22 - 28

🎭OPENING NIGHTS🎭 

June 22, 1976: One of the most produced and beloved musicals of all time, Godspell, debuted on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. It ran 527 performances.

June 25, 1998: 1999's Tony Award-winning Best Plays, Side Man, opened at The Criterion Center Stage Right. Later, it moved to the Golden Theatre, and ran for 517 total performances.

June 26, 2021: The first performance on Broadway since the COVID 19 shutdown will be Springsteen on Broadway, a return limited engagement of the smash hit theatrical concert from 2017-18.

June 28, 1987: Contrary to popular belief, there has been a revival of Dreamgirls. It opened at the Ambassador Theatre and starred Lillias White. It played 177 performances.

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAY🎂

June 22: Composer/actor Cyndi Lauper (Kinky Boots), actor Meryl Streep (Happy End), director/choreographer Gower Champion (42nd Street, Hello, Dolly!)

June 23: Actor Christy Altomare (Anastasia, Mamma Mia!), actor Anna McNeely (Cats, Gypsy), legendary director/choreographer Bob Fosse (Chicago, Sweet Charity, Pippin)

June 24: Scenic Designer Anna Louizos (High Fidelity)

June 25: Actors Annaleigh Ashford (Sunday in the Park with George, Sylvia), Hunter Foster (Grease, Hands on a Hardbody), John Benjamin Hickey (Cabaret, The Inheritance), playwright/activist Larry Kramer (The Normal Heart. As-Is)

Christy Altomare     Bob Fosse

Ariana Grande     Jason Tam

June 26: Actor Ariana Grande (13), actor Sean Hayes (Promises, Promises), lighting designer Kevin Adams (Head Over Heels, American Idiot)

June 27: Actor Kimiko Glenn (Waitress), actor Michael Ball (Aspects of Love), director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

June 28: Actor Jason Tam (Be More Chill, A Chorus Line), actor Kathy Bates ('night Mother), composer Richard Rodgers (Carousel, South Pacific)

📆ON BROADWAY THIS WEEK IN 1961📆

If you were a Broadway fan 60 years ago, here's what you might have had tickets to: for challenging drama, you might have headed to the Lyceum for Zero Mostel, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and Jean Stapleton in Rhinoceros. One of the longest running plays ever, Mary, Mary was brand new at the Helen Hayes, and a new comedy called Come Blow Your Horn at the Brooks Atkinson, by a new playwright named Neil Simon. (Interesting factoid: later in the run of that play, Joel Grey made his Broadway debut as a replacement!) I would have been camped out at the Booth Theatre to catch my beloved Angela Lansbury and a young man named Billy Dee Williams in A Taste of Honey.

Then, as now, musicals were a big draw, and there were plenty to choose from! Last season's co-winners of the Best Musical Tony, Fiorello! and The Sound of Music were still hot tickets at the  Broadway and Lunt-Fontanne, respectively. And this season's Best Musical, Bye Bye Birdie, was still several months from closing at the Shubert.

New musicals included The Unsinkable Molly Brown with Tammy Grimes over at the Winter Garden, and Julie Andrews and Richard Burton were holding court at the Majestic in Camelot, and the Styne-Comden-Green musical Do Re Mi was across the street at the St. James. Anna Maria Alberghetti, Kaye Ballard and Jerry Orbach were headlining Carnival! at the Imperial. And if you were a Francophile, the very French Irma La Douce at the Plymouth was where you wanted to be!

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