This Week in Broadway History: June 8 - 14

This Week in Broadway History:

June 8 - 14

🎭OPENING NIGHTS🎭 

 June 10, 1982: Transferring from off-Broadway, Torch Song Trilogy  opened at The Little Theatre (renamed The Helen Hayes Theatre during its Tony-winning run), starring Harvey Fierstein and Estelle Getty. It went on to play 1,230 performances.

June 10, 1993: The acclaimed Roundabout revival of She Loves Me opened at the Criterion Center, starring Boyd Gaines, Judy Kuhn, Sally Mayes and Howard McGillin. Later, it would transfer to the Brooks Atkinson for a commercial run.

June 14, 2011: Has it really been 10 years? After 182 previews, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark opened at the Foxwoods Theatre, where it would spin its troubled web for 1,066 more performances.

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAY🎂

June 8: Actor Robert Preston (The Music Man), actor Alexis Smith (Follies), actor Anthony Boyle (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child)

June 9: Actor/dancer Robert Fairchild (An American in Paris), composer/lyricist Benj Pasek (A Christmas Story, Dogfight), playwright Aaron Sorkin (To Kill a Mockingbird), author Gregory Maguire (Wicked)

June 10: Actor/icon Judy Garland, actors Gina Gershon (Bye Bye Birdie, Cabaret), Sean Allan Krill (Jagged Little Pill), Nick Adams (Priscilla Queen of the Desert), Colton Ryan (Girl From the North Country)

Anthony Boyle     Chris Evans

Judy Garland     Uta Hagen

June 11: Actor Matt McGrath (Cabaret, Girl From the North Country), actor/dancer Jane Lanier (Fosse), actor Adrienne Barbeau (Grease), director Daniel Sullivan (The Little Foxes)

June 12: Actor/educator Uta Hagen (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), diarist Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)

June 13: Actor Chris Evans (Lobby Hero), actor Richard Thomas (The Little Foxes), actor Joy Franz (Into the Woods)

June 14: Orchestrator Harold Wheeler (Dreamgirls, Ain't Too Proud), actor Jere Shea (Passion), actor De'Adre Aziza (Passing Strange, Women on the Verge...), actor Ryan McCartan (Frozen, Wicked)

📆ON BROADWAY THIS WEEK IN 1968📆

The watch word for this week is "star-power." Lots of chances to see marquee names in plays and musicals in mid-June of 1968!

This was your last chance to see the long running I Do! I Do! starring Gordon MacRae and Carol Lawrence at the 46th Street Theatre, as well as How Now, Dow Jones at the Lunt-Fontanne, with Barnard Hughes, Brenda Vaccaro and Tommy Tune in the chorus!

If a play's your thing, 1968's Best Play Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead was doing great business following its move to the Eugene O'Neill, and Neil Simon's Plaza Suite was the comedy hit of the season at the Plymouth, with George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton checking in nightly. If you preferred drama to comedy, Zoe Caldwell was giving lessons eight shows a week at the Helen Hayes in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

There were several musicals to choose from including long-running hits like Mame at the Winter Garden, Man of La Mancha at the Martin Beck, Cabaret at the Imperial. New musicals included The Happy Time with Robert Goulet, David Wayne and a child named Michael Rupert. The Palace was home to Joel Grey and a young Bernadette Peters in George M!. The big hit of the year, though, was the controversial Tribal Love-Rock Musical, Hair at the Biltmore. Nudity, drug use and a variety of sexual expression has come to Broadway!

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