Samantha Marie Ware News

Voting has now opened for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Austin Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 4th.

Voting has now opened for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Austin Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of November 25th.

Broadway's Future Songbook Series -- presented by Arts and Artists at St. Paul -- begins on Monday, September 29th in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center located at 111 Amsterdam Avenue and 65th Street.

Washington theatre celebrated its highest honors for achievement at the 30th Annual Helen Hayes Awards tonight, April 21, 2014 at the National Building Museum. Scroll down for the full list of winners!

The Nominating Committee of the Independent Reviewers of New England has just announced nominees for the 2014 IRNE Awards. The Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards, founded by Beverly Creasey of the Journal Newspapers and Larry Stark of TheaterMirror in 1997, recognize the extraordinary wealth of talent in the Boston theatre community.

Votes are cast; polls are closed; and results have been tabulated! This was our biggest year yet! After a record number of voters in more than 50 regions worldwide, BroadwayWorld is very excited to announce the 2013 Seattle winners! Thanks to all who voted, and huge congratulations to all the winners!

Voting is now underway for Seattle! We have a record number of votes in already, but if you haven't voted yet, click here to vote! If you have voted already, tell your friends.

Holy Crap! That's really the most emphatic sentiment I can use to describe the internal battles I had when trying to pick my top picks for this past year. There were so many amazing performances and achievements that to pick just one was almost an impossibility (and as you'll see, WAS an impossibility for one category). But the battle is over and it's my distinct pleasure to announce my picks for the 2013 Broadway World Seattle Critic's Choice Awards (or Jay's Picks, if you prefer).

Voting is now underway for Seattle! We have a record number of votes in already, but if you haven't voted yet, click here to vote! If you have voted already, tell your friends.

Voting is now underway for Seattle! We have a record number of votes in already, but if you haven't voted yet, click here to vote! If you have voted already, tell your friends.

Voting is now underway for Seattle! We have a record number of votes in already, but if you haven't voted yet, click here to vote! If you have voted already, tell your friends.

The electricity in Carol Morsani Hall, at the Straz Center in Tampa, for the opening performance of the National Tour of 'THE BOOK OF MORMON', was the closest I have experienced here, to the excitement of a Broadway opening night yet! The SOLD-OUT house was simply percolating, in anticipation of the 9 time Tony Award winning musical's Tampa debut.

The biggest show of Orlando's Broadway Across America season, THE BOOK OF MORMON is finally here and playing at Bob Carr. It is destiny that a show that cites Orlando as the greatest place ever, brings the audience to its feet. Even people who do not like musicals are lining up and getting excited to see this masterpiece.

At the end of the first act of The Book of Mormon, now playing Austin's Bass Concert Hall for a two week run, I thought to myself, 'This is the most distasteful, crude, offensive, and subversive musical I've ever seen, and I'm loving every minute of it.' When I went out to the lobby, it was clear that the audience agreed. Everyone was smiling and wiping away tears of laughter as they quoted some of the best lines so far.

In March 2011, Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone's joyfully irreverent, soulfully blasphemous, and wholly scandalous comedy THE BOOK OF MORMON took Broadway by storm, going on to win 9 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Score. The musical quickly developed a ravenous parish of fans that simply couldn't get enough of the bawdy spectacle, and left many around the nation counting the days until the First National Tour kicked off. After a short two-and-a-half year wait, Houston audiences are getting their chance to experience the production, and judging by last night's reaction, we couldn't be more enthusiastic or pleased. Now holding a coveted spot as one of the best musicals I have ever seen, this show was definitely worth the wait!

MORMON plays in DC until August 13, 2013

THE BOOK OF MORMON is an absolute go see production for anyone who is not a language prude or a religious fanatic. It is filled with total delight, magical showmanship, a marvelous score, creative dancing and fine staging. It's everything a modern musical that is meant for pure entertainment, with a sip of philosophy, should be!

'The Book of Mormon' may be outrageous, irreverent, and puerile in the extreme, but the most offensive thing about this insipid show is its insulting lack of wit.

It would be easy to be either immediately won over by the hype surrounding this show before ever seeing it, or to be disappointed once you had, because it couldn't possibly live up to it. That's why I go into these things with reasonable expectations. I'm already a fan of Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park, Team America, Cannibal! The Musical, etc) and Robert Lopez (Avenue Q, Phineas and Ferb, etc), and I can certainly appreciate the work they did creating the book, music and lyrics for this show, THE BOOK OF MORMON. But, I do think you have to be attuned to their particular brand of humor in order to fully appreciate it. Poking fun at religion is certainly nothing new for any of them, and they've always brought a sense of the conventions of musical theatre to whatever art form they've tackled, and with THE BOOK OF MORMON they've produced something which is both terribly funny and catchy as well.

BroadwayWorld collected as many of yesterday's evening Saturday Intermission Pics as we could to bring you Part 2 of our January 19th SIP round-up. Yesterday evening's photos featured the cast of EVITA taking a page from LES MISERABLES and announcing there's just 'One Week More' to see the show before it closes on Broadway, last intermission pics with NEWSIES' Ryan Steele, plus photos from THE BOOK OF MORMON, MARY POPPINS, FLASHDANCE, THE WIZARD OF OZ in Toronto, WEST SIDE STORY, THE LION KING, FUNNY GIRL at Riverside Theatre and lots of regional shows!