Weekend Agenda: Spring is… Springing Edition

Most of the new shows are finally going to enter previews in the next couple days.  We’re getting more rain and less snow.  And there’s suddenly a truckload of new stuff to talk about.  Yup.  Sounds like Spring is on its way.  Some thoughts on this week’s spring-y theater happenings, for your consideration:

• Riedel reports that advances for the Spring shows are uncharacteristically low, and in general the season is getting off to a very slow/quiet start.  We’re not surprised.  It’s hard to remember the last time we wrote expansively on a new show we’re stoked about. We even wrote about Wicked last week.  Now THAT is grim.
• The Book of Mormon‘s invited dress apparently generated much positive buzz on Twitter. Oh wait, that was just the show’s press team obsessively spamming our feeds with every positive comment about the show. For a performance that was not open to the public. That was attended by mostly friends and family. Our bad.
• Actor Tony Vincent is working on some tunes for a new album. We chatted with him this week about that, his post-American Idiot hair choices, the Great Wall of China, and the glories of being featured on an English postage stamp, among other things. Check out the full interview next week.
• Open casting calls for the first national tour of American Idiot, and Rent‘s off-Broadway run were announced this week. We’re guessing that lots of aspiring young Rogers will become aspiring young Johnnys simply by adding a studded belt.
• In other Book of Mormon news, Matt Stone and Trey Parker think Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark sucks. Our personal prayer? That their show provides a more timely—and edgier—perspective.
• So, Spider-Man is getting a co-director? Or not? Or a new musical supervisor? Or a book doctor? Not according to Julie Taymor and the show’s reps, who know nothing, have never heard of anyone, and have created a really awesome show…
• Speaking of Spidey.  Producers are complaining that it’s getting all the press.  Never fear, though, we have a suggestion for you: start reporting on injuries!  Judging from all the Spider-Man Injury Porn filling the press, the general populace has developed some real bloodlust.  We bet you have an injured dancer somewhere. You know, some broken fingers and toes, strained hamstrings… even some really bad blisters might do it.  Just find something you can dig up and exploit.
• Steven Sater’s Prometheus Bound, which stars Gavin Creel and begins performances tonight in Boston, will not have any weekend performances. Are they TRYING to keep us from seeing it? No, really. Are they?
• Billie Joe Armstrong saw Lady Gaga in concert this week, and she returned the favor by visiting American Idiot a few nights later. She forgot her pants, wore 6-inch platforms, and told the cast that, compared to them, she’d failed at being a musical theater superstar. All in a day’s work at American Idiot, where the crazier, more interesting show continues to happen offstage. We can’t wait to see what happens on Sunday, when Billie Joe Armstrong, Johnny Gallagher, and most of the rest of the cast departs.
• Christian Borle has been cast opposite Debra Messing in the pilot for NBC’s musical dramedy Smash, set in the world of musical theater.  File under: actual proof of our theory that Christian Borle became 10 zillion times more compelling to the universe after starring in Angels in America this season.