Weekend Agenda: Somewhere a Goat is Fainting Edition

Friday again. The theater season is about to go insane. And somewhere on the Groff farm in Pennsylvania, someone is singing “Totally Fucked” in order to call the goats to their feeding, we shit you not. What are we going to do with ourselves this weekend?  Probably gossip about some of this stuff between shows…

• Thanks to the lovely folks at Season of Savings we’ve got a handful of theater tickets to give out.  This week we ran a quick little twitter contest for a pair of tickets to see Sister Act, and @carlient was the lucky winner.  Keep your eyes peeled for a couple more contests in the next few weeks.

• So Newsies went into previews this week at the Paper Mill Playhouse. We were there for final dress on Wednesday and we’re dying to tell you all about it. Gird your loins, universe; we’ve been waiting like 20 years for this musical. We’re going to cover the shit out of it.

• Bobby Cannavale has been cast as Nicky Arnstein in Funny Girl, opposite Lauren Ambrose.  Inside our hearts we were campaigning pretty hard for Ramin Karimloo. But like… Bobby is kind of like the American version of Ramin, right? Only. We’re worried about the singing part. Okay, let’s be honest, we’re not worried enough to be mad about it.

• Pick your jaw up off the floor, Porgy & Bess on Broadway is happening. Just like it was always happening, from the minute everyone said it would happen.

• Producer Garth Drabinsky, who had his own little Broadway-themed corporate corruption scandal going for a while, is going to jail for absolutely sure, says a Canadian appeals court.

• Two new musicals in development that are exciting us to our very folicles: Bill T. Jones is working on Super Fly: The Musical, which cannot possibly be anything but awesome. And playwright Lisa Kron is working with Jeanine Tesori on Fun Home, which will be adapted from Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel. To out-of-the-box musical ideas, huzzah! We just hope they get produced before 2019.

• Mikhail Baryshnikov is bringing his play In Paris to New York someday, according to the New York Times. Even just reading the announcement got us all hot and bothered. We can’t wait to watch his mouth move while he speaks Russian on stage. Don’t know why we’re so excited? Clearly you didn’t see him in the last season of Sex and the City.

• Where in the world in Laura Benanti this week? On the cover of Playboy, natch.

• Michael Riedel is reporting that Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Billy Elliot are getting some rewrites to make them more “tourist-friendly.” Because clearly neither of those shows were developed to pander to tourist crowds to begin with. We’re so thrilled that theater is becoming more… uh… accessible.

• In other news, Susan Blackwell had her own hayloft scene with Mr. Jonathan Groff and we are so jealous we can’t even stand it. In this week’s fucking amazing episode of Side by Side there were sixty-five million kink jokes, fainting goats actually fainting, and a rumored lack of underwear on Mr. Groff’s person.  Basically, it’s the best thing that has ever happened. And we’re so jealous it wasn’t us.