“Obviously she pioneered the way for a lot of women,” McCann’s longtime friend and associate Kristen Luciana told the Daily News. “But Liz was so much more than a great female Broadway producer. She was a great Broadway producer—full stop.”

McCann rose to prominence as one half of McCann & Nugent Productions, a company she formed with Nelle Nugent in 1976. Together they produced a string of critically acclaimed hits including Amadeus (1981), Dracula (1977), and The Elephant Man (1979).

“The theater is a male-oriented world,” McCann told The New York Times Magazine in 1981. “And, sure, we’re women. I just don’t think of producing as being a problem for a woman. I think, essentially, the theater is desperate for success and product and ideas. Therefore, I don’t think anybody cares as much where those things come from as they think they care.”

Those ideas and what Playbill called McCann’s “taste for serious dramas” undoubtedly gave rise to her relationship with lauded playwright Edward Albee. She produced three of his works: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women, The Play About the Baby, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, which won the 2002 Tony Award for best play.

“Every once in a while, a playwright will be lucky enough to run into a producer who is crazy—who is willing to take chances, who feels that a producer’s responsibility is to find work you think really should be seen, to whom financial concern is not the main adventure,” Albee said of McCann in 2004. “The main adventure is trying to get plays on.”

Discovering the ‘Magic’ of Broadway

McCann was born in New York City on March 29, 1931, the only child of Patrick and Rebecca McCann, who had immigrated to New York from Scotland. She grew up in Manhattan’s Garment District, not at all far from what would become her second home: the Theater District. Despite this proximity, McCann did not harbor a childhood love of theater. Her father, who worked as a subway motorman, and her mother, a housewife, weren’t “wildly interested in culture,” McCann told the Times.

In fact, she was forced, all but kicking and screaming, to attend a theater production when she was 14 or 15. The show was Cyrano de Bergerac starring José Ferrer. Her cousin had an extra ticket, and McCann’s mother made her go.

“That was it,” McCann shared in a CUNY-TV interview. “It was just magic. From then on, I wanted to see theater. Now, that took some saving up of allowances to … buy a $3 seat, but that just blew me away, that production.”

McCann attended Manhatanville College and, upon graduating in 1952 considered a few options, none of which included a career in the theater. “I could get married, I could become a nun, or I could become a business rep for the telephone company,” she told the Times. “Since neither God nor man seemed determined to take me for his bride, I settled on the telephone company.”

Ultimately though, a chance meeting with a nun at Manhattanville led her to abandon that plan, according to Madeline Felix, FCLC ’08, who worked with McCann as an undergraduate at Fordham. McCann became her mentor, and the two remained close friends until McCann’s passing.

During a series of unpublished oral history interviews, McCann told Felix that “the telephone companies were loaded with Irish Catholic girls from colleges” back then, so, since she didn’t really know what she wanted to do, that “seemed a good bet.”

“Finally, the day came for my interview with the telephone company, and I was rushing to it when a nun on campus stopped me,” McCann told Felix. “I told her I was going to my interview, and she said, ‘Are you actually thinking of working for the telephone company? … That strikes me as a thoroughly boring thing to do.’ … I never went to the interview.”

Instead, thinking of becoming a drama teacher, McCann pursued a master’s degree in English literature at Columbia University.

Fordham Law: A Surprising Theater Level-Up

When McCann graduated from Columbia two years later, she began working as an unpaid intern at Proscenium Productions, based at Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Unsatisfied with the theater gigs she’d secured thus far, McCann believed that if she got a law degree, she could practice theatrical law.

She enrolled at Fordham Law, graduated in 1966, and passed the New York bar exam. After practicing law for about a year, James Nederlander hired her to be managing director of his newly acquired Palace Theater. McCann later joked that Nederlander’s own unrealized dream of becoming a lawyer and his respect for strong, no-nonsense women who reminded him of his mother were both ticks in her favor.

It turned out to be a fateful hire. Nugent worked for Nederlander as well, and in 1976, the two women struck out on their own, forming their now-legendary production company in the old Paramount Building on Broadway. From 1978 to 1982, their productions earned five back-to-back Tony Awards: Dracula, The Elephant Man, Morning’s at Seven, Amadeus, and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. And McCann’s partnerships with other producers earned her four more Tony Awards: for The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?; Copenhagen, a play about physicists and the development of the atomic bomb; and revivals of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and the musical Hair.

Her latest producing effort, Hangmen, never officially opened. Its previews had just wrapped in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a Broadway shutdown that’s only recently been lifted.

Offering the Next Generation a Leg Up

McCann was known for her willingness to nurture up-and-coming talent and mentor students interested in theater—including Fordham alumni John Johnson, FCLC ’02, now a multiple Tony Award-winning producer in his own right; and Frank DiLella, FCLC ’06, host of Spectrum News NY1’s On Stage. Her position as managing producer of the Tony Awards show—and her lasting friendship with Larry Sacharow, former director of the Fordham Theatre program who directed two of McCann’s Albee productions: Three Tall Women and Beckett/Albee—afforded her plenty of opportunity to do so.

In a 2014 interview with Fordham Magazine, Johnson, who began working with McCann when he was an undergraduate and collaborated with her on the 2009 revival of Hair, referred to her as a “third grandmother” who gave him “priceless” career advice during the decade or so he worked with her.

“She basically gave me the base of my career in terms of the knowledge that I needed for it, whether it was how to know how to read a box office statement or a wrap report, all the way to how she interacted with artists and creatives … with stagehands and crew members,” Johnson said upon McCann’s passing.

“She essentially shattered the glass ceiling of Broadway,” he added, stressing that McCann and Nugent’s refusal to be “pushed aside” has given every subsequent producer the opportunity “to stand on those shoulders.”

“It’s an incredible, incredible impact,” he said.

A funeral Mass was held for McCann on Monday, September 13, at the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, across the street from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. A recording of the Mass is available online.

Clint Ramos, head of design and production for Fordham Theatre, was nominated for two Tonys: one for best costume design, for The Rose Tattoo; and one for best scenic design, for Slave Play.

In a tweet, he expressed gratitude for the nominations and wrote, “May we always remember that this is only intermission and when we’re back, may our desire for a more equitable American theatre reflect the immense love we have for it.”

This fall, Ramos and the rest of the Fordham Theatre program have adapted to telling stories without physical stages on which to perform. He also has enlisted five university theater programs in the Northeast for an online production stemming from themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in plague-ravaged London during the 17th century.

John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, was nominated for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play, for his turn in The Inheritance. Hickey won the Tony in that same category in 2011 for his performance in The Normal Heart. Of his performance in The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez’s six-hour-plus story about gay men in the 21st century that was inspired by E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End, Variety’s Marilyn Stasio wrote, “Hickey plays Henry with passion and dignity, a near-impossible combination to pull off.”

Kenny Leon, who served as the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham in fall 2014, was nominated for best direction of a play for his work on A Soldier’s Play. Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, about a murder at a U.S. Army base in 1944 Louisiana, premiered off-Broadway in 1981 and starred a young Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, just four years out of Fordham. In the New York Daily News, Chris Jones wrote, “Leon manages to direct a show that doesn’t compromise those difficult themes [of systemic racism and violence]while also embracing the commercial and highly entertaining nature of the writing.”

This year’s awards ceremony will be held virtually, on a date still to be determined.

Last fall, Playbill listed Fordham among the colleges most represented on Broadway, so it’s no surprise to find three alumni and one Fordham Theatre faculty member among this year’s Tony Award nominees.

Fordham Theatre alumna Julie White, PCS ’09, is up for best featured actress in a play for her turn in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. Written by Taylor Mac, Gary is an imagined sequel to Shakespeare’s violent revenge drama. It’s set amid the decline of the Roman Empire and tells the story of the minor characters left with the macabre cleanup work following the gruesome events of Shakespeare’s original.

In her review for Vulture, Sara Holdren praised the “combined zaniness and pathos of [White’s] marvelously feverish performance” as Carol, a midwife who is merely mentioned in Shakespeare’s play, and added that it is “all but impossible to imagine Gary without [her] brilliantly kooky antics.”

White previously won the Tony for best actress in a play in 2007 for The Little Dog Laughed, and she was also nominated for best featured actress in a play in 2015 for Airline Highway.

Meanwhile, Ephraim Sykes, FCLC ’10, has been nominated for best featured actor in a musical for his role as David Ruffin in Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. New York Times critic Ben Brantley noted Sykes’ “spectacular scissor splits” and “smoking hot” performance as the music legend who sang lead vocals on Temptations hits like “My Girl” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” but who was as personally troubled as he was talented.

“This is the most monstrous role I’ve ever had to take on,” Sykes told Broadway.com. “The award [for me] is when I walk out of the stage door, and I meet somebody that says, ‘What you did really connected to me.’”

A graduate of the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in dance program, Sykes has previously been nominated for three Astaire Awards for his roles in Broadway productions, including Hamilton. He has also toured with the Ailey II dance company, and in 2016, he played Seaweed J. Stubbs in NBC’s televised live production of Hairspray!

Tony Award winner Clint Ramos, who joined Fordham Theatre last fall as head of the design and production track, has been nominated for best costume design for his work on the play Torch Song. He won the Tony in that category in 2016 for his work on the play Eclipsed.

Rounding out this year’s list of Fordham nominees is producer John Johnson, FCLC ’02, who got his start on Broadway as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham Theatre. He has a total of seven Tonys to his credit (among Fordham alumni, that’s second only to his mentor, Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, a nine-time Tony Award-winning producer).

This year, Johnson has been nominated twice, as an executive producer of best play nominee Gary and of The Waverly Gallery, which is up for best play revival.

Six additional members of the Fordham family are part of productions that have been nominated for 2019 Tony Awards:

• Siena Zoë Allen, FCLC ’15, associate costume designer, What the Constitution Means to Me
• Kaleigh Bernier, FCLC ’16, assistant stage manager, Be More Chill
• Jessie Bonaventure, FCLC ’15, assistant scenic designer, What the Constitution Means to Me and Hadestown
• Drew King, FCLC ’09, ensemble, Tootsie
• Fordham Theatre student Wayne Mackins, ensemble, The Prom
• Michael Potts, former Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham, Mr. Hawkins, The Prom

The 73rd Annual Tony Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, June 9, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Dinner and a Show: Fordham’s alumni office hosts theater outings as part of its cultural events series. On May 9, a group of alumni and guests saw Tootsie and heard from Fordham grad and ensemble member Drew King, FCLC ’09, in a special talkback session after the show. Plans are underway for an October outing to see Ain’t Too Proud featuring Tony-nominee Ephraim Sykes, FCLC ’10. Tickets will be available soon via the alumni events calendar.

From Intern to Executive Producer

In recent years, Johnson has emerged as one of Broadway’s most successful producers. He has a five-year winning streak on the line, having won a total of seven Tonys since 2013.

He got his start in the business as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham, when he helped coordinate the annual Tony Awards show. It was then that he met Fordham alumna and legendary Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, who became a mentor to him.

“For the 10 years that I was in an office with her, Liz gave me this really broad perspective about the business,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2014. “What she taught me, as a theater producer and as a human being, was priceless. She’s like my third grandmother.”

A Return to Roots

If Washington wins next month, it will be his second Tony Award. He won the Tony for Best Leading Actor in 2010 for his role in Fences, a role he reprised in the 2016 film adaptation he directed and co-produced.

In mid-April, he returned to the Lincoln Center campus, where he surprised students and filmed an interview for CBS Sunday Morning.

New York Times critic Ben Brantley has praised Washington’s “center-of-gravity performance” in Eugene O’Neill’s “behemoth barroom tragedy,” The Iceman Cometh. For the Oscar- and Tony-winning star, the role marks a return to his roots. In December 1975, he made his New York stage debut in a Fordham Theatre production of another O’Neill play.

“You know, my first role on stage, when I was a student at Fordham, was in The Emperor Jones,” he recently told the Times. “I’ve always loved O’Neill, and here I am, 40 years later, coming back to him in Iceman.”

Washington and Johnson are not the only ones with Fordham ties among this year’s Tony Award nominees. Christine Jones, who held Fordham’s Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre in 2013, is up for a Tony for Best Scenic Design of a Play for her work on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The 72nd Annual Tony Awards will be held on June 10 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Read about Johnson’s wins from last year here, and read an interview with Johnson from Fordham Magazine in 2014.

In addition to Johnson, Fordham’s alumni talent was well-represented by Kevin Smith Kirkwood, FCRH ’99, who performed in a beautiful and moving “In Memoriam” tribute at the annual awards show.

On Sunday night, he and his fellow producers took home two Tonys: for Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (best revival of a play) and for The Humans (best play). Johnson served as an executive producer of both productions.

In recent years, the Fordham Theatre alumnus has emerged as one of Broadway’s most prolific producers. He got his start as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham, when he helped coordinate the annual Tony Awards show. It was then that he met Fordham alumna and legendary Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, who became a mentor to him. McCann has earned 19 nominations and nine Tony awards in her five-decade career, including one for the 1998 revival of A View from the Bridge. Now, just 14 years after graduating from Fordham, Johnson is quickly catching up: He has received a total of 11 nominations and six Tony awards.

This season was especially fruitful for Johnson, who served as a producer of four other Tony-nominated productions: the revivals of The Crucible and Blackbird, and Bright Star and Shuffle Along in the best musical category—won by Broadway sensation Hamilton.

But even after another year of successes, Johnson is not one to rest on his laurels.

“Every year you are doing a new set of shows that present challenges in terms of how to sell tickets, how to establish an audience, how to work with the artists,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2014. “There’s no getting to that place where we can kick back and have some cocktails and just rake in the money.”

Throughout the live broadcast of the 69th Tony Awards, several Fordham alumni and students performed in medleys from the Broadway shows in which they appear: Kristine Covillo, FCLC ’05, and PCS student Megan Fairchild (On the Town); Taeler Cyrus, FCLC ’08 (An American in Paris); Drew King, FCLC ’09 (On the Twentieth Century); and FCLC student Melanie Moore (Finding Neverland).

Fordham’s alumni office regularly organizes dinner-and-a-show outings as part of its cultural events series. Tickets are still available to see the June 17 performance of On the Twentieth Century.

– Rachel Buttner

As the theater awards season heats up, Fordham alumni are once again getting noticed for brightening the Great White Way and off-Broadway stages.

Two alumnae top the list of the 2015 Tony Award nominees for best actress in a featured play: Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, for her role as Mrs. Kendal in The Elephant Man, and Julie White, PCS ’09, who plays Tanya in Airline Highway.

It’s the first Tony nomination for Clarkson, but the busy actress is no stranger to major awards ceremonies. She earned a pair of Emmys for her recurring role as Sarah O’Connor in the HBO series Six Feet Under, and in 2004 she received an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the film Pieces of April.

For White, it’s an opportunity to take home a second Tony. She won the best actress award in 2007 for her role as a movie agent in The Little Dog Laughed, when she was surprised to be selected from a field that included Angela Lansbury and Vanessa Redgrave. “It didn’t occur to me that I’d win,” she told FORDHAM magazine in 2010. “A lot of stars had to go into alignment for me to be in that situation.”

Producer John Johnson, FCLC ’02, looks to continue a hot streak at the Tonys. He won his first award in 2013, picked up a pair last year, and earned two nods this spring, as executive producer of This Is Our Youth and Skylight, both of which have been nominated for best revival of a play.

And a former Fordham Theatre faculty member is among the Tony nominees this year. Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who directed the program’s Senior Showcase in 2012 and 2013, earned a best director nomination for the play Hand to God, which Time Out New York has called “the freshest and funniest Broadway comedy in years,” praising him and his cast for “maintaining a fine balance of satire and humanity.”

Including Johnson’s and White’s recent wins, Fordham alumni have earned six Tonys in the past seven years. (The two other recipients are Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, who earned the 2010 award for best actor, and John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, who won the 2011 award for best performance by a featured actor in a play.)

Beyond the Tonys, alumni and other members of the Fordham community are up for several other distinguished theater awards (see the complete list below).

Novelist and playwright Anthony Giardina, FCRH ’73, earned outstanding play nominations from the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk for The City of Conversation. The play, which ran last year at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, charts three decades of politics from the perspective of a Washington, D.C., socialite.

And Megan Fairchild, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and a math major at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, is also among the nominees. She made her Broadway debut last fall in On the Town, earning an Outer Critics Circle nomination for outstanding featured actress in a musical.

The winners of the Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and Drama Desk awards will be announced at ceremonies in May, and the Tony Awards ceremony will be broadcast live on CBS on June 7.

AND THE NOMINEES ARE …
Eleven members of the Fordham family have earned individual nominations or are part of productions that have been nominated for major theater awards this spring.

Tony Award Nominees
Individuals
Best Featured Actress in a Play: Patricia Clarkson (The Elephant Man), Julie White (Airline Highway)
Best Direction of a Play: Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God)

Shows
An American in Paris, featuring Taeler Cyrus, FCLC ’08
(12 nominations, including Best Musical)
On the Town, featuring Kristine Covillo, FCLC ’05, and Megan Fairchild, PCS student
(Four nominations, including Best Musical Revival)
On the Twentieth Century, featuring Drew King, FCLC ’09
(Five nominations, including Best Musical Revival)

Outer Critics Circle Award Nominees
Individuals
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play: Patricia Clarkson (The Elephant Man)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical: Megan Fairchild (On the Town)
Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play: The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina, FCRH ’73

Shows
An American in Paris, featuring Taeler Cyrus
(Eight nominations, including Outstanding New Broadway Musical)
On the Twentieth Century, featuring Drew King
(Nine nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Musical)

Drama League Award Nominees
Individual
Distinguished Performance: Julie White (Airline Highway)

Shows
An American in Paris, featuring Taeler Cyrus
(Three nominations, including Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical)
Bootycandy, Aaron Rhyne, FCLC ’02, projection designer
(One nomination: Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play)
The Elephant Man, featuring Patricia Clarkson
(Two nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play)
Finding Neverland, featuring Melanie Moore, FCLC student
(Three nominations, including Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical)
Hand to God, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, director
(Two nominations, including Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play)
On the Town, featuring Kristine Covillo and Megan Fairchild
(Two nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical)
On the Twentieth Century, featuring Drew King
(Three nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical)
Skylight, John Johnson, executive producer
(Three nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play)
This Is Our Youth, John Johnson, executive producer
(One nomination: Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play)

Drama Desk Award Nominees
Individuals
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play: Julie White (Airline Highway)
Outstanding Play: Anthony Giardina (The City of Conversation)
Outstanding Set Design: Christine Jones, former Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre at Fordham University (Let the Right One In)

Shows
An American in Paris, featuring Taeler Cyrus
(12 nominations, including Outstanding Musical)
The Elephant Man, featuring Patricia Clarkson
(Two nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Play)
On the Town, featuring Kristine Covillo and Megan Fairchild
(Three nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Musical)
On the Twentieth Century, featuring Drew King
(Four nominations, including Outstanding Revival of a Musical)

– Rachel Buttner

“Denzel, Denzel, Denzel.”

Upon receiving the 2014 Tony Award for best director, Kenny Leon thanked Fordham alumnus Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, who is currently starring on Broadway in the Leon-directed revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. “He’s truly a theater inspiration.”

The play’s run ended June 15, but the bond between director and star will only strengthen this fall, when Leon is expected to join the Fordham faculty as the University’s 2014 Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre at Fordham, an endowed position established in 2011 with a $2 million gift from Washington. Leon last directed Washington in the 2010 revival of August Wilson’s Fences, which won a Tony for best revival of a play and earned Washington a Tony Award for best actor.

Though Washington was absent from the June 8 awards ceremony in Radio City Music Hall, Fordham was not without stellar alumni representation and achievement on stage.

John Johnson, FCLC ’02, won two Tony Awards. As one of the executive producers of A Raisin in the Sun, he took home the Tony for best revival of a play. He is also a producer of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, which earned four Tony Awards, including the award for best musical. The musical comedy was a Fordham College at Lincoln Center reunion of sorts for Johnson. HIs former roommate Aaron Rhyme, FCLC ’02, did the show’s projection design, for which he won a 2014 Drama Desk Award.

Johnson adds these two Tony wins to his first, earned last year as a producer of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which won best play. After receiving that award last June, Johnson credited his Fordham Theatre training for his success. He recalled that the goal of the program is to create “eclectic professionals” who can fill multiple roles: actor, director, playwright, and producer.
As a producer, Johnson said, “you’re focusing on selling tickets, you’re focusing on advertising, you’re focusing on contracts, you’re focusing on the day-to-day aspects of working with actors, directors, crew members. … You need all of those things in your tool kit, and that’s definitely something that Fordham taught me right from the outset.”

Four alumnae of the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in Dance program helped kick off the Tony Awards ceremony, following host Hugh Jackman’s high-energy entrance into Radio City Music Hall. Marija Juliette Abney (FCLC ’07); Taeler Elyse Cyrus (FCLC ’08); Erin N. Moore (FCLC ’05); and Monique Smith (FCLC ’02), joined their cast mates from the Tony-nominated After Midnight in a special number choreographed by Warren Carlye just for the telecast. The jazzy spectacle, set to “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” also featured Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight, and Fantasia Barrino.

Later in the broadcast, in one of two teasers for the upcoming 2014-2015 theater season, Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson sang “Neverland,” a song from the new musical Finding Neverland, which open this summer at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Hudson will not be part of the cast, but Fordham alumna Melanie Moore, FCLC ’14, will be in the ensemble. Moore, winner of season eight of Fox’sSo You Think You Can Dance, performed the role of Peter Pan during the Tonys’ Finding Neverlandpiece.

Fordham alumni have earned six Tony Awards in the past seven years. In addition to John Johnson and Denzel Washington’s awards, Julie White, FCLC ’85, earned a 2007 Tony for best actress in The Little Dog Laughed, and John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, won in 2011 for featured actor in The Normal Heart.

– Rachel Buttner

Frank DiLella, FCLC ’06, is the theater reporter for NY1 News in New York City and a contributing correspondent for PLAYBILL. A communications major, DiLella taught a course on theatre journalism to undergraduates at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus during the spring semester.

Bertie Carvel – Miss Trunchbull in Matilda(www.matildathemusical.com). Carvel takes gender-bending to a whole new level with his portrayal of the evil headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, in Broadway’s latest smash-hit musicalMatilda. Carvel won the 2012 Olivier Award for creating the character for the Roald Dahl musical in the United Kingdom. He’s currently reprising that performance eight times a week on this side of the pond at the Shubert Theatre. Expect to see this Broadway newbie walk home with a Tony® statue.

Nathan Lane – Chauncey in The Nance(www.lct.org). Two-time Tony® Award winner Nathan Lane (The Producers and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) returns to Broadway this season in Douglas Carter Beane’s new work, The Nance. Lane plays a gay burlesque performer struggling with the realities of homosexuality in New York City in the late 1930s. This performance marks the first Tony® nomination for Lane since his celebrated run in The Producers back in 2001. Lane will inevitably make you shed a tear or two while tickling your funny bone.

Kristine Nielsen – Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (www.vanyasoniamashaspike.com). After successful runs at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., and off-Broadway at Lincoln Center, Christopher Durang’s latest comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has made it to the Main Stem. The play features Durang alums Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce, and Kristine Nielsen as siblings named after classic Chekhov characters. While Pierce and Weaver may add star wattage to the show’s marquis, it is Broadway veteran Kristine Nielsen who gives the performance of the evening; a comedic and heart-wrenching turn that is not to be missed! And when you attend Vanya at the John Golden Theatre, take an extra-close look at the group of names above the title on the poster. John Johnson, FCLC ’02, serves as one of the show’s producers and is responsible for helping move the play to Broadway.

Patina Miller – The Leading Player in Pippin (www.pippinthemusical.com). Last seen on the Great White Way as the salty-tongued Deloris Van Cartier in the musical Sister Act (2011)—a role made famous on film by Whoopi Goldberg—Patina Miller is currently doing “magic” blending Fosse with circus art in the first-ever Broadway revival of the musical Pippin. Miller plays the Leading Player (a part created by Tony® Award winner Ben Vereen) and performs the role to perfection, singing music by Stephen Schwartz, recreating the iconic Fosse choreography (shout out to “The Manson Trio” number), and even tackling the trapeze.

Holland Taylor – Ann Richards in Ann (www.lct.org). After 30 years away from the Broadway stage, actress Holland Taylor returns to the Main Stem in a tour de force performance as the late Texas Governor Ann Richards. On stage for more than two hours, Taylor holds the audience in the palm of her hand in this new solo show, which follows the trials and tribulations of the female political pioneer. And not only can you expect to get a hearty Texas meal from watching Taylor on stage, be sure to check out the audience beforehand. Celebrity sightings have been plentiful, including Meryl Streep, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Anne Hathaway and more!

By Frank DiLella, FCLC ’06