Latest news with #HudsonTheatre
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nick Jonas garners mixed reviews for new Broadway show
Nick Jonas has been widely panned for his latest stage performance. Jonas is currently starring in the Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years. The theatrical revival also stars Tony winner Adrienne Warren. The production's official opening took place on Sunday evening at the Hudson Theatre in New York City. The Last Five Years explores the five-year relationship between mismatched couple Jamie Wellerstein (Jonas), a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt (Warren), a struggling actor. Time Out reviewed the show: "The problem is not that Jonas can't sing the part, though he doesn't sing it especially well. It's that the persona he has crafted over time - the ingratiating moves, mild pop riffs and bouncy strut of a cute, athletic, slightly cocky but basically nice All-American boy next door - are at a polar distance from what he is asked to play." Vulture agreed, "It's not his voice that lets him down; it's the lack of contours in his character." New York Theatre opined, "Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas, who are appealing and talented singers, just don't seem like a match for these roles, or for each other." Jonas began acting on Broadway at the age of seven, playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. He has since appeared in a raft of shows including The Sound of Music, Les Miserables and Hairspray.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nick Jonas Reveals Daughter Malti's Adorable Reaction Before ‘The Last Five Years' Opening Night
Nick Jonas got a 'singular impression' that his 3-year-old daughter, Malti Marie, is his No. 1 fan as he conquers Broadway. 'OK, so I'm all dressed and ready. I was walking out the door and my daughter, in her Tinkerbell dress, looked at me and said, 'Oh wow, goodbye Prince Charming. Break a leg,'' Jonas, 32, said in a Sunday, April 6, Instagram video, referring to his black pinstripe suit. 'So, I'm cooked.' Jonas is currently starring as Jamie Wellerstein in the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years. The theatrical revival, directed by Tony nominee Whitney White, also stars Adrienne Warren. The production's official opening is slated for Sunday evening at the Hudson Theatre in New York City. 'What a way to kick off opening day,' Jonas wrote via his Instagram Stories earlier on Sunday, sharing a handmade poster from his daughter. 'Thank you, MM.' Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra's Sweetest Quotes About Parenthood With Daughter Malti: Every Moment Is 'Precious' The poster featured multicolored tape spelling out 'Congrats,' as well as a stencil of Malti's hands, stickers of stars and the skyline of the Big Apple. The Jonas Brothers singer shares his only child with wife Priyanka Chopra Jonas, whom he wed in 2018. They welcomed Malti via surrogate in January 2022. After a premature birth and 100-day NICU stay, Malti was finally able to come home with her parents. "You realize quickly once you have a child that you can't control everything,' Jonas recalled during a November 2023 appearance on the 'Read the Room' podcast. 'I think that was the biggest lesson for me at a stage in my life I didn't expect to learn.' Nick Jonas Sweetly Kisses Daughter Malti's Forehead in the Middle of Jonas Brothers Concert He added, "You know, we went through a really tough couple of months at the start of her life and you have that vision [of] how it's going to go throughout your whole life, and then it's something completely different. Then, every day from there is completely different and presents its own set of challenges.' Now that Malti's growing up, Jonas has gotten to see her personality develop — and how his daughter takes after Chopra Jonas, 42. 'It's so encouraging to be around people like that [who don't take themselves too seriously],' Jonas said on the 2023 podcast. 'I'm not talking about self-deprecating stuff, [but] like if you walk into a door, it's funny. It's not like, 'Haha, you're an idiot.' It's like, 'We love you and we all saw it.' I think it's a really lovely quality to have in people. And obviously, my wife embodies that in spades. We're seeing it now manifest in our daughter in a way that is brilliant.' He gushed, 'Her sense of humor and her ability to laugh at situations, and even her mischievous attitude, it's great.'
Chicago Tribune
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘The Last Five Years' on Broadway stumbles with its casting
NEW YORK — At its core, Jason Robert Brown's two-character musical 'The Last Five Years' is about the difficulty of maintaining a relationship while working in high-pressure creative fields. Its score, provocative and beautiful, is filled with songs about loneliness, insecurity and isolation and about how hard it can be to sustain a power balance within a marriage when one partner's career is on the rise and the other's is stuck perpetually in the weeds. It's also a show about early-career artists, those years when big breaks have to be grabbed by the horns but also when the agonizing realization first dawns that they might never happen. (One chills out either way, as one ages.) And that's the first disconnect with the disappointing new Broadway production at the Hudson Theatre, featuring the truly bizarre casting of Nick Jonas, the pop star of Jonas Brothers heritage and fame, playing the rising novelist Jamie and Adrienne Warren as struggling summer-stock actress Cathy. Warren is best known for playing the title role in 'Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,' a character that is about as far away from Cathy as Jupiter is from Mars. Both of these performers are whopping musical talents and their mutual vocal prowess is very much on display — to the obvious delight of the many Jonas fans in the house. But you simply cannot believe that Warren is a hard-working but everyday young actress stuck in Ohio, doing shows no one of importance comes to see, any more than you can believe Jonas is a writer who is new to the temptations of fame, and also young enough to be excited by a New Yorker review of his book, rather than the reality, which is that he is an accomplished and experienced star. More importantly, you also cannot believe these two are in love. Rather, they seem stuck both invulnerable to each other and stuck in two completely different worlds. That's always a risk with this 90-minute show, which I first saw in its lovely premiere at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie in 2001, where it starred Lauren Kennedy and Norbert Leo Butz working with director Daisy Prince. That's because Brown structured the show so that the five-year relationship between Jamie and Cathy unspools in opposite directions. Jamie's story is told in chronological order. But Cathy's story is recounted in reverse, akin to 'Merrily We Roll Along'; in the first scene, her song mourns the end of her marriage. Think that structure through and you'll realize that the two have to meet in the middle. In the previous productions I've seen, that's been the core of the experience and, metaphorically, an observation about how a two-career marriage, although shot through with expectations and pressures of perpetual unity, typically has only a very limited amount of time when both parties could actually be said to be in the same place. The show's excellent advice is to grab it while you can, because the rest of a marriage is hard work. Brown came to some early wisdom on that particular topic. But in a musical, if you're not pulling for said relationship to survive and if you don't believe you are watching a real partnership that could live or die before your eyes, nothing works. And so it goes here. The pivotal meeting in the middle feels much like any other scene in director Whitney White's production, a show that delivers beautifully sung treatments of Brown's score, which on Broadway features some newly enriched orchestrations from the composer. Indeed, the whole experience feels as if you are watching two very different cabaret performers smushed together on a single bill, not two characters fighting for their marital lives. Frankly, the set design by David Zinn doesn't much help, either; it seems to reflect ambivalence of scale and purpose. I'll forever be deeply fond of this score and, indeed, the show's willingness to probe one of the trickiest aspects of a relationship, which is who has to give up what and when, and whether one party ever has a responsibility to rescue another. (Sure they do). 'The Last Five Years' also is uncommonly wise when it comes to explaining how skillfully some people rationalize marital difficulties as being seated entirely with the other person. You may be familiar. But with all due respect for their formidable talents, Jonas and Warren just aren't right for the piece, either individually or together.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
You Bet Joe and Kevin Jonas Were in the House for Nick Jonas' Return to Broadway in ‘The Last Five Years'
Of course Joe and Kevin Jonas were in the house on Tuesday night (March 18) to support their brother Nick Jonas in his return to Broadway in The Last Five Years. The siblings were reunited on the stage with Nick's co-star, Adrienne Warren in a family snap at the kick-off of preview performances at the Hudson Theatre in New York. The show tells the story of a relationship's end from the perspective of aspiring novelist Jamie (Jonas) and struggling actress Cathy (Warren) in a Rashomon-like tale in which Jamie tells his side in chronological order and Cathy starts at the dissolution of their marriage and works her way backwards. More from Billboard Nick Jonas Felt a 'Cool Breeze' In a Place He Didn't Want to After Pants-Splitting Broadway Rehearsal Mishap It's Giving Country: Chappell Roan Goes Full '90s Twang on 'The Giver' JENNIE's 'Ruby' Debuts at No. 2 on Billboard's Top Album Sales Chart In the production in which Warren and Jonas are the only on-stage actors, Nick said in an Insta video earlier this week that returning to Broadway feels 'so intense. This is a very intense show. And I am honestly ready for it, but it's natural to feel a little nervous. So I think I'm trying to step into this with real focus and confidence, but it's a big show. And it's got a lot of fans all over the world.' The Last Five Years premiered in Chicago in 2001 before moving to New York for an off-Broadway run in 2002 and a second off-Broadway stint in 2013. In 2015, it was adapted into a rom-com starring starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan. The current production will officially open on April 6 and run for 14 weeks, closing on June 22. It marks Jonas' return to Broadway 13 years after starring in the 2012 revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Watch Jonas and Warren take their first bows at the end of Tuesday night's show below. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
