Weekly Margin 2020, W15: Coping Mechanisms

Another hard week for everyone. I don't have a new insight for us this time. I hope those who celebrate had a festive Seder (I participated in a family one via Zoom) and/or a good Easter. I hope those who celebrate, celebrated still in isolation and safety.

Here's my positive thing to report: my brilliant friend Marissa and I had planned to watch the Tim Minchin arena tour production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Andrew Lloyd Webber's site but we forgot about time zones and missed our window (yes, we know it's on Prime to rent) and instead made good use of our time by planning the One True Good Revival of our favorite raccoon musical (it is a trash panda and we love it anyway). Someone please give us lots of money so we can produce it properly.

See below for other actual theater things, including this week's watch list and new developments on the theater landscape.

Streaming Theater-Related Content I Watched

• A condensed version of Anything Goes starring Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, and Burt Lahr.
• Lindsay Ellis's "Why is Cats?"
• NTLive's Jane Eyre.
• Paul Gordon's Pride and Prejudice.
• It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman.
• Cole Porter's Aladdin. [CW: unapologetic yellowface]
• Brian Stokes Mitchell singing "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha out his window into the street (an especially nice moment, showing his recovery from COVID-19).
• The stage version of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag on Amazon Prime.
• A smattering of clips across YouTube, including: Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball singing one of my favorite renditions of "A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd, Aaron Tveit singing "Popular" from Wicked, Colm Wilkinson, Alfie Boe, Simon Bowman, and John Owen-Jones singing "Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables, Anika Larsen and Keala Settle demolishing everything with "Take Me Or Leave Me" from Rent, Jonathan Groff doing his best Sutton Foster in the title song from Anything Goes, and Sutton Foster rehearsing the same number (holy shit, guys, she's such a star).

Theater Developments

• The Drama Desks will go on as scheduled at the end of May, online. They will be in honor of former Drama Desk President William Wolf, who passed away last month from COVID-19 complications. Relatedly, the Lucille Lortel Awards will be revealed online, while the Obies are postponed.
• London's West End extended its shutdown to May 31.
• Broadway extended its shutdown to June 7.
• As a direct result, Beetlejuice has officially ended its run.
• Broadway actor Nick Cordero is in the ICU in very serious condition.