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Principal casting has been announced for the North American tour of Funny Girl. Leading the company as Fanny Brice will be Katerina McCrimmon, who will make her national tour debut with the production. Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Melissa Manchester will take on the role of Mrs. Brice.

They will be joined by current Funny Girl Broadway cast member Stephen Mark Lukas as Nick Arnstein, with Izaiah Montaque Harris as Eddie Ryan, Walter Coppage as Florenz Ziegfeld, Leah Platt as Emma/Mrs. Nadler, Christine Bunuan as Mrs. Meeker, Eileen T’Kaye as Mrs. Strakosh and David Foley Jr. as Tom Keeney. Additional casting will be announced. Casting is by Jim Carnahan and Jason Thinger.

As previously announced, the tour will officially open on September 9 at Rhode Island’s Providence Performing Arts Center. Scheduled stops include Baltimore, Orlando, Nashville, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and more. The tour is currently slated to run through August 2024.

Currently running on Broadway through September 3 at the August Wilson Theatre, the Funny Girl revival is directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Ellenore Scott, with tap choreography by Ayodele Casel. The musical features a score by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill and an original book by Isobel Lennart revised by Harvey Fierstein. The musical follows the path of real-life comedian Fanny Brice on her road to stardom.

“Fans have adored Melissa throughout her 50-year musical career, and Katerina is a star in the making who embodies the rising stardom of Fanny. We could not be more thrilled to have this dynamic and talented duo lead the Funny Girl tour,” Mayer said in a statement.

The Funny Girl tour is being produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Scott Landis, David Babani and NETworks Presentations.

has caused a mass hysteria and is on an unstoppable run at the box office since its release.
Animal  The Ranbir Kapoor starrer has already crossed the Rs 100 crore mark on its first day and there are high chances that it will surpass the Rs 200 crore mark on its second day. ##JUMPLINK## Animal sequel As Animal continues to rule the box office, fans have already begun asking for its sequel and shooting fan theories in the comment sections of several social media threads.
Even director Sandeep Reddy Vanga said that he would dive deeper into the characters and storytelling of Animal if the film worked, which is definitely happening right now.
I watched the FDFS for Animal and here are my predictions for the plot and continuation of its story and sequel, Animal Park. 1. The park There must be a reason behind the name – Animal Park.
And one of the reasons might be the family and new characters that would get introduced, seeking revenge on one another. (Spoilers ahead; tread with caution) In the film, we saw Aziz the butcher, Ranvijay’s doppelganger, both played by Ranbir Kapoor, killing one of Ranbir’s henchmen and announcing marriage with his elder brother’s wife. Aziz’s elder brother, Abrar (played by Bobby Deol), already had two wives and multiple kids, along with many of his own siblings in the family with their respective kids. They could all declare war against Ranvijay for killing the eldest member of the family, Abrar, causing total chaos and annihilation. 2. The illusion or stealth In the film, we saw Ranvijay’s wife (played by Rashmika) leaving him after all the bloodshed.She might go to an unknown place to spend her life in solitude, where Aziz finds her, apologises, and starts manipulating her slowly, turning her against her own family, which will eventually destroy Ranvijay. 3. The carnage The previous point mentioned Aziz’s stealth mode, but he might decide to wage a full-fledged war against his own bloodline, causing Ranvijay to activate his ‘carnage’ mode. Ranbir’s Ranvijay character has already showcased the limits he could cross to protect his family, but it would be interesting to see how much more ‘savage’ he can get. Author

One of the most brilliant and funniest comedians Ghana can boast of, Emmanuel Nkansah Ansong,  known professionally as Lezky Decomic, has disclosed that affluent people do not laugh at comedy shows.

Lekzy, during a recent interview with Berla Mundi on the Day Show shared an experience he had at an event he was invited to that had affluent people present.

Speaking to Berla Mundi on the Day Show, the award-winning comedian shared an experience he had at an event he was invited to that had wealthy  people present. According to  him, the table with the rich people didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing.

He explained by saying, “Abrantie had a fashion show and invited me and a couple of millionaires. When I got there, I wanted to act like a big boy. So, I got a glass of water and decided to socialize. There was this table with Cheddar and his guys and he was like, ‘Come around. Let’s propose a toast. So he asked if it was champagne or whiskey and I said it’s water and he said, ‘I don’t propose water’. It just brought me down. I started talking and these people were doing their thing.”

 Lekzy divulged  that he encountered some people of his kind that were receptive to what he had to offer. In the words of the comedian, “The whole setup was actually built for comedy so I found one table. I think they are from where I come from. They were responding so well so I was like ‘Today, you are my audience’. I focused on them, did what I had to do and I left,” he stated.

However, due to this experience, Lezky is of the view that rich people do not laugh at comedy shows. “For rich people, they won’t laugh but they still come to you and go like ‘That was really good, you’ll go far’,” he noted

Few metal bands have exploded in popularity across the last decade like Ghost. Be it filling out arenas, winning awards or going viral on TikTok, it’s seemed like Tobias Forge’s spooky party starters are unstoppable right now. Amazingly, in an exclusive interview in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, Forge reveals that the very first Ghost song he wrote wasn’t necessarily meant to be taken entirely seriously.

“Ghost started with a song, Stand By Him, which ultimately came out on our first record,” he explains. “I wrote it spontaneously, as an experiment – almost a joke, if you will, in 2006. When I recorded it the first time, I had no equipment in my home, so I had to go to a friend’s house. We did this very rough demo. He said it was great. He’d been in Subvision, Repugnant and Crashdïet with me, but we’d stopped playing together. He was like, ‘Can we form a new band?’ and I was like, ‘This song is the only thing I have. If I can come up with two more songs and there’s a pattern, then of course.’ But they needed to be as playful and spontaneous, and sure enough they were.”

The rest is, as they say, history. Ghost would go on to become one of the biggest metal bands of their generation – though as Forge reveals, there was another early bump (or should that be bumps?) in the road that threatened to put a halt to his dreams of making it big in the music industry.

“Around 2008, when Ghost were first getting properly started, my girlfriend told me she was pregnant with twins,” he says. “I never said it out loud, but I was preparing for my dream not coming true – maybe I wouldn’t become a rock star, I’d never be successful… So I had to at least have something that I could live with, a hobby that I could feel strongly about and get all my inclinations filtered through. I wanted to play metal, but also write pop music, have this horror rock show with theatre… Still taking inspiration from Venom pictures in 1982 where they looked like bikers surrounded by smoke and red lights. Ghost felt like a combination of all those things. Lo and behold, when I didn’t have all the time in the world, like I had before and gotten nowhere, when I could only put so much effort in, everything changed.”

Ghost are currently midway through their US tour, which wraps up next month. Read more from Tobias in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, out now.