Who: Ed O’Neill, David Alan Grier, Alicia Stith, Richard Thomas, Phylicia Rashad
What: Virtual benefit reading
Where: TodayTix
When: Thursday, October 29, $5, 8:00
Why: TodayTix, the discount entertainment site, is keeping up its mission to offer affordable theater with “Spotlight on Plays from Broadway’s Best Shows,” seven virtual plays featuring all-star casts, livestreaming for a mere five bucks (and available for viewing for seventy-two hours). The series kicked off October 14 with Gore Vidal’s the Best Man, with John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Williams, Zachary Quinto, Phylicia Rashad, Reed Birney, and Elizabeth Ashley. Instead of being performed in little Zoom boxes, the actors were standing in regular-size rooms, not sitting in their kitchens or offices, surrounded on the computer screen by wallpaper that helped define the location. On October 21, Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth featured Lucas Hedges, Paul Mescal, and Grace Van Patten, directed by Lila Neugebauer. Next up for the newly redubbed TomorrowTix is Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet’s Race, which debuted at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2009 with Kerry Washington, David Alan Grier, James Spader, and Richard Thomas; Grier and Thomas are back for the virtual reading of the work, which deals with a racially charged sexual assault, joined by Ed O’Neill and Alicia Stith, with Rashad directing.
The series continues November 12 with Patti LuPone, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Sophia Macy in Boston Marriage, written and directed by Mamet; November 19 with Alan Cumming, Constance Wu, Samira Wiley, K. Todd Freeman, and Ellen Burstyn in Uncle Vanya, narrated by Gabriel Ebert and directed by Danya Taymor; December 3 with Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still, starring original cast members Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, and Brian d’Arcy James, once again directed by Daniel Sullivan; and December 10 with Colman Domingo, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tamberla Perry, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Heather Simms, Laurie Metcalf, Carrie Coon, David Morse, Kristine Nielsen, and Annie McNamara in writer-director Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue. Proceeds from “Spotlight on Plays” benefit the Actor’s Fund.