ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR JUNE 10, 2025
Tony Award winners, Toronto's Dora nominations, a AI Hamlet musical in Seoul, and more
Welcome to the latest edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
In a post-ceremony update to my recent story about the 2025 Tony Awards, South Korea had a good night at Broadway’s biggest awards show, with the Korean-born Maybe Happy Ending nabbing six trophies including Best Musical, Best Actor (for Darren Criss), and Best Director (Michael Arden). The Korean press touted the achievement in stories like this one in The Korea Times and this one in KBS World. The Korea Times story quotes American producer Rachel Sussman (Suffs) on the transnational partnership powering the show’s success, saying, “I think one of the things that has been successful for Maybe Happy Ending as a show and for an artist like Helen Park, who has had success on Broadway with KPOP and is now writing other musicals—they have knowledge of how the American process works.” (Sussman is also the focus of a Korea Times story pegged to the 2025 K-Musical Market in Seoul, in which she discussed the balance of cultural specificity and universal themes needed for a show to work abroad.)
Also of note: The Korean brand Tirtir was the official beauty partner of 78th annual Tony Awards. It’s “the first time a Korean cosmetics company has partnered with the annual ceremony honoring excellence in Broadway theater,” writes Ruthie Fierberg in BroadwayNews.
Get the full, transpacific backstory of the freshly minted Tony winner Maybe Happy Ending in this story from the fall:
And read about my own experience at the 2024 K-Musical Market in this story from a year ago:
Meanwhile, Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata leads the nominations for the Canadian equivalent of the Tonys, the Dora Awards, with 15 noms notched by the two-part epic; in the musical theater division, the pack leader is Yonge Street Theatricals’ Life After (nine noms), a popular new musical widely considered to have its eye on Broadway and beyond. The awards are given out annually by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA); the Canadian performing arts website Intermission has the full list of nominations. As noted by Cassandra Szklarski in The Canadian Press: “For a second year in a row, [major Canadian producer] Mirvish Productions is absent from the list because it withdrew from the alliance known as TAPA in 2023.”
AI gets a spotlight in a couple of recent theater news stories from around the world:
Theo Bosanquet’s story in The Stage asks: “[A]re backstage workers facing job losses or new opportunities?” With a focus on behind-the-scenes crew duties in the age of AI, the story includes a look at “intelligent lighting offerings”—e.g., “the kind of moving lights that [recent productions of] Starlight Express and Miss Saigon were using in a custom-made, experimental way, enabling them to track performers and create dynamic, moving scenes.” Some jobs will be made easier; others will be eliminated entirely. The upshot? “[I]t’s less a question of whether [AI] will begin to change the way we work, but how.”
In Seoul, the National Theater of Korea’s Haneul Theater is home to “the world’s first musical created by artificial intelligence (AI) based on … Hamlet,” according to Kyung-min Pyo in The Korea Times. Voice of Hamlet: The Concert is the Bard’s tragedy reimagined as “a rock concert-style one-person show” created “using an original AI-powered script and a composition model built by the production company Emotional Theatre.” The details in the story are fascinating: “According to the company, the AI was tasked with crafting a scenario based on two key concepts—‘monopolylogue’ and ‘concert’—first generating a draft in English. That version was then translated into Korean and revised through extensive back-and-forth dialogue between the creative team and the AI, eventually resulting in a final script … The score was finalized by music director Kim Sung-soo, known for his work on the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and the smash hit Netflix series Squid Game, who reviewed and arranged the AI’s compositions into fully realized musical numbers.” A review of the production in Korea JoonAng Daily says that “like other man-made musicals, it has its faults.” Critic Jian Lee writes that “[m]any of the songs feature catchy hooks,” but “[u]nlike traditional show tunes that build familiarity by repeating chord progressions or motifs, these numbers often shift unpredictably, making it harder for the audience to follow a musical throughline or emotionally invest.” She also points to script that focus so much on Hamlet’s internal state that details of the plot are lost: “If one’s memory of the original Shakespeare play is fuzzy, it is difficult to understand exactly why Hamlet is so constantly emotionally overwrought.” The show, ultimately, “doesn’t quite measure up.”
The enduringly popular international song competition Eurovision is a getting a musical theater adaptation courtesy of Will Ferrell, who’s co-writing the book of a new stage show based on his 2020 film comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. The latest project from American producer Lia Vollack, who’s currently shepherding MJ around the world, Eurovision will be directed by Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!) and co-written with Harper Steele (Saturday Night Live) and Anthony King (Beetlejuice), with music by Savan Kotecha, also one of the songwriters for the movie. The film follows an Icelandic pop duo (played onscreen by Ferrell and Rachel McAdams) aspiring to represent their country in the titular competition. “Producers didn’t give a timeline for the show, nor did they announce the cast for Broadway,” writes my colleague Rebecca Rubin in Variety.
The final performance of the recent Osaka engagement of Attack on Titan: The Musical will be screened in Japanese cinemas in July, reports Japanese musical theater site Natalie. Attack on Titan has been one of the most popular recent creations in the genre of 2.5D Musicals, the collective name for original, Japanese-language musicals based on anime, manga and videogames. The Japanese-language production played a sold-out, limited run at New York City Center in the fall, and then returned to Japan for a tour of major cities that finished in Osaka on Jan. 13. The cinema screening in Japan takes a page from the brand-building initiatives trail-blazed by the Metropolitan Opera, with its Met Live in HD series of cinemacasts, and National Theatre’s NT Live programming. The screening of Attack on Titan: The Musical is set for July 6 at cinemas around Japan.
I wrote about the New York run of Attack on Titan and delved into the booming world of 2.5D Musicals in this story from October:
Manila is buzzing about the new musical Delia D. The show is built around the tunes of Jonathan Manalo, a hitmaker in the Filipino music industry, and according to Philippines outlet The Freeman, “what has unfolded since [the show’s] debut has stunned critics, industry veterans, and audiences alike: an outpouring of emotion, admiration, and a newfound cultural moment that’s shaking up Philippine theater.” The show, about the rise of the titular (fictional) drag queen, has proven popular enough to warrant the scheduling of additional performances (as reported by BroadwayWorld Philippines). Among the factors key to the show’s success is actor-comedian-director John Lapus, “whose return to the stage is not just a nostalgic delight but a career-defining moment,” according to The Freeman. Produced by Full House Theater Company, the musical will end its extended run at Newport Performing Arts Theater on June 28.
Dreamgirls plays Brazil for the first time in a São Paulo run that starts on July 31. The production will star Samantha Schmütz, “one of the most versatile and beloved artists on the Brazilian artistic scene,” reports local outlet IstoÉ Gente. Directed by Gustavo Barchilon, the show is “presented by the Ministry of Culture, sponsored by Esfera, Return Capital and Zurich Santander, and supported by Hyundai Financiamentos, Unisys Br and Santander Brasil.”
FURTHER READING
Get the scoop on the international reach of the Tony Awards in last week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY:
THE TONY AWARDS ISSUE (2025 EDITION)
How the Tonys show up around the world, and how the world shows up at the Tonys.