1564 Okay, no one's actually certain that April 23, 1564 was 's birthday, but that's the accepted date. Over the next 52 years, the Bard pens such works as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Comedy of Errors, Othello, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar.
1935 A finds herself held hostage by the young man she's befriended. adapts 's novel. and star. There are 82 performances at the Booth Theatre on Broadway.
1952 plays an ant scientist who lives in an anthill Under the Sycamore Tree. Diana Churchill is his ant queen. directs 's comedy at the Aldwych Theatre in London.
1959 plays a gentle sheriff and the dancehall girl who falls in love with him in . directs and choreographs the 472 showings at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. provides the score.
1963 and play a store clerk and salesgirl who can't stand each other—unaware that they've been writing anonymous love letters back and forth—in , , and 's musical . produces and directs. It runs 301 performances at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.
1964 's , about a northern black man murdered by a white southern shopkeeper, is staged at ANTA by . and are in the cast. It runs for 148 performances.
1997 Iceberg! and 's new musical opens on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. The show, about the infamous night in April 1912 aboard the supposedly unsinkable liner, sails on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical and stays afloat for 804 performances.
1998 's hit Off-Broadway drama, , about an elderly woman who tries to spoil her homely 40-year-old daughter's first (and possibly last) chance for romance, opens at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre. The production earns the first Tony Award ever given to a woman for Best Director. (Moments later, takes home the second female directorial Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical for .)
2006 's Olivier Award-winning production of 's opens on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. and play two of the teachers, and the title "boys" include , , , , and . The production wins Tony Awards for actors Barnett, de la Tour, and Griffiths; director ; and Best Play.
2007 , 68, the founder and artistic director of the Smuin Ballet, who won a Tony Award for choreographing the hit 1987 Broadway revival of , dies of an apparent heart attack in San Francisco.
2009 A middle class English weekend gets complicated—in triplicate—by a randy Brit named Norman in the new Broadway production of 's at Circle in the Square. directs the trio of comedies playing in repertory, in a production previously seen at London's Old Vic in 2008. The production wins the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
2013 's returns to the theatre where , as a revival of the drama opens on Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre (formerly known as Henry Miller's Theatre). Directed by , the production stars , , and . Tyson wins a Tony Award for her performance.
2014 , 's play about an upstate colony where heterosexual men dress as women, opens on Broadway at 's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The cast includes , , , and .
2015 returns to Broadway in her first original role in more than two decades as the star of , , and 's , opening at the Lyceum Theatre. The musical is based on 's 1956 play about a millionairess who returns to the town where she grew up to wreak revenge on the man who did her wrong back in her youth.
2017 A new musical stage adaptation of 's opens its doors at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. stars as mysterious candy inventor Willy Wonka. The score includes - songs from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, alongside new ones written by and .
2019 Tootsie, the musical adaptation of the classic '80s film comedy, opens at the Marquis. Starring Santino Fontana in the Dustin Hoffman role, the Scott Ellis–helmed musical (with a score by David Yazbek) takes home Tony Awards for Fontana's performance and Robert Horn's book.
More of Today's Birthdays: 1939. 1947. 1950. Melina Kanakaredes (b. 1967). David Larsen (b. 1980). Savannah Wise (b. 1984).
-Matthew-Murphy.jpg)
