PBS continues its solo mission of putting Broadway-type shows on TV.
There’s a small sign of that now, when stations air “An Evening with Lerner and Lehrer” during their pledge drive. (See a separate piece here, under “stories.” A bigger package comes in May, with specials on three Fridays.
Two of those shows were done last year, during a slowdown in the pandemic – a Sutton Foster musical in London (shown here) and an outdoor comedy in New York. The other is a documentary. The shows, under the “Great Performances” banner, are:
— “Anything Goes” May 13. Foster, who won a Tony (her second) in the show a decade earlier, went to London to star with Robert Lindsay.
— “Merry Wives,” May 20. Jocelyn Bioh adapted “Merry Wives of Windsor,” for the first Shakespeare in the Park production since the Covid shutdown.
— “Keeping Company with Sondheim,” May 27. That’s the working title of a documentary that followed Stephen Sondheim, Patti LuPone, Katrina Lenk and others, as they prepared a revival of his musical “Company.” He died Nov. 26 at 91, two weeks before the official Broadway opening.