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[0:05] Mark Peikert: Good morning, theater lover, and happy August.

[0:08] Mark Peikert: I'm Mark Peikert, editor in chief of Playbill, and you are listening to Today in Theatre History for the week of August 10th through August 16th.

[0:19] Mark Peikert: When Paul Robeson opens August 10th, 1942, in the title role of Othello at the Brattle Hall Summer Theater in Massachusetts, he becomes the first black actor to play the Moor in an interracial production in the United States. His performance receives rave reviews.

[0:36] Mark Peikert: In 1983, Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy, who had recently been auditioning for the role of Uncle Ben in a Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, does not get the part. A spokesperson for the production soon makes a statement saying it had to do with ability and talent. It had nothing to do with politics.

[1:05] Mark Peikert: Me and My Girl wins Tony Awards for Robert Lindsay and Marianne Pankett, but loses the best musical award to another British import, Les Misérables. There are 1,420 performances on Broadway.

[1:26] Mark Peikert: The Tony Award nominee for Sugar Babies is best known for his puckish film performances in the many Andy Hardy movies and other films such as Babes in Arms and Babes on Broadway.

[1:46] Mark Peikert: Over the objections of her parents, it stays for 312 performances and is later filmed with Clara Bow.

[1:55] Mark Peikert: In 1999, Cheryl L. West's Jar the Floor opens at Off-Broadway's Second Stage Theater. The play looks at four generations of African American women who gather to celebrate the family's great-grandmother's 90th birthday.

[2:10] Mark Peikert: Three years after the original Broadway production closed, Rent returns to New York in 2011 with an off-Broadway revival at New World Stages.

[2:20] Mark Peikert: The world premiere of Annie Baker's John opens off-Broadway at Signature Theater's Irene Diamond Stage in 2015. Georgia Ingall stars as Murtis, the cheerful innkeeper at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg.

[2:34] Mark Peikert: Paul Portner's farce Sheer Madness opens August 12, 1987, for a 12-week run at DC's Kennedy Center. The show later changes to an open-ended run and becomes the longest-running show in the nation's capital.

[2:47] Mark Peikert: The improvisational Who Dunnit transports the action of the play to present-day Georgetown at the Sheer Madness Hairstyling Salon. The performance culminates nightly with an audience vote on who is guilty and who is not guilty. To date, it has run more than 13,000 performances.

[3:27] Mark Peikert: The cast includes Daniel Breaker, Colin Donald, Rachel Dratch, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Patty Murin, and Bryce Pinkham.

[3:36] Mark Peikert: On August 13th, 1921, Lynn Fontanne has her first major hit in the starring role of Jolcey, a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Mark Connolly. Despite her success, she rarely performs without future husband Alfred Lunt again.

[3:52] Mark Peikert: Getting the Band Back Together, a musical about an out-of-work banker who reunites his old high school rock band, opens on Broadway at the Belasco Theater in 2018.

[4:03] Mark Peikert: Comedian DeWolf Hopper debuts his dramatic recitation of the poem Casey at the Bat at Wallach's Theater on August 14, 1888. It becomes a cornerstone of his act for the next 40 years.

[4:18] Mark Peikert: In 1928, his opening night for one of the great comedy classics of Broadway history, The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's story of Hobo Reporters covering the story of a lifetime, bows at the Times Square Theater, starring Osgood Perkins and Lee Tracy.

[4:32] Mark Peikert: Howard Crabtree tragically does not get to see the 1996 opening of his Win Pigs Fly, as he died of complications from AIDS less than two months earlier. The musical revue with wild costumes, conceived by Crabtree and Mark Waldrop with music by Dick Gallagher, plays 334 performances at Off-Broadway's Douglas Fairbanks Theatre.

[4:54] Mark Peikert: In 2003, a power blackout cancels Broadway, Off-Broadway, and many regional shows.

[5:03] Mark Peikert: The life story of Beatle John Lennon comes to Broadway in 2005 with Lennon. The cast includes Will Chase, Chuck Cooper, Mandy Gonzalez, Terrence Mann, and Julia Murney.

[5:15] Mark Peikert: On August 15, 1988, Nell Carter and André De Shields open in a revival of Ain't Misbehavin', the 1978 musical revue of Fats Waller's music. Co-conceiver Richard Maltby Jr. directs the production, which opens on Broadway at The Ambassador. The show lasts 176 performances.

[5:35] Mark Peikert: Hairspray, the stage musical adaptation of John Waters' cult film, opens in 2002 on Broadway and goes on to win the lion's share of the 2003 Tony Awards. It stays at the Neil Simon Theater for 2,642 performances.

[5:53] Mark Peikert: In 2006, Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Melman opened on Broadway in Kiki and Herb, Alive on Broadway, as Kiki, an alcoholic cabaret star, and Herb, her pianist and only living friend.

[6:08] Mark Peikert: On August 16, 1913, Montague Glass's comedy Potash and Perlmutter begins a hit run at the Cohen Theater, starring George Sidney and Alexander Carr as the hapless pair.

[6:21] Mark Peikert: The world premiere of Charles Bush's Olive and the Bitter Herbs, starring Marcia Jean Kurtz, Julie Halston, and Dan Butler, opens off-Broadway at Primary Stages. Mark Brokaw directs the comedy about an actor who sees a ghost in her mirror.

[6:36] Mark Peikert: Samantha Barks and Andy Karl take on the roles created on-screen by Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, the musical, opening in 2018 on Broadway at the Nederlander.

[6:47] Mark Peikert: For more theater history, visit Playbill.com. And for more great podcasts, visit BroadwayPodcastNetwork.com.