1915 It's 90 in the Shade at the Knickerbocker Theatre. Richard Carle and Marie Cahill star in the musical with a score by Jerome Kern and book by Guy Bolton. The production closes abruptly after 40 performances when the actors, who had not been paid in a week, refuse to go on.
1968 Robert Anderson's family drama I Never Sang for My Father opens at the Longacre Theatre with a cast that includes Lillian Gish, Hal Holbrook, and Alan Webb.
1973 National Lampoon's Lemmings plays at the Village Gate in New York City. The revue, inspired by the magazine National Lampoon, has a cast that includes future Saturday Night Live stars John Belushi and Chevy Chase, among others. The 11-month run is directed by Tony Hendra.
1978 Laughter!, Peter Barnes' black comedy, runs at London's Royal Court Theatre. Timothy West, Frances de La Tour, and Roger Kemp are featured.
1982 Faye Dunaway stars in The Curse of an Aching Heart, which opens at the Little Theatre. Written by William Alfred, the play follows a woman moving through various stages in her life from childhood to retirement.
1996 Author-composer Jonathan Larson dies of an aortic aneurysm just one day before the first Off-Broadway performance of Rent. Read the original cast's memories of Larson twenty years later here.
2002 At a special sold-out performance attended by Colm Wilkinson, Cameron Mackintosh, Judy Kuhn, and Trevor Nunn, Broadway's Les Misérables celebrates surpassing the 6,137-performance run of A Chorus Line, making it the second-longest running show in Broadway history. The cast performs a combination of songs from the two shows—"One" and "One Day More."
2007 A revival of Brian Friel's Translations opens at the Biltmore Theatre, starring David Costabile, Morgan Hallet, and Dermot Crowley. The updated production features new music by Sam Jackson.
2009 Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen's classic tale of an unhappily married woman in 1880s Norway, gets a fresh approach on Broadway with Christopher Shinn's new adaptation, starring Mary-Louise Parker and MIchael Cerveris. Ian Rickson directs the production at the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre.
2010 Corbin Bleu makes his Broadway debut as a replacement Usnavi in Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes' In the Heights at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Today's Birthdays: W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965). Alan Brooks (1888–1936). Mildred Dunnock (1901–1991). Paula Laurence (1916–2005). Elizabeth Allen (1929–2006). Dean Jones (1931–2015). Patricia Marand (1934–2008). Sybille Pearson (b. 1937). Richard Poe. (b. 1946). Ruth Williamson (b. 1954). Jenifer Lewis (b. 1957). Dinah Manoff (b. 1958). Ariana DeBose (b. 1991).
