1908 J. Lucifer Mephisto tempts a sculptor to be unfaithful in The Soul Kiss. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, the musical comedy stars Ralph Herz, Adeline Genee, and Cecil Lean. Harry B. Smith provides the book and Maurice Levi, the music.
1944 Cole Porter's musical Mexican Hayride, with a book by Dorothy Fields and Herbert Fields, opens on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre. Starring Bobby Clark as a fugitive on the run in Mexico, the production runs for 481 performances.
1965 Ulu Grosbard revives Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge at the Sheridan Square Playhouse. Robert Duvall plays the troubled Eddie Carbone and Jon Voight plays Rodolpho. It runs 780 performances.
1976 With the passage of time, Jason Robards goes from Jamie to James, the patriarch of the Tyrone family. Directed by Robards, Long Day's Journey into Night plays for 11 performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Zoe Caldwell co-stars as Mary Tyrone.
1979 Wings takes flight at the Lyceum Theatre. Originally written for radio, Arthur Kopit's saga of a stroke victim fighting her way back to competence stars Constance Cummings. John Madden stages the 117 performances.
1988 Sarafina!, the South African musical by Mbongeni Ngema and Hugh Masekela, transfers from Lincoln Center to Broadway's Cort Theatre. The cast is comprised of young South African singers. The show receives five 1988 Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical.
2010 Time Stands Still, Donald Margulies' play about journalists who return home after covering war—only to investigate their own conflicted feelings about life and work—opens on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Brian d'Arcy James, and Eric Bogosian star. The production transfers to the Cort Theatre later that year, with Christina Ricci replacing Silverstone.
2015 The world premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem opens at the National Theatre in London. Nicholas Hytner directs the play about a young researcher exploring matter and consciousness.
Today's Birthdays: Colette (1873–1954). Dorothy Donnelly (1880–1928). Mary Boland (1880–1965). Arnold Moss (1910–1989). Spiro Malas (1933–2019). Alan Alda (b. 1936). Mikhail Baryshnikov (b. 1948). Hamish McColl (b. 1962). Peter McDonald (b. 1972). Joey Fatone (b. 1977). Adam Lambert (b. 1982).
