The Public Theater’s upcoming one-night-only benefit concert of The Pirates of Penzance has added four stars to its already epic cast. Jonathan Groff, Montego Glover, Norm Lewis and Anika Noni Rose will join a starry group of actors including Glenn Close, Eric Idle, Martin Short and original star Kevin Kline, who will reprise his Tony-winning role as the Pirate King. The concert will be presented on June 10 at the Delacorte as part of the Public’s annual gala, which will honor the late Nora Ephron (a longtime board member).

Glover will play Kate, with Groff as Frederick, Lewis as Samuel and Rose as Mabel. The ensemble of Pirates also includes Sarah Bolt, Darius Nichols, Eliseo Roman, Martin Sola, Matthew Stocke and Frank Vlastnik. Ted Sperling directs, with musical staging by choreographer Graciela Daniele (who worked on the original 1980 production at the Delacorte Theater) and musical direction by James Moore.

Meryl Streep and Sir Howard Stringer will be on hand to pay tribute to Nora Ephron, who collaborated with Streep for over 25 years.

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The entry starring Jonathan Groff has received an eight-episode order and comes after the loss of scores of LGBT characters on TV in last week’s wave of network cancellations.

HBO is heading to San Francisco.

The premium cable network has handed out series orders to its untitled San Francisco comedy project, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The eight-episode dramedy hails from Andrew Haigh, who directed the pilot that is based on Michael Lannan‘s feature script Lorimer. Haigh will executive produce alongside Bored to Death‘s Sarah Condon and Brothers and Sisters‘ David Marshall Grant, with Lannan receiving a co-EP credit.

The untitled entry will revolves around the three friends in San Francisco who explore the fun and sometimes overwhelming options available to a new generation of gay men. Groff stars alongside Frankie J. Alvarez and Murray Bartlett. Production will begin in the fall in San Francisco for a 2014 premiere.

The Groff vehicle joins recent additions Getting On (six episodes from the creators of Big Love) and Stephen Merchant’s Hello Ladies (eight episodes) as HBO bulks up on half-hours to join comedies Girls and Veep. Christopher Guest entry Family Tree also bowed this month to lackluster returns.

For HBO, the news comes a day after it reversed course and ordered James Gandolfini drama Criminal Justice as a seven-episode limited series.

The gay-themed comedy also comes at a pivotal time for the LGBT community, which recently lost scores of gay characters on TV in last week’s wave of network cancellations.

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New Sets

Gallery Links

• Events & Appearances > 2013 > March 04 – Miscast 2013
• Events & Appearances > 2012 > August 12 – Red Opening Night
• Events & Appearances > 2011 > August 08 – “The Submission” Cast Photocall
• Events & Appearances > 2011 > September 26 – Casting Society Of America’s 27th Annual Artios Awards Ceremony
• Events & Appearances > 2011 > September 27 – “The Submission” Opening Night – Curtain Call
• Events & Appearances > 2009 > February 23 – Defying Inequality
• Candids > June 26 2012 – West Village
• Photoshoots and Portraits > 002 HQ

Glee‘s Jonathan Groff and Joe Mantello have been cast in The Normal Heart, HBO‘s original movie adaptation of the Tony-winning Larry Kramer play, which is being written by Kramer and directed by Ryan Murphy. They join Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons and Taylor Kitsch in the pic, which tells the story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s. Production is slated to begin later this year in New York for a 2014 debut.

Groff, repped by WME, already has a gig with HBO, having been cast as a lead in the premium network’s Michael Lannen pilot, which revolves around three thirtysomething friends living in San Francisco who grapple with the complexities of the modern gay experience. In Normal Heart he will play Craig, the first lover of Bruce Niles (Kitsch), an early victim of HIV-AIDS. Mantello will play Mickey Marcus, an instrumental member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Murphy executive produces with Jason Blum, Dede Gardner and Dante Di Loreto.

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Jonathan Groff, Lyndy Franklin and Jeromy Smith were aspiring Broadway actors sharing an apartment on 51st Street in Manhattan when Groff got the script that would change his life.

“Before I went in for my first audition, Lyndy was away working, and I read all of my audition scenes with Jeromy,” Groff said. “So technically, Jeromy was my first Wendla, before Lea Michele.

“We were reading the beating scene, and Jeromy was like, ‘What is this? What are you auditioning for?’”

The show was Spring Awakening, and it turned out to be a ground-breaking, generational rock musical in league with Hair and Rent. It made stars of Groff and Michele, who went on to star in Fox’s Glee, and it earned 11 Tony Award nominations in 2007, including Groff’s nod for best actor in a musical.

Now, with Franklin and Smith — who have since married and combined their surnames — settled in Lexington as University of Kentucky musical theater instructors, that friendship is paying off: UK Theatre is producing Spring Awakening, and Groff is in town for several days of work on the show.

“The three of us have a relationship with the show that goes back even before I was cast in it, because they were with me through the whole audition process,” Groff, 28, said, sitting in the green room below UK’s Guignol Theatre before Wednesday morning’s rehearsal. “We’ve shared a journey with the show that’s pretty special, so it’s crazy to me that they’re here directing it.”

It’s also crazy to the students in the show that they get to meet and work with one of the actors who made a cultural icon of Spring Awakening, a rock musical about teens in turn-of-the-previous-century Germany awakening to their sexuality.

“His interpretation is infectious through any future Melchior that will exist,” said UK junior Michael Sheehy, who is playing the role that Groff originated. “So this is so exciting. He brings such a positive energy.”

Sophomore Rachel Snyder, who plays the female lead, Wendla, said, “My first reaction was immense nervousness, but that just transformed into this incredible excitement that we have such a fantastic opportunity, because he has such knowledge of the show.”

Theater department chair Nancy Jones said excitement over Groff’s visit has been burning up social media this week among theater students. “I know some of them have had trouble sleeping this week,” she said. “This is like a dream come true for them. He is who they want to be.”

Meeting with the UK students for the first time on Wednesday morning, Groff talked about the origins of Spring Awakening and his own journey with the show, including the first time he met a very confident Lea Michele.

“She was so intense,” Groff said. “She had been doing it since she was 12. She had done every previous workshop and introduced herself saying, ‘Hi, my name is Lea Michele. I have done every previous workshop as Wendla. You must be reading for Melchior.’ She did that with every Melchior that came in the room.”

Groff went through many of the trials and tribulations of developing the show. He likened acting in Spring Awakening to being in college.

“It is such a gift to be in a show where everyone is around the same age and going through the same thing,” Groff told the students.

Before the rehearsal, he said that the most important thing, though, is that the students don’t get fixated on “living up” to Spring Awakening‘s iconic status.

“This show only succeeds if they feel like they created it, if they feel like they were the original cast and it’s their own personal thing,” Groff said. “The purpose of this show is young people who normally would not get to express themselves in this way getting to express themselves.”

Of course, many of those students hope to have some of the experiences Groff has had.

It has been years since Groff and Lyndy Smith got an apartment together in New York after working together in Groff’s hometown, Lancaster, Pa. Another Lexington performer, Laura Bell Bundy, was even briefly their roommate.

A few years later after living together, Groff, Bundy and Lyndy Franklin Smith were all reunited at the 2007 Tony Awards: Bundy was nominated for best actress in a musical for Legally Blonde: The Musical, Groff was up for best actor in a musical for Spring Awakening, and Smith was in the cast of A Chorus Line, which was nominated for best revival of a musical and opened the show with a performance featuring her.

Now the Franklin Smiths are back in Lexington with a smiling 15-month-old baby boy, Ben, and directing a show they saw develop from the beginning.

“We had this amazing journey in New York,” Groff said. “This is like another expression of our Spring Awakening connection.”

Winner of the Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award and six Tony Awards, Red is described as an intimate glimpse into the world of outspoken and opinionated artist Mark Rothko.

Alfred Molina, reprising the role he created in London and was Tony-nominated for on Broadway, is joined by his co-star from the CTG production, Jonathan Groff.

All performances will be recorded live in front of an audience (without sets or costumes) to air on L.A. Theatre Works’ syndicated radio theater series, which broadcasts weekly on public radio stations nationwide and can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org.

In Red, behold the fury of Mark Rothko, celebrated bad boy of the art world, as powerful pigments and opinions splatter the canvases of his newly commissioned works for the highly anticipated Four Seasons restaurant in New York. Paint collides with canvas live on stage as masterpieces are born and torn down in a visceral experience that spills off the stage and forever changes the way audiences see red.

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Glee‘s Jonathan Groff is heading to San Francisco via HBO.

Groff will play Patrick in the untitled Lannan vehicle about three thirtysomething friends living in San Francisco who grapple with all the options in contemporary life and the complexities of the modern gay experience. Patrick is described as a gay man with a successful career as a video game developer who is less successful in his personal life.

In addition, Juilliard grad Frankie Alvarez will co-star as Augustin, an artist’s assistant and Patrick’s best friend who has a strong ego and for whom politics make it difficult for him to settle down with his boyfriend.

The comedy hails from Condon and David Marshall Grant (Brothers and Sisters), with Lannan (Remember Me) on board to pen the script. Andrew Haigh will helm the pilot, which is based on Lannan’s feature script Lorimer.

Groff, repped by WME, most recently was a regular on the second season of Starz’s recently canceled Kelsey Grammer drama Boss. His credits include episodes of The Good Wifeand features Taking Woodstock and The Conspirator. He next voices the lead character in Disney’s upcoming animated feature Frozen and the David Sedaris adaptation C.O.G. On Broadway, the Tony nominee’s résumé includes Spring Awakening.

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I first met Jonathan Groff when he was starring in Spring Awakening on Broadway. Fun fact: Jonathan’s first photo shoot was in Teen Vogue with his fellow Spring Awakening castmates Lea Michelle, Jonathan B. Wright, and John Gallagher Jr. Flash forward six years, and there we were, together in snowy Park City talking about his Sundance debut in the David Sedaris essay-turned-movie, C.O.G. Groff plays a young David Sedaris, working on an apple farm in the Pacific Northwest.

What’s this film about?
“My character goes to Oregon with the intention of being an apple picker to have the quintessential American experience. It goes terribly awry, and so he’s moneyless and jobless in a small town. The movie is very quirky, very upbeat, and there’s something really special about it. When I sat down with Kyle, who is our director, I knew that I had to do it. I’d seen his movie Easier with Practice, which is the only other movie he’s done, and I thought it was really amazing, especially for a first film. Plus I knew that not only was the script really interesting and the character really interesting, but it’s the first time that a David Sedaris piece of writing has been turned into a film.’”

Did you shoot in Portland?
“Yeah. It was 18 days. I think that it set the record for making it into to Sundance. I remember our last week of shooting, Kyle was like, ‘We can get it in by the deadline if, after we wrap in two weeks, we could have something ready.’ It took him two weeks to do a rough edit, then we were in. I screamed. I couldn’t believe it! Not because I didn’t think the movie would be great, but just because it got done so quickly. It’s kind of unheard of.”

Wow! Did he sleep?
“He did not sleep. He has a real eye for editing. As a director, while he was watching it, he was editing it in his mind and he knew which takes he wanted to use. I think, through the course of shooting it, he had a basic idea of what it was going to look like.”

How did you like Sundance?
“It’s winter, but there’s a summer camp vibe to it. It’s a fun energy to be around.”

What was it like to shoot in an orchard?
“We filmed in orchards in Oregon and a lot of the extras in the scenes where we’re picking the apples are actual workers from the farm. We were shooting late in the season, and so at one of the apple farms they did not pick the apples off the trees—they saved them for us, but in a different area. Gary, our production designer, had to tie hundreds of apples on trees with little, green twisty ties because the apples had fallen off. But it looks real in the movie!”

Was Portland gorgeous in the fall?
“It was so beautiful. The movie has really amazing shots of these huge, expansive orchards. Portland is such a beautiful city, especially when you get into the nature of it. The mountains, and the fields… it’s really a special place.”

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