Monster Mash: A big Sondheim bash; a new theater for South Africa; Playboy bunny makeovers

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--The more the merrier: Tony Award winner David Hyde Pierce will host the New York Philharmonic’s 80th birthday concerts for composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, joining a starry cast that includes Nathan Gunn, George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. (Playbill)

--Breakthrough: A new play by venerable South African dramatist Athol Fugard will premiere at the new Cape Town theater named in his honor -- a venue that, along with its acclaimed all-black resident troupe, Isango Portobello, hopes to bring together people of different races. (New York Times)

--Redoing the rabbit: More than 20 artists are creating videos, illustrations, photographs, sculptures and paintings that reimagine the Playboy bunny logo for an exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh celebrating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the first Playboy Club in Chicago. (Independent)

--Move over, Tim Burton: Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who recently left his own company, Morphoses, is preparing ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ for its premiere with London’s Royal Ballet next February. (Guardian)

--Thinking big: Officials in Glendale see promoting the city’s arts community as a way to boost the local economy. (Glendale News-Press)

And in the L.A. Times: Art critic Christopher Knight reviews an exhibition by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; theater critic Charles McNulty reviews Howard Korder’s ‘In a Garden’ at South Coast Repertory.

-- Karen Wada