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All stories by David Finkle on BroadwayStars

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Sunday, May 3, 2015

First Nighter: Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" Back at the Met by David Finkle

When you compose an opera based on William Hogarth's famous and guardedly beloved series "The Rake's Progress," you build...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 10:47AM

First Nighter: Stravinsky's 'Rake's Progress' Back at the Met by David Finkle

<![CDATA[Jonathan Miller's 1997 production of <em>The Rake's Progress</em>, revived at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time since 2003, and around for only two addi…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 06:47AM

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

First Nighter: Trash Cuisine Scrutinizes Man's Inhumanity to Man by David Finkle

It's been said that theater emanating from repressed societies is the most pungent. You certainly believe it's the god's honest truth at Trash Cuisine, which the Belarus Free Theatre -- free…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 08:18PM

Monday, April 27, 2015

First Nighter: "The Merry Widow" at the Met With New Cast Trying by David Finkle

If there's one thing Susan Stroman's new production of The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera House isn't,...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 01:02PM

Sunday, April 26, 2015

First Nighter: Anne Hathaway in "Grounded," Irish Troubles in "The Belle of Belfast," Red Bull Theater's "'Tis Pity She's a W by David Finkle

Synchronicity can be a scary, shocking and ominously timely thing. Only days after Barack Obama apologizes for a drone killing hostages held by al Qaeda in Pakistan, George Brant's Grounded…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 07:04PM

Friday, April 24, 2015

First Nighter: Lisa D'Amour's "Airline Highway" Traffic Jam by David Finkle

Everybody knows about gang comedies, most often as television series. Something less talked about, if ever talked about, are...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 12:05AM

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

First Nighter: 'Doctor Zhivago' Caught at Musical Malpractice by David Finkle

Before the lights go down at the Doctor Zhivago start, the tall, dark Broadway Theatre curtains are parted maybe six or eight feet. Filling the space between them is a compilation of grey c…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 09:02PM

Monday, April 20, 2015

First Nighter: 'Living on Love' Proves Insufficient, Even With Renée Fleming by David Finkle

What do you get when you cross Noel Coward's Private Lives with the Cole Porter-Samuel Spewack-Bella Spewack Kiss Me, Kate? You get cross. That's what you get.

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 06:39PM

Overreaching Revisions of Broadway Revivals by David Finkle

"Gigi" and "An American in Paris" underline a disturbing trend.

SOURCE: Clyde Fitch Report at 02:25PM

Thursday, April 16, 2015

First Nighter: Peter Sarsgaard in Shakespeare's and Austin Pendleton's "Hamlet" by David Finkle

It's surprising how many actors appearing as William Shakespeare's Hamlet don't take heed of the young Dane's advice to the players about speaking trippingly on the tongue and not sawing the…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 10:06AM

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

First Nighter: Flying Off Course While 'Finding Neverland' by David Finkle

Weinstein has certainly toiled industriously to render the movie he produced into a hit. Maybe the hordes of Peter Pan fans will turn it into one.

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 10:11PM

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

First Nighter: The Schwartz-Almond "Iowa," The Good-Time "39 Steps" by David Finkle

Towards the end of the Jenny Schwartz-Todd Almond somewhat musical Iowa--or Iow@, as the program has it--four Mormon sister-wives...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 09:52AM

Sunday, April 12, 2015

First Nighter: Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon Sparks the Gershwins' 'An American in Paris' by David Finkle

Christopher Wheeldon's choreography for An American in Paris, at the Palace, is so spectacular that you have to forgive anything else wrong with the production--and believe you me, there's p…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 09:53PM

Thursday, April 9, 2015

First Nighter: Tracey Scott Wilson's "Buzzer" Fizzles; "Clinton the Musical" Frazzles by David Finkle

As Tracey Scott Wilson's Buzzer gets underway at the Public, Jackson (Grantham Coleman) introduces himself to the...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 11:47PM

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

First Nighter: Little Girl "Gigi" Does Not Grow Up on Broadway in a Most Delightful Way by David Finkle

The reference to the release from Arthur Freed's incomparable MGM unit is recorded here as preamble to the unhappy news that a woefully cheap travesty of the gloriously romantic film has now…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 07:11PM

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

First Nighter: Robert Askins's "Hand to God" Deserves a Big Hand by David Finkle

Tyrone is a puppet with sharp teeth that lives at the end of the right arm belonging to timid Jason (Steven Boyer). The fabric...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 06:21PM

Monday, April 6, 2015

“Wolf Hall” Director Jeremy Herrin Holds Court by David Finkle

How one of the theater season's most anticipated events came to be.

SOURCE: Clyde Fitch Report at 11:40AM

Friday, April 3, 2015

First Nighter: New Dance Craze "Flexn" Fills Park Avenue Armory by David Finkle

Would the 21 dancers of Flexn, directed by Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and Peter Sellars, object to their movement styles...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 04:02PM

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

First Nighter: The Royal Shakespeare Company's Regal 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'Love's Labour's Won' by David Finkle

Both are surpassingly good treatments. I heartily recommend them, although I definitely question whether it's commercially wise to attach the Love's Labour's Won name to a script that would …

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 06:55PM

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

First Nighter: "Don Carlo" at the Met Is Grand Opera, "Soldier X" Marches Well at HERE by David Finkle

You don't hear the term "grand opera" much anymore. That's if you hear it at all. But it's going to be revived right now in regards to the opening night performance of Giuseppe Ver…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 04:23PM

First Nighter: "Don Carlo" at the Met Is Grand Opera, "Soldier X" Marches Well at HERE by David Finkle

<![CDATA[You don't hear the term "grand opera" much anymore. That's if you hear it at all. But it's going to be revived right now in regards to the opening night performance of …

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 12:23PM

Sunday, March 29, 2015

First Nighter: Bedlam Company's Double Go at 'Twelfth Night, or What You Will' Perhaps Too Much Bedlam by David Finkle

In the program's statement of company purpose, there's a sentence about the fun for them and the audience of "inciting laughter and chaos." There's nothing wrong with inciting lau…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 09:00PM

Monday, March 23, 2015

First Nighter: "Ken Ludwig's Baskerville," Richard Maxwell's "The Evening" by David Finkle

With his prolific works Richard Maxwell gives the inescapable impression that he finds the niceties of theatrical production -- things like scripting, acting, design -- compromising. The mor…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 04:04PM

Thursday, March 19, 2015

First Nighter: Wendy Wasserstein's "Heidi Chronicles" in A+ Revival by David Finkle

When Heidi Holland, studying for a degree in art history, is first seen, she's at a college dance with best-friend-forever Susan Johnston (Ali Ahn) where she meets admirer Peter Patrone (Bry…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 10:47PM

First Nighter: "Paint Your Wagon" Revival Paints Town Red-Hot by David Finkle

When Paint Your Wagon was first done and record companies still actively scoured upcoming scores for chart-topping possibilities, the ones selected were "I Talk to the Trees" and &…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 03:17PM

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

First Nighter: Folk Music Honoring 'Lonesome Traveler' Sure is Folksy by David Finkle

As writer and director, O'Neil is so intent on keeping Lonesome Traveler at a good-time hootenanny level (remember hootenannies?) that though he brings in some of the harder crises and their…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 09:37PM

Monday, March 16, 2015

First Nighter: Melissa James Gibson Prescribes an Ineffective "Placebo" by David Finkle

Louise (Carrie Coon) spends her time at the lab working on a study of female desire--with desire-depleted Mary (Florencia...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 08:47PM

First Nighter: A Strong Review for "Posterity," Des Bishop Is "Made in China" by David Finkle

Doug Wright loves to wrangle with deceased figures of greater or lesser fame, and in Posterity, at the Atlantic's Linda Gross Theatre, he comes up with a humdinger.

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 01:53PM

Sunday, March 15, 2015

First Nighter: Chenoweth, Gallagher at Full Steam in Three-Quarters Steam On the Twentieth Century' by David Finkle

During the On the Twentieth Century revival -- a musical comedy vehicle about a vehicle -- any number of Broadway veterans, including Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher, are working at th…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 07:46PM

Thursday, March 12, 2015

First Nighter: "Long Story Short" Sizes Up Marriage Fairly Enough by David Finkle

Nervous-as-a-tomcat-on-a-hot-tin-roof Charles (Bryce Ryness) and in-control-if-slightly-confused Hope (Pearl Sun) have just met perhaps...

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 12:25PM

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

First Nighter: Cush Jumbo Truly Stars in Josephine and I by David Finkle

Pauline Kael once wrote -- and probably said many times -- that "it takes a star to play a star." I thought of the quote while watching Cush Jumbo performing her Josephine and I, a…

SOURCE: Huffington Post at 10:25PM

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