Monday, April 15, 2019
How helpful are warnings from history? Two years ago, in February 2017, Amazon briefly sold out its entire stock of Hannah Arendt’s 500-page treatise, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:26PMTuesday, April 9, 2019
As “Beetlejuice” gears up for its Broadway opening, the new musical’s creators have spent a lot of time adjusting the dial on the show’s raucous, supernatural comedy, pinpointing jus…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:12PMSunday, April 7, 2019
In Broadway’s new “Oklahoma!,” the audience is just a pounding heartbeat away from Daniel Fish’s revisionist treatment of this iconic American musical. There’s still “a bright go…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:34PMThursday, April 4, 2019
Shakespeare nailed it: “Though she be little, she is fierce.” Glenda Jackson may look frail, but the 82-year-old legend performs the noble task of rescuing director Sam Gold’s rickety …
SOURCE: Variety at 08:03PMTuesday, April 2, 2019
Kids are central to the storyline of “To Kill a Mockingbird” — and for a while, child actors were going to be central to Aaron Sorkin’s new Broadway adaptation of Harper Lee’s clas…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:17PMSunday, March 31, 2019
Call it stealth theater. In the disarming introduction to her play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck holds forth in an American Legion hall in her hometown of Wenatchee,…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:10PMTuesday, March 26, 2019
Both onstage and onscreen, the title character in “Fleabag” says things that are pretty outrageous — even to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the woman who created her. Listen to this week’s po…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:30PMWe know next to nothing of the “Dark Lady of the Sonnets” — nothing beyond what Shakespeare tells us in 26 stanzas of overblown verse. Her eyes were nothing like the sun, of course –…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:30PMThursday, March 21, 2019
In the wake of the long-running “Jersey Boys” and the short-lived “Summer,” director Des McAnuff is back on Broadway with another show built around the song catalog of a music act �…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:30PMAny new play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (“Topdog / Underdog”) demands — and deserves — attention. And in its premiere production at the Public Theater,…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:22PMTuesday, March 19, 2019
If you find yourself directing a Broadway play with a cast so big it includes a goose, two rabbits, more kids than you can count and an actual infant, what do you do? If you’re Sam Mendes,…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:32PMMonday, March 18, 2019
Anyone who doesn’t have a cottage on the Cape or the Islands, as they say in Massachusetts, might be puzzled by the title of John Guare’s new play. “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” is no Re…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMThursday, March 14, 2019
No, Kate doesn’t get spanked. And for those wondering how the dicey ending of “Kiss Me, Kate” — that musical mashup of “The Taming of the Shrew” and backstage battling exes — w…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMIt takes three to tango, and Jamie Lloyd’s “Betrayal” completely grasps that. Having made it his mission to modernize the way we stage Harold Pinter’s plays, his chic, stripped-down …
SOURCE: Variety at 03:12PMTuesday, March 12, 2019
Sound design might be the most thankless job on Broadway — because when you get it right, nobody notices. Besides, a lot of theatergoers — and more than a few Tony voters — don’t qui…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:02PMMonday, March 11, 2019
Like “The Father,” which won the 2016 Tony Award for Frank Langella in the titanic lead role, “The Mother,” which features a searing performance by Isabelle Huppert, advances French …
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMSunday, March 10, 2019
“Be More Chill” is already a Broadway Cinderella story. A tale of nerdy teen angst and technology by songwriter Joe Iconis and bookwriter Joe Tracz, this geek-love, sci-fi, high school m…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:06PMThursday, March 7, 2019
Watching Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as the lead character of “Fleabag,” trying to resist saying something bitingly perceptive, inappropriately funny and completely unexpected is a study of co…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, March 5, 2019
Possible spoiler: The kid ain’t worth it! Some breathtaking design work has gone into the sleek production of Jeremy O. Harris’ “Daddy,” directed by Danya Taymor (“Pass Over”),…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:43PMProducer Eva Price has been working on Broadway for years now — but this year, she’s really making her mark, first as the lead producer of this spring’s edgy new revival of “Oklahoma…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:26PMThursday, February 28, 2019
A 15-year-old misfit, sitting alone on the fire escape and drawing cartoon dreams of a larger-than-life hero to rescue him from the perils of being a teenager. Haven’t we seen this one bef…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, February 19, 2019
Laura Benanti is now playing her dream role on Broadway. At the same time, the Tony winner (“Gypsy”) is also playing her toughest part ever. Listen to this week’s podcast below…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:59PMFriday, February 15, 2019
Time is money. Money is time. Both come unstuck in “The American Clock.” Arthur Miller’s kaleidoscopic account of the Great Depression, part autobiography, part social history, crawls …
SOURCE: Variety at 01:33PMThursday, February 14, 2019
Comfy? Okay, let’s talk Death: sudden death, painful death, lingering death, accidental death, and whatever other kinds of death happen to come into the receptive minds of playwrights Simo…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:24PMTo adapt a crass old adage: it’s “All About Eve,” not “All About Steve.” Stripping Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s sharp-witted screenplay about a waning theater star of its period trappi…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:26AMTuesday, February 12, 2019
Director Adam Shankman’s latest movie, the Taraji P. Henson comedy “What Men Want,” isn’t a musical. But as one of Hollywood’s top director-choreographers of mu…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:52PMThursday, February 7, 2019
“Pinter at the Pinter” has been an education — a crash course in Britain’s greatest post-war playwright. Director-producer Jamie Lloyd’s star-studded, six-month sprint through …
SOURCE: Variety at 02:46PMTuesday, February 5, 2019
Jeremy Pope is having the kind of year most young actors dream of: He’s currently making his Broadway debut in the title role of “Choir Boy,” the play by Oscar winner Tarel…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:06PMScott Ellis and Warren Carlyle never thought they’d bring Kiss Me, Kate back to Broadway. The duo behind Roundabout Theatre Company’s recent popular revivals of She Loves Me, On the Twen…
SOURCE: Broadway Direct at 04:18AMTuesday, January 29, 2019
Back when “The Prom” opened on Broadway in the fall, critics swooned over the musical comedy with a message. But for a while there, the creators had begun to think that their sho…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:54PMDuring its journey to Broadway, the buzzy Hadestown wasn’t just establishing an ardent fan base. It was also growing and developing from a rousing concert staging into a full work of music…
SOURCE: Broadway Direct at 05:34AM 
