All stories by Marc Miller on BroadwayStars

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Primary Trust" - 5/25/23 by Marc Miller

Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York"the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a couple …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "King James" - 5/16/23 by Marc Miller

How much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:20PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Regretfully, So the Birds Are" - 4/11/23 by Marc Miller

The last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:36AM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Vanities-The Musical" - 3/30/23 by Marc Miller

As an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 13, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "How to Defend Yourself" - 3/13/23 by Marc Miller

Whew, this one really needed an intimacy coordinator. Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself, at New York Theatre Workshop, is mostly about its titular topic, as reflected through the unea…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:23PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Best We Could" - 3/1/23 by Marc Miller

There's more than a whiff of Our Town in The Best We Could, Emily Feldman's "family tragedy" now on Manhattan Theatre Club's mainstage. The Wilder influence begins with Lael Jellinek's sceni…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:30PM[SHARE]
Thursday, February 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Wanderers" - 2/16/23 by Marc Miller

Who are these people? Why are they sharing a stage? Where are the character details that would help us understand them better? The Wanderers, Anna Ziegler's new drama at the Laura Pels, shar…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:35PM[SHARE]
Thursday, February 2, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Endgame" - 2/2/23 by Marc Miller

Exactly what Samuel Beckett was up to with Endgame has been the source of much speculation. A meditation on the futility of life? A fever dream about the inevitable journey toward death? A p…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:03PM[SHARE]
Thursday, January 26, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Smuggler" - 1/26/23 by Marc Miller

Moral ambiguity seeps into, permeates, and ultimately overwhelms The Smuggler, Ronán Noone's intelligent little "thriller in rhyme" downstairs at Irish Rep. The one-hander, performed with…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:04PM[SHARE]
Thursday, December 1, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Stardust Road" - 12/1/22 by Marc Miller

Wedging some 40 songs into a little over 90 minutes, Stardust Road is filled with Great American Songbook treasures, well-known and otherwise. And it mostly sounds terrific, thanks to Lawren…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:17PM[SHARE]
Thursday, November 17, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Jack Was Kind" - 11/17/22 by Marc Miller

Mary, though we don't find out until the very last moment that that's her name, is recording a monologue on her phone, which she's set up on a tripod, and the mechanics baffle her. Media-sav…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:17PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Downstate" - 11/15/22 by Marc Miller

A tough one, this. Bruce Norris's Downstate, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, plunks us down into a repellent environment, one we'd never choose to find ourselves in, and shakes our assu…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:06AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 7, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "You Will Get Sick" - 11/6/22 by Marc Miller

Given the human suffering we are made to witness in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of You Will Get Sick"the main character's terrifying and mysterious physical deterioration, even…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:38AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Chester Bailey" - 10/19/22 by Marc Miller

Chester Bailey. A prosaic title, and the play at Irish Rep, by Joseph Dougherty, doesn't overflow with poetry, either. It's a straightforward little two-hander, one with perhaps too many tan…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:36PM[SHARE]
Thursday, September 29, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "american (tele}visions" - 9/29/22 by Marc Miller

american (tele)visions, Victor I. Cazares's new play, in a premiere production at New York Theatre Workshop, is a kaleidoscope, an ever-shifting dazzlement of colors, patterns, shapes, multi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:30PM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 23, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Corsicana" - 6/22/22 by Marc Miller

Will Arbery is an outlier. His previous play at Playwrights Horizons, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, introduced us New York sophisticates to a subculture we'd probably never met, and hoped we…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:02AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Golden Shield" - 5/17/22 by Marc Miller

Golden Shield has a lot on its mind"too much, perhaps. Anchuli Felicia King's new drama at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1 concerns itself with, on the one hand, the unholy alliances of cor…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:40AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "72 Miles to Go..." - 3/10/20 by Marc Miller

Hilary Bettis's new play, 72 Miles to Go..., kind of sneaks up on you. It begins in a Tucson church in 2016, where the pastor, Billy (Triney Sandoval), is giving what evidently is his farewe…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:03AM[SHARE]
Monday, March 9, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Unknown Soldier" - 3/9/20 by Marc Miller

[Friedman's] writing in many styles, from pastiche to operatic to sorta-Sondheim, and he melds them well to tell an affecting story.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:44PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Perplexed" - 3/3/20 by Marc Miller

These debonair individuals aren't easy for us schlubs to identify with, and their problems are neither that acute nor that compelling.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:06PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation" - 1/20/20 by Marc Miller

A New York with a Forbidden Broadway in it is always a happier place. And the franchise's latest incarnation, Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation, currently occupying the York, is a pip.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:57AM[SHARE]
Thursday, December 5, 2019

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Harry Townsend's Last Stand" - 12/4/19 by Marc Miller

... well-produced, humorous, and occasionally moving. Still, Eastman's trudging down a well-traveled path.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:19PM[SHARE]
Monday, November 18, 2019

Talkin' Broadway Review: "The Inheritance" 11/17/19 by Marc Miller

Lopez's mammoth depiction of the last 30-odd years of gay American male-hood is a unique meditation.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:44AM[SHARE]
Friday, March 29, 2019

Smart Blonde at 59 E 59 by Marc Miller

"There are some who think Judy Holliday was the greatest comic actress of all time, and some who think she was simply the greatest comic actress of the century." That's David Shipman in The …

SOURCE: stagebiz.com at 12:46PM[SHARE]
Saturday, March 23, 2019

"Kiss Me Kate" at Studio 54 by Marc Miller

There's only one other full-size Broadway musical revival in town right now, that thing uptown about Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, so fans of golden age musicals had better hie themselv…

SOURCE: stagebiz.com at 12:20PM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 27, 2019

CARMELINA - Talkin' Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

But there must be something about Carmelina, because York Theatre Company's Musicals in Mufti has just brought it back for its third airing, the first title to score such a trifecta.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:43PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 8, 2019

CHOIR BOY - Talkin Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

A stageful of characters you don't often encounter in Broadway houses populates Choir Boy, Tarell Alvin McCraney's two-thirds-drama, one-third-concert, a Manhattan Theatre Club production at…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:00PM[SHARE]
Thursday, December 13, 2018

CHRISTMAS IN HELL - Talkin' Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

One walks into Christmas in Hell, at the York, wanting to like it.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:11PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 10, 2018

NOURA - Talkin' Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

Noura burns on a low flame.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:01PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 6, 2018

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY - Talkin' Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

Tricky business, political correctness.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:33AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 5, 2018

AMERICAN SON - Talkin' Broadway's Review by Marc Miller

Though we never actually meet him, Jamal, the title character of Christopher Demos-Brown's American Son, sounds like a wonderful kid.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:09AM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off