All stories by Michael Schulman on BroadwayStars

Monday, March 20, 2017

Stuck in Gander, Newfoundland by Michael Schulman

The town of Gander, Newfoundland, has six traffic lights and a population of less than thirteen thousand. Snowmobiling is popular, and people leave their car doors unlocked while they’re a…

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Thursday, March 2, 2017

Spring Theatre Preview by Michael Schulman

Since the film “Groundhog Day” came out, in 1993, it’s been claimed by existentialists, Buddhists, political theorists, and comedy nerds alike. The story has become a modern parable: a…

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Monday, February 27, 2017

Scenes from the Oscar-Night Implosion by Michael Schulman

Not long after “La La Land” was announced Best Picture at the eighty-ninth annual Academy Awards—after which “Moonlight” was announced Best Picture at the eighty-ninth annual Acade…

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Thursday, February 23, 2017

Oscar Spotlight: Best Director and Best Picture by Michael Schulman

“I’m the king of the world! Whooooo!” That line is not, in fact, from President Trump’s Inaugural Address but from James Cameron’s infamous speech at the 1998 Academy Awards, when …

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Sunday, February 19, 2017

Shakeup at the Oscars by Michael Schulman

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences occupies a squat nineteen-seventies building on Wilshire Boulevard, surrounded by car dealerships. On January 14th of last year, Cheryl Boone …

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Inside Julie Andrews’s Puppet Show by Michael Schulman

Lisa Henson and Emma Walton Hamilton met only recently, but they have something rare in common: each has a parent who likely held a deep, enchanted place in your childhood. Henson, who is fi…

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Oscar Spotlight: The Screenplays by Michael Schulman

“We didn’t need dialogue,” Norma Desmond tells a young screenwriter in “Sunset Boulevard,” recalling her silent-film-era glory days. “We had faces!” Screenwriters famously suff…

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Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Oscar Spotlight: The Actors by Michael Schulman

“Actors aren’t animals! They’re human beings!” the wise producer Leo Bloom once said, to which his partner, Max Bialystock, replied, “They are? Have you ever eaten with one?” Mos…

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Oscar Spotlight: The Actresses by Michael Schulman

For a certain stripe of Oscar obsessive—c’est moi—it’s all about actresses. A healthy variety of tough, sly, vulnerable, funny, chilling female performances signals that the state of…

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Monday, January 9, 2017

Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes by Michael Schulman

What a strange and contradictory—and not unentertaining—thing the Golden Globes were to watch last night. On the one hand, “La La Land,” a Hollywood movie musical about the magic of …

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Thursday, December 29, 2016

Unearthing Rare Second World War Musicals by Michael Schulman

A few years before writing “Guys and Dolls,” which premièred in 1950, Frank Loesser put his sizable talents to work for Uncle Sam, when the U.S. Army hired him to collaborate on a serie…

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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Postscript: Carrie Fisher, 1956-2016 by Michael Schulman

“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable,” Carrie Fisher, who died yesterday, at the age of sixty, wrote in her memoir “Wishful Drinking,” from 2008…

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

The Thorny Ethics of the Oscars by Michael Schulman

The Academy Awards officially need a rabbi. How else to navigate the thorny ethics that seem to sprout up each year around the question of separating the artist from the art? Of course, this…

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Wednesday, December 7, 2016

A Lost “Glass Menagerie,” Rediscovered by Michael Schulman

Jane Klain, the indefatigable research manager at the Paley Center for Media, which houses a vast collection of old television and radio programs, goes on archival treasure hunts that someti…

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Sunday, December 4, 2016

Cheryl Strayed’s Advice Becomes Theatre by Michael Schulman

Early in 2010, Cheryl Strayed got an e-mail from an acquaintance, Steve Almond, who wrote an advice column—Dear Sugar—for the literary Web site The Rumpus. Strayed was living in Portland…

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Friday, December 2, 2016

The Oscars and the Election by Michael Schulman

Oscar winners aren’t the best barometers by which to gauge the national mood. Movies and politics work at different speeds, reshaping themselves—and absorbing each other—in unpredictab…

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Sunday, November 27, 2016

Jason Sudeikis’s Quotable Wisdom by Michael Schulman

Jason Sudeikis sat at the back of the Bowery Poetry Club, waiting for open-mike night to begin. He had parked his black Vespa outside, having motored in from Clinton Hill, where he lives wit…

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Monday, November 21, 2016
Thursday, November 17, 2016

David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig Face Off in “Othello” by Michael Schulman

It’s an odd fact of “Othello” that Iago has more lines than the title character. But inconspicuousness—the ability to keep his own name out of the spotlight while cruelly manipulatin…

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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Richard Nelson’s Final Election Play Proves to Be Eerily Prophetic by Michael Schulman

Around three-thirty yesterday afternoon, Richard Nelson made his final edits to a project that has spanned this parlous political season: a trilogy of quiet and sad dramas called “The Gabr…

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Friday, November 4, 2016

Peter Morgan Serves the Queen, Again by Michael Schulman

Is Queen Elizabeth II interesting? Not in a world-historical sense—the dwindling power of the monarchy in the postcolonial age, the assortment of turmoils that have raged around her durin…

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Winter Theatre Preview by Michael Schulman

Few living actors can match the raw star power of Cate Blanchett, whose hypnotic self-possession—she has the gravitational pull of a small planet—made her a natural for roles like Queen …

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Friday, October 14, 2016

Revisiting a Legendary Sondheim Flop by Michael Schulman

In seventh grade, I became completely obsessed with the 1981 musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. It was my introduction to cynicism, set to a brassy Br…

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Immersion Theatre, on Broadway by Michael Schulman

In an era of binge-watching, live-tweeting, and the Oculus Rift, how can theatre compete as all-consuming entertainment? Perhaps it’s our desire to be more than spectators—to be sucked h…

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Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Festival Spotlight: Playing the President by Michael Schulman

It’s become a cliché of this election season that, if you were to present the current Presidential race as fiction, no one would believe it. So what better time to hear from a group of fi…

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Friday, September 30, 2016

Ghosts of Old Hollywood, as a Podcast by Michael Schulman

Karina Longworth is the host of the popular show “You Must Remember This,” which covers the golden age of cinema.

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Andrew Rannells Stars in “Falsettos” by Michael Schulman

The thirty-eight-year-old actor Andrew Rannells is part of a new crop of gay stars—like Chris Colfer and Tituss Burgess—who never had to bother to be closeted in the public eye. Lean and…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Thursday, September 22, 2016

Catching Up with Richard Nelson, Real-Time Election Playwright by Michael Schulman

What were you up to on Friday, September 16th? Did you think about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Did you talk about the election with the people you encountered? Chances are that you did,…

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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

How Many Jokes About the Upper West Side Can You Make? by Michael Schulman

George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon are two Upper West Side alter kakers who are partial to turtlenecks, cultural programs at the Y, and the oeuvre of Alan Alda. For a time, they hosted a pr…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:35PM
Monday, September 19, 2016

Hari Nef, Model Citizen by Michael Schulman

A few days before graduating from Columbia University, in May, 2015, the actress and model Hari Nef showed up at a Flatiron office building to meet Ivan Bart, the president of IMG, the agenc…

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Saturday, September 17, 2016

Remembering Crazy Eddie: His Prices Were Insane by Michael Schulman

Growing up in Manhattan in the eighties, I loved the TV commercials for the electronics chain “Crazy Eddie.” What kid wouldn’t? The pitchman, an unholy mashup of Pee-wee Herman and Don…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 08:58AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards