Some of what follows appeared here ten years ago. Hoping it stands up to a re-reading and amuses first timers.) As a struggling actor back in the day, I drove a cab, tended bar…the usua…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:20PMI became an ardent fan of playwright Theresa Rebeck in 2007 with “Mauritius,” her Broadway debut. About a disputed inheritance of that British colony’s rare and extremely valuable 1847…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:00PMMost actors will tell you they would rather play the villain than the hero. The bad guys are often more complex, sometimes amusingly so, and they dominate their scenes. The appeal may be inb…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:38PMIn the early 1950s Murray Melvin acted with the Hampstead Drama Group, north London. My parents, Constance and George Hawkins, did too, and George was its “props maker”. A child at the t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:24AMThere is some practical insight in “Colin Quinn: Small Talk,” the actor/comic/writer’s solo standup gig at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village. Who knew, for example, that t…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:46PMMost full-scale musical shows run several weeks of previews before submitting to critical evaluation; some even longer, with mixed results (cue “Spiderman”). The New York Gilbert & S…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:06PMWhen Mani Soleymanlou began acting, he was offered roles as stereotypical outsiders. That he now stars as a cop named Coco is indicative of broader shifts in a changing Quebec.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:24AMIt is an unusual opening number for an orchestral jazz concert/revue: a strikingly evocative solo rendition of the legendary Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” Even more unusual, the w…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:42PMYou need not be closely familiar with William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” or with his personal life to enjoy “& Juliet.” References to both are deployed liberally througho…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 06:23PMA “Shaggy Dog” story is one with a high-stakes build-up and much activity that comes to an anti-climactic conclusion, like an elongated joke with an unfunny punchline. A serious shaggy d…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 08:13PMMy first Mike Birbiglia show was “Sleepwalk with Me” in 2008 at the Bleecker Street Theater, where some of the 199 seats were behind poles. The 80-minute self-written monologue recounted…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 11:01PMMost solo shows are one act affairs that run about 90 minutes or less. “Walking With Ghosts” is just Gabriel Byrne, sharing memories and spinning tales for well over two hours in two act…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:09PMIf you want to know what a stage director does (or can do) for a play, you might want to first read Alice Childress’s “Wine in the Wilderness” and then get yourself to Two River Theate…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 01:19PMOn consecutive evenings last week, I saw what are likely the longest and shortest works, in terms of running time, currently on New York stages. The long one, clocking in at well over three …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:58PMAs much as I admire and am entertained by fine classical acting – at Stratford and in Central Park, for instance – and by complete-package musicals (“The Prom” and “Into the Woods�…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:39PMThe term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of […] The post The…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:15PMThis piece is prompted by the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which I am scheduled to see on October 12. Neither a review nor an analysis, it is just…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:27PM“Strings Attached” is about three physicists, an American woman and two British men, on their way by train from Cambridge to London to see Michael Frayn’s science-based play “Copenha…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:23PMAn esteemed scholar once wrote about “Waiting for Godot” that “We all bring to Samuel Beckett’s play whatever is uppermost in our minds.” As tidy as that seems, my “Godot” expe…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:58PMMrs. Nugent should have quit while she was ahead. When she went to the Brady home to complain that her son Philip was being bullied by Francie Brady, Francie’s ma was ready to punish him. …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:05PMTennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” reportedly his own personal favorite, has weathered so many revivals and revisions since its 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning premiere that all…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:18PMIt’s a common refrain in the city: Chicago summer is so worth the wait. Newbies and transplants can feel the buzz of opportunity in the air when the weather starts to turn. Visceral summer…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:30PMIt is fascinating to imagine the processes that went into mounting the Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.” Not only Stephen Sondheim’s exquisite music and lyrics and James Lapine’s…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:31PMAs written for MediaNews Group in Michigan: However you define Power Couple, you will not find a more representative theatrical pair than actor Colm Feore and director-choreographer Donna Fe…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 08:55AMFrom 1968 to 1973, “SOUL!,” America’s first Black-hosted nighttime TV talk show, celebrated Black literature, poetry, music and politics, largely in interview formats. In 1971, prolifi…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 10:11PMOne of my favorite theater memories is of seeing Phil Silvers in “Do Re Mi” in 1960. In a scene where his character is producing a recording session, Silvers tells the six on-stage music…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:06PMThere are many reasons for taking a date to a community theater production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Maybe you are both studying English Lit or are enrolled in acting classe…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 07:49PMThe following article appears in the May edition of the Canadian national Mensa magazine, MC2, and online and in the print editions of MediaNews Group in suburban Detroit. One hundred…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 11:10AMBetween 1961 and Y2K, Neil Simon was represented on Broadway by thirty plays, winning four Tony Awards (one honorary) and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (“Lost in Yonkers”). The plays…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:45PMThink about the last ten new plays you saw. Were most of them really well written, with cohesive plots and well-developed characters? Were they thought-provoking and/or amusing? Well, that a…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:51PMIn years past I have seen several plays performed in foreign (to me) languages. “Death of a Salesman” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” both familiar works, were perfectly clear in Yiddish,…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 09:39PM
