Thursday, November 7, 2024
Broadway theaters will dim their marquee lights on Nov. 7 in honor of Dame Maggie Smith, who died in September. Smith began her acting career on stage and took theater roles well into her 80…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 10:24PMSunday, January 21, 2024
With three shows running currently in NY and two more on tour, the late composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim is as present in contemporary theater as he was when he was alive.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 04:06PMThursday, January 11, 2024
The late composer/lyricist was once considered an acquired taste — but with three shows running in New York and another on tour, he's a hit.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 06:24PMTuesday, July 18, 2023
Ginger Rogers would have turned 112 this week. We remember her and her collaboration with her most famous partner, Fred Astaire.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 08:19PMWednesday, March 29, 2023
Marcel Marceau, who spent more than half the 20th century re-popularizing the ancient art of pantomime for a modern age, was born 100 years ago this month.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 11:18PMSaturday, March 11, 2023
With four nominations, more Asian performers were recognized by the Academy in 2023 than in any single year in its history. In other respects, this year was a step back from diversity at the…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 06:35PMWednesday, March 1, 2023
You're at the theater, the last scene ends, and the cast comes out for applause. It's pretty standard today. But curtain calls once were eccentric, revealing, funny and just plain effective.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 04:12PMTuesday, December 20, 2022
At this time of year, people travel to be with their families. And Broadway and Hollywood have been giving them something to sing about: Traveling-song show tunes.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 11:12PMFriday, December 2, 2022
Broadway-legend-in-training Stephen Sondheim was a college sophomore in 1948 when his musical Phinney's Rainbow was produced — and recorded — at Williams College in Massachusetts.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 10:24PMWednesday, September 21, 2022
In the first of our six-part series, NPR's Bob Mondello explains how the theater that most Americans see is being transformed.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 06:19AMThursday, September 8, 2022
On the eve of the 2022 election, Arena Stage presents monologues on the theme of choice by eight female playwrights. The show runs for 18 performances and tickets are $18, a nod to the US vo…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 01:55PMSunday, July 3, 2022
Brook's work ranged from classical star-studded productions to radical experiments in theater. He reinvented King Lear and explored the fragility of civilization in the film Lord of the Flie…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 07:42PMMonday, June 20, 2022
A thousand pages of correspondence by Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist for such musicals as Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel and The Sound of Music are available to a wide public for the fir…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 09:07PMThursday, June 9, 2022
NPR's Bob Mondello looks at a show-stopping theatrical phenomenon that's fallen out of fashion — the encore.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 11:24PMSaturday, February 26, 2022
Why should Americans care about Ukraine? An answer from 1960s Broadway.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 08:18AMMonday, February 21, 2022
Two new books about a legendary silent film comic — Dana Stevens' Camera Man and James Curtis' Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life — give fans new reason to revisit Keaton's work.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 06:24PMThursday, December 9, 2021
Tony and Maria, Sharks and Jets — Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner take a fresh look at the musical theater classic West Side Story.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 09:18PMFriday, November 26, 2021
Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, one of the most influential figures in the American musical theater, has died. He was 91.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 10:54PMThursday, July 15, 2021
Dev Patel as a knight of the Round Table, Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn, the mostly nonwhite casts of Bridgerton and Hamilton — all belong to a tradition that has its roots in live the…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 10:12PMWednesday, April 8, 2020
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers gave Americans a much-needed on-screen escape in the 1930s. You can find their dance numbers online, but critic Bob Mondello recommends you watch their films i…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 09:18PMThursday, November 15, 2018
A precise performance from young Victor Polster grounds this closely observed tale of Lara, a trans girl impatient with the process of transition.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 11:18PMTuesday, May 1, 2018
Bob Mondello says the musical looked — and sounded — much different from anything Broadway had ever seen and helped secure a place for rock music on the Great White Way.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 07:48PMFriday, February 9, 2018
Authors Isaac Butler and Dan Kois celebrate Angels in a new book, The World Only Spins Forward, that collects the memories of everyone from playwright Tony Kushner to Congressman Barney Fran…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 04:09PMThursday, August 4, 2016
When the co-founder of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., made her theater a nonprofit, hundreds of small regional stages followed suit. Fichandler died July 29 at the age of 91.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 05:27PMMonday, June 6, 2016
Playwright Peter Shaffer has died. He was best known for Equus and Amadeus, both of which became movies.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 07:09PMMonday, February 8, 2016
After NPR's Bob Mondello used The Music Man to help explain the Iowa caucuses, he wished there was a musical of Our Town so he could do the same for New Hampshire. It turns out there is one.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 10:44PMSaturday, October 3, 2015
Argentina's newest tourist attraction is housed in a repurposed century-old Beaux Arts Central Post Office building. The Centro Cultural Kirchner is one of the largest cultural centers in th…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 07:28AMFriday, July 31, 2015
Bob Mondello looks at the most-produced shows at high schools through seven decades, and ponders what the choices made by drama teachers tell us.
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 06:04PMMonday, May 25, 2015
The creative team for Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is climbing the walls this week. After four opening-night delays and 80 full-price preview performances, a lot of critics decid…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 05:58PMWednesday, May 20, 2015
The musical has some of the best-known songs in Broadway history, but it originally had other tunes that almost no one knows. Some of those songs were recently performed for the first time i…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 05:05PMWednesday, December 17, 2014
As an African-American Annie arrives on movie screens, critic Bob Mondello looks at other cross-cultural reinventions, from Pearl Bailey's Dolly to the Americanization of Carmen as Carmen Jo…
SOURCE: National Public Radio at 04:11PM 
