Saturday, February 2, 2019
One of the questions I often ask myself after seeing a new show is: why are the show makers telling me this story? I haven’t been able to figure out the answer to that question …
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:18AMThe Convent, the new play by Jessica Dickey, is like a mashup of Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds about a disparate group of people trying to find themselves on a spiritual retreat, and Cary…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:18AMSaturday, January 19, 2019
Transgression—social, sexual and otherwise—has been the bread and butter of Neil LaBute’s career. It might be the downfall of it too. Last year, allegations about some unidentified mis…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:48AMSaturday, January 12, 2019
Something radical is happening on New York stages this season. It’s mainly taking place off-Broadway and it’s largely being driven by women of color who have written that most traditiona…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMMost theatergoers, especially those with limited time and resources, try to figure out which shows to see through a combination of word of mouth, social media and official reviews, particula…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMLife has gotten crazy again and I couldn't find the time to write this week. So as I usually do when this happens, I'm turning on the ghost light that theaters use when they're temporarily e…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMOver the past decade the playwright Theresa Rebeck has had four shows premiere on Broadway and at least a half dozen others open in major off-Broadway productions. And I can’t figure…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMThe end of the year has sneaked up on me. I got lost in the whir of finishing the school semester where I teach, getting ready for Christmas and dealing with some health problems (nothing se…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMYep; I've slipped back into a hole that’s going to keep me from doing a regular post today. But this isn't a disagreeable hole. I fell into it by (1) reading two fascinating books about 19…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMThe weather has been unseasonably warm here in the city but the winter theater festivals, including a few new ones, are plowing ahead as usual and so I thought I’d do a redux of the guide …
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMSaturday, November 10, 2018
As regular readers of this blog know, I'm crazy about my husband K. I also really appreciate his patience in allowing me to take up so much of my time with theater. We're just a third o…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:54AMLove ‘em or hate ‘em, the 1960s continue to influence American discourse. And those tumultuous times are front-and-center in two new recent plays: Gloria: A Life, a look at the car…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:54AMSaturday, October 20, 2018
It happens almost every fall and this year, it’s even more intense than usual. There are so many shows opening that seeing them on top of making plans to celebrate the birthdays of my niec…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:18AMSaturday, October 13, 2018
Bill Irwin is a genius. And it’s not just me saying that. The folks at the MacArthur Foundation made that official 34 years ago when they gave him one of their famous five-year fellowships…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:33AMSaturday, October 6, 2018
They say that timing is everything. And the timing could hardly be better for Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, which opened at New York Theatre Workshop last weekend, jus…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:12AMSaturday, September 29, 2018
Ever since Aeschylus wrote the first Greek tragedies back in the fifth century B.C., playwrights have been creating works that wrestle with the pressing issues of their time. One of the most…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:54AMSaturday, September 22, 2018
Just like the rest of us, theater makers can fall into ruts and end up doing the same thing over and over. That's what happened to John Doyle who repeated his conceit of having actors play t…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:18AMSaturday, September 15, 2018
It may be a sacrilege to say this but I've never been a fan of the plays of George Bernard Shaw. I appreciate Shaw's place in the theatrical pantheon and his role as a pioneering progressive…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:42AMSaturday, September 8, 2018
Drawing up a list of the fall shows I most want to see is my way of making myself feel better that summer (my favorite season) is ending. It's something I've done for even longer than I've b…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 07:54AMSaturday, September 1, 2018
Maybe it's because I'm getting older but time seems to be passing more quickly than ever and the entire summer just flew by. One minute, I was watching my DVD version of 1776, which I try to…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:42AMSaturday, August 25, 2018
Because I’ve always believed there should be shows on Broadway that cater to all kinds of tastes, it’s not easy for me to say this but the new musical Gettin' the Band Back Together does…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:48AMSaturday, August 18, 2018
So many people were raving about the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's production of Fiddler on the Roof that I felt I had to see it. At the same time, I feared it wouldn't live up to al…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:06AMSaturday, August 11, 2018
There's no post today because I'm taking time off to celebrate my birthday this weekend. The celebrations include a repeat visit to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with my theatergoin…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 08:24AMSaturday, August 4, 2018
Maybe there were too many top chefs in the room when they were cooking up This Ain't No Disco, the rock musical that recently opened at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. Ca…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:06AMSaturday, July 28, 2018
What a difference a director can make. The first time I saw the dark comedy Straight White Men, it was directed by its playwright Young Jean Lee for a 2014 workshop production at the Public …
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:12AMSaturday, July 21, 2018
It's summer vacation time and tourists, who account for over 60 percent of Broadway's ticket buyers, have been streaming into the city, eager to see shows ranging from tried-and-true war hor…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:32AMSaturday, July 14, 2018
Edward Bond's drama Saved shocked London audiences in 1965 with its depiction of a group of disaffected young people stoning a baby to death. That harrowing scene set the bar for genera…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:04AMSaturday, July 7, 2018
"I really identified with El," I overhead a seventysomething-year-old man telling his similarly-aged wife as we all walked out of Skintight, the new comedy by Joshua Harmon about older men w…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 10:04AMSaturday, June 30, 2018
Memorial Day came and went a month ago. The Summer Solstice breezed in last week. The Fourth of July is just a few days away. And temperatures here in New York are heading into the high 90s.…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 09:06AMSaturday, June 9, 2018
A note from Jan: Two people can see the same show and walk away with different feelings about it. My theatergoing buddy Bill and I just saw the new production of The Boys in the Band that ma…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:36AMSaturday, June 2, 2018
Although separated by five centuries and different codes of acceptable onstage profanity, the playwrights William Shakespeare and Stephen Adly Guirgis have a lot in common. Wait; hear me out…
Linked From Broadway & Me at 11:42AM 
