Once upon a time there was a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan called The Five Points. For over 70 years, it was a crowded slum, populated mostly by newly -freed slaves and ethnic Irish. Altho…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 02:05PMA female press secretary, a female chief of staff, a first lady and several female assistants but even all of them together can’t keep the hapless president from occasionally opening his m…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 08:04AMBlack comedy, or gallows humor, is a style of story telling that makes light of subject matter usually considered somewhat taboo, like death, suicide and disease. Either term applies to Mart…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 11:06AM“The Minutes” Playwright Tracy Letts possesses the extraordinary ability to lull an audience into expecting something dry and ordinary but then making it explosive. Teaming up again with…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 02:01PMFood is often the centerpiece of family holidays and celebrations. In “Birthday Candles”, the new play presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, the s…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 05:08PMPhoto by Julieta Cervantes When TV’s Murphy Brown was mocking singer Barry Manilow, I was buying his albums and attending his concerts. I was unabashedly a Fanilow. So I looked forward to …
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 10:36AMWhat a quandary! There was a new show to review, but it was opening night for my favorite baseball team. Which one should I choose? The theater won this time. A timely revival of Richard Gee…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 09:32AMWhen we see married actor couples working together on stage, we feel a special connection. It’s as if we are in on the joke. We expect chemistry and smile when they kiss and caress because…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 06:38PMWhen was the last time you smiled for two hours? Were you wearing a mask? Under their masks, audiences at the Winter Garden Theater are grinning broadly eight times a week. Despite any criti…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 12:35PMFor many audiences, Phylicia Rashad will always be the elegant unflappable TV wife/mother/lawyer in The Cosby Show. She came into their homes every Thursday like a welcome friend. After the …
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 09:04PMLynn Nottage must be the hardest-working playwright in New York, having written three shows for the Fall 2022 season. First was Clyde, a terrific show about ex-convicts and second chances. D…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 01:40PMA viewer should be prepared for intense theater when attending a Eugene O’Neill play. If the show is “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” she should be ready for a lengthy assault on her…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 02:35PMIt’s been almost 25 years since the 1997 release of the first Harry Potter book. Its young readers have grown up, gotten jobs and now have families of their own. Do the Harry Potter charac…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 05:11PMOnly Stephen Sondheim could have taken a motley group of would-be murderers and made them sympathetic and funny. At one time, a musical about killing presidents would have been controversial…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 09:07AMIt felt strange to be attending a show last Saturday night instead of sitting in front of the television waiting for SNL to begin. Fortunately, the play was “The Search for Signs of Intell…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 11:40AMBy now, everyone associated with musical theater has written a tribute to legend Stephen Sondheim who died Nov. 26, 2021 at age 91. Productive until the end, Sondheim died while working on a…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 02:09PMFirst let’s get rid of the elephant in the room- Rob McClure, hardworking star of Broadway’s “Mrs. Doubtfire” is NOT Robin Williams who created the 1993 movie role. However, he doesn…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 12:30PM“What’s your justification?” demands the director, prodding his actors to consider their characters’ motivations in the play “Trouble in Mind.” Playwright Alice Childress had her…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 09:17AMFor some, food is merely sustenance; for others, it is an art form. And for the former convicts who work at Clyde’s, a truck stop in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the perfect sandwich may of…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 04:26PMSiblings can be a blessing. It’s even nicer when they live nearby. In “Morning’s at Seven,” the revival of Paul Osborne’s play at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, they are a little …
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 04:57PMPhoto credit: Joan Marcus We have a conflict in America. While it is built on the shoulders of immigrants,and the Statue of Liberty stands tall in New york harbor, our policies discourage im…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 11:34AMA group of characters gather at Laine’s boarding house. They are running away from something or to something. It is 1934 in Duluth, MI, ( actual birthplace of Bob Dylan) and people are sti…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 08:24PMThe playwright George Bernard Shaw must have been a feminist long before the movement became popular. He used his plays to decry the few opportunities for women and observed how they were be…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 12:14PMOne young man rejects a scholarship to MIT so he can stay home to care for his mother and younger siblings; he’s Depression. An older Nigerian man shares knowledge and tales from his yo…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 07:17AMIf I had a product to sell, I’d hire comedian /actress Jackie Hoffman to be my spokesperson. With her rubbery face and perpetually dour expression, she’s believable. She would never lie!…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 05:28PMThe playbill for Bertolt Brecht’s play The Mother suggests immediately that the drama at The Performing Garage will be unique. Brecht himself noted that the aim of the play is not to enter…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 04:42PMOn September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. It was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, involving more than US $600 bi…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 03:54PMRuben Santiago-Hudson was raised by his grandmother. So he did what any talented theater person would do-he wrote a play about her! “Lackawanna Blues” is Santiago-Hudson’s paean to his…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 01:14PMTo many,“Six the Musical” was the show that was mere hours away from opening night when Broadway shut down in March 2020. A smash hit in London’s West End, the show had already created…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 06:47PMLanguage plays a significant role in “Pass Over,” the play by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whether through repetition, ambiguity or cultural references. It begins with the title referring…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 05:13PM“I don’t remember Christopher Lloyd,” said the woman sitting behind us in the outdoor theater. “Jim from the TV show Taxi,” we reminded her. “Oh, the crazy one.” For some, Lloy…
SOURCE: stagebuddy.com at 11:45AM
