Saturday, 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…
SOURCE: 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.…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:36AMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Dominique Mori…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, 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…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:42AMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Anthony Giardi…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, May 26, 2018
No show reviews this week. And no real good excuse for not doing one, except that the weather is suddenly beautiful and I feel like kicking back and taking it easy. But I haven't been …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 03:06PMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Clare Barron C…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, May 19, 2018
My name is Jan and I'm a Harry Potter fangirl. Seriously. I mean I pre-ordered the published script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Amazon, downloaded the Kindle vers…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:54AMSaturday, May 12, 2018
We theater junkies can be a demanding lot. And sometimes we let our pursuit of the excellent get in the way of our enjoying the very good. At least that's how I've been feeling about two sho…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:42AMSunday, May 6, 2018
The irony is that I've been seeing so many shows lately that I've fallen behind on just about everything else and so find that I don't have the time to tell you about them. I'm hoping to cli…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:42AMSaturday, April 28, 2018
Let the games begin. The spring theater season officially closed Thursday night with the opening of The Iceman Cometh, which means the Tony nominators will be toting up their scorecard…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:06AMSunday, April 22, 2018
Traditions says that King Lear is the most difficult role in the English-speaking theatrical canon. So as soon as actors hit their 50s, they start itching to take on the challenge. Which exp…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:48PMSaturday, April 14, 2018
Few things make me happier than seeing my husband K enjoy a good laugh while he's watching a show. And so that alone would be reason enough for me to cheer the revival (and Broadway debut) o…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:01AMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Lindsey Ferren…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, April 7, 2018
We're in the midst of an American musicals renascence so vibrant that even people who can't name the Big Five R&H shows know the names Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pasek & Paul and Kristen An…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:01AMSaturday, March 31, 2018
Tourists now make up 60% of the Broadway audience and seeing a Broadway show for most of those folks means seeing a big, splashy musical. And if it has a title they already know, so much the…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 03:38PMSaturday, March 24, 2018
Race has long been—long as in ever since white settlers arrived in the New World, took territory from the natives and then imported enslaved Africans to work that land—a divisive issue i…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:16AMSaturday, March 17, 2018
No post this week because my husband K and I have gone off on a quick vacation to the west coast. But the theater season is kicking into high gear and I'll be back next week. In …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:41AMSaturday, March 10, 2018
There is an unapologetic sweetness to the musical A Letter to Harvey Milk that won me over despite the many flaws of this show which opened this week in the Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row.Base…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:24AMSaturday, March 3, 2018
A couple of weeks ago, a friend remarked that most of my recent reviews have been negative. "Haven't you liked anything you've seen," she asked. Well, yes I have. But since starting the Stag…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 01:50PMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Hammaad…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, February 24, 2018
It's been 20 years since the dance critic Joan Acocella declared that she wouldn't critique a piece that the choreographer Bill T. Jones had centered on terminally ill people and his own dia…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:04AMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Martyna…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, February 17, 2018
It's hard to believe that I've been writing this blog for 11 years but that's what the calendar tells me. As longtime readers may remember, I posted a "Curtain-Raiser" on Feb. 14, 2007 (I've…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:27AMSaturday, February 10, 2018
[Porto], And judging by the knowing laughter from the 20- and 30-somethings in the audience at the performance I attended, she's hit her intended mark.the oddly punctuated romantic com…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:32AMSaturday, February 3, 2018
The creative ferment at the beginning of the last century rivaled that of the Renaissance. Painters like Pablo Picasso and Vasily Kandisnky restructured painting. Composers like Claude Debus…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:07AMSaturday, January 27, 2018
People don't usually make too big a deal about a 45th anniversary. After all, the much more impressive-sounding 50th is so close. But the 1973 match between Billie Jean King, a 29-year-old t…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:51AMSaturday, January 20, 2018
When theater lovers want to express their deep devotion to an actor as formidably talented as John Lithgow, they often say they would be content to listen to him if he were just reading the …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:51AMThe Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: Kyle Jarrow K…
SOURCE: BroadwayRadio at 05:55AMSaturday, January 6, 2018
Is Mark Rylance the greatest actor of our time? Over the course of a three-decade career, he's won three Tonys, two Oliviers and an Oscar. Last year, the Queen knighted him for his service t…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:31AM 
