Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Repertory companies were once mainstays of the theater but,
with rare exceptions like Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, they’re become
rarities nowadays. It’s just too expensi…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 06:59AMSaturday, December 3, 2011
Like every exclusive society, the world of theater lovers has its unspoken rules. For starters, we’re all supposed to genuflect to everything by Shakespeare, mostly everything by Che…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:59AMWednesday, November 30, 2011
photo by Joan Marcus
Everybody knows that theater is a collaborative art, with its elements—the acting, the directing, the design, lighting and the play itself—all leaning on one anothe…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:59AMSaturday, November 26, 2011
You gotta love the folks at Lincoln Center Theater. Or at least I do. Artistic director André Bishop and executive producer Bernard Gersten do what too few of their not-for-prof…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMWednesday, November 23, 2011
Theater doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A show like The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs took on a different meaning after the Apple co-founder’s death. And Wild Animals You Sh…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:59AMSaturday, November 19, 2011
My husband K is in love with the actress Nina Arianda. Which is OK with me because—like every other true theater lover in New York right now—I, too, am in love with Arianda, the st…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 12:59PMWednesday, November 16, 2011
Katori Hall became the first African-American woman to win the Olivier Award for Best New Play when The Mountaintop, her meditation on the last night in Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, play…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:59AMSaturday, November 12, 2011
There’s not much scenery on the stage at The Public Theater’s Newman theater space where a new production of King Lear opened this week but that doesn’t stop nearly everyone on stage f…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:52AMWednesday, November 9, 2011
No matter how talented they are, ample-bodied and strong-featured actresses like Mary Testa usually play the funny best friend or the sassy sidekick instead of the leading lady. And so…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMSaturday, November 5, 2011
Maybe I’m the wrong demographic for Asuncion, the new play by Jesse Eisenberg that just opened in a Rattlestick Playwrights Theater production at the venerable Cherry Lane Theatre. O…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMWednesday, November 2, 2011
Lots of people seem almost angry that they don’t like Relatively Speaking, the trio of one-act comedies now playing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. It averaged a
D+ on StageGrade, wh…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 06:59AMSaturday, October 29, 2011
Cynics have long said that dying young can be a career boost in show business. But I doubt that even the most sardonic of them meant that the good fortune would redound on someone othe…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:40AMWednesday, October 26, 2011
There’s an audience for Milk Like Sugar, the new play by Kirstin Greenidge that’s currently playing at Playwrights Horizons. But it's clearly not for everyone. About half way through thi…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:58AMSaturday, October 22, 2011
The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood has declared that Stephen Karam’s new play Sons of the Prophet is “the first important new play of the fall season.” That’s quite a compli…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:00AMWednesday, October 19, 2011
It’s not every young playwright who makes her New York debut at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Or who has that play directed by the hot- director-of-the-moment Sam Gold. Or designed by …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMSaturday, October 15, 2011
There are at least three obvious reasons that may have prompted the Roundabout Theatre Company to revive Man and Boy, the 1963 drama by the British playwright Terence Rattigan, which opened …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:30PMWednesday, October 12, 2011
People see plays for all kinds of reasons. I was excited about The Lyons because I wanted to see what made Linda Lavin turn down chances to reprise her terrific performances in two hig…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:59AMSaturday, October 8, 2011
Not much seen this week—at least not that I can yet write about since I try to keep the opening night embargo that shows ask reviewers to observe. Besides, it’s promising to be a b…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:03AMWednesday, October 5, 2011
I’m going to be honest with you. I had no idea what to make of Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, the new Adam Rapp play that the Atlantic Theater Company, its own facilities under …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMSaturday, October 1, 2011
Playwrights usually write memory plays at the beginning of their careers, as Tennessee Williams did with The Glass Menagerie and Dylan Thomas with Under Milk Wood. But Lanford Wilson already…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
The producers of The Submission initially attempted to stir up buzz by suggesting that one character’s identity should be kept secret until people saw the play. But they didn’t nee…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:57AMSaturday, September 24, 2011
Sweeney Todd may be Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece but Follies is his most beloved show. There have been at least a dozen major productions since this highly conceptual musical first debut…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:58AMSaturday, September 17, 2011
They say that all politics is local. But that doesn’t mean it has to be banal. And, alas, the latter turns out to be the case with Sweet and Sad, the new play by Richard Nelson…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:43AMWednesday, September 14, 2011
Cleverness can be its own curse. Elevator Repair Service became a critics’ darling with Gatz, the experimental company’s dramatized reading of the full text of F. Scott Fitzgerald�…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:58AMSaturday, September 10, 2011
This time of year is always bittersweet. Labor Day has come and gone, which means that while summer doesn’t end until Sept. 23, the golden days of my favorite season are fast dwindli…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:58AMWednesday, September 7, 2011
Everyone has their biases. Mine is against what I’ve taken to calling yuppie tragedy: plays in which really great looking, really smart and usually really well-off people with really…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:57AMSaturday, September 3, 2011
My Labor Day weekend post is usually a salute to the people who work hard to make the shows we all love. Past tributes have been to struggling playwrights and blue-collar actors. …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:59AMSaturday, August 27, 2011
Michael Greif is one of the reigning architects of new musicals. He helped to create Grey Gardens and Next to Normal. And, of course, he did the original production of Rent. Still, I wish …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:40PMIs there a perfect time to see a show? Professional critics go to special press nights before a show opens so that they can tell the rest of us if it’s worth checking out. Those of u…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:58AMWednesday, August 24, 2011
Talent counts in the theater but luck matters too. There are nearly 200 shows in this summer’s
New York International Fringe Festival and the challenge for their creators is to find …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:59AMSaturday, August 20, 2011
Death was indeed on a holiday the first time I tried to see the new chamber musical Death Takes a Holiday that has been playing this summer at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels T…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:58AM 
