Tuesday, June 6, 2023
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . I’m sure most people would agree that, even if they have no idea of what Wet Brain Syndrome is, it makes a more intriguing play title than Wernicke-Korsakoff [o…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:30PMThe original Off Broadway cast recording of “Other Lives: The Story Songs of Michael Colby” (Jay Records), a cycle of story songs by lyricist Michael Colby (Charlotte Sweet, Ludlow Ladd)…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:10AMMonday, June 5, 2023
By Ron Fassler . . . In the years since the AIDS crisis first loomed in the 1980s, there have been many plays on the subject. Is there such a thing as too many? Has everything that needs t…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 03:05PMSunday, June 4, 2023
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . The key figure in Tori Sampson’s (If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must be a Muhfucka) promising, well-acted, but less than satisfying play, This Land Was Made, at Off-Broa…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:51PMThursday, May 25, 2023
By Carol Rocamora . . . Meet Bert. He’s the best friend a fellow could ever have—at least according to Kenneth. He’s warm, funny, supportive, and always there when Kenneth needs him�…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:30PMTuesday, May 23, 2023
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . Bernarda’s Daughters, by Diane Exavier, is a title guaranteed to trigger thoughts of The House of Bernarda Alba, the distinguished play by Federico García Lorc…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:00PMSaturday, May 20, 2023
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . The Manhattan Theatre Club is having a friendship moment. Over at its Broadway venue, the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, David Auburn’s Summer, 1976 follows the on…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:09PMBy Ron Fassler . . . When I was eighteen years old, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) played my local cinema. My brother and I went to see it and were among the few in the theater tha…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 06:15AMThursday, May 18, 2023
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . Like courtroom dramas, plays about people involved with branches of psychotherapy have a built-in theatrical premise. One or more characters gradually expose trau…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:29PMTuesday, May 16, 2023
By Stuart Miller . . . When my son and I saw Molière in the Park’s staged reading of Tartuffe in Prospect Park two years ago, we laughed frequently and marveled at the relevance of Moli…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 02:50AMBy Myra Chanin . . . In 2009, when Disenchanted was getting ready to hold its first workshop (at Pearl Studios in New York City), over 700 women auditioned for the 11 roles for a one-night…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 02:29AMMonday, May 15, 2023
By Myra Chanin . . . Zap! Pow! Wowie! I don’t believe I have ever watched a more fulsome, luxuriant, talent-flooded extravaganza than Lynn University’s 2023 Celebration of the Arts. Th…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:27AMTuesday, May 9, 2023
National Asian Artists Project (Baayork Lee, Executive Artistic Director), whose mission of “showcasing the work of Asian-American theatre artists through performance, outreach and educati…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 12:10PMBy Ron Fassler . . . In Richard Ploetz’s The Country Play, now at the Theater for the New City, the author wants desperately for us to make a connection with what he has written—the way …
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:03AMBy Samuel L. Leiter . . . In his Foreword to the 1965 publication of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, John Braine takes issue with the critics who, m…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 03:42AMTuesday, May 2, 2023
By Brian Scott Lipton . . . It may not literally be true that Barry Manilow has written the songs the whole world sings. Still, I would bet my bank account that most of the more than 2,000 p…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:22PMBy Carol Rocamora . . . In a boisterous Broadway season bursting with blockbusters, big casts, and flashy dance ensembles, a small, gentle play can still make a sound of its own. A deep, r…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:23AMMonday, May 1, 2023
By Matt Smith . . . Living legend, multi-award winner and newly-minted memoirist Chita Rivera popped into the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center on Monday night, her first of many sto…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:46AMThursday, January 5, 2023
By JK Clarke . . . Great Expectations is one of those great novels most of us encountered in a sturdy high school English curriculum. Riveting and multi-layered with a multitude of conflic…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 06:28AMMonday, January 2, 2023
By Walter Murphy . . . Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore debuted in 1878 during England’s Victorian era. One could choose to study the decline of the empire since that…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:07PMMonday, November 21, 2022
By Walter Murphy . . . Imagine a teenage playwright beginning his career by addressing the sacrifices an accomplished woman must make when she weds a less-talented partner. Add societal ex…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:00PMSunday, November 20, 2022
By Carole Di Tosti . . . Life is about second chances. So believes Juliet Capulet, the once tragic female protagonist of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, who steps out of 14th cen…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:27PMBy Marilyn Lester . . . Every so often all the parts of a show might just come together in a beautifully optimal way. Such was the case with Judi Mark’s Merely Marvelous—The Songs Of G…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:15PMFriday, November 18, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . The first rule of musical theater is that in creating a show one must have a story that keeps an audience’s attention. With that said, it’s sad to report that even…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:04AMThursday, November 17, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . The quirkily charming new Broadway musical Kimberly Akimbo, at the Booth Theatre, brings to mind a small number of similarly inclined, small-bore, bighearted show…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:30AMWednesday, November 16, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . If the title of Will Arbery’s new comedy-drama from the New Group sounds confusing, just put the emphasis on “climbing” and say it aloud as if it were a newspape…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:00PMTuesday, November 15, 2022
By Carol Rocamora . . . The story of summer love holds sweet promise in the theater, don’t you agree? But not in the case of a certain summer, in a certain time and place . . . Playwri…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:59PMBy Carole Di Tosti . . . How far back can you trace your lineage? For Madeline Sayet, Native American theater-maker and lover of Shakespeare, the challenge of understanding her identity as…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 11:45AMby Cooper Lawrence . . . If you were wondering where your favorite Broadway stars are hiding out on Monday nights when their shows are dark, well last night November 14, they were at the mos…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:13AMMonday, November 14, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . The husband and wife team of John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey have returned to the Café Carlyle for a two week engagement that is as warm and inviting as sitting by…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:46AMBy Ron Fassler . . . Peter Fogel is a throwback to a time when you could watch a comedian like him on The Ed Sullivan Show, the CBS Sunday night variety series that ran from 1948 to 1971. Fa…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:30AM 
