All stories by Jonathan Mandell on BroadwayStars

Monday, April 21, 2025

Life and Trust closes abruptly. Phantom reopens eventually? Sadie Sink now and then. Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Amid the busiest time for openings on Broadway and beyond, there is also news of an abrupt closing,  a teased re-opening, and a promising summer theater season mostly outdoors and much of …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:12AM
Saturday, April 19, 2025

Rheology Review. Theater meets Science Over Sand by Jonathan Mandell

 “Rheology” begins with a physicist delivering a lecture about sand, with a blackboard full of equations, and equipment (hourglass, sandbox, projections) to illustrate her points. This …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:13PM
Friday, April 18, 2025

Summer Theater 2025 At Lincoln Center and Little Island by Jonathan Mandell

Deaf Broadway’s version of “Waitress.” A new show by Suzan-Lori Parks. A 4,000-year-old epic play. Shakespeare on immigration. Monteverdi on race relations. Opera singer Anthony Roth …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 04:39PM
Thursday, April 17, 2025

Broadway Discounts to 2025 Shows by Jonathan Mandell

Given all the recent announcements of shattered Broadway box office records — which means more theatergoers are paying higher ticket prices than ever before for Broadway shows — below is…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:05PM
Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Glass Kill What If If Only Imp Review. A Caryl Churchill Quartet. by Jonathan Mandell

Deirdre O’Connell as Dot keeps an imp in a corked old wine bottle, expecting it to work magic – to  grant Dot’s wishes, as long as what she asks for is not too selfish. It’s true t…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:34PM
Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Bad Muslim Fringe Review by Jonathan Mandell

Azhar Bande-Ali was in a plane that had a mechanical problem that prevented it from landing, which provoked a spiritual problem;  he worried that the plane would crash, and he would die. So…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:47PM
Monday, April 14, 2025

John Proctor is the Villain Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

The first word in this play is “sex.” Mr. Smith says it to his teenage students, asking for its definition, which the class then recites in unison, reading aloud from their textbooks. Th…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:07PM

Broads on Broadway: Smash, Boop, Old Friends. Leslie Odom Jr Back in Hamilton. Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Female characters and performers dominated the shows that opened  this past week on Broadway, which the previous week had been dominated by shows featuring male characters and performers. …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:31AM
Sunday, April 13, 2025

The End of All Flesh Fringe Review. Hillbillies as Post-Apocalyptic Philosophers by Jonathan Mandell

“Urinetown” co-creator Greg Kotis takes us to another future dystopian society in this small, cheeky musical that’s part of the New York City Fringe Festival.  With a banjo-driven bl…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:14PM
Saturday, April 12, 2025

Tariffs and Other Taxes in Broadway Shows by Jonathan Mandell

The president of the United States puts a fifty percent tariff on all imported cheese, which leads to war…with Switzerland. That’s the premise of “Strike Up the Band,” the first of a…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:37AM
Friday, April 11, 2025

Theater blog roundup: High on Broadway. Tributes to Finn and Fugard. by Jonathan Mandell

Broadway is luring the star-struck to pay big bucks in this final stretch of the season, leading Janice Simpson of Broadway & Me to ask “whether all the hoopla and moola are worth it.�…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:42PM
Thursday, April 10, 2025

Smash Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

“Smash” offered viewers the rare thrill of original musical numbers written by a Tony-winning songwriting team expressly for network television, and simultaneously gave Tweeters a targe…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:25PM
Wednesday, April 9, 2025

What This Place Makes Me: Contemporary Plays on Immigration by Jonathan Mandell

There is a moment of mystery near the end of “Public Obscenities,”  which was a finalist last year for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama: Choton, the queer Bengali American PhD student from …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:07PM
Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Sondheim’s Old Friends Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

In this sixth Sondheim show on Broadway since his death in 2021, a cast of 19 including Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga perform 40 songs selected from 14 shows for which Stephen Sondheim w…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:59PM
Monday, April 7, 2025

Boop Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

If “Boop!” were a store rather than a Broadway musical, it would be a factory outlet, and the pile-on of merchandise on display would all be refurbished from parts of old shows –  th…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:53PM

Brawny Broadway. Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Male characters of various stripes – clockwise from top left,  valiant, vain, and vile  – dominated the Broadway shows that opened over the past week: “Good Night, and Good Luck,�…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:32AM
Sunday, April 6, 2025

The Last Five Years Broadway Review. Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren, mismatched. by Jonathan Mandell

Two decades after it was first produced, I was finally won over to Jason Robert Brown’s two-character musical inspired by the unraveling of his first marriage. This was in 2021 during the …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:50PM
Saturday, April 5, 2025

What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters. by Jonathan Mandell

Opening night doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It suddenly has come to mean even less than it did three years ago, when I first wrote that it had become nearly meaningless. The changes h…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:39AM
Friday, April 4, 2025

Glengarry Glen Ross Broadway Review. What’s the effing point? by Jonathan Mandell

Jeffrey Richards has produced playwright David Mamet’s plays ten times on Broadway over the past twenty years, including the revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross” that is currently running …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 02:40PM
Thursday, April 3, 2025

Good Night and Good Luck Broadway Review. George Clooney as anti-authoritarian crusader by Jonathan Mandell

Where is our Edward R. Murrow? That is the implicit question that animates George Clooney’s play, opened tonight on Broadway in an elegant, meticulous and timely production directed by Dav…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:50PM
Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Lucille Lortel Award Nominations for Off-Broadway 2025 by Jonathan Mandell

Drag: The Musical, Our Class, and Three Houses received the most nominations for the 40th annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway.  Winners will be presented…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:39PM
Tuesday, April 1, 2025

April 2025 New York Theater Openings by Jonathan Mandell

Below is a calendar of theater opening* in April, including twelve shows on Broadway, half of which are adapted from (or inspired by) works of art or entertainment in other media — two mov…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:40AM
Monday, March 31, 2025

Broadway Heats Up. Award Season Arrives. Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Thirteen shows will open on Broadway in the four weeks until the Broadway 2024-2025 officially ends; by then New York theater award season will be well underway: New York Theater Awards Cale…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:23AM
Sunday, March 30, 2025

Theater Quiz for March 2025 by Jonathan Mandell

How well were you paying attention to the theater news, views and reviews in March? Take this quiz to find out. Loading…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:36PM
Saturday, March 29, 2025

Dogs on Broadway by Jonathan Mandell

Sandy was not the first dog on a New York stage. Even Bill Berloni concedes that. He trained Sandy for “Annie” back in 1977, and, this season, Tana June for “Gypsy” (along with her u…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:30PM
Friday, March 28, 2025

The In-Between: Intimate and Candid Moments of Broadway Stars photographed by Jenny Anderson by Jonathan Mandell

Is that Sarah Paulson in pajamas brushing her teeth? She is in her dressing room at the Belasco, during the run of the play “Appropriate” — one of some one hundred black-and-white phot…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:05PM
Thursday, March 27, 2025

The Picture of Dorian Gray Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

Sarah Snook portrays some 25 characters as well as the narrator in this dazzling and sometimes dizzying stage-and-video adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, but at the curtain call, she is f…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:50PM

World Theatre Day 2025. Rosalba Rolón on the Power of Storytelling by Jonathan Mandell

Today is World Theatre Day, celebrated internationally every March 27th since 1962, even when the lovely enveloping darkness in a theater feels no match for the ugly encroaching darkness o…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:50AM
Wednesday, March 26, 2025

New York Theater Awards Calendar and Guide 2025 by Jonathan Mandell

Below is a calendar of dates from April to June in 2025 when nominations and awards are announced, and ceremonies take place, for the major New York theater awards (and a few others), follow…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:10AM
Tuesday, March 25, 2025

The 20 Women Playwrights Who Have Won Pulitzer Prizes by Jonathan Mandell

In honor of Women’s History Month, here are the 20 women playwrights who have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an annual award given for “a distinguished play by an American author…de…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:06AM
Monday, March 24, 2025

Peak Broadway: Purpose, Buena Vista, Mincemeat, Othello. Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Good theater can heal, as proven by the daily dose of theater openings last week – four shows on Broadway, several Off Broadway and beyond – many of them restorative. Ok, some were not. …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:19AM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Nov 17, 2024: Elf - Marquis Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre