Monday, March 13, 2023
By Jonathan Mandell. Theatremaker Jonathan Mandell discusses virtual playwriting series Bard at the Gate and looks at the impact and future of digital theatre.
SOURCE: HowlRound at 12:20PMMonday, August 23, 2021
By Jonathan Mandell. Jonathan Mandell shares his experience at New York City’s first-ever official Puppet Week.
SOURCE: HowlRound at 01:59PMThursday, July 29, 2021
By Jonathan Mandell. Jonathan Mandell reflects on a number of live, in-person productions that have taken place in New York City over the course of summer 2021.
SOURCE: HowlRound at 11:14AMMonday, March 29, 2021
How some fancy footwork (and many stairs) made stars of the Newsies newsboys, including Ryan Steele and Ephraim Sykes.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, December 30, 2020
Were there magical moments on New York stages in 2020? The question is debatable – just like the definition of “theater” is being debated – since nobody has been performing on any ac…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:32AMTuesday, December 22, 2020
“Being Alive”and “Losing My Mind” – are there any better Sondheim songs to sing at the close of a year full of loss, unrequited yearning and obsession? That they are sung by perfor…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:32PMThursday, December 17, 2020
What kind of weird holiday show is this? That was my initial reaction – not my usual reaction to a show by Taylor Mac, which is more often: Wow ( to Hir, and A 24 Decade History of Po…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:36AMThursday, December 10, 2020
Joel Grey sings “Give My Regards to Broadway” – in Yiddish. And he’s not alone among the 50 performers of the Folksbiene Chanukah Spectacular, a fast-moving, entertaining 80 minutes …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:06PMThursday, December 3, 2020
The credits at the end of this A Christmas Carol list a cast of 51 characters – 50 of them portrayed by Jefferson Mays. He’s the narrator, as well as Ebenezer Scrooge, Scrooge’s clerk …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:12PMMonday, November 23, 2020
About 15 minutes into the HBO film adaptation of “Between The World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates best-selling 2015 book framed as a letter to his son about what it means to be Black in Amer…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PMWednesday, October 21, 2020
“I think what we do is evil but I still want to do a good job at it,” says Nikolai, one of the Russian trolls trying to sway the American Presidential election in Sarah Gancher’s funny…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:06PMThursday, October 15, 2020
Spike Lee filmed David Byrne’s American Utopia on the stage of Broadway’s Hudson Theater earlier this year; it is arriving on HBO on Saturday, October 17, in a completely different era…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:32PMWednesday, October 14, 2020
Political theater is different this year, and not just because it’s on screens rather than stages. There is a palpable sense of urgency. The weeks counting down to Election Day may hav…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:24PMMonday, October 12, 2020
“When is the last time you went to live theater like this”? I asked one of the seven other audience members waiting for Voyeur to begin, an hour-long play that takes place in the stree…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:36PMMonday, September 14, 2020
Joshua Henry, who is the theater world’s most unlikely Annie, sang “Tomorrow” (“The sun will come out tomorrow…”) at Miscast, followed by Heather Headley singing “Endless Night…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:03PMSaturday, September 12, 2020
I went to the theater in New York for the last time the day after they shut down Broadway on March 12th, six months ago today. My theatergoing on Friday the 13th Off-Off Broadway (which was …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:42PMFriday, September 11, 2020
Things are looking up for the Apple family, but not for me, as the characters talk to one another on a Zoom call yet again. Richard Nelson’s third play in four months about the same set of…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:48PMSunday, July 19, 2020
Historically, Amadeus is baloney. Theatrically, it’s a feast. Musically, the National Theatre’s 2016 production of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play — a recording of which is being streamed…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:54PMSunday, July 12, 2020
Watching Gideon Glick’s expressive face in The Few– elated one moment, defeated the next, then adoring, angry, hurt, resigned — is one key to unlocking the mystery of how this Play-Per…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:24PMFriday, July 10, 2020
On the surface, The Deep Blue Sea might seem a love triangle, but Helen McCrory’s performance makes it a prism — multifaceted, disorienting, and brilliant – in the National Theatre’s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:18PMMonday, July 6, 2020
Lorraine Hansberry’s third and final Broadway play, which is being presented online through July 9 in a dark, expressionistic production directed in 2016 by Yael Farber for the National T…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:42PMThursday, July 2, 2020
The Apple family is back again, on another Zoom call. After the triumphant return in April of writer and director Richard Nelson’s Apple Family series with What Do We Need To Talk About, w…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:03PMMonday, June 8, 2020
Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, is, itself, stuck in a strange loop. The smash Off-Broadway hit was scheduled to come to Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Septem…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:32PMThursday, May 14, 2020
“We have a humanitarian crisis in prison that will blow up in our faces,” says André De Shields, speaking sonorously and looking grave in a clerical collar and a salt-and-pepper beard, …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:32AMWednesday, May 13, 2020
This play about cookbook author Julia Child is a recipe for how not to do online theater. To Master the Art falls flat, despite some great ingredients. This is not how I expected to react. F…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:36PMMonday, May 11, 2020
As the shut-down of theaters enters its third month, theater artists vow “we’ll be back” – that this is just intermission. But will audiences be back? A new three-part survey by Sh…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:32PMThursday, May 7, 2020
The pandemic has produced two kinds of theatrical Netathons , which is my name for oversized online theatrical events by established artists in support of a charitable cause. The first are t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:48AMMonday, May 4, 2020
Just announced: Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama. When I saw it last June at Playwrights Horizons Off-Broadway, I wrote: A Strange Loop is a …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:32PMThursday, April 30, 2020
After spending an hour on Zoom with the Apple family in Richard Nelson’s latest low-key play, I was surprised by my reaction, which I could sum up as: Hallelujah! What Do We Need to Talk…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:18PMTuesday, April 7, 2020
By Jonathan Mandell. Jonathan Mandell examines the new theatrical landscape brought on by COVID-19 and discusses the emerging aesthetic—one that is low-tech, low-key, one-on-one, close-up.
SOURCE: HowlRound at 02:00AMThursday, April 2, 2020
Rachel Dratch portrays FrannyCakes, a makeup vlogger who fights with an old lady over a bottle of Purell in a Costco. Marylouise Burke is Penny, a lovely suburban matron who wonders where …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:42PM 
