All stories by Jonathan Mandell on BroadwayStars

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." S…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:42PM[SHARE]
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 target …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:25PM[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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 "  the …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:53PM[SHARE]

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[SHARE]
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 pa…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:50PM[SHARE]
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 hav…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:39AM[SHARE]
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 at the…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 02:40PM[SHARE]
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 David…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:50PM[SHARE]
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 pre…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:39PM[SHARE]
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 movie…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:40AM[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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 understud…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:30PM[SHARE]
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 photograph…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:05PM[SHARE]
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 far…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:50PM[SHARE]

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 darkne…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:50AM[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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…dealin…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:06AM[SHARE]
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. But …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:19AM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 23, 2025

Othello Broadway Reviews. Denzel and Jake Take on the Bard by Jonathan Mandell

Denzel Washington stars in the title role of Othello, and Jake Gyllenhaal as his secret nemesis Iago, in director Kenny Leon's production of Shakespeare's tragedy, opening officially tonight…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:45PM[SHARE]

Sondheim at 95 by Jonathan Mandell

Stephen Sondheim would have turned 95 today. In the three years and four months since his death, attention to the Broadway composer has only grown, with the opening of a new musical, a reviv…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:42AM[SHARE]
Saturday, March 22, 2025

Untitled Miniature. Gelb nude in an even smaller box. by Jonathan Mandell

Joshua William Gelb writhes nude and mute in a box for forty-five minutes. That's "[Untitled Miniature]" in a nutshell. It's my job to put this in context, so I'll try. I'll also explain how…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:32AM[SHARE]
Friday, March 21, 2025

New York City Fringe Festival 2025 by Jonathan Mandell

Greg Kotis, whose "Urinetown" won a Tony shortly after its debut at the New York International Fringe Festival, now offers a new post-apocalyptic musical at a new New York fringe festival. H…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:23PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 20, 2025

Operation Mincemeat Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

"Operation Mincemeat" is terribly clever and frightfully British, with a strong next-generation Monty Python vibe. If it ultimately feels too clever by half, that may be because this new mus…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:02PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Buena Vista Social Club Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

As a band and a brand, "Buena Vista Social Club" has been gold from the get-go: It was a hit Grammy-winning album that in 1996 had brought together an impromptu group of old-time Cuban music…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:51PM[SHARE]

We Had A World Review by Jonathan Mandell

Playwright Joshua Harmon secretly recorded the last conversation he had with his dying grandmother, during which he told her that his next play was going to be about their family. "Do you ha…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:51PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Vanya Review. Andrew Scott in a One-Man Chekhov Play by Jonathan Mandell

After watching Andrew Scott portray all eight characters by himself in a new version of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," which is playing Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel through May 11, I s…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:51PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 17, 2025

Purpose Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

In "Purpose," an extraordinary play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Tony winner for last season's "Appropriate") opening tonight on Broadway in a terrifically acted, crowd-pleasing production tha…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:40PM[SHARE]

The "Taylor Swift Effect" on Broadway (aka "obscene" ticket prices.) Dimming dilemma addressed. Stageworthy News of the Week. by Jonathan Mandell

Tickets for "Othello" are selling for $921, even as far back as Row M, which helped the Shakespeare play starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal gross a record-breaking $2.8 million l…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:48AM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off