All stories by Jonathan Mandell on BroadwayStars

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Laurie Anderson at BAM: Songs, A Scream, Tai Chi by Jonathan Mandell

 Laurie Anderson launched the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s fortieth annual Next Wave Festival Tuesday night with “Let X = X,” an unconventional concert that featured, yes, songs from t…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:41AM
Thursday, October 19, 2023

Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy by Jonathan Mandell

There’s a photograph of 23-year-old Stephen Sondheim with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Gina Lollabrigida on the set of director John Huston’s movie “Beat the Devil,” where  Son…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:46AM
Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Top 12 Most Produced Plays and 24 Most Produced Playwrights in 2023-24 Season by Jonathan Mandell

Heidi Schreck’s “What The Constitution Means To Me” is the most produced play in America this season, according to American Theatre Magazine’s latest survey, and Lynn Nottage is the …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:49PM
Monday, October 16, 2023

Helen Review. Her Odyssey far from Home, and from Homer by Jonathan Mandell

Helen of Troy, the beauty whose face launched a thousand ships, the woman whose exploits inspired poets and playwrights from Homer to Euripides to Virgil to Shakespeare and his contemporary …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 06:59PM

Merrily and Gutenberg open on Broadway. Sondheim’s Here We Are extends. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

It’s easier to feel that theater is bouncing back during such a busy week on Broadway and beyond  (especially for critics trying to catch up on shows that opened earlier whose runs have …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:33AM
Sunday, October 15, 2023

Job Review. Tech, Twisted into Horror by Jonathan Mandell

“Job” begins with a woman in her twenties pointing a gun at a male therapist in his sixties. Why? That’s not fully revealed until the end of the therapy session, a climax that’s so o…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:25PM
Saturday, October 14, 2023

TLA Theater Book Awards 2023 by Jonathan Mandell

Books about the Method school of acting and about theater’s long history of “racial impersonation” have been named the best theater books of the year by The Theatre Library Associatio…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:58AM
Friday, October 13, 2023

Swing State Review by Jonathan Mandell

Peg is unhappy, not just because her husband died a year ago, but also because it’s been ages since she’s seen a bat on the prairie that surrounds her house in rural Wisconsin.“You wa…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:59PM
Thursday, October 12, 2023

Gutenberg The Musical Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

“Gutenberg! The Musical!” is deliberately bad – that’s the central joke of it – but much of what’s bad about it isn’t deliberate. The score is largely unmemorable. The premise …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:57PM
Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Merrily We Roll Along Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

People will be watching “Merrily We Roll Along” in 2040, if all goes as planned. That’s the year that director Richard Linklater plans to release a movie adaptation of the Stephen Sond…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:46PM
Monday, October 9, 2023

(pray) Review. Black Women’s Spirituality…and Machetes? by Jonathan Mandell

“(pray)” might feel at first like a theatrically heightened version of a traditional gospel church service, with church ladies in their Sunday finest preaching and praying, clapping and …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:29PM

Indigenous Theater Gets its Day. Tony Awards 2024 set for Lincoln Center. Nathan Lane hates puppets?! #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Today is Indigenous People’s Day, which since 2021 has been officially recognized as a national holiday — not coincidentally on the same day (the second Monday in October) as Columbus …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:02PM
Sunday, October 8, 2023

Prelude Festival: Exposure. Radiohole Weirdness by Jonathan Mandell

“We’re here to celebrate the body – squirts, blasts, noises and inappropriate acts,” proclaimed our host, the performer known as Fantasy Grandma,  introducing “Exposure,” a gro…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:35PM
Friday, October 6, 2023

Theater Blog Roundup: A New Era in New York Theater by Jonathan Mandell

Many long-time leaders of New York theaters have been retiring or dying, as Jan Simpson catalogues in a post in her blog Broadway and Me. The questions she ponders: Who will replace them and…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:45AM
Thursday, October 5, 2023

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

Jocelyn Bioh’s inviting workplace comedy, presenting a day in the life of a hair braiding salon in Harlem, would be a shoo-in for two separate Tony Awards, if either existed – one for ha…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:05PM
Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Three Love Stories Near a Railroad Review. Hemingway and Eugene O’Neill, the Krymov way by Jonathan Mandell

To get the full flavor of what the great exiled Russian director Dmitry Krymov does with (to?) Ernest Hemingway’s two short stories, which are hard to see as love stories at all, and to Eu…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 04:56PM
Monday, October 2, 2023

Sondheim Side by Side by Side. Melissa Victorious! #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Almost two years after Stephen Sondheim death at the age of 91, October will see the opening at The Shed of what’s billed as the composer’s “final musical” – “Here We Are” – …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:52AM
Sunday, October 1, 2023

October 2023 New York Theater Openings. Sondheims, Reunions, and Zoomers beyond the vintage venues. by Jonathan Mandell

Below is a calendar of theater opening* in New York in October, with two greatly-anticipated musicals by Stephen Sondheim, one never produced before. The other, “Merrily We Roll Along,” …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 06:08PM
Saturday, September 30, 2023

Theater Quiz for September 2023 by Jonathan Mandell

How well were you paying attention to the theater news, views and reviews in this month that launched the Fall 2023 season? Find out in the quiz below. Loading…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 03:22PM
Thursday, September 28, 2023

Melissa Etheridge: My Window Revier by Jonathan Mandell

Melissa Etheridge was so young when she started playing the guitar that her fingers bled, but she kept at it, which seems a fitting start for her rocky road to rock star. On her 17th birthda…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:01PM
Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Purlie Victorious Review by Jonathan Mandell

It’s hard to picture a better cast for this first Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 broad, biting comedy about racism in the Old South. As the title character, Leslie Odom Jr., assu…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:00PM
Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Wanted: New Blood for Broadway. The Wiz sets opening. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

“The Wiz” announced its opening date in April, starring Nichelle Lewis as Dorothy, Deborah Cox as Glinda and Melody A. Betts (featured in this first photograph above) as Aunt Em an…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:27PM
Sunday, September 24, 2023

Broadway’s View of the Jew by Jonathan Mandell

The photographs below offer a small sample of the many Jewish characters that have been portrayed in plays and musicals on Broadway, focusing on the most familiar and the most recent.  The …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:27AM
Saturday, September 23, 2023

ASL on Broadway Fall 2023 by Jonathan Mandell

 In celebration of the International Day of Sign Languages, proclaimed every September 23 by the United Nations since 2018, below is the schedule of ASL-interpreted performances on Broadwa…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:50AM
Friday, September 22, 2023

Mary Gets Hers Review by Jonathan Mandell

The story told in Emma Horwitz’s “Mary Gets Hers,” about an orphan girl who falls into prostitution, and then is rescued from it,  follows nearly scene by scene a tenth century play …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:25PM
Thursday, September 21, 2023

Refuge at PAC NYC: More than a concert, an act of faith by Jonathan Mandell

During the second of the five concerts that are launching the new performing arts center at the World Trade Center, the violinist Trina Basu went up to the microphone after her set and said …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 04:49PM
Wednesday, September 20, 2023

9 Kinds of Silence Review by Jonathan Mandell

The soldier is silent. This frustrates the woman who is not exactly his captor but not his keeper either; she works for the motherland, which disapproves of his silence.  If he doesn’t b…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 03:13PM
Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Prometheus Firebringer Review. Artificial Intelligence on Stage by Jonathan Mandell

Half of what happens in “Prometheus Firebringer” is extraordinary, unprecedented. But you wouldn’t know that just by watching what’s on stage, which is mostly a series of monologues …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:57PM
Monday, September 18, 2023

Broadway 2024: 4 more. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

 Broadway favorites  Kelli O’Hara, Brian d’Arcy James, and Heidi Schreck are returning, and Rachel McAdams making her Broadway debut, in two plays and two musicals that were newly ann…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:03AM
Friday, September 15, 2023

Psychic Self Defense Review. A Curtain Raiser for the Ages by Jonathan Mandell

“Psychic Self Defense” – gorgeous, impish and enveloping — had long ended before I understood the title, although the show itself remained ineffable. To be clear, I never doubted it …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:05PM
Thursday, September 14, 2023

alt-Hamlet Review. A “post-Roe satire” by Jonathan Mandell

Susan and Bella, two students at UC Berkeley who are twin sisters, keep on getting pregnant – their pregnancy represented by red balloons —  and they keep on popping “M&Ms” –…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:50PM