All stories by Jonathan Mandell on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity by Jonathan Mandell

“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever been told they were too fat,too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical,” Ryan Donovan writes…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:56PM
Monday, March 27, 2023

Happy World Theater Day. DeVito, Smash on Broadway. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

In honor of World Theater Day, celebrated internationally every March 27th since 1962, here are some beautiful theaters from around the world: Theater isn’t just the buildings in which it …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:08AM
Sunday, March 26, 2023

Bad Cinderella Broadway Review by Jonathan Mandell

What’s so bad about “Bad Cinderella”? Sure, it takes great liberties with the fairy tale, sexing it up, setting it to loud pop music, replacing the familiar story with a berserk comic …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:51PM
Thursday, March 23, 2023

Parade Review. Ben Platt as Jewish Martyr in Unsettling Revival by Jonathan Mandell

Two years after a jury convicted Leo Frank of murdering a 13-year-old girl and condemned him to death, a prison guard enters his jail cell with a message from his wife Lucille:  Georgia Go…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:36PM
Monday, March 20, 2023

Sondheim. Fosse. Jerry Herman. We ❤️ NYC. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

This week felt like a reunion of some of the greatest figures in American musical theater — the Broadway opening of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” the concert version of Jerry Herman’s �…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:04AM
Sunday, March 19, 2023

Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ Review by Jonathan Mandell

The sensuous slouch, the bowler hat placed rakishly on the tilted head, the turned-in pigeon toes, undulating abdomen, hands reaching out as if roping in their prey, or palms up in the air s…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:03PM
Saturday, March 18, 2023

Dear World Review. Donna Murphy in Jerry Herman’s Flop Musical. by Jonathan Mandell

“Dear World” was a vehicle for Angela Lansbury, though one that otherwise crashed when it ran on Broadway for a mere 132 performances in 1969, even as Jerry Herman’s other musicals on …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 06:01PM
Friday, March 17, 2023

Careful The Spell You Cast: How Stephen Sondheim Extended the Range of the American Musical by Jonathan Mandell

Stephen Sondheim was not a cynic; he was a romantic. That in a nutshell is the thesis Ben Francis puts forth in Careful the Spell You Cast: How Stephen Sondheim Extended the Range of the Ame…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:41PM
Thursday, March 16, 2023

A Doll’s House Review: Jessica Chastain Escapes Her Chair! by Jonathan Mandell

It’s too tempting to mock this austere version of Ibsen’s play as Broadway’s answer to the movie that just swept the Oscars. Call it: Nothing Nowhere With No Intermission! Jessica Cha…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:00PM
Wednesday, March 15, 2023

The Harder They Come Review. Suzan-Lori Parks Adapts Jimmy Cliff’s Reggae Movie by Jonathan Mandell

“The Harder They Come” is a largely faithful stage adaptation of the 1972 movie starring Jimmy Cliff that is said to have introduced the world to reggae music; its fidelity to the origin…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:00PM
Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Radio 477! review. Ukraine then and now: jazz, destruction and defiance. by Jonathan Mandell

In 1929, a group of avant-garde artists in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, put on a jazz musical revue called “Hello, This Is Radio 477!” celebrating the city’s lone radio…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 02:20PM
Monday, March 13, 2023

Digital Theatre Is Here To Stay: Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate by Jonathan Mandell

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 12:20PM

#Oscars Hidden Theater Connections. New Michael Jackson in MJ. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Connecting Oscars to theater news: A24, the film company that had the best night — with its seven awards for “Everything All At Once,” including Best Picture and three of the four perf…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:55AM
Sunday, March 12, 2023

Oscar Winners 2023: Everything Everywhere All At Once Best Picture, Best Actress, five more by Jonathan Mandell

Best PictureEverything Everywhere All At Once Best DirectorDaniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once Best ActressMichelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Onc…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:19PM
Saturday, March 11, 2023

Puppetopia Festival: Deeper Closer Warmer by Jonathan Mandell

“Deeper Closer Warmer,” a fun hour of puppet monster mayhem, is the creation of identical twin brothers Pablo and Efrain Del Hierro from Santurce, Puerto Rico who for more than a decade,…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 03:58PM
Friday, March 10, 2023

Digital theater is still here! 6 Innovators Who Persist. by Jonathan Mandell

On the third anniversary Sunday of the pandemic having shut down in-person theater, even people who welcomed digital theater in 2020 and 2021 surely now — some eighteen months after theate…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:03AM
Thursday, March 9, 2023

Dark Disabled Stories Review by Jonathan Mandell

Ryan J. Haddad is not going to make disability funny tonight the way he usually does, he tells the audience at the Public Theater near the beginning of this groundbreaking  production. “…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:40PM
Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Cherry Lane Theater History and Hollywood Connection (before A24) by Jonathan Mandell

When A24 bought the Cherry Lane Theater last week for $10 million, the indie film company acquired a two hundred year old building, with an illustrious hundred year theater history, and not…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:58PM
Monday, March 6, 2023

West Village Theaters On The Rise. So many names, so much #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

Betty Smith, Oscar Isaac, Rachel Brosnahan, Jessica Hecht, Parker Posey, Eric Bogosian, Lea Michele, Caridad Svich, Michael Heitzman, Will Davis, Lea Salonga, Constantine Maroulis, Andre De …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:30AM
Sunday, March 5, 2023

A Fine Romance: Adapting Broadway to Hollywood in the Studio System Era by Jonathan Mandell

When “Sweeney Todd” was finally released as a movie musical in 2007, twenty-eight years after its debut on Broadway, Stephen Sondheim said “everyone who has attempted to translate a st…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:26PM
Saturday, March 4, 2023

The 18 Women Playwrights Who Won The Pulitzer Prize by Jonathan Mandell

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

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:56PM
Friday, March 3, 2023

Love Review by Jonathan Mandell

What is it about the homeless that inspires such  groundbreaking theater? Last year, it was “Addressless,” digital theater with gameplay. Now, “Love,” something completely differen…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:56PM
Thursday, March 2, 2023

Eric Bogosian’s 1+1 Review by Jonathan Mandell

A sleazy photographer convinces a naïve aspiring actress to pose naked for him. Didn’t that happen to Irene Cara in “Fame” more than forty years ago?  And even then it felt trite an…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:51AM
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

March 2023 New York Theater Openings by Jonathan Mandell

Below is a calendar of theater opening* in March 2023 in New York, including seven shows on Broadway: a new Andrew Lloyd Webber, revivals of Sondheim, Fosse and Jason Robert Brown, a classic…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 01:26PM
Tuesday, February 28, 2023

The Seagull/Woodstock NY Review by Jonathan Mandell

One scene stands out in Thomas Bradshaw’s adaptation of Chekhov for the wrong reasons. It’s a play-within-the-play, in which the son of a famous actress stages a show that doesn’t go o…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:47PM
Monday, February 27, 2023

Letters From Max, A Ritual: Theater review by Jonathan Mandell

There is so much love that Sarah Ruhl has put into this play, and into the book from which it’s adapted, and into the letters and poems exchanged between Ruhl and Max Ritvo that make up th…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:30PM

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window Review. Lorraine Hansberry’s Greenwich Village by Jonathan Mandell

There’s something of an inside joke tucked into Lorraine Hansberry’s rarely-produced second Broadway play, which director Anne Kauffman has brought to life in a starry revival at BAM. T…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:00PM

Becomes A Woman Review by Jonathan Mandell

Before she authored the novel “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” Betty Smith wrote a play about the same character, Francie Nolan. Smith’s novel, which follows Francie from young girlhood to …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:11PM

Obie Winners: English, Martyna Majok, Ping Chong, Anne Bogart, Ralph Lee, etc. Confronting Antisemitism on Broadway. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

The 66th Obie Awards, which will be celebrated tonight, were announced over the weekend, Full list of Obie winnersAmong the 37 awards,  for shows presented between July 1, 2020, and Aug.…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:52AM
Saturday, February 25, 2023

Theater Quiz for February 2023 by Jonathan Mandell

How well were you paying attention to New York theater in February? Answer these ten questions, plus a bonus question, to find out. Loading…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:14PM
Friday, February 24, 2023

Ukraine and Theater One Year Later by Jonathan Mandell

Today, the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the national opera theater of Ukraine held a concert called “Ukraine: Free and Unbreakable,” and the theater community in…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:30AM