Monday, May 25, 2015
I broke Broadway's gentleperson's agreement with the media and bought a ticket for Thursday's preview.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PM"Lost in the Stars" is a stately, nobly intentioned, peculiar mess of a musical from 1950.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMIt is time - I'm afraid past time - to turn the lights on "Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark."
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMMandy Patinkin appears so seldom onstage these days that it feels wrong - ungrateful, even - to be less than thrilled with the results.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMGeoffrey Rush is giving one of the most astonishing performances of ordeal theater we're ever likely to see.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMBut here's a record that may be tough to bust. Has a show ever survived terrible reviews and continued to thrive like this at the box office?
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMDavid Lindsay-Abaire calls his new play, simply, "Good People." Like everything in this deceptively amiable, stealthily gripping tragicomedy, however, the words are less plain than they firs…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 05:58PMFriday, November 21, 2014
There's a sign outside the Booth Theatre that had me confused for weeks. Above a glass door in front of the all-star revival of Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" is one of those critic quo…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 02:34PMFriday, August 15, 2014
Theaters are so much more than just rooms and buildings. Theaters have walls that know endless stories. Even if these walls could talk, I'd like to believe they would not.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 03:25PMWednesday, February 20, 2013
Hey, there's Lena Dunham on the cover of the new Rolling Stone. And there she is filling backpacks with awards for creating and starring in "Girls," the habit-forming HBO series about 20-som…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 11:05AMThursday, March 15, 2012
Let's get this out of the way at the top. Philip Seymour Hoffman is too young and soft to be the standard-issue iconic Willy Loman chiseled on the Mount Rushmore of American drama. Andrew Ga…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 10:36PMFriday, February 3, 2012
It is hard to resist snappy, interesting theater people talking trash and emoting sincerely while trying to put together a new musical for Broadway. With Steven Spielberg, NBC and creators w…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 04:10PMThursday, August 11, 2011
A Midwest acquaintance, newly smitten with New York, proudly told me recently how much he loved seeing "Jersey Boys," his first Broadway adventure. I gave him what I hoped was an enthusiasti…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 04:03PMFriday, August 5, 2011
Word-association quiz: If I say "Hair," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Godspell" and "Rent," your answers are likely to bubble up from a niche of particularly vivid memories. I'm guessing the im…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 06:32PMFriday, July 22, 2011
For months, I've been tempted to spend a night at the McKittrick Hotel, tantalized by tales of mysterious goings-on in the far-far west stretches of Chelsea, and piqued by reports of this or…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 11:02PMFriday, July 8, 2011
For a while in "As You Like It," it was hard not to fear for the rest of the Royal Shakespeare Company's ambitious five-play season at the Park Avenue Armory.
For most of the first half of …
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 08:31PMThursday, July 7, 2011
Life is very good on Broadway these days. Grosses are up. Even more impressive, though less easily quantified, quality is up, too. What's more, just weeks after the Tony Awards marked the cl…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 11:13PMThere was a time, before he refocused on writing books for musicals and opera in the late '90s, when the theater was deeply hooked on regular infusions of witty and timely, substantive yet c…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 11:11PMFriday, July 1, 2011
The Lincoln Center Festival has never made sense, not really. Why would New York, which already is a culture festival, need another one in the summer when, supposedly, everyone who claims to…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 04:00PMAnyone smitten with the idea of Shakespeare comedies as role models for idealized love doesn't know "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well That Ends Well," the disturbing and twisted works be…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 08:57AMSunday, June 26, 2011
For the past two summers, director Daniel Sullivan has worked magic with the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park -- first with an enchanting "Twelfth Night" starring Anne Hathaway,…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 10:19PMWednesday, June 15, 2011
So, is it better? Yes, the story makes sense now and, so far, no one has fallen down.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 06:48AMMonday, June 13, 2011
"The Book of Mormon," the dirty-talking hit musical comedy, cleaned up big time at the 65th annual Tony Awards Sunday night at the Beacon Theatre, winning nine major awards including best mu…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 07:27AMFriday, June 10, 2011
Two other major Off-Broadway companies, Playwrights Horizons and the New York Theatre Workshop, have collaborated on a very different moment in American cultural history. "The Shaggs: Philos…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 09:55AMTennessee Williams wrote a prison short story called "One Arm" in the '40s, adapted it into a screenplay in 1967 and spent a chunk of his disappointed late life trying to get it filmed.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 09:54AMThursday, June 9, 2011
I don't care who wins many of the Tony Awards Sunday night, but don't get the wrong idea. Indifference has nothing to do with it.
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 08:49PMTuesday, June 7, 2011
Although most of the world knows Ingmar Bergman through his movies, New Yorkers had the privilege of sharing another visceral part of his vision through regular visits to Brooklyn Academy of…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 11:49AMSunday, June 5, 2011
In a way, it feels right to close the Signature Theatre Company's 14 invaluable years at its space on the far west side of 42nd Street with "The Illusion," Tony Kushner's free adaptation of …
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 09:08PMFriday, June 3, 2011
If things had gone as planned, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" would now be tallying its potential wins on next Sunday's Tony Awards broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. If the mega-musical had opened…
SOURCE: Newsday Subscription at 06:06AM 
