All stories by Marc Miller on BroadwayStars

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "We Live in Cairo" - 11/8/24 by Marc Miller

There's more than a whiff of Rent to We Live in Cairo, Daniel and Patrick Lazour's long-aborning musical now at New York Theatre Workshop. Also the heady scents of cardamom and sumac. Take a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:19AM
Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Vladimir" - 10/15/24 by Marc Miller

One of the pleasures of Vladimir, Erika Sheffer's sturdy new play at Manhattan Theatre Club, is how it allows us Americans to listen in on ordinary Russians' conversations. We've had plenty …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:13AM
Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Counter" - 10/9/24 by Marc Miller

This won't be a long one, because The Counter is one of those plays where divulging almost any detail might constitute a spoiler. Meghan Kennedy's short, straightforward exploration of frien…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:06PM
Saturday, September 28, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Magnificent Bird / Book of Travelers" - 9/28/24 by Marc Miller

Your first thought on entering the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons is, hey, this doesn't look like the set for a song cycle. That's what Magnificent Bird and Book of Traveler…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:57PM
Thursday, September 26, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Fatherland" - 9/26/24 by Marc Miller

"Fatherland." Has a vaguely Teutonic ring to it, no? But plays don't come more American than Fatherland, Stephen Sachs's distillation of disturbing recent U.S. events and their cataclysmic e…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:11PM
Sunday, September 22, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Beacon" - 9/22/24 by Marc Miller

It's Irish Rep, and there's a squabbling mother and her adult son onstage, so we know this isn't going to end well. My first thought of The Beacon, Nancy Harris's new play, was, this reminds…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:12PM
Friday, September 20, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song" - 9/20/24 by Marc Miller

So let me take you back to the original Forbidden Broadway. It's 1982 and we're at Palsson's, an inelegant upstairs boîte on West 72nd Street (it's still there, as the Triad). The stage is …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:46AM
Monday, July 15, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "On Beckett" - 7/15/24 by Marc Miller

As one who has often found the works of Samuel Beckett to be baffling, boring, or both, I wasn't looking forward to On Beckett. The lecture on and excerpts from the man's oeuvre, returning t…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:20PM
Thursday, May 23, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Molly Sweeney" - 5/23/24 by Marc Miller

Everybody, except me, loved Irish Repertory Theatre's previous effort in its Friel Project, Philadelphia, Here I Come! They saw a trenchant examination of stultifying small-town Irish life a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:02PM
Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Here There Are Blueberries" - 5/13/24 by Marc Miller

Here There Are Blueberries is surely the right title for this one. It refers to a caption in a photo album, a very special photo album. The phrase evokes a carefree, whimsical quotidian exis…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:58AM
Sunday, April 28, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Staff Meal" - 4/28/24 by Marc Miller

Ever seen a shaggy-dog play? That's a fair description of Staff Meal, Abe Koogler's shape-shifter of a comedy now at Playwrights Horizons. His purpose is hard to pin down, if not impossible.…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:00PM
Thursday, April 18, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Still" - 4/18/24 by Marc Miller

With Brooklyn Laundry having recently ended its merry run at Manhattan Theatre Club, New York now has a new, not-dissimilar mini-romance to celebrate. Lia Romeo's Still, from Colt Coeur at D…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:38PM
Monday, March 25, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" - 3/24/24 by Marc Miller

Philadelphia, Here I Come! was Brian Friel's first major success, and the new revival at Irish Repertory Theatre, part of its Friel Project retrospective, offers ample evidence why. It's a s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:42AM
Saturday, March 23, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Teeth" - 3/23/24 by Marc Miller

You've probably heard about it as "the musical about the penis-eating vagina." Yes, but Teeth aims to be something more–a horror musical that also takes in repression, misogyny, violence, …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:11PM
Saturday, March 16, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Corruption" - 3/16/24 by Marc Miller

Rupert Murdoch is a scourge, a reckless power monger whose pursuit of material gain has irrevocably changed and devalued the journalistic universe. On that much many of us will probably agre…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:45PM
Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Brooklyn Laundry" - 2/28/24 by Marc Miller

The New York Times beat me to it yesterday in saying so, but gosh, this is some season John Patrick Shanley is having. First a well-received revival of his early play, Danny and the Deep Blu…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:00PM
Thursday, February 22, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "A Sign of the Times" - 2/22/24 by Marc Miller

It's called A Sign of the Times, and zowie, is it ever. Start with a jukebox score, consisting of rock 'n' roll favorites old enough to be nostalgically remembered by people old enough to be…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:32PM
Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "" - 2/14/24 by Marc Miller

At the Brick, there's not a bad seat in the house. That's because the house is a long, narrow room framing a long, narrow table, plus a few barstool-height chairs against the wall to fill th…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:23PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "I Love You So Much I Could Die" - 2/14/24 by Marc Miller

Storytelling doesn't come much more basic than I Love You So Much I Could Die, Mona Pirnot's autobiographical one-woman show at New York Theatre Workshop. NYTW's mainstage theater usually fe…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:06PM
Friday, February 2, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Jonah" - 2/2/24 by Marc Miller

The first thing about Jonah: It's not much about Jonah. He's a character, to be sure, an endearing one, embodied by Hagan Oliveras with goofy Jesse Eisenberg charm. But Jonah is mostly about…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:40AM
Monday, January 22, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Aristocrats" - 1/21/24 by Marc Miller

Said my companion as we exited Aristocrats: "It's The Cherry Orchard meets Three Sisters." Not quite, but Brian Friel's 1979 drama, in revival at Irish Repertory Theatre, does have a heavy l…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:33AM
Thursday, November 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Jerusalem Syndrome" - 11/30/23 by Marc Miller

The Jerusalem Syndrome? The timing does not seem propitious for the York Theatre Company to trot out what's meant to be a fizzy, escapist musical comedy set in the present-day Middle East. B…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:36PM
Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Three Solo Shows at Playwrights Horizons" - 11/21/23 by Marc Miller

With Stereophonic blaring happily away on its mainstage, Playwrights Horizons is attempting an intriguing experiment upstairs at the Peter Jay Sharp: three one-acts, all solo shows, each wri…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:18AM
Thursday, November 2, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Poor Yella Rednecks" - 11/1/23 by Marc Miller

The curious thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, Qui Nguyen's Manhattan Theatre Club follow-up to his well-received, autobiographical Vietgone of several seasons back, is that its title characte…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:40AM
Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Merry Me" - 10/31/23 by Marc Miller

Whoo-whee! It's a good thing Hansol Jung's Merry Me, at New York Theatre Workshop, hired an intimacy coordinator (Rocío Mendez). A great deal of shagging permeates the action, of various ge…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:16AM
Sunday, October 29, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Stereophonic" - 10/29/23 by Marc Miller

How much you like Stereophonic, David Adjmi's play with (quite a lot of) music at Playwrights Horizons, may well hinge on how much you like Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Aerosmith, and their ilk…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:04PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Translations" - 10/29/23 by Marc Miller

A word of advice: Before seeing Translations, the opening volley in Irish Repertory Theatre's season-long (Brian) Friel Project, show up early. To get maximum impact out of this beguiling li…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:09PM
Thursday, September 28, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Golden Rainbow" - 9/28/23 by Marc Miller

Winners! Losers! Sinners! Boozers! So goes a line in "24 Hours a Day," the opening number of Golden Rainbow, the 1968 musical being given a rare airing at York Theatre Company's Musicals in …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:51PM
Monday, September 11, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Lieutenant" - 9/11/23 by Marc Miller

Indulge us for a moment, please, we collectors of cast albums and mavens of Tony Awards trivia. In 1975, a lot of Jerry Herman fans were very upset when his favorite among his scores, Mack a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:59PM
Monday, August 28, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "How to Steal an Election" - 8/28/23 by Marc Miller

Sounds current, doesn't it? When I told friends I was reviewing something called How to Steal an Election, at least one responded, "Oh, is it new?" Not at all: The Off-Broadway musical by Wi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:16PM
Friday, July 14, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Saviour" - 7/13/23 by Marc Miller

It can't be easy to cram two separate plays into one 70-minute running time, but that appears to be what playwright Deirdre Kinahan has done with The Saviour, a compact drama now on Irish Re…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:56AM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 01, 2025: Glengarry Glen Ross
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic
TBA: Ragtime