All stories by Marc Miller on BroadwayStars

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
Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Wet Brain" - 6/7/23 by Marc Miller

Dysfunctional families rarely emerge as dysfunctional as the one portrayed in Wet Brain, John J. Caswell, Jr.'s high-decibel whatsit of a comedy-drama on Playwrights Horizons' mainstage in a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:47AM
Sunday, June 4, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Love + Science" - 6/4/23 by Marc Miller

Well, it's one way to kick off Pride Month. Love + Science, David J. Glass's drama now at City Center Stage II, recalls the whole horrible 1980s mishandling of the emerging AIDS crisis, as s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM
Thursday, May 25, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Primary Trust" - 5/25/23 by Marc Miller

Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York–the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a coupl…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43PM
Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "King James" - 5/16/23 by Marc Miller

How much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:20PM
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Regretfully, So the Birds Are" - 4/11/23 by Marc Miller

The last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:36AM
Thursday, March 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Vanities-The Musical" - 3/30/23 by Marc Miller

As an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM
Monday, March 13, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "How to Defend Yourself" - 3/13/23 by Marc Miller

Whew, this one really needed an intimacy coordinator. Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself, at New York Theatre Workshop, is mostly about its titular topic, as reflected through the unea…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:23PM
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Best We Could" - 3/1/23 by Marc Miller

There's more than a whiff of Our Town in The Best We Could, Emily Feldman's "family tragedy" now on Manhattan Theatre Club's mainstage. The Wilder influence begins with Lael Jellinek's sceni…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:30PM
Thursday, February 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Wanderers" - 2/16/23 by Marc Miller

Who are these people? Why are they sharing a stage? Where are the character details that would help us understand them better? The Wanderers, Anna Ziegler's new drama at the Laura Pels, shar…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:35PM
Thursday, February 2, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Endgame" - 2/2/23 by Marc Miller

Exactly what Samuel Beckett was up to with Endgame has been the source of much speculation. A meditation on the futility of life? A fever dream about the inevitable journey toward death? A p…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:03PM
Thursday, January 26, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Smuggler" - 1/26/23 by Marc Miller

Moral ambiguity seeps into, permeates, and ultimately overwhelms The Smuggler, Ronán Noone's intelligent little "thriller in rhyme" downstairs at Irish Rep. The one-hander, performed with s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:04PM
Thursday, December 1, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Stardust Road" - 12/1/22 by Marc Miller

Wedging some 40 songs into a little over 90 minutes, Stardust Road is filled with Great American Songbook treasures, well-known and otherwise. And it mostly sounds terrific, thanks to Lawren…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:17PM
Thursday, November 17, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Jack Was Kind" - 11/17/22 by Marc Miller

Mary, though we don't find out until the very last moment that that's her name, is recording a monologue on her phone, which she's set up on a tripod, and the mechanics baffle her. Media-sav…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:17PM
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Downstate" - 11/15/22 by Marc Miller

A tough one, this. Bruce Norris's Downstate, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, plunks us down into a repellent environment, one we'd never choose to find ourselves in, and shakes our assu…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:06AM
Monday, November 7, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "You Will Get Sick" - 11/6/22 by Marc Miller

Given the human suffering we are made to witness in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of You Will Get Sick–the main character's terrifying and mysterious physical deterioration, ev…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:38AM
Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Chester Bailey" - 10/19/22 by Marc Miller

Chester Bailey. A prosaic title, and the play at Irish Rep, by Joseph Dougherty, doesn't overflow with poetry, either. It's a straightforward little two-hander, one with perhaps too many tan…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:36PM
Thursday, September 29, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "american (tele}visions" - 9/29/22 by Marc Miller

american (tele)visions, Victor I. Cazares's new play, in a premiere production at New York Theatre Workshop, is a kaleidoscope, an ever-shifting dazzlement of colors, patterns, shapes, multi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:30PM
Thursday, June 23, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Corsicana" - 6/22/22 by Marc Miller

Will Arbery is an outlier. His previous play at Playwrights Horizons, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, introduced us New York sophisticates to a subculture we'd probably never met, and hoped we…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:02AM
Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Golden Shield" - 5/17/22 by Marc Miller

Golden Shield has a lot on its mind–too much, perhaps. Anchuli Felicia King's new drama at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1 concerns itself with, on the one hand, the unholy alliances of c…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:40AM
Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "72 Miles to Go..." - 3/10/20 by Marc Miller

Hilary Bettis's new play, 72 Miles to Go..., kind of sneaks up on you. It begins in a Tucson church in 2016, where the pastor, Billy (Triney Sandoval), is giving what evidently is his farewe…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:03AM
Monday, March 9, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Unknown Soldier" - 3/9/20 by Marc Miller

[Friedman's] writing in many styles, from pastiche to operatic to sorta-Sondheim, and he melds them well to tell an affecting story.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:44PM
Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Perplexed" - 3/3/20 by Marc Miller

These debonair individuals aren't easy for us schlubs to identify with, and their problems are neither that acute nor that compelling.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:06PM
Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation" - 1/20/20 by Marc Miller

A New York with a Forbidden Broadway in it is always a happier place. And the franchise's latest incarnation, Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation, currently occupying the York, is a pip.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:57AM
Thursday, December 5, 2019

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Harry Townsend's Last Stand" - 12/4/19 by Marc Miller

... well-produced, humorous, and occasionally moving. Still, Eastman's trudging down a well-traveled path.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:19PM
Monday, November 18, 2019

Talkin' Broadway Review: "The Inheritance" 11/17/19 by Marc Miller

Lopez's mammoth depiction of the last 30-odd years of gay American male-hood is a unique meditation.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:44AM

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
Nov 17, 2024: Elf - Marquis Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre