Monday, April 15, 2013
My buddy Ingrid Gammerman has told me that she does it. So has my pal Donald Tesione. On occasion, I’ve done it, too.
That is, play a cast album on the precise night of an all-star concer…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 02:23PMFriday, April 12, 2013
I’m glad to be back in my hometown of Arlington, Massachusetts to see SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM at the local community theater. Granted, you may giggle a bit when you hear the official nam…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 12:10PMThings are coming along nicely for the Broadway revival of the 1975 musical Good Time Charley. And as you've certainly heard, for the last few weeks the production's powers-that-be have been…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 08:56AMTuesday, April 9, 2013
On Wednesday, April 8, 1964, Variety told me that Anyone Can Whistle had opened the previous Saturday to three raves and three pans. I’d never seen such an extreme split from the New York …
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 12:04AMFriday, April 5, 2013
It only ran 63 days in 2002, but THE LAST FIVE YEARS has lasted far longer than the last 11 years. Jason Robert Brown’s musical, which has had countless productions around the country, is …
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 12:40PMA bit more than 60 years ago, a musical called "Wish You Were Here" opened to mostly terrible reviews. The future looked bleak, but then director Josh Logan decided to return to the show and…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 07:44AMMonday, April 1, 2013
Were you among the many who’d planned to go see Betty Buckley do Dear World in London – only to find the show had shuttered earlier than expected?
“I’m not surprised,” says my bu…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:44PMFriday, March 29, 2013
It was the month in which Breakfast at Tiffany's began performances on the 4th - which meant that by March 8th, after it had played five previews, it had already outrun the 1966 musical vers…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 11:56AMAudiences love when a character makes a fast costume change. If it happens with enough speed, they almost feel as if they’re getting two characters for the price of one. That opportunity a…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 11:15AMTuesday, March 26, 2013
Have you been wondering why the National Collegiate Athletic Association nicknames its annual basketball tournament “March Madness” when the tournament heats up in April? Or why CBS call…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 12:03AMFriday, March 22, 2013
Wish I could remember the precise story I was telling my buddy Bob Burger at the opening night party of the York's Starting Here, Starting Now. The point of it was that I was in a situation …
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 01:34PMWhen my New Jersey travels took me to Plays in the Park in Edison for Nunsense, I was overwhelmed by the power-packed performance of Susan Speidel – and told the director afterward. “Oh,…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 10:53AMTuesday, March 19, 2013
While basketball fans of Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland are moaning and mourning that their team didn’t make the 68-team NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament – and adherents of the chosen…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 12:28AMFriday, March 15, 2013
Her name was Stella. She was a heavy-set girl who was a techie in the high school drama club for which I was an advisor. Between scenes of every show, you could see, if you looked carefully …
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 11:39AM"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Patti LuPone," says the lady to the packed house - with an as-if-you-didn't-know tone to her voice.
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 08:12AMTuesday, March 12, 2013
Next Sunday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s “March Madness” will officially begin. We’ll know which sixty-eight teams will play for the 2013 NCAA’s men’s basketba…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 12:07AMFriday, March 8, 2013
If you do PASSION correctly – meaning the way that Stephen Sondheim envisioned it – your audience will applaud only once the entire night. That will happen at the end of the show, after …
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 12:15PMMarch is coming in like a lion for Rodgers and Hammerstein. When most people think of Dick and Ockie, they recall their 11 musical properties (or at least five of them). Many may not know or…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 07:24AMMonday, March 4, 2013
As I wrote last week, if college basketball can have “March Madness,” so can musical theater.
My column of February 26 stated that aficionados should spend March going delightfully mad.…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:45PMFriday, March 1, 2013
It’s never been produced on Broadway and its London production was short-lived. But these facts haven’t kept one theater after another from doing CHILDREN OF EDEN. Here in Watertown, Mas…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 12:10PMIt was the month that I attended The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for the seventh time - and I've still yet to be in the right place to catch any one of the Fritos, M&M's, Oreos, b…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 07:34AMMonday, February 25, 2013
And here it comes: that annual sporting event that’s unashamedly come to be known as “March Madness.”
Much of the country will be watching to see which college basketball teams will b…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 11:45PMFriday, February 22, 2013
“Every moment in life is an audition,” writes Tim Federle in Better Nate Than Ever. If that’s true, Federle’s audition as a writer gets him the part as The Country’s Most P…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 11:18AMA movie becomes a Broadway musical? While we think of this as a recent phenomenon, Donnybrook! proves it isn't. Its source, The Quiet Man, hit film screens on Sept. 14, 1952. Fewer than nine…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 07:34AMSunday, February 17, 2013
It’s one of those Tony-winning musicals that doesn’t get done very often – and certainly not enough.
But sharp director John Simpkins decided that his students at NYU Steinhardt could…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 08:36AMCongratulations to Fred Abramowitz, AnyaToes, Susan Berlin, Brigadude, Mark Canestraro, Laura Frankos, Ingrid Gammerman, John Griffin, Marc Grossberg, Jack Lechner, Paul Mendenhall, Brian Mu…
SOURCE: Kritzerland at 08:25AMSaturday, February 16, 2013
Learn how Broadway and TV actor Bryan Batt, a New Orleans native, was among those who helped turn around the fortunes of the New Orleans community theatre Le Petit Theatre due Vieux Carre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, February 15, 2013
There’ll be a grand finale on the final day of the Junior Theater Festival ’13 in Atlanta. But before the big display of entertainment, the teachers repair to classrooms to learn a littl…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 10:26AMTuesday, February 12, 2013
Here’s hoping that you can make it to New York this month and next to see the York Theatre Company’s four “Musicals in Mufti.”
Starting this weekend, Mufti – which does readings o…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 01:31AMFriday, February 8, 2013
On Feb. 17, 1983, I returned to New York from a two-week business trip and met my girlfriend at the O'Neill, where a friend had arranged comps for a preview of a new play. It started out ter…
SOURCE: kritzerland.com at 09:23AMWhile Alan Menken and I were having dinner the night before Junior Theater Festival ’13 was to begin, he said to me, “You know, when I was a kid, what I really wanted to be was a rock st…
SOURCE: Music Theatre International at 06:10AM 
