Cross-posted from my music blog Train My Ear In my decades of listening to and thinking about, and occasionally making, music, I’ve had some widely shared crushes and obsessions (Beatles,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:33AMThe actors and musicians behind “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” see themselves in the stories they will share, and sing about, onstage.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:42PMWill Arbery (photo by Korde Tuttle) Like August: Osage County, Will Arbery’s play Heroes of the Fourth Turning is much, much better than its clunky title. Also like August it’s a veri…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMIt was one thing to deliver lectures in American Legion halls as a teenager. It’s another to stand on a Broadway stage flanked by the photos of 163 staring men.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:24PMActors Paul Rudd, Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper appear onstage during curtain call at the opening night of “Three Days of Rain” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on April 19, 2006 in N…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMRob Harvila's much-discussed recent article on the meaning and value of harsh criticism in the age of social media got me thinking back to my days as a more or less full-time critic in New Y…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:18AMGalt MacDermot.It doesn't actually embarrass me to love Galt MacDermot, the composer of Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona, whose death was just announced--I'm just using this opportunity to e…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:12PMLong story short: I was the last regular critic employed by the ticket-concierge site Broadway.com, for whom I reviewed the 2005-06 season (highlights included Sweeney Todd, Bridge & Tun…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:32PMStill waiting for her signature role, the versatile Rebecca Naomi Jones is changing things up in a stripped-down new staging of the musical classic.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:54PMConor McPherson discusses digging deep into the Dylan catalog for his Depression-era play with music, “Girl From the North Country.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:48AMHow do married clowns make wordless wizardry with balloons, umbrellas, packing peanuts and fabric? Turn on those electric fans.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:21AMSarah Jones in Bridge & Tunnel. (Photo by Paul Kolnik)Broadway.com, Feb. 1, 2006Bridge & TunnelReviewed by Rob KendtIf the Tonys had an ensemble award, Sarah Jones would be an odds-o…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:12AMFrom The Sondheim Review, December 2011Bittersweet HomecomingBy Rob Weinert-KendtThe perfect Follies, it should be admitted by even its most fervent acolytes, does not exist, and may in fact…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:54AMThe 1950 Broadway production of As You Like It, with Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind/Ganymede. Tonight I'm taking my eight-year-old son to see his first Shakespeare: Public Works' adaptat…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:54PMZilah Mendoza in Electricidad at the Mark Taper Forum, 2005. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)Luis Alfaro has been retrofitting Greek tragedy to L.A.'s Latinx gang culture for many years now, and by…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:42PMI had the pleasure of interviewing the late, great Martin Landau back in 2005 for the shortlived magazine Moving Pictures. Here's my story in its entirety.Martin Landau has been places,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:06AMVishal Bhardwaj.One of the joys of reporting on the upcoming Monsoon Wedding musical, apart from the chance to chat over chai with one of my idols, director Mira Nair, was that everyone invo…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:36PMA musical based on the popular 2002 film will debut at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. It has Broadway ambitions.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:31PMOrville Mendoza at Stephen Sondheim's piano.I first saw Orville Mendoza in the lead role of Sweeney Todd at East West Players in 1994; I later had the distinct joy of reviewing him…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:12AMPatrick Wilson and Amanda Peet in Barefoot in the Park. (Photo by Carol Rosegg)Amanda Peet recently contributed this funny, lightly harrowing essay about the weird contortions she put hersel…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMDear New York theater friends who think this L.A. 99-seat thing sounds like B.S. and a clear-cut case of exploitation that Equity has every good reason to shut down: I might not go so far as…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:06AMMichael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, Manoel Felciano, and Donna Lynne Champlin in "Sweeney Todd" (photo by Paul Kolnik)It's hardly controversial that Sweeney Todd is Sondheim's masterpiece (and, …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:03PMDerrick Lee Weeden and Anthony Heald in Othello at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 1999. (Photo by David Coooper)I'm about to take in New York Theatre Workshop's new production of Othello,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:06AMPatrick J. Adams, Cynthia Mace, Brian Kerwin, and James Eckhouse in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? at the Mark Taper Forum in 2005.I've seen a fair amount of Edward Albee's work in my time, ind…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMThe hoariest question songwriters get asked is: Which comes first, the words or the music? Stephen Sondheim’s answer has always been: the dramatic situation. (With all apologies to Merrily…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:44PMI first saw Stew performing in the mid-1990s with a band improbably named Crazy Sound All-Stars at a place called Onyx Echo in Los Feliz; I was invited by a college friend, Carey Fosse, who …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:12PMIn his new show, “The Total Bent,” the music is always the play, and vice versa.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:51PMThe moving interview between two dear friends and “Mothers.”
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:28AMThis interview originally appeared in the April 12, 2001 issue of Back Stage West."How's my light?" asked Laurie Metcalf as the cover photo for this story was being taken, and then she reali…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 09:56PMThe poet-playwright Dan O’Brien has a collaborative bond with the former war photographer Paul Watson, manifested in “The Body of an American.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:34AMMother Courage and Her Children: Alexandria Wailes, Streep, Geoffrey Arend, and Frederick Weller. (photo by Michal Daniel)Improbably, Brecht's Mother Courage is in the news--the theatre news…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:56PM
