All stories by Rick Pender on BroadwayStars

Monday, April 17, 2017

Into the Woods — Re-Imagined by Fiasco by Rick Pender

Thick taut ropes stretch across the back of the stage at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles like a forest of piano wires. Stacks of piano harps scale each side of the stage, framed by a pro…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:23PM
Tuesday, March 28, 2017

“Sondheimas Mixtape” at Joe’s Pub in NYC by Rick Pender

What would you expect when fans have been known to refer to their favorite composer and lyricist (who wrote a song about it) as God? The Sondheimas Mixtape at the Public Theater in Manhatta…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 08:22PM
Thursday, March 23, 2017

Have Your Pie and Eat It, Too by Rick Pender

  In New York City, the Barrow Street Theatre production of Sweeney Todd (running until at least Dec. 31, 2017) truly extends beyond the normalcy of the fourth wall. More than an immers…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:02PM
Sunday, March 19, 2017

Gyllenhaal & Ashford in SUNDAY: Delirious Joyfulness by Rick Pender

  New York City Center’s Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway (Feb. 11-April 23, 2017) Every once in a rare while, the theater rewards us with a kind of transcendent experie…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:48PM
Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sondheim Times Four in California by Rick Pender

You would think that at some point in its evolution, a theater company devoted to producing works whose themes concern LGBT issues and whose playwrights represent the LGBT community, would g…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 07:50PM
Monday, February 27, 2017

Church had a real good time in Gypsy by Rick Pender

At age 22, Sandra Church originated the role of Louise in Jule Styne, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy staged by Jerome Robbins. She retired from the theater in the 1960s to pu…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 07:04PM
Sunday, February 19, 2017

A Work of Art: Sunday in the Park at Boston’s Huntington Theater by Rick Pender

Color and light, tension and harmony. These design elements should be fundamental to any stage production, but perhaps none more than Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George. In …

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 11:59AM

Boris Aronson: Vision and Execution by Rick Pender

In an extraordinary six-year period, Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince brought four landmark musicals to Broadway: Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973) and Pacific Ov…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 11:51AM

Great Expectations: Designer Derek McLane by Rick Pender

  Everything Sondheim: In 2002 you designed six Sondheim shows in one summer for the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration. Derek McLane: That’s true! EvSo: How exactly did it work? Wer…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 10:50AM
Monday, October 24, 2016

Miscast in Canada by Rick Pender

The Stratford Festival in Ontario is one of North America’s preeminent theater companies. Producing a rolling repertory of more than a dozen plays and musicals from April through November …

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 04:07PM
Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Sondheim’s Postmodern Reinvention by Rick Pender

Like many Stephen Sondheim fans, author Robert L. McLaughlin discovered Sondheim’s musical work when he found a cast album (in his case, Company) at the library while in high school. McLau…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 08:35PM

Company at Boston’s Lyric Stage by Rick Pender

How do you solve a problem like Company? While now revered as a benchmark of the post-Golden Age, its own advancing years can be a challenge to those who might wish it would always be what i…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 08:04PM
Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Streisand Sings Duets by Rick Pender

It’s hard to listen to Barbra Streisand’s latest album, Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, without comparing it to her two previous Broadway albums. The liner notes explicitly link he…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:21PM

Gift That Keeps On Giving by Rick Pender

  At the age of 25, Jim Walton originated the role of Franklin Shepard in Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway. Walton talks about the highs and lows of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 01:46PM
Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Sondheim in Trondheim by Rick Pender

Rabarbrateateret (“The Rhubarb Theater”) is a theater company situated in the idyllic “old town” Bakklandet in Trondheim, Norway’s third largest city. The company has mounted accla…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 04:28PM

Sweeney Todd was “in between” at Glimmerglass by Rick Pender

So is it a musical or an opera? One might have expected Sweeney Todd at the Glimmerglass Festival to come down firmly on the side of the latter. But, to borrow a thought from Into the Woods,…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 04:27PM

Opera or Musical? Sondheim made Sweeney to scare an audience by Rick Pender

The big revelation instantly splashed across the media was that Stephen Sondheim’s new musical is to have its premiere Off Broadway at the Public Theater in late 2017 — “ if I can fini…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 04:26PM
Sunday, July 17, 2016

Singing Sondheim: Guys Edition by Rick Pender

For Everything Sondheim’s first installment of “Singing Sondheim,” I’m looking at recent releases from male singers. You can expect a follow-up column with female singers next month …

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 05:36PM

Katie Welsh’s “Informative” Cabaret About a Dozen Sondheim Women by Rick Pender

  Singer Katie Welsh performed an evening of song, Women in the World of Sondheim, at Feinstein’s 54 Below in New York City on June 10, 2016, accompanied by pianist Emily Whitaker. Sh…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 05:30PM

Barbara Cook Pens a Blunt, Compelling Memoir by Rick Pender

  In Barbara Cook’s preface to her memoir Then & Now, she expresses the hope that “this book might help some people through bad times.” This piercingly candid, remarkably clea…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 05:21PM

John McMartin, Follies’ Original Benjamin Stone, Dead at 86 by Rick Pender

  John McMartin, an actor with a flair for patrician roles, died on July 6, 2016. According to the New York Times, the cause was cancer. He was 86. McMartin, whose stage career began in…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 05:17PM
Thursday, June 16, 2016

Showbiz Memoirs by Breglio and Bricusse include Sondheim Moments by Rick Pender

REVIEW BY ERIK HAAGENSEN Two recent books about show business share a tangential tie to Stephen Sondheim while otherwise being about as different as they can be. American entertainment lawye…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 10:01AM
Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Concert Recording: WHEN EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE, performed by Victoria Mallory and Kurt Peterson by Rick Pender

REVIEW BY RICK PENDER When Kurt Peterson and Victoria Mallory walked onstage at New York City Center on Sunday, April 29, 2012, it was a joyous reconnection to present a concert they called …

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 01:38PM
Monday, May 30, 2016

Brilliant Stuff: Len Cariou Saw the Power of SWEENEY TODD from Day One by Rick Pender

INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL PORTANTIERE Len Cariou’s brilliant career has had at least three acts. His first act was onstage in his native Canada and at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, primar…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 02:41PM

DO I HEAR A WALTZ? at New York City Center’s Encores! (May 11-15, 2016) by Rick Pender

EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE FOR EVERYTHING SONDHEIM BY MARK SHAIMAN AND JIM SCHNEIDER It’s been 51 years since the Leona of Do I Hear A Waltz? went to Venice to cry, but the (May 11-15, 2016) reviv…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 02:32PM
Thursday, May 19, 2016

Critics Weigh in on Encores! staging of Do I Hear A Waltz? by Rick Pender

COMPILED BY CHRISTA SKILES From May 11 to 15, New York City Center’s Encores! series presented a concert staging of Do I Hear A Waltz? by Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim. The cast…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:58PM

Reductive “Definitive” Volume About Modern Musicals Won’t Satisfy Neophytes or Experts by Rick Pender

REVIEW BY ERIK HAAGENSEN The starkly titled, lavish coffee-table book Musicals, from England’s prestigious DK publishing house, grandly promises to be “The Definitive Illustrated Story�…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:15PM
Sunday, April 24, 2016

Sondheim and the Chaotic Age: Ethan Mordden’s Opinionated Guide by Rick Pender

  REVIEW BY THERESA J. BECKHUSEN Ethan Mordden’s On Sondheim (Oxford University Press, 2016) is indeed an opinionated guide. It also happens to be thorough and authoritative, despite…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 05:33PM
Monday, April 18, 2016

Discovering Leona: Melissa Errico stars in DO I HEAR A WALTZ? for Encores! by Rick Pender

INTERVIEW BY ANDY PROPST In just a few weeks, a musical theater rarity will take the stage of New York City Center: Do I Hear a Waltz?, the 1965 tuner with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics b…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:24PM
Sunday, April 17, 2016

A Writer Speaks Up … by Rick Pender

I was a contributing writer for The Sondheim Review from 2007 to 2015. During the past several years I’ve worked closely with TSR’s former managing editor, Rick Pender, and his editoria…

SOURCE: EverythingSondheim at 03:52PM
Friday, March 9, 2012

Feature: The Humana Condition by Rick Pender

TheaterMania previews the 36th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville.

SOURCE: TheaterMania at 08:00AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards