Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Seventeen years after he first appeared in “Yellow Face,” the veteran actor Francis Jue has returned with a nuanced performance as a blustery patriarch.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:31PMTuesday, September 17, 2024
Elvis Costello and Sarah Ruhl’s musical adaptation of the 1957 film, a satire about a hustler turned power-hungry TV personality, hits the London stage.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:36AMSaturday, May 4, 2024
Catherine Zeta Jones in "A Little Night Music." (Photo by Joan Marcus)
I'm not sure any Stephen Sondheim show is really underrated anymore—there are passionate partisans for every one, f…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 06:42AMSaturday, November 4, 2023
The seats of the Elysian Theatre on Riverside Dr., which in my time in L.A. was the home of the Colony Studio Theatre (later Knightsbridge). It was also the theater closest to my home in Ech…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 06:06PMThursday, June 8, 2023
photo by Gary Leonard
When I was starting up Back Stage West back in late 1993/early 1994, I remember someone suggesting that we do something like Interview magazine—i.e., have one celeb…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:37PMWednesday, March 8, 2023
Orville Mendoza as Sweeney at the 2014 Sondheimas celebration. (Photo by David Gordon)
When Stephen Sondheim died last year, I reflected that he is probably the single artist I've written t…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:34PMJosh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford and a starry creative team are hoping there’s an appetite for Broadway’s first full-scale revival of Sondheim’s Grand Guignol masterpiece in 43 years.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:00AMThursday, February 9, 2023
One of the privileges of my theatergoing in L.A. back in the day was seeing talented actors like David Dukes do some of the best work of their careers in venues both big and small. I also go…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:22AMThursday, February 2, 2023
It wasn't a one-on-one, alas, but I well remember the day I was ushered into a South Coast Rep rehearsal room for a sort of four-way interview: myself, another reporter, the press rep (Crist…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 06:00AMMonday, January 9, 2023
Note: Sam Jackson is wearing a hat for the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro League team that played 1920-1960.
Tonight I'm headed to the TCG "Our Stories" Gala honoring Samuel L. Jackson …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:47PMFriday, October 21, 2022
Larry Gilliard Jr. and Harold Perrineau in "Topdog/Underdog" at Center Theatre Group in 2004.
It's been a very Suzan-Lori Parks week for me; a few days ago I published my lively Q&A wi…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:43AMThursday, September 15, 2022
On her new album, the singer fuses Stephen Sondheim’s emo register with a familiar coffeehouse folk sound.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:25PMWednesday, April 6, 2022
Lileana Blain-Cruz, a “master of curating chaos,” is making her Broadway directing debut with a revival of Thornton Wilder’s comedy of human survival, “The Skin of Our Teeth.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:36AMThursday, December 30, 2021
photo by Gary Leonard
As I mentioned last week, going through old copies of Back Stage West, the actor's trade I ran from 1993 to 2003, I stumbled across this rollicking chat between two ve…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:54AMWednesday, December 29, 2021
In shows like “Caroline, or Change” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” the composer excels at translating her astute insights about characters into music.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24AMThursday, December 23, 2021
photo by Gary Leonard
I happened to have recently been going through old copies of Back Stage West, the actor's trade I ran from 1993 to 2003. This far-ranging and fascinating piece was in…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 08:36PMWednesday, November 3, 2021
It's hardly an exaggeration to say that Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was a formative work for me—indeed, one of a series of groundbreaking works that Gordon Davidson's Mark Taper Forum stag…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:54PMThursday, October 28, 2021
At American Theatre I've often (though not often enough) had the pleasure of assigning and publishing pieces by my brilliant friend and colleague Isaac Butler. But there was a time when he …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:48PMWednesday, October 27, 2021
The passing of humorist Mort Sahl has occasioned no better piece than Jason Zinoman's in the Times. You should go read that now. For a chaser, you might check out this Interview-style dialo…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:32PMSunday, October 24, 2021
Kenna Ramsey, Tracy Nicole Chapman and Marva Hicks personify a radio in Caroline, or Change. Photo by Craig Schwartz.
I was fortunate last night to catch the new Broadway revival of Carol…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:18AMWednesday, October 6, 2021
Major Matt Mason.
In July of 2012, my friend and fellow blogger Isaac Butler asked me write a piece about Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth for an "Adolescence Issue" of his blog Parabas…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:32PMTuesday, August 24, 2021
In 2014, L.A.'s Center Theatre Group hosted a run of the Barry Manilow/Bruce Sussman musical Harmony, a historical musical about the Comedian Harmonists, a real-life musical group from …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:48PMTuesday, June 15, 2021
Karen Olivo and cast of the 2009 revival. (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Is West Side Story really all that? I've always been much more smitten with the score than with any other aspect of the show…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:32PMFriday, April 2, 2021
For a time around the turn of the aughts, I and the crew at Back Stage West did an annual "Actors We Love" issue. Over the years the folks I wrote about included Alyson Hannigan, Bob Balaban…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:36AMWednesday, July 8, 2020
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.For a blessed few years I was among the New York Times's freelance theater correspondents most likely to be assigned features about new rock or pop musicals. …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:36AMFriday, June 5, 2020
The cast of Backbeat. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
Cross-posted on Train My Ear.Some years ago I was hired to write the program notes for the Center Theatre Group's production of Backbeat, a s…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:13AMThursday, May 28, 2020
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.Some years ago Adam Feldman at Time Out New York asked me to contribute some entries for a grand list of "Best Broadway Songs of All Time." I had nothing to d…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:42PMThursday, May 21, 2020
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.If you forced me to make a list of favorite composers, Kurt Weill would be at the top, Maurice Ravel would be second, and, though I'm not exactly sure about th…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:48PMMonday, May 18, 2020
When I first arrived in New York City 15 years ago I didn't land a full-time job right away—it took me more than a year before I landed one writing web features for TDF—but among my free…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:32PMThursday, April 30, 2020
Cross-posted from my music blog Train My Ear.With the music I cherish most, it’s the sound that matters first and above all. I don’t just mean sound in the purely aural sense—i.e., the…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:18AMThursday, April 23, 2020
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 02:33AM 
