Thursday, March 27, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Lofe Life" - 3/27/25 by Howard Miller

You know what they say about marriage: the first 150 years are the hardest. OK, while none of us will ever see that sort of longevity, wait until you meet Susan Cooper and her husband Samuel…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:52PM
Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Wine in the Wilderness" - 3/24/25 by James Wilson

When Tommy Marie, a character in Alice Childress's Wine in the Wilderness (now playing at Classic Stage Company's Lynn F. Angelson Theater), first appears, she draws laughs. Her ill-fitting …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:48AM
Monday, March 24, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Who Is Jimmy Pants?" - 3/24/25 by Marc Miller

I'm smiling this morning. Who Is Jimmy Pants?, the second in New2NY's trio of staged readings at the York Theatre Company, is silly and inconsequential, but it's also one big long grin.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:15PM
Thursday, March 20, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Operation Mincemeat" 3/20/25 by Howard Miller

It's bizarre. It's disgusting. It's borderline psychopathic. That's how one of the characters describes an actual who-could-possibly-believe-it scheme of World War II British Intelligence in…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:04PM

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Buena Vista Social Club" 3/19/25 by Howard Miller

Muchas gracias to everyone who brought the gift of the Buena Vista Social Club to Broadway, where it opened tonight at the Schoenfeld Theatre in a perfect blend of music, dance and story.

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43AM
Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "We Had a World" - 3/19/25 by Marc Miller

Some playwrights we appreciate because we don't know what they're going to come up with next, and some we appreciate because we do. Joshua Harmon surely belongs in the latter category, for a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:27PM
Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Amerikin" - 3/18/25 by Howard Miller

Sharpsburg, Maryland, a small town of well under 1,000 souls, is best known as the site of the Civil War's Battle of Antietam (or, if you are a Confederacy devotee, the Battle of Sharpsburg)…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:25PM

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Purpose" 3/17/25 by Howard Miller

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' sharp-as-a-tack new play, Purpose, brilliantly directed by Phylicia Rashad and opening tonight on Broadway at the Helen …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:32AM
Sunday, March 16, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Last Call" - 3/16/25 by Michael Dale

"I make something where there was nothing," says the world famous American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein to the equally world famous Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan in Pete…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:17PM
Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Irrepressible Magic of the Tropics" - 3/4/25 by Michael Dale

If you stay still for a moment in the fictional town serving as the setting for Julián Mesri's mystical adventure, The Irrepressible Magic of the Tropics, you may hear the soothing sound of…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:10PM
Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "On the Evolutionary Function of Shame" - 2/26/25 by Kimberly Ramírez

How do we define identity when science offers to rewrite the foundations of who we are? D.A. Mindell's On the Evolutionary Function of Shame explores this existential question by blending bi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:45PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Curse of the Starving Class" - 2/25/25 by James Wilson

Curse of the Starving Class, which was first produced in New York in 1978, is the second play in what playwright Sam Shepard called his Family Trilogy. Along with Buried Child and True West,…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:05AM
Monday, February 24, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Grangeville" - 2/24/25 by James Wilson

Samuel D. Hunter's stunning and deeply affecting Grangeville, currently running at New York's Signature Center, begins in complete darkness. The disembodied phone voices of two men discussin…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:36PM
Sunday, February 23, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Conversations with Mother" - 2/23/25 by James Wilson

Conversations with Mother, Matthew Lombardo's semi-autobiographical comedy currently running at Theater 555, is a crowd-pleasing show that traces the relationship of a mother and son over fi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:42PM
Thursday, February 20, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Garside's Career" - 2/20/25 by James Wilson

British playwright Harold Brighouse's legacy rests largely on Hobson's Choice, his well-crafted comedy from 1915 that satirizes class hypocrisies and gender roles. Though best known for its …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:19PM
Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Chicago - "Betrayal" - 2/18/25 by Christine Malcom

[at the Goodman Theatre] Directed by Susan V. Booth, the production is a curious (albeit mostly successful) juxtaposition of artful staging that conjures up a warm nostalgia for the past an…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:23AM
Friday, February 14, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Redwood" 2/13/25 by Howard Miller

Idina Menzel, Wicked's original Elphaba, is back on Broadway, and once again she is defying gravity. No, she hasn't returned to the Gershwin Theatre and the land of Oz. Instead, she is starr…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:58AM
Thursday, February 13, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "B*tchcraft" - 2/13/25 by Michael Dale

"This is the part of my story I really don't want to talk about," says rebelliously queer and creatively anti-patriarchal music artist Bitch about two-thirds into her funny, touching, and ag…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:27AM
Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "My Man Kono" - 2/12/25 by James Wilson

Charlie Chaplin's appreciation for Japanese culture has been well documented. He visited Japan several times, and he had a deep admiration for the physicality of both Kabuki and kengeki (sam…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:09PM
Thursday, February 6, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Urinetown" - 2/6/25 by Howard Miller

When Urinetown opened on Broadway back in 2001, by way of the New York International Fringe Festival and a follow-up Off Broadway run, it was a decided hit, picking up ten Tony nominations a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:33PM
Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Antiquities" - 2/4/25 by Marc Miller

A decade back, Jordan Harrison got us thinking about artificial intelligence, man-machine relationships, and the dangers of rapidly advancing technologies in his Pulitzer finalist Marjorie P…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:18PM
Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Sheltered" - 1/29/25 by Michael Dale

When you walk into the cell theatre for a performance of Cate Wiley's exploration of the day to day lives of women in America experiencing homelessness, Sheltered, and I thoroughly recommend…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:43PM
Monday, January 27, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Kowalski" - 1/27/25 by Howard Miller

A beach house in a state of disrepair, not unlike its primary inhabitant, is the setting for Gregg Ostrin's Kowalski, a tangle of truth, truthiness, and fanciful speculation opening tonight …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:48PM
Sunday, January 26, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Beckett Briefs" - 1/26/25 by Marc Miller

The house at Irish Repertory Theatre is less than full, and the end-of-evening applause, at best, polite. There's my argument: Do less Samuel Beckett! But Irish Rep is on something of a Beck…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:24PM
Friday, January 24, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "English" 1/23/25 by Howard Miller

True story: I once attempted to show off my linguistic prowess at a French restaurant by ordering a salad with Roquefort dressing. I wound up with a dish of horseradish ("raifort") instead. …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:36AM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Cymbeline" - 1/25/25 by James Wilson

George Bernard Shaw famously dubbed Shakespeare's Cymbeline "stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order." Appalled by the ludicrous coincidences and tangled plot lines, Shaw rewrote the l…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:36AM
Monday, January 20, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The She-Wolves" - 1/10/25 by Michael Dale

When the Duke of York refers to Queen Margaret of Anjou as the She-Wolf of France in William Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part III, it isn't exactly a compliment. "How ill-beseeming is it in thy …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:47PM
Monday, January 13, 2025

Talkin' Broadway - Book Review: "Women Writing Musicals" - 1/7/25 by Wendy Caster

In the new book Women Writing Musicals, Jennifer Ashley Tepper and Applause Theatre & Cinema Books rescue one important part of theatre history: women writing musicals. And it is full of jui…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:01PM
Thursday, January 2, 2025

Talkin' Broadway - Book Review: "Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld's Last Star" - 1/2/25 by Mark Dundas Wood

If the name Helen Morgan means anything to people today, it's likely for three salient things. First, there's her captured-for-posterity portrayal of mixed-race singer Julie LaVerne in the J…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:21PM
Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Sound Advice Reviews: Karen Mason, Janis Siegel, Rebecca Kilgore and Rio - 12/31/24 by Rob Lester

Here are three releases that celebrate songwriters, each from a long-careered, stylish female singer. Karen Mason mines the oeuvre of the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Including selectio…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:21AM
Monday, December 23, 2024

Talkin' Broadway - Interview with McKinley Belcher III" - 12/23/24 by Michael Portantiere

McKinley Belcher III made his New York City stage debut in 2013 as Benvolio in a totally gonzo Classic Stage Company production of Romeo and Juliet. With that experience under his belt, he w…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:34AM

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