Thursday, June 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Grey House" 6/1/23 by Howard Miller

There are lots of appropriate adjectives to describe Levi Holloway's ghostly play Grey House, opening tonight at the Lyceum Theatre. Among these are "eerie," "mysterious," and sometimes even…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:12PM
Thursday, May 25, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Primary Trust" - 5/25/23 by Marc Miller

Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York–the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a coupl…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Gas" - 5/25/23 by Howard Miller

As a playwright, Charles Cissel is an experimentalist, more concerned with digging deeply into what lies underneath the surface than with using conventional storytelling techniques. He is li…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:24PM
Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Bernarda's Daughters" - 5/23/23 by James Wilson

In lieu of a playbill or the increasingly more ubiquitous fliers containing a digital QR code, audiences attending Bernarda's Daughters, Diane Exavier's elegiac play currently running at the…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:19AM
Friday, May 19, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Fears" - 5/18/23 by James Wilson

Construction noise, profanity-shouting pedestrians, non-stop emergency-vehicle sirens, and the booming music of pedicabs can certainly pose an obstacle for individuals hoping to find quiet s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:59AM
Thursday, May 18, 2023

Sound Advice: "Shucked" and "KPOP" cast recordings by Rob Lester

Rob reviews the new OBC cast recordings for "Shucked" and "KPOP."

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:41AM

Talkin' Broadway - Book Review: "Blanche: The Life and Times of Tennessee Williams's Greatest Creation" - 5/15/23 by Wendy Caster

Blanche: The Life and Times of Tennessee Williams's Greatest Creation, by Nancy Schoenberger, is an odd little book. Saying that it runs some 193 pages of actual content is generous, as that…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:34AM
Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "King James" - 5/16/23 by Marc Miller

How much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:20PM
Monday, May 15, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Romeo and Juliet" - 5/14/23 by James Wilson

"For never was a story of more woe/ Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." Thus concludes one of Shakespeare's best-known and most-performed plays. In the boisterous, gag-filled production pres…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:48AM
Monday, May 8, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Sorry for Your Loss" - 5/8/23 by James Wilson

"You think things are one way, but they can be another way." This reversal of expectations is a recurring theme throughout Michael Cruz Kayne's Sorry for Your Loss, the new one-person show p…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:01PM
Sunday, May 7, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Oliver!" - 5/6/23 by James Wilson

There have been numerous hit Hollywood animated family films that include serious or dramatic content and some that even feature death. In the Walt Disney classic Bambi, the young deer must …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:30AM
Friday, May 5, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" 5/5/23 by Howard Miller

An offhand wisecrack reference to filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's movie Rashomon in Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window might serve well to explain the many different possib…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:47AM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "shadow/land" - 5/4/23 by James Wilson

The press materials for Erika Dickerson-Despenza's new play at the Public Theater request that the title, shadow/land, be documented using lowercase letters. In the first thirty minutes or s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:18AM
Monday, May 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway - Book Review: "Chita: A Memoir" by Chita Rivera - 5/1/23 by Wendy Caster

She's a legend. She has been nominated for a Tony 10 times, winning for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman. She has a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, plus at least 10 other lifetime …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:22PM
Thursday, April 27, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" - 4/27/23 by Kimberly Ramírez

Red Bull Theater, in association with Fiasco Theater, is presenting a playful, relevant production of Francis Beaumont's riotously comic, fourth-wall-shattering metaplay The Knight of the Bu…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:39PM
Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Summer, 1976" 4/25/23 by Howard Miller

Playwright David Auburn's narrative two-hander Summer, 1976, opening tonight at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, boasts a pair of supremely gifted actresses who are quite adroit at getting us…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:07PM
Monday, April 24, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Prima Facie" 4/23/23 by James Wilson

As modernist playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw demonstrated, theatre has the power to rattle the cultural consciousness and shine the spotlight on pressing contemporary social and political…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:58AM
Saturday, April 22, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Breathless" - 4/22/23 by Howard Miller

The 2023 Brits Off Broadway Festival kicks off at 59E59 Theaters with the Theatre Royal Plymouth production of Breathless, playwright Laura Horton's tale of compulsion and anxiety that shine…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:35PM
Friday, April 21, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "The Thanksgiving Play" 4/20/23 by Howard Miller

Who owns history? Or more precisely, who gets to decide which aspects of history are moved to the front of the line and plastered with the title of "TRUTH"? A serious question that is taken …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:30AM
Thursday, April 20, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" 4/19/23 by Howard Miller

What tickles your funny bone? Is it an evening of witty repartee and bon mots being tossed about with debonair aplomb? A bit of Noël Coward, perhaps, or the carefully structured comedy styl…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:04AM
Monday, April 17, 2023

Talkin' Broadway - Book Review: "The Great American Songbook: 201 Favorites You Ought to Know (& Love) " by Steven Suskin - 4/17/23 by "the Great American Songbook: 201 Favorites You Ought To Know (& Love)" By Steven Suskin

The blurb on the back cover describes it as a "cheerfully opinionated guidebook" and that's an apt characterization of Steven Suskin's thoughtful survey of songs with impact and importance. …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:11PM
Friday, April 14, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Camelot" 4/13/23 by Howard Miller

Camelot, the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical that is near and dear to the hearts of aficionados of Broadway's "Golden Age," has always been loved for its songs. This remains true to this day, …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:48AM
Thursday, April 13, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Fat Ham" 4/12/23 by Howard Miller

Fat Ham, James Ijames' fanciful Pulitzer Prize-winning riff on Hamlet that opened tonight at the American Airlines Theatre, takes a sad tale about bloody vengeance and reconfigures it into a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:18AM
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Regretfully, So the Birds Are" - 4/11/23 by Marc Miller

The last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:36AM
Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Smart" - 4/11/23 by Wendy Caster

Elaine is committed to taking care of her mother, but it's far from easy. Ruth had a stroke, and she frequently has difficulty speaking, occasionally has difficulty moving around, and receiv…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:31AM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "White Girl in Danger" - 4/10/23 by James Wilson

In his Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson skewered the predominantly white theatre industry through the main character's effort to create a "big…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:48AM
Friday, March 31, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Life of Pi" 3/30/23 by Howard Miller

Transforming a best-selling novel from page to stage is a risky affair. It takes a great deal of talent, imagination, and theatrical acumen to pull it off without getting bogged down in weig…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:03AM
Thursday, March 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Vanities-The Musical" - 3/30/23 by Marc Miller

As an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM
Sunday, March 26, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" 3/26/23 by Howard Miller

I've got to confess that it is hard to erase the memory of a tuba-playing Patti LuPone from the stripped-down 2006 Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. But …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:12PM
Friday, March 24, 2023

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Bad Cinderella" 3/23/23 by Howard Miller

How best to describe Bad Cinderella, the new musical with a score by über-successful theatre composer and impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber that officially opened tonight at the Imperial Theat…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:03AM
Sunday, March 19, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Drinking in America" - 3/19/23 by James Wilson

In September 1986, Lily Tomlin took Broadway by storm in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Jane Wagner's play that explored, among other topics, women's issues and se…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:07PM

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