Wednesday, 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. …
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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,…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:33AMWednesday, November 6, 2019
Will 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMSunday, January 27, 2019
Actors 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMFriday, January 18, 2019
Rob 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 11:18AMMonday, December 17, 2018
Galt 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:12PMTuesday, November 20, 2018
Long 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 03:32PMSunday, November 26, 2017
Sarah 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 04:12AMTuesday, November 21, 2017
From 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 01:54AMMonday, September 4, 2017
The 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 05:54PMFriday, August 25, 2017
Zilah 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 04:42PMWednesday, July 19, 2017
I 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,…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 03:06AMThursday, May 4, 2017
Vishal 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 03:36PMMonday, April 17, 2017
Orville 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 01:12AMThursday, April 6, 2017
Patrick 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMFriday, March 10, 2017
Dear 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:06AMThursday, March 9, 2017
Michael 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, …
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:03PMThursday, December 8, 2016
Derrick 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,…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 11:06AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Patrick 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMWednesday, August 31, 2016
The 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 02:44PMFriday, June 3, 2016
I 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 …
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 01:12PMMonday, April 11, 2016
This 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 09:56PMThursday, January 14, 2016
Mother 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…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 05:56PMFriday, December 18, 2015
photo by Sara Krulwich for The New York TimesThis excellent piece by my colleague Eric Grode, looking back at 50 years of Fiddler memories as the musical's newest revival readies for its ope…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 11:15AMMonday, July 13, 2015
Tom Bell and Ian McKellen in the London premiere of Bent, 1979.A major revival of Martin Sherman's play Bent begins performances on July 15 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, directed b…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 07:50AMWednesday, July 8, 2015
I was recently contracted to write a preview of the Broadway transfer of Hamilton for Time Out NY, but the piece was spiked in favor of a no-doubt-excellent preview by the estimable Adam Fel…
Linked From The Wicked Stage at 11:28AM 
