177 stories by "Brad Hathaway"
Quick. Without looking at the title of this column, who was the only person to win the Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical on Broadway, the Oscar for the Best Director of a Movie and t…
Like most good theater critics, I am a theater maven, a theater junkie, a theater lover. I went into theater criticism in order to spread the word about good work " to support quality theate…
Theater Shelf for February 4 – Television Musicals The success of NBC’s live telecast of The Sound of Music last December has sparked interest in the televising of musical…
Two years ago, when I was preparing the 2012 holiday gift guide, I received a press release from a new well-named label: Broadway Records. It announced the launch of a series of live recordi…
How many biographies open with the reading of the subject’s will? Gary Marmorstein choses to open his biography of Lorenz Hart one week after Hart’s death as his younger brother …
Suggestions from Brad Hathaway  The post Holiday Gifts for Theatre Lovers appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.
Sondheim music without lyrics? Two jazz musicians uncover a new sound for Sondheim lovers. DC jazz bassist Tommy Cecil tells of the time a few years ago when he was playing a gig supporting …
You know the story by Mark Twain. You know a lot of music by Maury Yeston – composer/lyricist of Nine, Titanic, Goya, Death Takes a Holiday, many songs from Grand Hotel and the more-be…
The name Susan L. Schulman probably doesn’t mean much to many of my readers, but it jumps off the page for me and for many of my fellow theater journalists. She’s one of the legi…
Michael John LaChiusa doesn’t write easy musicals. He writes complex, multi-themed and often huge works based on challenging material. Think of Marie Christine, the theatrical opera ba…
A new CD of a show I’ve loved from its earlier recording raises the question “Do I need another one?” Often, the answer for the normal collector is “No.” (O…
When you say “the recording is better than the show was” sometimes it is a positive comment on the recording and sometimes it is a negative comment on the show. In this case, it …
My theater shelves are already groaning with books about the history of musical theater. Some are well researched but terribly dry reference works. Some are entertaining but hardly definitiv…
Ghostlight Records’ “New Broadway Cast Recording” of Pippin offers an hour of highly melodic soft-pop Stephen Schwartz music from what must be one of the most fun shows on …
From the opening trumpet statement of the melody for “Tomorrow” to the launch into “It’s A Hard Knock Life” and the release of “You’re Never Fully D…
This relatively short (less than an hour) and occasionally interesting documentary deals with, as its subtitle says, “The History of L. Frank Baum’s Classic Books and Movies.R…
Writing a musical is a task that takes both talent and training. No one textbook can give you all you need even if you have all the talent in the world. However, while there are many textboo…
Michael Kantor’s documentary, Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, examines the extent to which the Broadway musical has been essentially a Jewish creation. It is a loving tribute to a …
A musical theater collection needn’t " indeed shouldn’t " be confined to those timeless hits familiar to all theater aficionados. There are so many fabulous scores that never bec…
If you only have time this year to read one autobiography of an actor, make it Richard Seff’s book Supporting Player: My Life Upon The Wicked Stage. If you only have time to read one a…
If you want to prepare for this Sunday night’s Tony Awards telecast on CBS (8pm EST), you might want to get hold of the new original Broadway cast album of the show that has more nomin…
The series on Tony nominees continues with this look at the recently released Original Broadway Cast recording of the newest revival of Cinderella. New musical " or revival? You be the judge…
Matilda, the big London hit that has become a big Broadway hit, arrived on these shores with an original cast album already on the market. The Royal Shakespeare Company, which produced the s…
One of the most interesting lists in the announcement of this year’s Tony Award nominees is the nominations for Best Orchestrations. The range is as wide as the types of shows involved…
The Tony Season has officially begun. Last week’s announcement of the nominees in twenty-six competitive categories set off an avalanche of opinion, prediction and bragging that will c…
