311 stories by "Broadway & Me"
No new post today since I figure you're probably still making your way through the mammoth one I did on Wednesday. Besides let's face it, everyone who cares about theater, including me, is f…
As usual, I haven't gotten around to weighing in on all the shows that opened during the run up to the Tony nominations. Although I have managed to have my say in these posts on all four of …
Cheesy musicals aren't my thing. Unless, of course, they're good cheesy musicals. Which is an apt description for The Anthem, the new Culture Project production that opened at the Lynn Redgr…
We're 10 days away from the Tonys and the campaign is in full stride, with nominees in several categories running neck and neck. Which is great for us theater junkies because it means that B…
Some people (the Tea Party, the Republicans in the House) don't mind being scolds but I find no pleasure in it, which is why I've taken so long to say anything about Heathers The Musical, wh…
The City of Conversation, now at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse theater through July 6, is the kind of show I love: a well- made drama about big issues and ideas that isn't afraid to get…
The first time I saw An Octoroon it was a hot mess. Its director had quit the show, then called The Octoroon: An Adaptation Of The Octoroon Based On The Octoroon, two weeks before it was sch…
After my marathon of non-stop play going over the past few weeks, I've developed a serious case of spring fever. So I played hooky over the last couple of days: took long walks, took naps, w…
The Whale, a play about a 600 lb. man eating himself to death, won Samuel D. Hunter a spot high on the leaderboard of hot young playwrights. But I was so simultaneously fascinated and repuls…
The last time I tried to rally support for an underappreciated show, I failed miserably. Despite my appeal for The Bridges of Madison County (click here to read what I wrote) the show failed…
This is one of those crazy times when I find that I can either see shows or write about them but not both (cause as much as I love myself some theater"and sharing it with you all"there are a…
The Tony nominations announced yesterday morning were as perplexing as ever. Maybe even more so. As happens every year, some "sure things" got left out (almost none of the big name movie sta…
Appearing in a Broadway play has become almost as popular with Hollywood stars as having a charity of their own. Of course, some Hollywood actors"Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington"h…
The spring season is firing along on all cylinders. Six shows are opening this week. The Outer Critics Circle announced its nominations yesterday (click here to see them), the Drama League l…
Standing ovations have become so much a part of the Broadway theater-going experience that the producer Ken Davenport recently conducted a survey to find out why people keep jumping up at th…
Moviemaking"the old-fashioned kind with people and plots but no aliens or armageddons"has become so rare in Hollywood that there's been a mass migration of some of its best talent into TV……
Ira Aldridge, the first black man to play Othello before a white audience, is a fascinating character. And Adrian Lester, who recently played the Moor in an acclaimed production by London's …
The new musical The Bridges of Madison County isn't doing well. And I'm not sure why. It's based on the 1992 novel about the star-crossed love affair between a war bride turned Iowa housewif…
Back in the days when both writers and audiences prized loving families as much as dysfunctional ones, people couldn't get enough of the Hansons, a poor but close-knit clan of Norwegian-Amer…
Beau Willimon's first play, Farragut North, was produced by the Atlantic Theater Company with John Gallagher and Chris Noth in the lead roles and then turned into the movie "The Ides of Marc…
I can't say exactly how it happened but I've obviously missed the deadline for Wednesday's post and so I'm belatedly turning on the ghost light, the traditional sign that theaters are tempor…
After years of seeing dramas about dysfunctional families, I'd begun to wonder if it was even possible for there to be a good play about a happy family. So I suppose I should have been happy…
The two previous plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that I've seen" Neighbors and The Octoroon: An Adaptation of the Octoroon Based on the Octoroon"featured black actors wearing black face and …
If you asked a random sampling of playgoers to list the best living playwrights in the country today, names like Edward Albee, Tony Kushner and Sam Shepard would come up long before anyone g…
Two shows have recently opened that I'd like to talk about but don't feel as though I should since I've a rooting interest in each. The first is Satchmo at the Waldorf, a one-man (but multi-…
