256 stories by "Elysa Gardner"
The Plastics are back and ready to paint the town pink in their Broadway bow. For the uninitiated, that group, introduced to movie fans in 2004's comedy classic Mean Girls, isn't a rock band…
In a new show, the Broadway and television star is paying tribute to the late 1950s pop singer whose musical virtuosity is now little-recognized.
For those who keep track of celebrity appearances on Broadway, 2017 did not disappoint, offering plenty of opportunities to either relish an established star or catch a rising one. In the fi…
In 2017, truth wasn't just stranger than fiction; it was defined in sometimes conflicting terms. Theater's ability to bring people of different opinions and beliefs together " for entertainm…
Director Pam MacKinnon has blazed a path in New York theater and on stages elsewhere, with nuanced but unsparing portraits of human struggle. She brought audiences her shattering Tony Award"…
When Tony Award"winning director Christopher Ashley signed on to helm Escape to Margaritaville, a new musical featuring the songs of beloved troubadour and author Jimmy Buffett, he was not y…
Although she has been one of our most reliably groundbreaking stage and screen directors for decades, Julie Taymor is loath to "dwell too much on the 'woman' thing," as she puts it. Last spr…
When Julie Taymor was first approached to direct and design a stage adaptation of Disney's The Lion King, she had not yet seen the blockbuster animated film. But 20 years after opening on Br…
Biello and Martin's new off-Broadway musical, 'Marry Harry,' goes looking for love in the big city. Elysa Gardner reviews.
In "Tell Hector I Miss Him," the young Puerto Rican playwright Paola Lázaro draws on intense personal experiences to create very human characters.
The final Kander and Ebb musical, The Scottsboro Boys (* * * out of four), now in its Broadway premiere, seems determined to challenge even the most sophisticated and inured audiences.
For anyone who has spent the past decade lamenting the rise of jukebox musicals, Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles on Broadway (* * ½ out of four) is either a new low point or a refreshingly…
No one, or nothing, seems to stay put in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (* * ½ out of four), the new musical adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's 1988 film.
What has been less widely reported is this: Beyond the offstage drama and lavish budget, and all the feats and flash accompanying them, lies an endearingly old-fashioned musical.
The central figure in Lindsay-Abaire's excellent new play, Good People (*** ½ out of four), is a woman for whom things can only get better.
It seems sadly fitting that the first New York revival of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (* * * ½ out of four) should arrive toward the end of an election season tha…
"I've turned off my Google alerts," quips Taymor, Spider-Man's director and co-librettist. But the Tony Award-winning veteran is serious and passionate in defending her project.
It's two hours before curtain at the John Golden Theatre, where the first Broadway production of Driving Miss Daisy— the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that became an Oscar-winning film &…
On June 3, five days before this year's Tony Awards are handed out, the original Broadway cast recording of If/Then, a contender for best original score, will be released " featuring Idina M…
Among the King/Goffin classics showcased is (You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman, a hit for Aretha Franklin and later featured on King's landmark album Tapestry. If you haven't seen Muell…
azz hands. Cocked hips. Feet turning sharply inwards and out.
It's the "Manson trio," one of Bob Fosse's signature dance numbers, first introduced in the original production of Pippin -- …
In this staging of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the estimable Daniel Sullivan directs an assemblage of gifted stage and screen veterans " among them Al Pacino, whom Sullivan la…
