5,772 stories by "JONATHAN MANDELL"
 The most exciting moment in this fourth Broadway production of Cole Porter's backstage musical riffing on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew comes at the top of Act II, when the cast…
Today Stephen Sondheim turns 89 and Andrew Lloyd Webber turns 71. Â Sondheim made his Broadway debut at the age of 26 in 1956 , Lloyd Webber at 23 in 1971, and, along with John Kander (who…
In the six decades since The Temptations began, as we're told near the end of the latest Broadway jukebox musical "Ain't Too Proud," Â 24 men have performed at one time or another as membe…
Leo (Daveed Diggs) makes an outrageous request of his best friend Ralph (Thomas Sadoski) in Suzan-Lori Parks' bizarre, disturbing and in some ways brilliant new play, White Noise, at the Pub…
Leo (Daveed Diggs) makes an outrageous request of his best friend Ralph (Thomas Sadoski) in Suzan-Lori Parks' bizarre, disturbing and in some ways brilliant new play, "White Noise," at the P…
Raja Feather Kelly is one of the busiest choreographers Off-Broadway, with a half dozen shows currently or soon to be on stage. All but one of them are straight plays. As I detail in my prof…
A dozen shows will be opening on Broadway over the next six weeks, ending the 2018-2019 season. Two-thirds of them have already announced their policies for official discounted tickets " rus…
Near the end of "The Mother," her son strangles the title character to death. But not really. The mother (Isabelle Huppert) is imagining it, or dreaming it. There is a change of lighting, he…
By the end of "Holy Day," two hours without intermission or let-up of gothic horror set in 19th century Australia, the audience has been made witness to a missing child, an abduction, both h…
On the Ides of March, exactly 2,063 years ago, Julius Caesar was smug, at least according to Shakespeare. "The ides of March are come," he tells a soothsayer in Act III. "Ay, Caesar," the So…
Playwright Matt Williams, who is credited with creating, producing and/or writing such once-popular TV series as Home Improvement, The Cosby Show, and Roseanne (tells us in the program that …
Hugh Jackman will star as Harold Hill in "The Music Man." Directed by Jerry Zaks, with choreography by Warren Carlyle, the fourth Broadway production of Meredith Wilson's musical about a tra…
"I'm not obsessed with sex; I just can't stop thinking about it," says Phoebe Waller-Bridge in "Fleabag" " both the "Fleabag" that's a funny and sad BBC TV series, currently available on Ama…
"I'm not a girl, not yet a woman…I'm in between," Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. The opening of Be More Chi…
Somebody wrote "NYC Loves BMC" in chalk on the sidewalk outside Broadway's Lyceum Theater, the new home of Be More Chill, the high energy, high decibel pop-rock musical that stars Will Rolan…
Somebody wrote "NYC Loves BMC" in chalk on the sidewalk outside Broadway's Lyceum Theater, the new home of Be More Chill, the high energy, high decibel pop-rock musical that stars Will Rolan…
In "The Cake," Debra Jo Rupp (the mother on "That 70s Show") portrays Della, a Christian baker in North Carolina who refuses to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. If the story is inspired by…
I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways. Â When I had last seen Hamilton, about two years ago, the las…
In "The B-Side," three men sing along with an album on a record-player "Â or, as people prefer to say these days, a vinyl on the turntable. But there's a reason why the Wooster Group's en…
March is designated Women's History Month and there is no better example of a theater woman on the march this March than Dominique Morisseau, who is 1. curating "50 in 50: Letters to Our …
"Daddy," a play by Jeremy O. Harris, who made his Off-Broadway debut a few months ago with his controversial "Slave Play," could be accurately described as a porn melodrama about a love/hate…
Simon, 15 years old and an aspiring comic book creator, is disappointed. His neighbor Jim in Apartment 4-B can't walk through walls, and has no secret cave; he doesn't even drive a "super ki…
Near the beginning of "Good Friday," a play by Kristiana Rae Colon produced at The Flea with an all-female cast, crew and creative team, there's something I've never seen on stage before: Af…
The actors portraying Boesman and Lena move slowly through the audience, carrying their life's possession on their heads and shoulders, looking around in fear and fatigue, until they make th…
Four shows are opening on Broadway in March. Two of them are transfers from Off-Broadway that thrilled audiences in very different ways: "Be More Chill" and "What The Constitution Means To M…
