5,771 stories by "JONATHAN MANDELL"
Centuries before Othello, and millennia before Black Panther, there was Memnon, the king of the Ethiopians, who came to the defense of Troy during the Trojan War.  Homer mentions Memno…
John Krasinski's character Roger seems as affable and appealing as Krasinski himself at the start of  Penelope Skinner's superficially entertaining play, but Roger quickly descends int…
Dissent is as American as the Fourth of July, and in honor of both, and as a way to offer solace in the face of a relentless assault on our democratic and Constitutional rights, below are ex…
The songs below recall the original spirit of the Fourth of July, when 249 years ago Americans engaged in an act of protest against tyranny. Some of the songs have become such popular anthem…
Only "Purpose" is performing on the Fourth of July itself, But eighteen of the 30 Broadway shows currently running have added performances either within the two days before or the two days a…
Below is a calendar of New York theater opening* in July, all of it beyond Broadway, featuring some familiar crowdpleasers, such as a unique "Waitress," and a starry "Heathers," with Back to…
Sure, five more Broadway shows closed over the weekend, but not everything has come and gone (30 still running), and there are several exciting new announcements: Taraji P. Henson will make …
Jeff Hiller has written a celebrity memoir to end all celebrity memoirs. Each of his twenty-four chapters is given the title of an actual celebrity memoir, and the age at which the author of…
How well were you paying attention to the theater over the past month? Answer these ten questions, plus a bonus question, and find out. Â Loading…
This sweet, lively and original musical deserves a wider audience, or maybe just a much longer run where it is, since the production works so wonderfully well in the intimate Off-Off Broadwa…
Today, the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationally, seems an apt day for my annual census of gay characters on Broadway. At a time when LGBTQ …
As "Lowcountry" begins, David, who just recently was permitted to remove his ankle bracelet, is about to go on a first date with Tally, whom he met on a dating app. Eventually, we learn what…
"Do you realize that the U.S. has only spent under 20 years when we are NOT involvednin war?" the rap star Duke (Jay Ellis) tells an unseen interviewer. "When will that end?" Duke is being a…
New Yorkers have a busy week ahead: the Jimmy Awards tonight; tomorrow Primary Election Day; all week, Pride events " including the last of three plays of the Criminal Queerness theate…
"The Gilded Age"Â Â had a remarkable number of Broadway veterans in its cast over its first two seasons, and many of them are returning for Season 3, which launches tonight " just the fi…
The circus performers in "Passengers" are both powerful athletes and graceful artists, achieving awe-inspiring feats of physical prowess. They are also travelers, and storytellers, in ways t…
"Bear Grease" is billed as a reimagining of the musical Grease, "told through an Indigenous lens" by a husband-wife duo who call themselves LightningCloud. But this proudly amateurish produc…
"We can't let Martin Luther King Jr's dream become a nightmare because of the current administration," André De Shields said in a speech accepting the 2025 Legacy Award at the Broadway Cele…
The eleven finalists for this year's Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education are a highly eclectic mix of academic theater books, some of which don't seem…
After two hours satirizing an arts fundraising gala with barbed caricatures, loopy shtick and shameless slapstick, Taylor Mac takes the stage alone in a fool's cap to deliver a coda in rhyme…
At the opening performance of "Les Misérables" at the Kennedy Center, during the same week that pro-democracy protestors rallied throughout the country, as Donald Trump ordered the U.…
"This is one of the most dangerous jobs in the city, "  Hiram Delgado as Barabbás said on stage this weekend in "La Dureza," which chronicles a day in the life of a Deliverista " on…
Today is both the day of "No Kings" marches and rallies throughout the United States (including New York), and the first day of early voting in the New York City primaries for mayor and othe…
I'm being strapped into what looks like a homemade electric chair, thick black wires gathered in a pile around my feet and sprouting above my head. A man in a white lab coat puts a fancy pai…
We first see Izzy Scutley, the character Jean Smart is portraying in her first Broadway role in 25 years, in a bathrobe cleaning the toilet in her home in a trailer park in rural Mansfield, …
