With Sylvester Stallone set to make his Broadway debut as book writer and producer of Rocky the musical, I was drawn to see Grudge Match, a new movie opening Christmas Day starring Stallone …
2013 was the year of Shakespeare, and cross-dressing, and people getting naked in tubs on stage. It was a year full of solo performances and celebrity Broadway debuts and shows that sound on…
Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane and the entire 18-member cast of the Goodman Theatre of Chicago’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls, are…
Even as we mourn the deaths of Peter O’Toole, 81, Â Eleanor Parker, 91, and Joan Fontaine, 96, we celebrate the still theatrically active Estelle Parsons, 86, and Carol Lawrence, 82.…
During the intermission at "Handle With Care," billed as a new romantic comedy starring Carol Lawrence, the original Maria of West Side Story, I pondered some nearly theological questions: I…
The Glass Menagerie and Twelfth Night are on most critic’s top 10 list of the best theater of 2013 so far — but not all (Time doesn’t have either.) I was early with my Top …
How does one become one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century? The answer is not directly forthcoming in "How I Learned What I Learned," the memoir written and performed by August …
Watson was the name of both Sherlock Holmes' fictional assistant and Alexander Graham Bell's real one, as well as the IBM supercomputer (named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson) that beat t…
10. Kinky Boots StageGrade: B+ This show has become more beloved since yahoos condemned it during Thanksgiving. I always found it entertaining, in a Busby Berkeley sort of way, but it’…
Let’s face it, the live TV broadcast of The Sound of Music overshadowed whatever exciting news about Broadway itself this week– Â new leads for Bullets Over Broadway and Act On…
Before she portrayed an action hero, an astronaut, an activist or an alien on the screen, actress Sigourney Weaver says, "I was always doing new plays Off-Off Broadway. The spaces were alway…
Win two tickets to see La Soiree, a theatrical spectacle that Entertainment Weekly called “a mesmerizing hybrid of sideshow, vaudeville & burlesque” and Flavorpill said…
Does this sound like The Sound of Music to you? The Sound of Music is the only Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with no overture. Instead there is the first of 22 songs (see song list at b…
“It always seems impossible, until it’s done.” Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country's first black pre…
Christmas cheer is a cut-throat business, something I learned from the composer of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, Johnny Marks, who pointed out to me that the success of his little ditty and…
This has been an eventful holiday week, and not just because The Lion King celebrated another benchmark — as did, more oddly, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. (scroll to 27 and 30, below…
Six by Sondheim, a documentary that debuts on HBO on Monday, December 9th, looks at six of Stephen Sondheim’s landmark songs: “Something’s Coming” from West Side Stor…
How well were you paying attention to New York theater news in November? Answer these ten questions to find out. As always, the questions are based on my weekly summary of New York theater n…
My gift guide from 2012 proved so popular that I am updating it for 2013. Call them theater lovers or theatre lovers or drama queens or Broadway Babies: If you have somebody in your life who…
The performance of a number from the Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade had America all a-Twitter. It had the bigots out in force, at least ju…
Sign up here for my new New York Theater Weekly Email Newsletter, which will have a quick rundown of New York theater news and reviews, plus special offers and contests. A sample of the firs…
Win a pair of tickets to either Bedlam’s Hamlet or St. Joan. The  much-lauded Bedlam theater company employs just four actors playing all the roles (more than 50), offering &#…
2013 has been an amazing year in theater in New York City, and, rather than waiting another month, Thanksgiving seems the right time to express one’s gratitude with a top 10 list. As i…
With the lines blurring between professional and amateur drama critics, and indeed between anointed critics and avid theatergoers, we thought it worth hearing from more alternative voices. H…
After the Tony Awards broadcast, the Thanksgiving Day Parade is probably the best opportunity for television viewers to see performances by current casts of Broadway shows. But the week of T…