617 stories by "Jan Simpson"
Off-Broadway shows usually come and go more quickly than big
main-stem Broadway productions (unless those productions are duds or feature
big Hollywood stars who sign up for limited runs or …
Nostalgia for the 1950s, the childhood years of the baby boomers,
will probably hold strong as long as the boomers do. But, as the TV series "Mad Men" has shown,
ruminations about thos…
Anyone with even the slightest awareness of the young pop
star Justin Bieber and his recent antics knows that the mix of celebrity and
adolescence can be a toxic combination.
So it's v…
"Smash," which ended its two-season run on NBC this past
Sunday night, was like that friend you're embarrassed by and are always thinking you should drop because she just doesn't know how to…
For years now, the sociologist Richard Florida has been
preaching that young people in what he calls the creative class don't want to
just sit back and be fed their culture, they want to get…
Who knew that Russians would be so hip this spring? The Encores! series just finished its season with a
production of Rodgers and Hart's gangsters-and-Russian ballet musical On Your
Toes. An…
It's another can't-find-time-to-blog weekend for me but
rather than turn the ghost light on yet again, I'm going to give a brief shout
out to a new trend I've noticed: the fancy inserts prod…
Even if Nora Ephron hadn't written it and Tom Hanks weren't
starring in it, Lucky Guy would probably be a hit. For the play, now running at the Broadhurst
Theatre, tells the story of t…
Performers who've made their name in musicals often jump at
the chance to show that they can do straight dramatic roles as well. In just the past year, Norbert Leo Butz and
Nathan Lane…
Let me make two things clear right at the beginning of this
post. The first, as regular readers know, is that I hate audience participation. The second is that I absolutely loved Here Lies L…
Even if you were born and raised in New York, as both my
husband K and I were, you've probably had fantasies of living "the real New
York life." Of course the definition of what
that is vari…
You don't even have to be a theater lover to know that the
Tony nominations were announced yesterday. There were, as usual, the fairly predictable nods. Hollywood heavyweight Tom Hanks
got a…
I know. I know. This is two Saturdays in a row that I've turned on the ghost light, signaling a temporary pause in these posts. But what can I tell you? It's a crazy time and I'm seein…
Transposing Shakespeare to a different locale or time period
no longer earns a director the automatic cool points it once did. In fact,
doing so has become almost as ho-hum as a standing ova…
It's crazy time on Broadway"six shows opened this past week and five more are due next week before the season officially closes on April 25"and so I should be here writing like a madwoman to…
People who love musicals really seem to love The Last Five
Years. In fact, those who saw the original 2002 production are still singing its
praises. And there have reportedly been over 3,500…
It may not be politically correct to say this but I'm
getting tired of drag queens. Not the real people but the theatrical versions
of them that keep turning up in Broadway musicals in far g…
It's always sad to hear that a show is closing prematurely.
And that's true whether or not you had a good time when you saw it. Cause I'm
feeling badly for the cast and crew of Hands on a Ha…
If you'd asked, I'd have said that one-person shows were my
least favorite form of theater. So it's been truly surprising to find that some
of the shows I've most enjoyed this season have be…
Fairy tales ain't what they used to be. Books like "Confessions
of an Ugly Stepsister" and "Glass Slippers & Jeweled Masques" have brought
an edgier, and even erotic, vibe to the old sto…
Even before it opened the Pershing Square Center complex last year and
turned it into a prime hangout for theater lovers, the Signature
Theatre Company was beloved for focusing an entire sea…
Honky, the provocatively named comedy now running at Urban
Stages, kicks off with a not very funny incident: a black kid is killed for his
sneakers and sales spike at the Nike-style company …
Passover begins on Monday evening and although My Name is
Asher Lev opened four months ago and has extended its run at the Westside
Theatre through
Sept. 1, it's hard to think of a bet…
The expectation we have for playwrights is the same as we
have for parents: that they should love all their children equally. Of course they don't. Both tend to have a soft spot for th…
Sometimes you just need a good laugh. At least that's how I've been feeling over the
past couple of weeks as I've gone from one disappointing show to the next. I usually tack tow…
