622 stories by "Jan Simpson"
Happy Thanksgiving!Â
It's been a crazy month. An avalanche of shows have been opening both on and off Broadway. I've seen 20 of them over the past four weeks"some good, some just OK, a fe…
The only thing small about Kyoto, the latest import from Britain that opened this week at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse theater, is its one-word title. Everything else is outsized: the …
One-person shows are popping up everywhere. And it makes sense that they should. They're comparatively cheap to put on since by definitiion there's only one performer to pay and the cost…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "Water by the Spoonful"2012 Puli…
Every once in a while I see a show that is filled with smart ideas, and that is interestingly directed and well-performed and yet still leaves me cold. Over the past week or so I saw two …
Theater lovers have been celebrating the 10th anniversary of Hamilton this year, and well we should. Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about the Founding Fathers made seeing musicals cool again, …
Once again I seem to be late to the party. Other bloggers, critics and influencers have been putting out lists of the things they most want to see in this new theater season since mid-August…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "Street Scene"1929 Pulitzer winn…
Well, here we are: it's Labor Day Weekend already. And every year since I started writing here, I've marked this unofficial end of summer"and the real start of the fall theater season"wi…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Bubba Weiler (playwri…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "Dinner With Friends"2000 Pulitz…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Gene & Gilda by C…
The New York Times recently published a fancy interactive list of what it considers to be "The Best Movies of the 21st Century."Â The editors say they assembled the list by asking more th…
It's often said that imitation is the highest form of flattery but sometimes it's just a knock-off of something more original. And I'm afraid the latter seems to be the case with Ginger Twin…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Charles Randolph-Wrig…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "How to Succeed in Business With…
We've already had our first heat waves of the season"the temperature hit 101° in Central Park this past week!"which is a sure sign that summer is here. But for almost 20 years now, the su…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "The Diary of Anne Frank"1956 Pu…
In most tellings of the myth about the ill-fated love story between Orpheus and Eurydice that famously has him going to the underworld to bring her back from the dead, he gets top billing an…
Several years ago, I reported a piece on the Smithsonian's "American Popular Song" album, which was intended to be a collection of the best rendition of each song in the Great American Songb…
This is a slightly different post than I use write but maybe like me, you have wondered why the nominators for so many different theater awards seem to love the actress Kara Young so much th…
A new genre has been developing over the past few years, one that in tribute to the post-war change in British theater I've been calling "angry young women plays."Â Â
These new works mo…
All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: "Lost in Yonkers"1991 Pulitzer w…
The 2024-2025 theater season ends on Sunday with the dual openings of the musicals Dead Outlaw and Real Women Have Curves. And I'm exhausted. But it's the kind of good exhaustion that com…
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The ever present tension between art and commerce moves centerstage in three recently opened off-Broadway productions"Irishtown at the Irish Repertory Theatre, I'm Assuming You Kn…
