626 stories by "Jan Simpson"
Why is Frank Wood, not just a stalwart of New York theater but a Tony winner, lying on the floor and playing a dying dog? That's the question I kept asking myself as I sat watching Toros, th…
It's 1998 and the five starting players for the Lady Train, the all-black girls basketball team in a small Arkansas town, aren't dirt poor or bougie rich. The problems they're dealing with a…
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. Deirdre Kinahan, Play…
Like most theater obsessives, I take pride in my collection of experiences that give me bragging rights"I saw Hamilton at the Public before it was a hit! I saw Glory Days, which opened and c…
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 Flick"2014 Pulitzer winner …
Happy Fourth of July Weekend! Time has been so slippery over these past three pandemic years and global warming is now playing such havoc with the weather that on some days just breathin…
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. Guest: Eboni Booth, P…
Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and I go back a long way. I saw his first New York show down at P.S. 122 right after its director quit during previews and one of the actors published a pie…
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: "Buried Child"1979 Pulitzer winn…
Diversity is sometimes thought of as the vegetable of theatrical offerings: something that we theater lovers should include in the diet of things we consume because it's "good" for us. But m…
No review posting today but I'm thrilled to be able to share the news that Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at New York's Library for the Per…
Regular readers will know that I usually post my reviews on Saturdays but I'm changing things up this week because the show I want to talk about has a short run and the performance I recentl…
And so it's begun. The last show of Broadway's 2022-23 season"a revival of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window,Lorraine Hansberry's 1964 meditation on white allyship"opened on April 27. …
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. Guest: David Auburn, …
O.K., so here's the dilemma: when you revive a classic show that has problematic elements (and which of them doesn't?) should you keep it the way it was written or update it for modern sensi…
It somehow feels appropriate during this Easter-Passover weekend to note that a lot of shows both on and off Broadway have been wrestling with faith this season (click here to read more abou…
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: "Anna Christie"1922 Pulitzer win…
People always ask people like me"people who've been blessed with the opportunity to see lots and lots of shows"what our favorites are. I tend to hem and haw when it comes to plays (sometimes…
Despite the projection of the date 1879 on the brick wall at the back of the Hudson Theatre, the new revival of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House could be taking place in so…
Thousands of dollars and countless hours have been spent trying to figure out how to get young people into the theater. But I've got a hunch that the answer is simple: offer things they want…
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: "Ruined"2009 Pulitzer winner "Ru…
Lorraine Hansberry only lived long enough to see two of her plays produced. The first was A Raisin in the Sun, celebrated when it opened in 1959 as the first play by an African-American woma…
So here we are celebrating"albeit slightly belatedly"the 16th anniversary of Broadway & Me. My first post went up on Feb. 14, 2007 and in the intervening years, I've seen so many wond…
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Around 1982 the photographer Larry Sultan began taking photos of his parents at their home in California's affluent San Fernando Valley. And he kept at it over the next 10 years, final…
A frigid cold front is sweeping across a large part of the country this weekend. And that can be a disincentive to go outside for even the most avid theatergoer. Luckily, there are"thanks to…
