5,851 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
How well were you paying attention to the New York theater news, views and reviews in the month of January. Take this ten-question quiz and find out. Loading…
The war on culture has played out in many ways over the past year, as chronicled by the bloggers/substackers,podcasters to whom I link below. There's famously the mess at the Kennedy Center,…
"Masquerade"Â Â has just been extended through July 5 " proof, if you needed it, that the immersive version of "The Phantom of the Opera" has caught on.This wasn't a given when it took o…
Anne Gridley's favorite neurologist has told her that people can only concentrate on walking for about eight seconds; human beings are designed to walk without thinking about it.  But …
A record-breaking 11.4 inches of snow reportedly fell on Central Park on Sunday, and the shows went on " mostly: Ten of the 31 shows currently running on Broadway did cancel. A storm warning…
"I don't want to be an ambassador for Asians, but that's part of the job when you're in a country, and you work in an industry, that continues to see us as perpetual foreigners, incapable of…
"Data" speaks to the precise moment in which we are living to an astonishing degree, and not just because of our concerns about AI. It begins and ends with characters playing ping pong! It f…
A massive snow storm is expected to reach New York City Sunday morning, January 25, 2026 leading New Yorkers to ask one question " how bad will it get? " and New York theatergoers…
Below are two videos of LJ Benet, who will be making his Broadway debut as Michael Emerson in the forthcoming musical "The Lost Boys," explaining the show, and singing one of the numbers fro…
Ed Schmidt, a playwright and performer who should be better known, stood behind a table with twenty-seven objects on it, which he said were found in a box belonging to a man named Edward O'C…
"Sinners" received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, followed by "One Battle After Another" with 13. Several theater-related films received nods, including nine (including Best Picture…
When this is over…things will have changed forever,"Â Â Ian McKellen told me near the start of "An Ark," staring directly at me. I didn't roll my eyes. At first that was only because m…
Last week was full of theater news, and politics. Hell's Kitchen is closing; Darren Criss is leaving; Adrien Brody is making his Broadway debut. Dylvan Mulvaney is joining the cast of "Six."…
The day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr delivered what is usually called the "I've Been To The Mountaintop" speech because of its stirring final moments. But i…
The unnamed central character in Katie Kitamura's acclaimed novel "Audition" (Riverhead Books, 197 pages) is a middle-aged actress of some repute and of great perception, who offers some ric…
Why do the four opera singers repeat "This is Mad'line X" forty-one times? What's with the big ducks and why are they playing golf? Is the ensemble a group of courtiers or a deck of card…
Dorothy Parker hated the theater, especially the "wretched downtown plays. The actors represent characters like 'truth' or 'poverty' while the audience is content to represent 'sleeping' or …
In a season that promises to be rich in starry revivals and adaptations of familiar titles, the ten shows below are largely from beyond Broadway " most Off Broadway, some more out-of-the-way…
"Try/Step/Trip,"Â Â a terrifically rhythmic, unconventional musical that merges rap with step-dancing, was inspired by the court-ordered stay in drug rehab by poet, composer and performe…
There are seven new participants in the twice-yearly discount program: All Out:, Chess, Liberation, Marjorie Prime, Oedipus,Ragtime, Two Strangers (the links are to my reviews.) Click on the…
At a press conference on Friday announcing 1,500 free tickets to the Under the Radar Festival, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said: "This is just one example of an agenda and an approach that we ar…
"I'm not an ax murderer," Peter (Namir Smallwood) says to Agnes (Carrie Coon.) It's his first line in "Bug," Tracy Letts' intentionally unsettling 1996 play, now in its Broadway debut. But w…
LaChanze, a 19-time Broadway veteran. has won five Tony Awards,  one of them for her starring role in the original 2005 Broadway production of "The Color Purple," the other four as a B…
A young man strips an older woman of her clothes, wipes her bottom and changes her diaper: It is an early scene in "Mami," one of the many startling wordless moments that have the otherworld…
Marc Shaiman, one-half the songwriting team behind the Broadway musicals "Hairspray," "Catch Me If You Can," "Some Like It Hot," and "Smash," doesn't even start to tell us about any of his m…
