5,789 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
"Dead Outlaw," a darkly comic musical that tells the ghoulish true tale about a corpse from the Old West, has been resurrected, opening tonight on Broadway, with the same cast and creative t…
There is a Sinatra vibe that Jonathan Groff nails from the start, when, in shiny tux and tie, he works his way around the café tables of Broadway's Circle in the Square Theater,  rede…
In the lobby gift shop of the Marquis, where Netflix's Broadway version of "Stranger Things" has opened, there is a Demogorgon plushie for sale for thirty dollars. It's not called a Demogorg…
"Death Becomes Her" leads the nominations at the 75th annual Outer Critics Circle Awards, announced this morning by Oh, Mary! stars Cole Escola and Conrad Ricamora at the Muse…
"Pirates!," which opens tonight on Broadway, is billed as a reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan's 146-year-old comic operetta. But luckily there is plenty it shares with the twenty-six previ…
Before launching into the funny, sweet, sad, slight, sometimes sexually graphic story of his first love, the author and performer of this one-man show introduces himself in telling and trade…
William Shakespeare is said to have been born on this day in 1564. It wasn't until 1750 that there is any record of one of his plays being produced in New York " "King Richard III" " but Bro…
Below are the nominations for the 91st annual Drama League Awards announced this morning by Sarah Hyland and Orville Peck at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Ce…
Amid the busiest time for openings on Broadway and beyond, there is also news of an abrupt closing,  a teased re-opening, and a promising summer theater season mostly outdoors and much…
 "Rheology" begins with a physicist delivering a lecture about sand, with a blackboard full of equations, and equipment (hourglass, sandbox, projections) to illustrate her points. This go…
Deaf Broadway's version of "Waitress." A new show by Suzan-Lori Parks. A 4,000-year-old epic play. Shakespeare on immigration. Monteverdi on race relations. Opera singer Anthony Roth Cost…
Given all the recent announcements of shattered Broadway box office records " which means more theatergoers are paying higher ticket prices than ever before for Broadway shows " below is a r…
Deirdre O'Connell as Dot keeps an imp in a corked old wine bottle, expecting it to work magic " to  grant Dot's wishes, as long as what she asks for is not too selfish. It's true the i…
Azhar Bande-Ali was in a plane that had a mechanical problem that prevented it from landing, which provoked a spiritual problem; Â he worried that the plane would crash, and he would die. …
The first word in this play is "sex." Mr. Smith says it to his teenage students, asking for its definition, which the class then recites in unison, reading aloud from their textbooks. They'r…
Female characters and performers dominated the shows that opened  this past week on Broadway, which the previous week had been dominated by shows featuring male characters and performe…
"Urinetown" co-creator Greg Kotis takes us to another future dystopian society in this small, cheeky musical that's part of the New York City Fringe Festival.  With a banjo-driven blue…
The president of the United States puts a fifty percent tariff on all imported cheese, which leads to war…with Switzerland. That's the premise of "Strike Up the Band," the first of a trio …
Broadway is luring the star-struck to pay big bucks in this final stretch of the season, leading Janice Simpson of Broadway & Me to ask "whether all the hoopla and moola are worth it." S…
"Smash" offered viewers the rare thrill of original musical numbers written by a Tony-winning songwriting team expressly for network television, and simultaneously gave Tweeters a target …
There is a moment of mystery near the end of "Public Obscenities,"Â Â which was a finalist last year for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama: Choton, the queer Bengali American PhD student from …
In this sixth Sondheim show on Broadway since his death in 2021, a cast of 19 including Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga perform 40 songs selected from 14 shows for which Stephen Sondheim w…
If "Boop!" were a store rather than a Broadway musical, it would be a factory outlet, and the pile-on of merchandise on display would all be refurbished from parts of old shows "Â Â the …
Male characters of various stripes " clockwise from top left,  valiant, vain, and vile  " dominated the Broadway shows that opened over the past week: "Good Night, and Good Luck,…
Two decades after it was first produced, I was finally won over to Jason Robert Brown's two-character musical inspired by the unraveling of his first marriage. This was in 2021 during the pa…
