5,869 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”, “Aladdin” and “Fun Home” had the greatest number of nominations for the 64th annual Outer Critics Circle…
With the best title of any Broadway play this season, two always-impressive actors as the cast, and a theme of loss and aging that hits close to home, "The Velocity of Autumn" is the sort of…
Before she wrote the songs for the astonishing "Fun Home" or collaborated with Tony Kushner on the extraordinary "Caroline, Or Change," Jeanine Tesori wrote the music for "Violet," her fi…
There was no applause for Daniel Radcliffe when he first enters "The Cripple of Inishmaan," the first and first-rate Broadway production of Martin McDonagh's harsh 1996 comedy. I'm su…
“Act One,” the  well-meaning stage adaptation of the beloved theatrical memoir by Moss Hart, aims to explore the intoxicating appeal of the theater, but it instead demonstrate…
Broadway barks indeed. This season, dogs are in the casts of four Broadway shows. All four were rescued from a dog pound, and now perform eight shows a week. Are their Pooper-Scoopers monogr…
"The theatre is not so much a profession as a disease, and my first look at Broadway was the beginning of a lifelong infection," playwright and director Moss Hart wrote in Act One, his long-…
Annie Baker’s The Flick has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Here is my review of The Flick. Citation: “Awarded to “The Flick,” by Annie Baker, a thoughtful …
Eight Broadway shows are opening in the next ten days. Two opened last week, Bullets Over Broadway and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. It’s tax time, which may be why there …
click on any photo to see it enlarged Audra McDonald is the same age as the Billie Holiday she is depicting in the first Broadway production of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," a remar…
“Bullets Over Broadway,” based on Woody Allen’s 1994 movie about a novice playwright in the 1920s whose show is saved by a mobster, is opening tonight at the St. James Thea…
If/Then with Idina Menzel, A Raisin in the Sun with Denzel Washington and The Realistic Joneses  with Michael C. Hall opened on Broadway; Adrian Lester gives a star turn portrayi…
In "The Realistic Joneses," a kind of "Endgame"Â reoriented to the American suburbs, Michael C. Hall and Marisa Tomei as a couple named Jones pay an unexpected visit to introduce themselve…
"Me and my family…we are very plain people," Denzel Washington says in "A Raisin in the Sun," at the start of a monologue that by the end " "we are very proud people" — is one of the…
In "If/Then," Idina Menzel portrays two different versions of the same character Elizabeth, and at the beginning of the musical, I was feeling like two versions of myself as well. Elizab…
Ed Iskandar talked with God. Then it was Lucifer's turn. Now he was addressing Adam and Eve. "The audience has just paid $50 to watch the Bible, so bite the fuck out of the apple and …
In April, there are more than 30 shows opening on Broadway, Â Off-Broadway or Off-Off Broadway, at least one for each day of the month, although the schedule is more chaotic than that. (Ge…
Here Lies Love; Fun Home, and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 received the most nominations for the 2014 Lucille Lortel Awards celebrating Off-Broadway, presented by the Off-Broa…
How well were you paying attention to the New York theater news in March, 2014? Answer these 10 questions and find out.
When Ira Aldridge played Othello in London, they were still debating whether it was a good thing to end slavery in the British colonies. Aldridge is the real-life African-American actor port…
In “If/Then,” the new musical by the team that created Next To Normal, Idina Menzel returns to Broadway after a nine-year absence, playing Elizabeth, a city planner who returns t…
We saw the poster of Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig – a close-up of his face with a little mascara and lipstick — but now we’re getting him in full dress — or full …
In the calm before the April avalanche — with 13 shows opening on Broadway alone within the next four weeks, Â piling up to open as close as possible to the Tony Awards cut-off deadl…
There are 12 shows opening on Broadway in April, 2014.
Kevin Spacey doesn't strangle a dog within the first few minutes, nor become President of the United States in the last few, but "Breathing Time," a play by Beau Willimon, the creator…
