5,809 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
A list of shows, parties, concerts, intimate dinners, cruises and outdoor events you can still do on New Year’s Eve 2014 in New York City. More than a billion people watch the ball dro…
2013 was, if nothing else, a year of lists. I’ve already put together a list of the most noteworthy (and weirdest) theater stories of 2013. Here is a list of the ten most-read articles…
Why does the first film starring both Meryl Streep AND Julia Roberts, based on a play that won both five Tony Awards AND the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, wind up disappointing? There are a coup…
There were more productions of Shakespeare on Broadway in 2013 than at any time since 1958. But it wasn’t just on Broadway that the Bard was big this year. That is I why, for the new m…
Almost all of the 32 Broadway shows currently playing are offering Monday night performances on Christmas week, as well as matinees on the Thursday after Christmas Day. Some are offering a s…
Here are 15 of the longest-running and most popular shows on Broadway, listed alphabetically, with brief descriptions that include my take, and links where available to my initial reviews. T…
The week in theater was one of unusual extremes, with tragic news coming from London one day " the collapse of a theater " followed by news the very next day that delighted Harry Potter fans…
With Sylvester Stallone set to make his Broadway debut as book writer and producer of Rocky the musical, I was drawn to see Grudge Match, a new movie opening Christmas Day starring Stallone …
2013 was the year of Shakespeare, and cross-dressing, and people getting naked in tubs on stage. It was a year full of solo performances and celebrity Broadway debuts and shows that sound on…
Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane and the entire 18-member cast of the Goodman Theatre of Chicago’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls, are…
Even as we mourn the deaths of Peter O’Toole, 81, Â Eleanor Parker, 91, and Joan Fontaine, 96, we celebrate the still theatrically active Estelle Parsons, 86, and Carol Lawrence, 82.…
During the intermission at "Handle With Care," billed as a new romantic comedy starring Carol Lawrence, the original Maria of West Side Story, I pondered some nearly theological questions: I…
The Glass Menagerie and Twelfth Night are on most critic’s top 10 list of the best theater of 2013 so far — but not all (Time doesn’t have either.) I was early with my Top …
How does one become one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century? The answer is not directly forthcoming in "How I Learned What I Learned," the memoir written and performed by August …
Watson was the name of both Sherlock Holmes' fictional assistant and Alexander Graham Bell's real one, as well as the IBM supercomputer (named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson) that beat t…
10. Kinky Boots StageGrade: B+ This show has become more beloved since yahoos condemned it during Thanksgiving. I always found it entertaining, in a Busby Berkeley sort of way, but it’…
Let’s face it, the live TV broadcast of The Sound of Music overshadowed whatever exciting news about Broadway itself this week– Â new leads for Bullets Over Broadway and Act On…
Before she portrayed an action hero, an astronaut, an activist or an alien on the screen, actress Sigourney Weaver says, "I was always doing new plays Off-Off Broadway. The spaces were alway…
Win two tickets to see La Soiree, a theatrical spectacle that Entertainment Weekly called “a mesmerizing hybrid of sideshow, vaudeville & burlesque” and Flavorpill said…
Does this sound like The Sound of Music to you? The Sound of Music is the only Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with no overture. Instead there is the first of 22 songs (see song list at b…
“It always seems impossible, until it’s done.” Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country's first black pre…
Christmas cheer is a cut-throat business, something I learned from the composer of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, Johnny Marks, who pointed out to me that the success of his little ditty and…
This has been an eventful holiday week, and not just because The Lion King celebrated another benchmark — as did, more oddly, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. (scroll to 27 and 30, below…
