5,809 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
All is forgiven, Richard Greenberg. The busiest playwright in New York this season bounces back from "Breakfast At Tiffany's" with “The Assembled Parties,” an original new play t…
“At The Ballet” from A Chorus Line, sung by Audra McDonald, Megan Hilty and Kelli O’Hara at the “Live from Lincoln Center” tribute to Marvin Hamlisch: One Singu…
Question: When is the last time a movie star abandoned his lucrative Hollywood career because his wife asked him to? Answer: More recently than a violinist gave up his music for the chance a…
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that,” a quote by Martin Luther King Jr., was one of the many sayings projected onto the wall of the Brooklyn Academy of Mu…
Disgraced,” a new play by Ayad Akhtar, won the 2013 Prize for Drama. Directed by Kimberly Senior, at LCT3′s new home at Lincoln Center Theater, he Claire Tow Theater, Disgraced t…
Ten shows will be opening on Broadway within the next ten days. The consensus on the two that just opened, “Matilda” and “Motown,” were starkly different — and …
It is easy to see "Motown: The Musical" as Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr.'s affectionate tribute to himself: He co-wrote the book (based on his memoir) and produced the show, which f…
How do you solve a problem like “Matilda”? How do you handle the juggernaut it's become? The quirky musical, about a neglected little girl with extraordinary powers, is based on …
For its online auction, Playwrights Horizons has come up with dozens of items to bid on — some great; some elaborate; one a really, really bad idea. The theater’s fundraising onl…
Matilda opens on Broadway April 11th, a musical based on the children’s novel by Roald Dahl about a little girl with extraordinary powers, but it is clearly not like your normal childr…
The lyrics to “Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher” offered a dilemma after the former British prime minister’s death at age 87. So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher May God̵…
Hands on a Hardbody, the musical about a sadistic contest where ten people try to win a pick-up truck by keeping their hands on it, has announced it’s closing on April 13th, aft…
“Bombshell,” the Marilyn Monroe musical that fans of Smash will have  been following for 26 episodes, promises to open on April 20th in an episode entitled, appropriately, …
Lucky Guy and Kinky Boots opened on Broadway last week, Matilda is opening this week — one of a dozen Broadway shows still to open this month, to finish the Broadway Spring 2013 …
Encores! Off-Center, a new series from New York City Center, will begin this summer with the intent to do for old Off-Broadway musicals what its Encores! series has done for old Broadway sho…
Did Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” feature a real bear? We know that “Gypsy” had a little lamb, “Legally Blonde” both a chihuahua and a bul…
The League of Independent Theater held its first political candidate forums last month, and is planning to make endorsements in New York City political races. With some 50,000 independent th…
Nobody is sure how applause began, or when — babies applaud; applause is mentioned in the Bible — but we all know where it wound up: In the theater. In The Atlantic, Megan Garber…
Is it a shock to say that "Kinky Boots" just isn't kinky enough? It could have been. Harvey Fierstein wrote the book, he who began his career as a 300-pound teenage drag queen on the Lower E…
The 2013 theater award season began with the announcement on April 3 of the nominees for the 2013 Lucille Lortel Awards, honoring Off-Broadway. Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Redgrave rece…
Halfway through "Detroit," Lisa D'Amour's funny, dark and timely new play with a pitch-perfect cast that includes David Schwimmer and Amy Ryan, a character named Sharon explains that she has…
The main character of "The Whale" is 600 pounds, but one of the many pleasures of this funny and affecting new play by Samuel D. Hunter, being given a splendid production with a universally …
One reason to regret what seems at the moment to be the inevitable — that the second season of Smash, the backstage theater TV series, will be its last. In this duet, Bernadette Peters…
Playwright Richard Greenberg, whom I profile in Playbill this month, has three plays opening nearly simultaneously in New York: Breakfast At Tiffany’s opened March 20 at the Cort Theat…
How well were you paying attention to what was happening in New York theater in March? Find out with these ten questions The questions are all based on posts from this blog in March, 2013. T…
