5,870 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
http://www.nbc.com/smash/video/meet-jeremy-jordan/n31999 Jeremy Jordan, who made a splash on Broadway in “Bonnie and Clyde” and especially “Newsies,” plays Jimmy, an …
The beer commercial that made grown men cry. A little background: The Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company owns six teams of horses, which they call The Budweiser Clydesdales, that they use for pr…
While it is true that there is not a single Broadway show scheduled to open in the month of February, and there will surely be more new commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl than stage…
By the end of the first scene of the first-ever revival of "Moose Murders," which attained legendary status as the worst flop in Broadway history, I thought to myself: This is really not any…
Clockwise from top left: Phantom of the Opera, Scarlett Johansson in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Barry Manilow, scene from Picnic, Rebecca producer Ben Sprecher
Tak…
Mayor Michael Bloomberg did not address the theatergoers at City Center on the first night of the Encores! appealing if not thrilling production of the 1959 musical "Fiorello," and he did no…
Anton Chekhov was born today in 1860, and died at age 44. He was a Russian physician, a short story writer and a playwright, whose best-known plays, written in the last few years of his life…
Before Randi Zuckerberg spoke at the second annual TEDx Broadway, offering some  suggestions at how to use technology to transcend the limitations of Broadway, the former official a…
Vincent Gassetto does not work in the theater; he is the principal of a middle school in the Bronx, M.S. 343. Yet he had something worthwhile to say at today's day-long conference about Broa…
When Daniel Day-Lewis won the Screen Actors Guild award for his leading role in "Lincoln" " having already won a slew of other awards for it as well as an Oscar nomination — I wondered…
Two plays I just reviewed for Backstage, Mat Smart’s "The Steadfast," a play about American soldiers through the ages, and Judith Malina’s "Here We Are," a theater piece about…
At 44, Richard Blanco was the youngest poet chosen for the inaugural poem in U.S. history. He is also the first only gay man and the first Hispanic to read the inaugural poem. “One Tod…
President Barack Obama Inaugural Address Monday, January 21, 2013 Washington, DC Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fel…
This week in New York theater: January 14, 2013 Big Fish, a new musical based on the 2003 film, Â is opening on Broadway's Neil Simon Theater on October 6 directed by Susan Stroman a with …
The producers of the new Broadway play “Lucky Guy” have listened to the criticism, and changed the marquee at the Broadhurst Theater, getting rid of the billboard (left) with the…
"Cat On A Hat Tin Roof" with Scarlett Johansson and Benjamin Walker could not possibly be so dull, I said during the first intermission; I just must be tired. The couple next to us left duri…
"Well, for all of you 'SNL' fans, I'm 50! I'm 50! You know, I need to do that without this dress on, but you know, maybe later at Trader Vic's, boys and girls. What do you say? I'm 50! You k…
Bette Midler's return to Broadway after three decades is one of three new Broadway shows announced this week, a week in which only one show announced its closing, even though it’s Janu…
Are all single women to be pitied? Would an undisciplined drifter in the 1950's have a torso with a sculpted six-pack? Did William Inge's "Picnic" really deserve the Pulitzer Prize for Drama…
It has been less than two years since I saw The Other Place Off-Broadway, yet what I remembered of it was just the spellbinding performance by Laurie Metcalf (still best-known as Roseanne…
Why isn't Harold Arlen as well-known as George Gershwin? It is a question that provokes debate among connoisseurs of what has become known as the Great American Songbook, or the Golden Age o…
Lincoln leads with 12 Oscar nominations, including best adapted screenplay by Tony Kushner (playwright of “Angels in America”). Les Miserables, the movie of the stage musical, sn…
Laura Osnes as Cinderella and Santino Fontana as the Prince in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” beginning previews January 25, and opening March 3, 2013
January is the month for theater festivals in New York, more than at any time other than the summer. Â The offerings tend toward the avant-garde and the international and indeed many of th…
When Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes’ “Water By The Spoonful” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama last year, the standard response I heard was: What? Who? The play had never been prod…
