5,853 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
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…
Opening night doesn't mean what it used to mean. It suddenly has come to mean even less than it did three years ago, when I first wrote that it had become nearly meaningless. The changes hav…
Jeffrey Richards has produced playwright David Mamet's plays ten times on Broadway over the past twenty years, including the revival of "Glengarry Glen Ross" that is currently running at the…
Where is our Edward R. Murrow? That is the implicit question that animates George Clooney's play, opened tonight on Broadway in an elegant, meticulous and timely production directed by David…
Drag: The Musical, Our Class, and Three Houses received the most nominations for the 40th annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. Winners will be pre…
Below is a calendar of theater opening* in April, including twelve shows on Broadway, half of which are adapted from (or inspired by) works of art or entertainment in other media " two movie…
Thirteen shows will open on Broadway in the four weeks until the Broadway 2024-2025 officially ends; by then New York theater award season will be well underway: New York Theater Awards Cale…
How well were you paying attention to the theater news, views and reviews in March? Take this quiz to find out. Loading…
Sandy was not the first dog on a New York stage. Even Bill Berloni concedes that. He trained Sandy for "Annie" back in 1977, and, this season, Tana June for "Gypsy" (along with her understud…
Is that Sarah Paulson in pajamas brushing her teeth? She is in her dressing room at the Belasco, during the run of the play "Appropriate" " one of some one hundred black-and-white photograph…
Sarah Snook portrays some 25 characters as well as the narrator in this dazzling and sometimes dizzying stage-and-video adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, but at the curtain call, she is far…
Today is World Theatre Day, celebrated internationally every March 27th since 1962, even when the lovely enveloping darkness in a theater feels no match for the ugly encroaching darkne…
