5,870 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
Follow New York Theater on Twitter at @NewYorkTheater On seeing his first play, Harry Belafonte discovered “theater was power: power to influence, power to know of others…”…
One couple decides to call each other brooms, a combination of groom and bride, and even orders a wedding cake with two little brooms on top. When it comes to same-sex marriage, you can't be…
"Mend your speech a little, lest it mar your fortune," King Lear tells his youngest daughter. This is good advice for the Twitter generation, and in the production at the Public Theater star…
The story at the heart of "Venus in Fur" fascinates Americans above almost any other. I don't mean the sadomasochistic power struggle between a 19th century European nobleman and his dominat…
A cast of 17 joyously celebrate the late Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa E.T.C., by performing her words as set to music by Elizabeth Swados.
The most revealing moment in the first Broadway revival of "Godspell," a musical by Stephen Schwartz (now best-known for "Wicked"), may come after Jesus stands up on the piano, mike in hand,…
The health of a society can be determined by the art it demands, Edward Albee has said. But what about how much we're charged for it? This week in New York theater the average ticket price f…
James Gaddas' hourlong monologue for a boxer is made fresh by Jonny Collis-Scurll's performance and by a gay twist in this Brits Off Broadway offering.
If you are surprised to see Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Schwartz, Elton John and Stephen Sondheim guzzling beer and gobbling chicken wings at the local Hooters, then you probably did not wa…
This play about the effect of a factory strike on three blue-collar guys who have been friends since the first grade is strongest as a look at camaraderie.
If you are surprised to see Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Schwartz, Elton John and Stephen Sondheim guzzling beer and gobbling chicken wings at the local Hooters, then you probably did not wa…
Before it even begins, "The Atmosphere of Memory," with its elegant title and world-class cast, promises to be a worthy next play for the Labyrinth Theater, whose last one was "The Mother"Wi…
There is the man who was laid off a year and a half ago as the creative director for a children's television production company, and showed up at Zuccotti Park a day ago after being evicted …
There is sparkling wit and great timing these days at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, but it's just in the window, in an article Elaine May wrote to promote "Relatively Speaking," a trio of unf…
In "Chinglish," David Henry Hwang's funny and timely new play, an American man declares his love for a Chinese woman in Chinese: "Frog loves to pee," he says with feeling. That is not what h…
At the end of Ivo van Hove's interminable stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film "Cries and Whispers," we are rewarded with a breathtaking image: A video of a woman making angel wings in …
Joseph Douaihy knows about pain. So do the people all around him, the region they live in, and the country his family is from. Yet in Stephen Karam's "Songs of the Prophet," all this pain is…
The opening of a play about the dark side of the iPhone; an Occupy Wall Street demonstration at Lincoln Center and news of the first theater company to bring Occupy Wall Street to the stage;…
However uncomfortable you may feel about Mike Daisey's pokes at Steve Jobs so soon after the Apple founder's death cannot compare to the queasiness at the horrors this chronicler of the digi…
On the week that thousands protested in the theater district as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, two shows opened on Broadway: "The Mountaintop," about Martin Luther King Jr. and "Ma…
How is it that "The Lyons" is the most enjoyable play I have seen so far this season? The characters are unhappy and unpleasant, and not only that, they are the kind of people we've seen on …
Occupy Wall Street has spread around the world. Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Times Square this weekend, passing by the American Airlines Theater, home to "Man and Boy," a play sta…
There is a shocking moment halfway through "The Mountaintop," the play starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett that imagines the last night that Martin Luther King Jr. is alive. It is …
Jerry Herman's first Broadway musical, with a surprisingly varied score and a dated story about Americans finding love in Israel, is given a competent barebones revival by Musicals T…
This week in New York theater began with the promise of Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. coming to Broadway, and ended with the possibility of two of each. Another possibility: Michael C. H…
