5,870 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
Everybody from Louis Armstrong to Bobby Darin to Sting has recorded its music; Bob Dylan has said he was "aroused straightaway by the raw intensity of the songs." It's been on Broadway seven…
Only one show opened on Broadway in September. In October, there will be four: Man and Boy with Frank Langella, October 9; The Mountaintop, with Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett, October 13…
A terrific cast and a respect for Jane Austen's language help make this latest staging of the beloved novel a worthy entertainment, even while the score is not ideal.
Featuring actual teenagers playing fake ones, "Kissless" seems clueless, but thanks to some strong-voiced songs and choreography it's not worthless.
With a cast that includes Jonathan Groff ("Spring Awakening," "Glee") and Rutina Wesley, who as Tara was just killed (perhaps permanently?) in the "True Blood" season finale, "The Submission…
The action this week in New York Theater has been largely off Broadway and even Off-Off Broadway. Off-Broadway Week begins today, two-for-one tickets until October 9th. The winners of the Ne…
“These awards celebrate our incredulity that things ever go right,” said playwright John Patrick Shanley Robert, one of the presenters for the seventh annual New York Innovative …
The marquees are going up, the new Broadway season has begun — with the opening of the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies”. (Technically, the new season began in …
A theater full of girls ages 13 to 15 are enthralled by the speaker on the stage, Gloria Steinem, who is speaking at the Talkback after "Facebook Me," a fascinating theater piece written and…
The announcement that "Freud's Last Session" was leaving the Upper West Side for Midtown gave me a guilty conscience. I thought I should see the show before it departs its natural habitat; t…
In 1997, a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub, taken to the 70th police precinct, and sodomized with a wooden handle, which was then used to bash …
When the sequined ghosts of showgirls past appear at the beginning of "Follies," a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical opening tonight whose delights edge out its disappointments, the pe…
When the Elevator Repair Service theater company staged "Gatz" last year, one critic gushed that it represented a new genre in theater, a hybrid of book (Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby") and…
Sept. 11 affects a New Jersey Muslim family in this play by Rehana Lew Mirza, which, originally mounted on the first anniversary of that event, doesn't compel in revival.
From the moment the six members of the Fiasco Theater tell us to turn off our cell phones by singing a polished melody, it is clear these entertainers could spin magic from a bologna sandwic…
The Fringe Festival ended two days earlier than planned because of Hurricane Irene, which knocked out the closing night party, and the last-second chance to see shows with big buzz. Eighteen…
Lea Michele Sarfati was born a quarter-century ago today, August 29, 1986. As Lea Michele, she debuted on Broadway at age eight as Young Cosette in Les Miserables, and subsequently had roles…
Writer and performer Ali Kennedy Scott portrays five survivors of a natural catastrophe in Australia, but her delineation of character needs to be deeper and more distinct.
OK, yes, we first see the creator of the Spider-Man musical Julie Taymor " renamed Julie Paymore (get it?) " in a straitjacket and mask a la Hannibal the Cannibal in "Silence of the Lambs." …
In Nathan Cuckow and Beth Graham's new play, two twins read and act out a macabre tale that is better written than it is performed and funnier than it is terrifying.
The two site-specific plays that make up "HotelMotel" take place around a bed in a back parlor of The Gershwin Hotel, which is right next door to the Museum of Sex, and that seems an especia…
Three shows in New York explicitly describe themselves as both theater pieces and as circus acts: "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark," Cirque de Soleil's "Zarkana," and, now, "Traces," which com…
Nicholas Billon's subtle, unsentimental play is inspired by the recent discovery of an island off the coast of Greenland and imagines the story of the man who discovered it and his family.
Like the motorcyclists who tattoo Harley-Davidson onto their arms, some theatergoers treat "Rent" as an indelible part of their lives, something that has become almost sacred. This may help …
The first official photograph of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in “The Dark Knight Rises” comes with a question: Is Catwoman some kind of rite of passage for good actresses (Halle Be…
