5,870 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
Tony nominee Todd Rosenthal designs “The Mothef**ker With the Hat”
More complicated than telling people the name of The Motherf**ker With The Hat is describing the set, especiall…
This 70-minute drama, about a baseball player refusing to sing the national anthem after the death of his brother in Iraq, promises provocation but winds up largely an unsurprising sports …
The resumption of previews for “Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark,” with a new Playbill cover (the one at far right) managed not to upstage much else this week in New York theater, si…
By most accounts, the Broadway 2010-2011 had a high number of quality plays and musicals. But there were, by common agreement, some real clunkers too. There are SO many theater awards for qu…
A minister with a terminal illness presides over a Christmastime gathering of his estranged family in a play with appealing characters but marred by an overly slow pace.
As soon as the Tony Award nominations were announced at the top of this week in New York theater, theatergoers hurrahed and griped, sliced and diced. Some were delighted that The Scottsboro …
What does a woman want? What does a marriage mean? Is Socialism the answer? Was "My Fair Lady" a fluke? These are the questions raised by "A Minister's Wife," a musical adapted from one of G…
Arthur Laurents died Thursday at the age of 93. A playwright, director, librettist, screenwriter, gay role model, and inspiration for generations, he was involved in 23 productions on Broadw…
Below is the list of nominations for the Tony Awards for 2011. The Book of Mormon has the most nominations at 14. The Scottsboro Boys has the second-most at 12 — and may be the most ev…
Two members of the New York Neo-Futurists bought two storage lockers at auction in the Bronx and piece together the lives of the former owners in this intriguing but overstuffed play.
The Broadway theater season has ended, and the theater awards season begun. Of the 18 shows that opened on Broadway in the Fall, only two are still playing — Lombardi and Rain. But 21 …
The Broadway season that just ended featured 40 plays and musicals — 18 in the Fall and 22 in the Spring. Many of them with magical moments. Here is a selection of just 12, not all fro…
Below is a list of the nominations for the Drama League Awards for 2011. (Unlike other theater organizations that give out annual awards, membership in the Drama League is open to the genera…
Below is a list of the nominations for the 2011 Outer Critics Circle Awards, which honor the best in Broadway and Off-Broadway theater. Winners of the awards will be announced May 16. The an…
Below is the full list of nominees for the 56th Annual Drama Desk Awards, honoring excellence in Broadway, off-Broadway, and non-profit New York theater. The winners will be announced at a c…
One of the jokes in "The People in The Picture," a Broadway musical starring Donna Murphy as both a young Yiddish theater star and an elderly grandmother, has a man harassed by two thugs off…
"Baby, It's You," a jukebox musical featuring nearly three dozen pre-Motown pop songs and a thoroughly inept script, must have struck its creator (Floyd Mutrux, creator of " Million Dollar Q…
Theatergoers leaving "The Normal Heart," a revival of the 1985 play about the AIDS crisis, were greeted by activist Larry Kramer handing out a leaflet from the curb. He was not urging a boyc…
"For once could you let my emotions come out?" Edie Falco as Bananas says to Ben Stiller as her husband Artie Shaughnessy in the David Cromer-directed revival of "The House of Leaves," as Ar…
In the busiest week on Broadway all year, I saw three plays involving nuns, three involving drug dealers " and one with both a nun and a drug dealer. Two performers debuted on Broadway and b…
Whatever else its charms, "Born Yesterday" is most noteworthy for having made a star out of Judy Holliday, and for having given the dumb blonde joke a novel twist. Its latest revival with Ji…
"War Horse" is a touching love story between a boy and his horse, it is a shocking war story, but above all, it is a breathtaking work of stagecraft, employing theatrical ingenuity at the se…
"Take some more tea, " the March Hare says to Alice. "I haven't had any yet, so I can't take more." "You mean you can’t take LESS,’ says the Mad Hatter: “It’s very ea…
In the very first moment that Mark Rylance appears on the stage and in the very last, "Jerusalem" soars from his daredevil performance as Johnny "Rooster" Byron, a fiery spirit about to be e…
Patina Miller, the newly-discovered diva making her Broadway debut as star of "Sister Act," doesn't thank God in her Who's Who bio, and thank God for that. She thanks Whoopi Goldberg and her…
