977 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Ghostlight) Stranded in an Israeli desert town by mistake, an Egyptian band stays overnight with the locals before heading on to their engagement. Composer-lyri…
Original Broadway Cast, 2019 (Decca Broadway) Librettist Robert Horn and composer/lyricist David Yazbek made some wise moves in translating the popular 1982 comedy film Tootsie into a stage …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2018 (Masterworks Broadway) People have adapted Shakespeare's plays into musicals before, usually taking on the Bard's hits. Librettist/lyricist Peter Kellogg and…
Original Broadway Cast, 2019 (Ghostlight) How far will a musical go to give you a good time? In the case of Beetlejuice, all the way to the Netherworld and back. Based on Tim Burton's cult '…
Original Broadway Cast, 2018 (Atlantic)Â Mean Girls has been a major staple in pop culture ever since the film was released in 2004. With instantly quotable dialogue and numerous iconic m…
Original Broadway Cast, 2019 (Broadway Records) Â The Prom might be described as an old-fashioned musical comedy with a modern sound and up-to-the minute subject matter and plot, about a …
It's interesting to debate just where Lillian Hellman's reputation as a playwright stands as compared to her contemporaries in terms of quality, prolificity, and also revivability.
Sex, politics, and sex in politics have been rich subjects for theatrical treatment pretty much since day one, and will no doubt continue to be
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Warner Bros.) Andrew Lloyd Webber found his greatest commercial success in the era of the British pop-opera blockbusters, so it's easy to forget that he fir…
The year 1912 was a bad one for certain trans-Atlantic ship passengers"and, based on what happens in the first scene of Stanley Houghton's 1912 play Hindle Wakes, currently on view in a rare…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) Kid Victory premiered at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA in 2015, and played a limited run Off Broadway at the Vineyard in 2017.Â�…
It's demonstrably true that people who think they're supposed to hate each other due to cultural, racial, religious, ideological, and other differences amplified by tribalism can actually li…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Ghostlight) Based on the real-life rivalry between cosmetics titans Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, with a score by Grey Gardens team Michael Korie and S…
Director Julie Taymor has stated that a Chinese puzzle box was the metaphor that came to her mind as the jumping-off point for her new Broadway production of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Hollywood Records) One wants to applaud In Transit, Broadway's first a cappella musical, about the semi-connected lives of a small group of New Yorkers played o…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Rhino Warner Classics) The 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet film Amélie caused a major resurgence in American audiences' interest in French cinema and at least briefly …
Original Off-Broadway Cast (PS Classics, 2011) Bernard Shaw's plays do not easily adapt into musicals; My Fair Lady took Lerner and Loewe two tries, and only worked when they opened up the a…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) A tragic true-life story inspired this musical about The UpStairs Lounge, a popular gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans that was …
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) In Bandstand, composer Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor, who co-wrote the book and lyrics with Oberacker, created an original musical set i…
 Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (The Musical Company) Alhough they've been a songwriting team for years, husband and wife David Hein and Irene Sankoff made their Broadway debut with the mus…
Original Broadway Cast, 2016 (Ghostlight) Steve Martin is a man of many talents: actor, playwright, stand up comic, novelist. And here, with Edie Brickell as his collaborator, he adds musica…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Masterworks Broadway/Broadway Records) After the immense artistic and commercial success of Matilda, Tim Minchin turned his efforts next towards adapting the be…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Ghostlight) In 1989, Chazz Palminteri told the story of his youth in the Bronx as a one-man play, chronicling his conflicting loyalties to his working-class fat…
Film Soundtrack, 2007 (Columbia) This is the deservedly popular soundtrack album of a gorgeously bittersweet indie film, set in Dublin, about the brief but intense romance and songwriting pa…
Off Broadway Cast, 2016 (Jay Records) Here is a major revisal of the 1970 musical The Rothschilds, cut down to one-act and including several previously unheard Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick son…
