973 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Premiere Recording, 2006 (Ghostlight) Librettists David Ives and Paul Blake based this Irving Berlin songfest on the 1954 film of the same title, which starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as …
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Ghostlight) Â Weddings have inspired musicals since at least as early as the 1920s (often with multiple couples overcoming ridiculous obstacles before tying …
Dark comedies don't get much darker that Scott McPherson's funny, sad, beautiful play Marvin's Room, about a caregiver who contracts a serious illness herself.
The dystopia depicted by George Orwell (real name, Eric Arthur Blair) in his chillingly prescient novel 1984 has not come true in all of its nightmarish particulars, at least not to the…
Film Soundtrack, 1997 (Atlantic) Just as Disney Animation was beginning to see a decline in its musical renaissance in the mid-'90s, Fox Animation decided to try its hand with the Princess f…
Sara Bareilles:Â What's Inside: Songs from Waitress, 2015 (Epic)Â The idea of Sara Bareilles writing a musical wasn't so far-out, even before it happened. The 21st century has seen sev…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Atlantic ) A musical that unapologetically wears its heart on its sleeve, Dear Evan Hansen is the most high profile theater work to date from the songwriting te…
The current, wish-come-true, New York City Center Encores! presentation of The Golden Apple will have seven performances over a five-day period.
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2016 (Ghostlight) Here's a musical comedy about the porn industry, created by the New York-based theater company The Civilians, with music and lyrics by Michael F…
It's not surprising that Yours Unfaithfully, Miles Malleson's 1933 play about a couple's attempt to successfully negotiate the terrain of what we would now call an "open marriage," was not p…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2016 (Broadway Records) First seen at the York Theatre Company's home at St. Peter's Church and then in a commercial run at the Westside Theatre, this show was a …
Original Broadway Cast, 2009 (PS Classics) The Story of My Life is an intimate, unusual, two-character musical with songs by Neil Bartram and book by Brian Hill. The strengths of the cast al…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2013 (Ghostlight) Texas is big. Edna Ferber's 1952 novel, Giant, is big, spanning decades and two generations of rancher families. The 1956 movie version is big, …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2013 (Ghostlight) Many musical scores can stand perfectly well as cast recordings, separate from their staged productions. Others lose something when deprived of …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2010 (JAY) In several of their shows, John Kander and Fred Ebb have used various types of entertainment as the contextual setting for exploring historical and soc…
Original Broadway Cast, 2010 (Verve) Not to be outdone by Disney, the Dreamworks company decided to come to Broadway with a musical adaptation of its Oscar winning animated film Shrek, about…
Original Broadway Cast, 2007 (Manhattan Records) Part backstage satire and part whodunit, Curtains was a long-gestating property. At the time of its opening, the show was touted as having th…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2014 (PS Classics) Musical theater fans look back with affection at the Off-Broadway shows of the early- to mid-sixties " small, unique productions whose distinct…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2011 (PS Classics) On paper, Death Takes a Holiday probably looked like a wonderful idea for a musical. Composer-lyricist Maury Yeston has done some very admirabl…
Original Broadway Cast 2005 (Ghostlight) David Yazbek's Broadway scores are just plain fun, whether it's the frenetic farce of Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or the blue-collar hu…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2015 (Ghostlight) In Jean Webster's 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs, Jerusha Abbott is an orphan whose intelligence prompts orphanage trustee Jervis Pendleton to pay f…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2008 (P.S. Classics) You might think The Adding Machine, Elmer Rice's 1923 expressionist drama, an unlikely candidate for musical adaptation. It's a bleak tale of…
Film Soundtrack, 1951 (MGM/Rhino-Turner/Watertower Music) In the 1990s, Turner Entertainment restored one of MGM's greatest musicals, An American In Paris. The restoration turned up the stud…
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1992 (Walt Disney) Listening to the soundtrack recording of this 1992 movie that starred a young Christian Bale (well before his days headlining much …
The program for the Mint Theater Company's production of N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea tells us that the author "took his place among the leading British dramatists of the 1950s," but it's …
