499 stories by "ROB WEINERT-KENDT"
You've got to hand it to Elisabeth Vincentelli: Of New York's daily critics, she's the only one out there truly blogging. I do admire the Times' Theater Talkback idea, which forces Ben and C…
Theater for the very young seems to be a growing trend. Three new fathers explore the possibilities.
Dakin Matthews and Helen Mirren in "The Audience." (Photo by Joan Marcus)The Broadway season has come to an end, and while much of the exciting work this past year was Off-Broadway (and ther…
My review of the Disney film of Into the Woods is in the current issue of The Sondheim Review, and the editors have graciously allowed me to publish it in full here; it should be said that t…
Once a member of the boy band Take That, Gary Barlow and his writing partner Eliot Kennedy brought a hit-song sensibility to the score of "Finding Neverland."
The last thing I wrote about the controversy over L.A.'s Equity 99-Seat Plan, for American Theatre magazine, was more personal than the typical news report; I felt I couldn't help but inject…
The rest of 2015 will have a lot to live up to: In quick succession, I've already seen/written about/considered two of the best productions I'll probably see in years, let alone this calenda…
Mercedes Reuhl and Bill Pullman in The Goat(photo by Sara Krulwich/NY Times)Bill Pullman said something really interesting in this interview--and it wasn't the fact that he's playing Othello…
Anna Camp plays an artist in crisis in Verité — “This play is definitely keeping me up at night,” says Anna Camp, the star of Verité, Nick Jones’s unsettling new co…
From left, Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr. from the cast of "Hamilton." CreditDamon Winter/The New York TimesOne of the most infectious sentime…
The composer-performer Lin-Manuel Miranda meets with cast members from his new musical, "Hamilton," to discuss hip-hop hustle and the founding fathers.
Stephen Ouimette and cast in an "Iceman" rehearsal. (Photo by Liz Lauren)I had the great privilege recently of sitting in a Chicago rehearsal room and watching the 18-person cast of the Good…
"The Iceman Cometh," directed by Robert Falls and starring Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy, prepares to come to New York.
It's been a spotty year of blogging here, got to admit, and only partly due to the October debut of this. And it's hard not to find it sobering that my two most-read post were essentially ob…
Most of the theater I've seen in my lifetime, and much of the best of it, has been in Los Angeles. And the great majority of that great theater was produced under what's now called the 99-Se…
When I wrote this cover story for American Theatre, about how the presence of composer/musicians within their own theater pieces showed hope of changing and revivifying musical theater, I wa…
You may have been wondering what happened to the review-aggregating site I created with Isaac Butler in 2010. I can spell out the saga in relatively simple terms, with links to help you conn…
I'm not a big fan of the current Broadway revival of Stoppard's Coward-esque romcom, but I had seen and, to my recollection, somewhat enjoyed a production of it about a decade ago in L.A., a…
How Hari Dhillon channels the anger and revelations in Broadway’s Disgraced — Welcome to Building Character, our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles ItR…
Jimmy Nail, who stars in "The Last Ship," and Sting, who wrote its songs and conceived the show, draw from their hometown, Newcastle-on-Tyne, for inspiration.
Jay Armstrong Johnson, Tony Yazbeck, Clyde AlvesIf I were "officially" reviewing the new Broadway revival of On the Town for hire, I would probably be required to note some of its flaws…
Two new immersive pieces at the Park Avenue Armory have young audiences make their way through the building's grand rooms.
As I learned in my reporting on the new musical of Jonathan Lethem's novel The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem made a two-CD "mixtape" for supplementary listening when the book was published in…
The cast of The Fortress of Solitude at Dallas Theater Center (photo by Karen Almond)I've been hearing about this Fortress of Solitude musical for nearly as long as it's been in de…
"The Fortress of Solitude," a musical based on Jonathan Lethem's novel, features music influenced by its setting in the 1970s and early 1980s.
