A.R.Gurney is a national treasure, who earned his sobriquet slowly and surely by writing over forty plays in the past 60 years, rivaling his contemporary Sir Alan Ayckbourn in productivity. …
There was for a time, in what we call the golden age of Broadway, a genre known as “the drawing room comedy”. A select few of the major playwrights of the day wrote them, dressed…
This new two hander by Laura Eason opened July 31st but I was not available to see it during the press previews, so I apologize for reporting to you on it at this late date. Its run has been…
Full disclosure: I have known and represented John Kander, Fred Ebb and Chita Rivera since before they all three knew each other. As a young agent at the Music Corporation of America, I was …
The Atlantic Theatre Company, nestled in its own theatre in a church on East 20th Street, has come up with a winner in Between Riverside and Crazy, a taut and tingling family drama replete w…
Bert Berns was an American song writer and producer in the 1960s. An original sixties rock ‘n roller and writer of soul, he made a mark in popular music, particularly with “Here …
Erasmus Fenn is a stage magician turned novelist turned playwright, whose first play, Drop Dead Perfect, has been brought to Theatre at St. Clement’s off Broadway, through the combined…
Penelope Skinner’s very dark comedy The Village Bike first appeared in 2011 at the Royal Court’s Upstairs Theatre in London. In 2012 it played the Sheffield Theatres, what we wou…
In recent times playwrights have been inviting us into worlds we would never know without them. Harvey Fierstein has set Casa Valentina in a camp in the Catskills to which certain men like t…
The mission of the Mint Theatre, operating out of a tiny black box theatre on West 43rd Street in an office building, is to unearth, to present and preserve forgotten plays of merit. In note…
The new musical If/Then, by the same creative team that brought us the prize winning Next To Normal five years ago, is once again an imaginative and impressive piece of work. Written by Tom …
I find it remarkable that a “well made play” which originally opened on Broadway in 1938 for a moderately successful run of 207 performances should have such an impact on an audi…
Sir Alan Ayckbourn was in New York this past weekend polishing up his staging of the three evenings of theatre he has brought us to officially welcome the delights of spring. The weather tur…
One of the joys of a long life in theatre is that you get to visit old friends whom you first met decades ago. Cabaret is a true case in point, for back in the middle of the last century (19…
It’s been several years since Gerard Alessandrini dusted off his skewering sword with which to parody working actors, writers and other well intentioned theatre folk. Now, in the curre…
The first ladies of the New York stage have been having a rough time of it of late. They have been finding rich and meaty roles in plays that come close, but don’t make it to the finis…
Each year, the Drama League bestows awards on all sorts of worthy talents who have contributed to the season just passed. On May 16th, I attended this year’s luncheon, the social event…
Tyne Daly has found herself a rich and demanding role, and she inhabits it with all of her considerable talent in peak condition. The role is Katherine Gerard, who first appeared in public i…
If you like country music, bluegrass, lowdown rock and lots of gospel, you’ll find yourself moved by Jeanine Tesori’s score which was first heard off Broadway in 1997 in a well r…
Every once in a while a play is announced for Broadway production with names attached to it that are not familiar to me. Such a case is The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina, with a c…
This “revue of a lifetime” is a good idea, well intentioned, occasionally very well executed, but unfortunately off its mark as often as it is on. Conceived and written by Stephe…
It’s alarming to have to report that Eric Coble’s two hander which starred Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella closed Sunday night after 16 performances on Broadway. A battery o…
Annapurna is a mountain that rises some 26,000 feet in the northern part of Nepal. It was once climbed by two men who just made it to the peak, only to make one fatal mistake on their wa…
Harvey Fierstein has recently joined Thomas Meehan and James Lapine on the A list of writers whom the establishment calls upon to crank out a book for a new musical, replacing Terrence McNal…
For those of you who remember, and cherish, the original Rocky film that made an instant star of Sylvester “Sly” Stallone, here’s what you have to know. Thomas Meehan, …