610 stories by "Richard Seff"
Three West End musicals. All hits. All very different. Let’s start with the first of three that I saw the last week in June. That would be Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical now…
During my recent 8 night visit to London, I was able to have a look at 5 very disparate offerings in the West End, which is how the British spell “Broadway”. I saw two of the…
The Lincoln Center 3 series has been offering new writers an introduction via a series of productions at its Laura Pels Theatre underground at the Lincoln Center Theatre complex. But the lon…
In the 1940s and 50s there were any number of plays dealing with the Axis, which was our enemy in World War II. Some of these plays  were hits (There Shall Be No Night, A Bell For Adano, …
Each year at this time if you listen carefully, you can hear the hoots and howls ranging from “We was gypped” to “How can you ignore the brilliantly reviewed originator of …
May 11th marked the 47th anniversary of the opening of a Broadway musical by a new songwriting partnership, brought together by a Broadway agent working on his first big show, and introducin…
The Second Stage Theatre has brought New York a charming light soufflé of a play to remind us that spring is here and that balmy spring weather is just around the corner. Olivia Thirlby …
They might have called this show A LITTLE BITTA THIS, A LITTLE BITTA THAT. I don’t know the way in which it was formed, but there is a vague connection to Oh, Kay! a hit from 1926 when…
The New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village is known for its eclectic taste. Recently it housed the one – man play An Iliad by Dennis O’Hare.In the fall of 2010Â I witne…
In 1990, the screenplay of “Ghost” earned an Oscar for its author, Bruce Joel Rubin. The film was a crowd pleaser, and that made it instantly eligible for the “let’s …
We owe the Brits a great debt for gifting  us with the bombshell called Tracie Bennett. The slim actress/singer, who would appear from her photo to be a contemporarily coiffed blonde, has…
Richard Bean, prolific British playwright, has landed with a bang with this, his first export to American shores. A great success for two seasons at the National Theatre in London, a transfe…
I was certainly alive during the reign of Joseph Alsop as a syndicated political columnist, but the truth is he and his writings never attracted me, so I approached David Auburn’s play…
The interior of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway is decorated to the nines with bunting, campaign photos; hoopla music is playing over the speakers; the management wants you to know…
There’s been some controversy about the slowly growing trend of presenting plays with characters originally conceived as white being played by actors of color. The recent all black cas…
Disney-Hyperion published a novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson with this title, and it climbed to the NewYork Times best seller list. Disney Theatrical Productions president Thomas Schum…
Bruce Norris, the author of Clybourne Park, must be Chicago’s best known secret, for it is in the Windy City that the Steppenwolf Theatre has premiered six of his previous plays, begin…
Andrew Lloyd Webber is returning with a vengeance. His Phantom of the Opera sizzles along in its 25th profitable year at the Majestic, his revived Jesus Christ Superstar set up shop at the N…
Don’t let the title of Amy Herzog’s play 4000 Miles put you off. My first impression after hearing it was that it was probably another play about the war in Iraq or Afghanist…
In a New York time before mine, there was something called “The Round Table” and it consisted of scalawags and wits who bonded between 1919 and 1929;Â a group of bright wags w…
Let’s face it, on entering the New York Theatre Workshop to see Dennis O’Hare’s adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, I was unprepared. All I remembered of my long ago qui…
I’ve written about the work of the Actors Company Theatre (TACT) before, and here I am again to report to you on Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers which is the company’s spring …
Edward Albee has a lot of explaining to do. In the lobby of the newly opened Pershing Square Signature Center way out west on 42nd Street, there is a wall devoted to photos and quotes from t…
Even the lower standards set for success in today’s musical theatre are hardly met by the currently reconceived revival of the musical Carrie. It’s always a pleasure to welco…
I’m stepping out of my field just this once  in order to make you aware of Sean Egan’s new biography of playwright James Kirkwood. You may not recognize his name, but you know…
