610 stories by "Richard Seff"
A.R.Gurney, who was called “Pete” by all who knew him, passed away at the age of 87 in 2017. He died in his apartment in New York surrounded by his family, which is how he wanted…
In his own time, Damon Runyon (1880-1946) was a sports writer and columnist for the Hearst newspapers but was perhaps best known as the creator of Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide, Jedediah Sky…
David Rabe’s Good For Otto, directed by Scott Elliot and presented by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street, is a very absorbing play, running almos…
I didn’t want to slink off into the night without saying so long to you very lovely DC fans at DC Metro Theater Arts. It was time to go, and I’m grateful for the space in which t…
Terrence McNally has been a steady contributor as a playwright ever since his first play, And Things That Go Bump In The Night landed on Broadway in 1963. It didn’t bump for long; it p…
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the very successful Encores! series threw us a party by offering its seven audiences (February 7"11) a potpourri of book scenes and musical numbers from ei…
Long buried in a box marked “forgotten” was this remarkable play, now unearthed by Jonathan Banks’ Mint Theater Company, which has brought it back to shimmering life for a …
Robert Fairchild, a lead dancer with the New York City Ballet Company, burst upon the Broadway scene two years ago by playing the lead in the stage version of An American In Paris. He was im…
I believe there’s a reason the name of the countertenor Farinelli precedes that of King Philippe V of Spain in the title of the play running currently at the Belasco Theatre on Broadwa…
The Manhattan Theatre Club has imported the London Royal Court Theatre’s production of The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, and with it have come the highly acclaimed original cast (Francesc…
Drawing room comedy is back for the moment, thanks to Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman. Genuine high wattage star Uma Thurman is riding in this vehicle which deals with the powerful …
This 90-minute sketch by Steve Martin begins as a situation comedy. Until fairly recently there were always several lighting up Broadway; and they were usually written by the likes of Neil S…
At last, a musical version of the SpongeBob family of characters who first appeared in a film cartoon in 1999. The title character and his friends have always lived in the fictional underwat…
Just as I was about to resignedly sigh Another tired revival of a favorite musical from the Golden Age?–along came Brigadoon from the remarkable New Yorks City Center “Encores!&#…
Only on rare occasion have I found a one-man (or woman) play rich enough for my blood. I do recall John Gielgud’s mesmerizing performance in Shakespeare’s Ages of Man, and there …
The playwright Julia Cho now has Office Hour on at the Public Theatre, but she has been a steady and welcome contributor to the contemporary scene for some time. Works of hers have been prod…
Jason Alexander was a Broadway baby long before he achieved fame on Seinfeld, but he’s had trouble re-establishing himself even though he’d appeared in Merrily We Roll Along, The…
A few weeks ago I found myself hankering to have a look at the London theater season, so I spent a day in the friendly skies of United Airlines to spend a week in which our own NY scene was …
A junk bond is a high-yield, high-risk maturity in the financial markets, and a greedy group of investors bought them and enjoyed the 10-12 percent interest that was sent out semi-annually, …
The characters Song Lilig and her consort René Gallinard are back on Broadway. Their play is M.Butterfly and its tale of a romance between a French diplomat (Gallinard, played by Clive Owen…
I was most anxious to see Follies in its current production at the National Theatre in London. Somehow news of it had escaped me, but Imelda Staunton is a great favorite of mine, and sheR…
David Yazbek has been one of the less publicized composer/lyricists from the generation of writers who followed those who wrote musicals in the “Golden Age” of Broadway. Yazbek h…
The setting of Lonely Planet is a “map store on the oldest street in an American city.” I assume the playwright, Stephen Dietz, wrote that into the program to let us know that…
Brian Friel’s play, The Home Place, has taken its time to find its way to New York, where it arrived in good hands at the newly renovated Irish Repertory Theatre off Broadway. Th…
The Roundabout Theatre Company has delivered to Broadway an interesting revival of this J.B. Priestley play that intrigued Depression audiences in the mid 1930s when it opened in New York an…
