499 stories by "Rob Weinert-Kendt"
Orville Mendoza at Stephen Sondheim's piano.I first saw Orville Mendoza in the lead role of Sweeney Todd at East West Players in 1994; I later had the distinct joy of reviewing him…
Patrick Wilson and Amanda Peet in Barefoot in the Park. (Photo by Carol Rosegg)Amanda Peet recently contributed this funny, lightly harrowing essay about the weird contortions she put hersel…
Dear New York theater friends who think this L.A. 99-seat thing sounds like B.S. and a clear-cut case of exploitation that Equity has every good reason to shut down: I might not go so far as…
Michael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, Manoel Felciano, and Donna Lynne Champlin in "Sweeney Todd" (photo by Paul Kolnik)It's hardly controversial that Sweeney Todd is Sondheim's masterpiece (and, …
Derrick Lee Weeden and Anthony Heald in Othello at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 1999. (Photo by David Coooper)I'm about to take in New York Theatre Workshop's new production of Othello,…
Patrick J. Adams, Cynthia Mace, Brian Kerwin, and James Eckhouse in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? at the Mark Taper Forum in 2005.I've seen a fair amount of Edward Albee's work in my time, ind…
The hoariest question songwriters get asked is: Which comes first, the words or the music? Stephen Sondheim's answer has always been: the dramatic situation. (With all apologies to Merrily W…
I first saw Stew performing in the mid-1990s with a band improbably named Crazy Sound All-Stars at a place called Onyx Echo in Los Feliz; I was invited by a college friend, Carey Fosse, who …
In his new show, "The Total Bent," the music is always the play, and vice versa.
The moving interview between two dear friends and "Mothers."
This interview originally appeared in the April 12, 2001 issue of Back Stage West."How's my light?" asked Laurie Metcalf as the cover photo for this story was being taken, and then she reali…
The poet-playwright Dan O'Brien has a collaborative bond with the former war photographer Paul Watson, manifested in "The Body of an American."
Mother Courage and Her Children: Alexandria Wailes, Streep, Geoffrey Arend, and Frederick Weller. (photo by Michal Daniel)Improbably, Brecht's Mother Courage is in the news--the theatre news…
The playwright talks about her incentive for injecting a cathartic surprise into the play, which centers on two teenagers bonding over poetry homework.
photo by Sara Krulwich for The New York TimesThis excellent piece by my colleague Eric Grode, looking back at 50 years of Fiddler memories as the musical's newest revival readies for its ope…
Tom Bell and Ian McKellen in the London premiere of Bent, 1979.A major revival of Martin Sherman's play Bent begins performances on July 15 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, directed b…
I was recently contracted to write a preview of the Broadway transfer of Hamilton for Time Out NY, but the piece was spiked in favor of a no-doubt-excellent preview by the estimable Adam Fel…
So the Times just had me contemplate the tradition of the Broadway musical's "11 o'clock number," and specifically, whether the great new musical Fun Home has one in the stunning "…
A musical likes the Broadway tradition of an "11 o'clock number" so much, it has more than one.
A striking number of people involved in the May 2006 production of columbinus at New York Theatre Workshop went on to have careers I've followed, and/or I've gotten to know: actors Anna …
Once a kind of fortifying ritual for beleaguered theater artists, the Secret City has grown into a half-irreverent, half-earnest blend of revival meeting.
Designing costumes for Broadway’s The Pee-wee Herman ShowOne night back in 1977, Paul Reubens, a wiry sketch comic at the Los Angeles improv company the Groundlings, came up with the c…
The playwright-director Moisés Kaufman is playing with puppets for his “Puss in Boots” opera.
Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s “Knickerbocker Holiday” and “Lost in the Stars” — entirely coincidentally — are back for concert readings i…
The playwright returns to the painful divisive years of the recent Bush regime.
