879 stories from Broadway & Me
You wouldn't think that the subject of slavery would be an obvious choice for comedy. And yet the writer James McBride pulled it off with "The Good Lord Bird," his comedic novel about a youn…
Maybe it's the summer heat. Or maybe too many of you are out of town. Or maybe it's a reluctance to take a chance on an unknown show. Whatever the reason, there weren't as many entrants in t…
We're now in the midsummer of this year's theater festival season. It's the time when small companies and fledgling productions get a chance to strut their stuff. Some of these showcases, li…
With temperatures climbing into the 90s, we're in the midst of the summer's first real heat wave. And consequently, everything is slowing down, including show openings"and now B&Me. I'll…
Since getting her B.A. at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and an M.F.A from Columbia University barely a decade ago, Rachel Chavkin, whose acclaimed production of Natasha, Pierre and the Grea…
Spring's incessant flow of show openings slows to a trickle in the summer so theater junkies like me have to look elsewhere for our fixes. I recently found some solace in theater-related exh…
The Tonys and all last season's other theater celebrations are now behind us, several original Hamilton cast members (including the show's creator Lin-Manuel Miranda) are scheduled to take t…
Outsiders are Samuel D. Hunter's specialty. But his aren't the heroic or charismatic figures that command center stage in most narratives. Instead, they are the more commonplace misfits soci…
Now 54, Matthew Broderick made his stage debut as a teenager in the original 1982 production of Torch Song Trilogy, won a Tony Award the next year for his performance in Neil Simon's autobio…
The four women who gather for the funeral of a man they all once loved in Out of the Mouth of Babes wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. That feminist litmus test requires tha…
Joe Tippett is a terrific actor. He's particularly good at mining humor when playing "bros" and other kinds of macho guys. But he's also great at revealing how his characters want to be…
The last two minutes are the only fully satisfying ones in Incognito, the new Nick Payne play that is running at Manhattan Theatre Club through July 10. The problem is that while they really…
As soon as I finished Wednesday's post on the highs and lows of some of the musicals up for Tonys, I realized that I should give some equal hi-lo time to a few of the nominated plays as well…
From the moment that Hamilton's revolutionary troupe stepped onto the stage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre last summer, it was clear that Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop infused celebration of …
Sometimes I think John Doyle's middle name must be Minimalist. The British director made his reputation with small-scale productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals in which the actors played i…
It's been a long time since I walked out of a musical and couldn't wait to hear the score again. Luckily, the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell recorded a concept album for Hadestown,…
Ooops. I've slipped into a hole again. Not to worry; it's all good stuff. I'm working on a freelance piece for one of my favorite publications (more about that in the future) and gearing up …
Daphne's Dive, the bar in the play of that same name which opened this week at Signature Theatre, seems to be a great place to hang out. The bar's genial regulars are diverse ethnically and …
Show biz people love shows about show business, especially ones in which a band of artists overcome some adversity to put on a show. And right now, two productions about works that broke thr…
Fully Committed, the one-man show about a reservation clerk at a trendy high-end restaurant, didn't get any Tony nominations. But in a season filled with weightier plays about such downer su…
There's been so much going on in the theater (and in my life) over the past few weeks that I haven't had a chance to talk about one of my favorite shows of the spring season: The Effect, whi…
The nominees for this year's Tony for Best Musical are all the kind of big song-and-dance shows that have for years defined the Broadway musical. But I sometimes think the future of the art …
People are always saying "it's an honor to be nominated" when they get a slot on the ballot for a top award like the Tonys. But that's more true than ever for most of the nominees in the mus…
It's a shame that the Red Bull Theater's production of The School for Scandal is closing May 8, after barely a two-week run because this is one of the most delightful shows I've seen this se…
Nearly all my theatergoing friends have been asking me if I've seen, and what I think about, The Royale, which has been running at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse theater for the last sev…
