884 stories from Broadway & Me
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…
If you call yourself any kind of theater lover, then you know that today is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. So, like much of the rest of the world, I'm taking time out …
For the first time in years, I attended the announcement of the Outer Critics Circle nominations, which The Algonquin Hotel graciously hosted in its Blue Bar yesterday morning. I wanted to s…
Now that transgender people are popping up on TV shows ("Transparent," "Orange is the New Black") in plays (Hir, Southern Comfort) and even on fashion runways (click here), the one muted let…
Your mood when you walk into a theater can have a lot to do with what you think of a show when you walk out. And so perhaps because I've been wrestling with some of the issues"the mean…
Pericles doesn't show up on the lists of Shakespeare's greatest hits. It didn't even make it into the First Folio. And most scholars say the Bard didn't actually write all of it anyway. This…
Some men sit through plays with the resigned demeanor of boys serving detention and longing for the school bell to ring. But not the men at the performance I attended of Hold On to Me Darlin…
The things I like the most about the new play Familiar are the things I can talk about the least. Unless I want to spoil the experience of your seeing this lovely work by the Zimbabwean-Amer…
The actress Marin Ireland can do no wrong in my book and she shows why that's so in Ironbound, a drama about a Polish immigrant that's playing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through…
All of a sudden the rootsy melodies of bluegrass music are being strummed on all kinds of New York stages. There's Southern Comfort, which is playing down at the Public Theater through this …
Yep, I'm back in the hole again so no post today. But, aside from the bunch of shows I did manage to talk about on Wednesday, I hope you will check out the roundtable discussion I had …
March Madness is the term used to describe this time of the year when college basketball teams compete for their national championship. But for me, it means the time when the spring theater …
Heavy loads of work and other obligations have put me in a hole. I'm working my way out but it may take another week or so before I can post again. I'll try to sneak in an occasional tweet (…
Most parents want their children to have a better life than they did. But a few want to better their own lives by living through their kids. That latter group is the one that interests playw…
So much of my time is spent trying to keep up with shows that open on Broadway and those produced by the larger off-Broadway companies that I rarely get to see smaller off-off Broadway shows…
Like the playwright John Patrick Shanley, I was a kid from a working-class family who got a scholarship to a New England prep school and it changed my life in all kinds of ways. So I was rea…
Lydia Diamond's Stick Fly, which had a brief Broadway run back in 2011, was such a refreshing look at African-American life in contemporary America that I had to talk myself out of jumping o…
I get sentimental around this time every year because tomorrow is Valentine's Day, a chance for me to celebrate how lucky I am to have my husband K in my life. And because it's also th…
Some roles become so identified with one actor that others shy away from doing them. Here I'm thinking of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (although the British actress Sheridan Smith recently dare…
Health problems (nothing dire but serious enough to have screwed with my schedule) are keeping me from posting today. So as I usually do when I can't write here, I'm putting up the ghost lig…
Maurice Hines and his younger brother Gregory were barely out of diapers when they started in show business. Known as The Hines Kids (and later as Hines, Hines and Dad when their drummer fat…
