884 stories from Broadway & Me
If you'd asked, I'd have said that one-person shows were my
least favorite form of theater. So it's been truly surprising to find that some
of the shows I've most enjoyed this season have be…
Fairy tales ain't what they used to be. Books like "Confessions
of an Ugly Stepsister" and "Glass Slippers & Jeweled Masques" have brought
an edgier, and even erotic, vibe to the old sto…
Even before it opened the Pershing Square Center complex last year and
turned it into a prime hangout for theater lovers, the Signature
Theatre Company was beloved for focusing an entire sea…
Honky, the provocatively named comedy now running at Urban
Stages, kicks off with a not very funny incident: a black kid is killed for his
sneakers and sales spike at the Nike-style company …
Passover begins on Monday evening and although My Name is
Asher Lev opened four months ago and has extended its run at the Westside
Theatre through
Sept. 1, it's hard to think of a bet…
The expectation we have for playwrights is the same as we
have for parents: that they should love all their children equally. Of course they don't. Both tend to have a soft spot for th…
Sometimes you just need a good laugh. At least that's how I've been feeling over the
past couple of weeks as I've gone from one disappointing show to the next. I usually tack tow…
Maybe I'm just in a cranky mood. Because I've seen nearly
two dozen show so far this calendar year and I can count the ones I've liked on
one hand, with a few fingers left over.
And as…
Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly is a small play in almost
every way. It's a two-hander and all the
action takes place on a single set, a rundown boathouse near a farm
in Lebanon, Mo., …
Well, I guess it's official:
I am truly not a John Doyle gal. The Scottish- born director has earned all kinds of kudos from critics
(most notably the New York Times' Ben Brantley) for…
Young Hollywood stars coming to New York to act in plays is
so last year. Now, they're writing the
plays. Just this past week, I saw The Revisionist, a new play
by Jesse Eisenberg, mos…
Few things are more annoying than having someone go on
and on about how some long-gone production was so much better than the one that you can see right now. So I'm going to have to
be…
It takes both talent and moxie to make it in show business.
And Paul Downs Colaizzo, the 27-year-old playwright whose first play Really
Really opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Tuesday…
The folks at Warner Bros. emailed to ask me if I'd be
interested in receiving and reviewing their new DVD box set of movie
musicals. I get offers like this a lot
and I tend not to respond be…
Let's face it: the
fall theater season was disappointing as hell.
Of the 20 or so shows that opened on Broadway between last year's Tony
broadcast and the dropping of the ball in Time…
Tomorrow is going to be a big day for me because it is both
Valentine's Day (for which my beloved husband K and I have special plans) and the
sixth anniversary of Broadway & Me, which I …
Audience participation is not my thing. So you might think that The Mystery of Edwin
Drood would not be my kind of show. At least, that's what I feared.
For this
musical, base…
Everything I'd read about the latest revival of Tennessee
Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof promised that it was going to be a hot
mess. The show's top-billed star Scarlett Johansson kept hint…
Sometimes you really can't go home again. Encores!, the great concert series that
celebrates the American musical, decided to celebrate its 20th season by going back to Fiorello!, the …
The Jammer, the roller derby comedy that opened at the Atlantic
Stage 2 last week, is a goofball of a show.
And I mean that as a total compliment.
Unless the action is s…
The coming out narrative, in which a young or closeted homosexual
struggles to accept his or her sexual identity, has been the dominant theme in
gay literature since at least 1862 when the p…
Directors often say that casting is the most important
decision they make since putting the right or wrong person in a role can make or break
a show. By that measure, the Roundabout
Th…
We regular Broadway theatergoers have gotten used to playing
host to movie stars over the past few years.
But most of them have been young starlets (male and female) hoping to make the…
So many shows, so little time. And since the traditional January post-holiday
reaping is now here, they're closing faster than I can write about them.
Some of those closi…
The news that she was getting $10,000 and a place at the
table alongside America's greatest playwrights must have thrilled Quiara
AlegrÃa Hudes when she got the news that her play Water b…
