884 stories from Broadway & Me
For people obsessed with theater, talking about how the
theater is dying is like talking about the weather for regular people: you know
you can always get a conversation going.
And yet…
It's usually not a good thing when your favorite part of a
show is its scenery. That's the way I felt after I saw Spider-Man: Turn
Off the Dark and that's the way I felt when I walked out of…
Lots of people are upset because Sunday night's Tony Awards
drew only 6 million viewers, a big drop from the 6.9 million who tuned in
last year. I could try to put a positive on that by poin…
Tomorrow is Tony Day, which will mark the end of the 2011-2012 awards
season. And it's been a good one because there's been no monster hit to suck
all the oxygen"
and the suspense"out…
To be fair, I should admit that I'm not really into comedy. And I'm completely mystified by British humor. I like a witty
joke as much as the next bloke but the low-brow, drop-the-drawers si…
The true story that inspired February House, the new musical
at the Public Theater, is so cool that I couldn't wait to see the show. Here it is: in the early '40s, a group of artists that in…
Anyone who still questions the value of star power on
Broadway should take a look at the current revival of Evita in which the pop
star Ricky Martin plays Che, the narrator of Andrew Lloyd W…
Another impossibly busy weekend is staring me in the face so I don't
have time to tell you about any of the recent shows I've seen. But I have
managed to steal a few minutes to put together …
Maybe we should blame Joseph Alsop. When the KGB tried to blackmail the
powerful Washington columnist with a threat to reveal his homosexuality, Alsop
marched straight to the U.S. emba…
Some people are going to be drawn to the terrific new play
that just opened at The Duke on 42nd Street because of its
titillating title: Cock. Others may want to see it because of the refres…
To borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton's first presidential
campaign, it's the dancing, stupid.
The floor-shaking production numbers in which a supercharged ensemble of
male dance…
Maybe the question was simple but my guess is that readers of B&Me are just a theater savvy bunch cause everyone who wrote in got the right answer (the Carnegie Deli) to the question:&nb…
So many shows opened in the final weeks of the theater
season that officially ended on April 26 that I've had to scramble to catch up
with all of them. There were 14
new shows on Broadway in…
My friend Doug came to New York last month to celebrate his
birthday with some fellow theater lovers, including my buddy Bill and me. Sometime during the evening, well into
our cups, w…
Ethnic humor can be a tricky
thing. But anyone who's gone to
the website Old Jews Telling Jokes will tell you that it can also be a very
funny thing. Now, some of those classic
c…
The Tony nominators spread around their love this year. When the nominations were announced yesterday, 30 of the 37 eligible shows were named in at least one category. And some of the …
Is any American play better known or more beloved than Tennessee
William's A Streetcar Named Desire?
Even the most casual theatergoers have heard of Stanley's "Stella" cri de couer and…
A lot of hard work goes into bringing a Broadway show to the
stage. So every time I write about one, I try to remember all the years of study, the hours of rehearsal, the dreams of glory and…
The main image on the cover of the Playbill for Regrets, the new drama playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club through the end of the month, is of a smiling All-American family, circa 1954.&nb…
Movies and plays in which actors impersonate more famous celebrities aren't my favorite form of entertainment. And yet I had really looked forward to seeing End of the Rainbow, the new music…
It's becoming Sam Gold's world. And we theater lovers will just have to content ourselves with living in it. Which is fine with me. For over the last three years, Gold has surfaced as …
Here's a question for the Baby Boomers among you: was the substance you abused in your youth more likely to be speed or hashish?
I ask because the answer could determine which of the…
It's been a big season for remixed musicals. But while newcomers did the controversial nipping and tucking on Porgy and Bess and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, it's the original team (c…
"What do you do," a friend once asked me. "If you don't like something that everyone else likes?" Well, we're about to find out right now. Because I really didn't like Now.…
There's no one who enjoys clever stagecraft more than I do. But I'm old-school enough to believe that everything that appears on a stage"the acting, the set, any coup de theatre"should…
