879 stories from Broadway & Me
Why is Frank Wood, not just a stalwart of New York theater but a Tony winner, lying on the floor and playing a dying dog? That's the question I kept asking myself as I sat watching Toros, th…
It's 1998 and the five starting players for the Lady Train, the all-black girls basketball team in a small Arkansas town, aren't dirt poor or bougie rich. The problems they're dealing with a…
Like most theater obsessives, I take pride in my collection of experiences that give me bragging rights"I saw Hamilton at the Public before it was a hit! I saw Glory Days, which opened and c…
Happy Fourth of July Weekend! Time has been so slippery over these past three pandemic years and global warming is now playing such havoc with the weather that on some days just breathin…
Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and I go back a long way. I saw his first New York show down at P.S. 122 right after its director quit during previews and one of the actors published a pie…
Diversity is sometimes thought of as the vegetable of theatrical offerings: something that we theater lovers should include in the diet of things we consume because it's "good" for us. But m…
No review posting today but I'm thrilled to be able to share the news that Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at New York's Library for the Per…
Regular readers will know that I usually post my reviews on Saturdays but I'm changing things up this week because the show I want to talk about has a short run and the performance I recentl…
And so it's begun. The last show of Broadway's 2022-23 season"a revival of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window,Lorraine Hansberry's 1964 meditation on white allyship"opened on April 27. …
O.K., so here's the dilemma: when you revive a classic show that has problematic elements (and which of them doesn't?) should you keep it the way it was written or update it for modern sensi…
It somehow feels appropriate during this Easter-Passover weekend to note that a lot of shows both on and off Broadway have been wrestling with faith this season (click here to read more abou…
People always ask people like me"people who've been blessed with the opportunity to see lots and lots of shows"what our favorites are. I tend to hem and haw when it comes to plays (sometimes…
Despite the projection of the date 1879 on the brick wall at the back of the Hudson Theatre, the new revival of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House could be taking place in so…
Thousands of dollars and countless hours have been spent trying to figure out how to get young people into the theater. But I've got a hunch that the answer is simple: offer things they want…
Lorraine Hansberry only lived long enough to see two of her plays produced. The first was A Raisin in the Sun, celebrated when it opened in 1959 as the first play by an African-American woma…
So here we are celebrating"albeit slightly belatedly"the 16th anniversary of Broadway & Me. My first post went up on Feb. 14, 2007 and in the intervening years, I've seen so many wond…
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Around 1982 the photographer Larry Sultan began taking photos of his parents at their home in California's affluent San Fernando Valley. And he kept at it over the next 10 years, final…
A frigid cold front is sweeping across a large part of the country this weekend. And that can be a disincentive to go outside for even the most avid theatergoer. Luckily, there are"thanks to…
Giving awards can be tricky. We all want to"and should"celebrate extraordinary theatrical talent. But every time one person is ushered into the winner's circle, a whole lot of other folks ar…
January can be a quiet time on Broadway. Lots of shows close (click here for a list of some of them). Very few open. Which makes it a good time to catch up with the ones still running that y…
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Wishing you a year filled with all of the above, plus, of course, lots of great theater...
Theater worked hard this year to come back from the pandemic. As part of those efforts, Broadway dropped its requirement that theatergoers show proof of being vaccinated and made mask wearin…
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The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust announced this week that it is awarding its $100,000 Mimi Award to two mid-career playwrights: James Ijames and Lloyd Suh. I'm pleased for both…
The world of musical theater is divided right now between the people who saw KPOP before it came to Broadway and those who saw it afterward. I sadly fall into the latter group.Â
The origi…
