3,308 stories from Newsday
How smart to kick off a new touring revival of Dreamgirls with a few weeks at the Apollo Theater. Of course, both the 1981 show and the 2006 movie begin with a talent contest at the legendary Harlem landmark, which for 75 years has been introducing newcomers and showcasing stars through the ups and downs of West 125th Street. With a gifted company of virtual unknowns, the musical plays with and within the wonderfully restored theater as if both were forever young.
In the Next Room or the vibrator play is a great big idea with a mildly amusing play tacked onto it. The comedy is more substantial and less self-consciously whimsical than the three previous Sarah Ruhl plays that also have been luxuriously produced in New York in the past three years. But I still wish I understood the appeal.
It gets off to a spectacular start, the Kennedy Center revival of Ragtime that moved to Broadway with no big names and a director/ choreographer—Marcia Milgrom Dodge—who will not be unknown for long. But Ragtime dwindles, as it has always dwindled.
Theresa Rebeck's "The Understudy" is a slight but breezy and knowing backstage comedy that is cast, yes, with two TV stars.
"Nightingale" is an imaginative, compelling, cannily constructed 85 minutes about far more than we think we already know about Lynn Redgrave's losses.
"Life changes in an instant," said Vanessa Redgrave, sitting alone on an elevated stage at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine last Monday. "You don't want to think it could happen to you. …
Brighton Beach Memoirs is not as good as it was in 1983. It is even better. Neil Simon's coming-of-age autobiographical comedy is not as heartwarming as it was when the hit starred young Matthew Broderick and ran three years. It's now also a heartbreaker.
Good looking but misbegotten 'Miss Julie'
Broadway has been eerily quiet about new musicals this season. That just changed - in a very big way - with "Memphis," arguably the best black musical written by white guys since "Dreamgirls…
It is absurdly early to take the temperature of the fall season on Broadway. Logic and the calendar say no, no, no. The facts, however, demand another story altogether.
"Bye Bye Birdie" has not been on Broadway since the original hit in 1960. And on the basis of the busy and boring revival chosen to open the new Henry Miller's Theatre, the absence is easy t…
Is there a more bogus female character in modern theater than Carol, the college student in David Mamet's "Oleanna?" Has there ever been less a credible drama disguised as social and literar…
A royal inside-theater delight
Anna Deavere Smith's new piece is about death and dying, but please don't run away.
It is also about America's health care crisis, but is not intended to send us screaming into the night.
