3,308 stories from Newsday
It has been 94 years since an internationally celebrated Yiddish drama called "The God of Vengeance" opened on Broadway and was instantly shut down by the vice squad as obscene.
"With used furniture, you can't be emotional," says Solomon, the shrewd 89-year-old appraiser who has come to assess the beautifully made, sturdy tables and other physical remains of a once-…
Four years ago, rock icon David Byrne and director Alex Timbers collaborated on "Here Lies Love," a smashing, immersive disco extravaganza about the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, of all un…
To most passers-by, the sounds around "Miss Saigon" at the Broadway Theatre today are just the same as the old noise. Ears flinch from the usual Times Square din. Traffic honks, barkers hawk…
Word from away about "Come From Away" has seemed almost too good to be true. Reports from productions at the La Jolla Playhouse, the Seattle Rep, Washington, D.C., Toronto and, oh yes, Gande…
"The Glass Menagerie" again? Why? Why does Broadway need another revival of Tennessee Williams' familiar masterwork, the seventh since this achingly moving drama ignited his career in 1945 a…
"Significant Other" is a slick, well-made, funny-sad new Broadway comedy, the kind that doesn't often get a first-rate commercial production these days. At its soft heart, however, the play …
Now that "La La Land" has won the Oscar -- oops, I mean almost won best picture, though it did win lots of others -- the appetite for movie musicals has once again been established. Maybe. A…
Andrew Lloyd Webber has broken his share of records in the 47 years since "Jesus Christ Superstar" introduced him to the world. When "Sunset Boulevard" opened last month at the Palace Theatr…
Of all Stephen Sondheim's glorious, groundbreaking masterworks, "Sweeney Todd" may be the most user-friendly. It has worked wonderfully as grand opera and as Brechtian nightmare and as the o…
There was a time, not so long ago, when David Mamet wrote trenchant, crackling satires -- hilarious morality/amorality plays that, deep down, pushed the buttons of serious issues. Less famou…
Ridiculous, I suppose, to feel protective of the Tony Awards. Despite my ongoing mixed emotions about competition in the arts, however, I can't ignore a little sting of concern.
Every once in a rare while, the theater rewards us with a kind of transcendent experience, a feeling that this, surely, will never happen again -- at least not remotely in the same way.
Javier Muñoz, who succeeded Lin-Manuel Miranda in "Hamilton" last July, has a back injury and is on temporary medical leave. Filling in for him as the world's hippest Founding Father …
Leave it to John Kander, 89 and definitely still counting, to dare to write a musical that evokes ambiguous feelings about a pedophile kidnapper.
Anna Deavere Smith, better known as a playwright and performer than as a journalist, was recognized by the 68th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism, it was announced Monday by Long Islan…
The past is very much with us, as this theatrical grab bag can attest:
Wallace Shawn is best known as a master Hollywood character actor -- you know, that balding, squat, pink man with the querulous voice and the mysterious smile.
If any actor can make you believe a character who says "I'm spending time with my thoughts on the advice of my pastor" while staring at a half-naked woman on a bed, that actor is Reed Birney.
New York is having a little Stephen Sondheim festival -- emphasis on the little. Although all three spring productions are revivals of glorious groundbreaking works, none is opening as a gra…
Many people have special affection for "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." This was the first (and only) musical score by the late country singer-songwriter Roger Miller, who wo…
She is big. It's the production that got small.
If you didn't know that Emma Stone could sing and dance before "La La Land," you clearly had not seen her knockout turn as Sally Bowles in "Cabaret," her Broadway debut in 2014.
We have heard a lot lately about Lucas Hedges, the 20-year-old Oscar nominee who plays the fatherless teen in "Manchester by the Sea." But we also need to know, right now, about his smolderi…
David Ives, Stephen Sondheim's collaborator on a new musical and author of the seductively manipulative "Venus in Fur," also has a singular fascination with classic French plays. He is back …
