Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Director Lila Neugebauer sets Lincoln Center Theater’s starry, breathtaking new Broadway production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” in current-day America rather than Russia around …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMMonday, April 22, 2024
When a character in the new musical “The Heart of Rock and Roll” tries to convince his ex to leave her job at a factory that makes shipping materials, he is stunned: “Oh, my god. It’…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMIn Peter Morgan’s tantalizing but disappointing new play “Patriots,” Boris Berezovsky is presented as a larger-than-life oligarch in a post-Soviet Russia who transforms Vladimir Putin …
SOURCE: Variety at 08:14PMSunday, April 21, 2024
When Eddie Redmayne’s slithering Emcee assures the audience at “Cabaret” that “here, life is beautiful,” he’s telling a half-truth. The August Wilson Theater, done up like the Ki…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMSaturday, April 20, 2024
“Hell’s Kitchen” opened on Broadway on April 20, 2024. The following is Aramide Tinubu’s review of the show’s Off Broadway premiere published on Nov. 19, 2023. The credits and copy…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PMFriday, April 19, 2024
There’s a moment in David Adjmi’s play “Stereophonic” when a discordant, mid-’70s band-on-the rise hears one of its songs played back to them in the recording studio for the first …
SOURCE: Variety at 11:59PMThursday, April 18, 2024
A musical that captures the sweep of history in all its complexities without sacrifice of character or credibility is no easy feat. But “Suffs,” which tells the story of the final pus…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMWednesday, April 17, 2024
A flight of imagination born of the trippy 1970s, “The Wiz” can shoulder a lot of interpretation. Sidney Lumet’s shadowy film, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, sets the Black s…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, April 16, 2024
Grant Gustin, the former CW superhero now making his Broadway debut in the musical “Water for Elephants,” has been headlining his current, critically praised stage gig since it began pre…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:14PMSunday, April 14, 2024
To the list of larger-than-life, survivalist women in musical theater, add Tamara de Lempicka — but with an asterisk. The name of the Polish-born portraitist who died in 1980 might not be …
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMFriday, April 12, 2024
According to theater lore, it was Elizabeth I who demanded Shakespeare write another play about Falstaff, which, allegedly, is why he wrote “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The Queen might …
SOURCE: Variety at 01:21PMThursday, April 11, 2024
Tough guys with a soft side have long held a firm grip on the American imagination. S.E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” about a cadre of down-and-out boys, has been read by millions o…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMWednesday, April 3, 2024
No one, wisely, has turned “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” into an opera — not least because, arguably, Eugene O’Neill’s most famous play already is one. It features extended s…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:53PMTuesday, April 2, 2024
The Tony-winning Broadway icon Bernadette Peters has long been considered one of the foremost performers of composer Stephen Sondheim’s work. But as Peters revealed in the latest episode o…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:22PMThursday, March 28, 2024
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that love bone-shaking, ear-splitting spectacles, like fireworks and arena-sized heavy metal concerts, and those who want nothing more than…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, March 26, 2024
At the start of the second half of Ivo Van Hove’s production of his own musical version of John Cassavetes’ ultra-Seventies backstager “Opening Night” — with music and lyrics by Ru…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:00PMThursday, March 21, 2024
Ever feel like running away from home to join a musical? Then “Water for Elephants” would be the show of choice that offers escapism, enchantment and heart — and thrills, too. Based o…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMWednesday, March 20, 2024
Juliana Canfield didn’t mean to lie when she was auditioning for the play “Stereophonic” — it just accidentally happened. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: Th…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:00AMThursday, March 14, 2024
Musical theater can be a sucker for a romantic tale, whether it’s about obsessive devotion, idealized passion, or lost loves. “The Notebook,” based on Nicholas Sparks’ bestselling, 1…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, March 5, 2024
Even if you don’t know “The Notebook,” you know there’s a romantic couple at the heart of the story. But in the new Broadway musical adaptation of “The Notebook,” there’s not j…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:31PMMonday, March 4, 2024
A cohort of producers, including Ben Holtzman, Thomas Laub, Sammy Lopez, Greg Nobile, Alyah Chanelle Scott, Heather Shields and Rachel Sussman, discuss their vision for Broadway.
SOURCE: Broadway News Subscription at 09:01AMTuesday, February 20, 2024
What’s a theater influencer and how do you become one? On the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast, Kristin Hopkins and Ashley Hufford, two influencers with stro…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:41PMFriday, February 16, 2024
Oscar Wilde himself sat in the Royal Box in the West End’s beautifully gilded Theatre Royal Haymarket in the 1890s for the premieres of his comedies “A Woman of No Importance” and “A…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:22PMWednesday, February 14, 2024
Enraged by the British government charging the standard 15% sales tax on tickets for Live Aid, Bob Geldof (Craige Els) bullies his way into a meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (s…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:28PMTuesday, February 6, 2024
The creators of “Illinoise,” the new stage show inspired by the 2005 Sufjan Stevens album “Illinois,” are the first to admit that the production isn’t a musical in the most traditi…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:53PMTuesday, January 23, 2024
When Sterlin Harjo, the co-creator of “Reservation Dogs,” started writing his first play with the other members of The 1491s, the sketch comedy troupe of which he was member, he and the …
SOURCE: Variety at 01:20PMTuesday, January 9, 2024
At first blush, the three-hour runtime of “Prayer for the French Republic,” playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway, seems appropriate. Though it obviously does not exist s…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMFresh off an early workshop of “The Light in the Piazza,” the actress Kelli O’Hara had a passing thought: What if there was an ambitious musical adaptation of “Days of Wine and Roses…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:36PMThursday, December 14, 2023
“We need something a little theatrical.” Boy, does excited Bob Newby (Christopher Buckley) get his wish. He’s trying to solve a staging problem in “The Dark of the Moon,” the schoo…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:00PMTuesday, December 12, 2023
For a long time the 1998 animated film “The Prince of Egypt” didn’t have an official stage adaptation. But that didn’t stop fans from putting on live versions of the musical anyway�…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:54PMSunday, December 10, 2023
Going (or not going) to the big dance has been an irresistible storyline for musicals from “Oklahoma!” to “The Prom.” The set-up inherently inspires social stress, romantic anxiety, …
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMTuesday, December 5, 2023
Sara Bareilles has always spoken openly about the fact that her work on the musical “Waitress” changed her life. “My life is in two categories: It’s before and after ‘Waitress,’�…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:16PMTuesday, November 28, 2023
While the cast of the new Broadway production of “Spamalot” is cracking up audiences, they’re all trying their best not to crack up as well. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” …
SOURCE: Variety at 06:34PMThursday, November 16, 2023
It may be appropriate for a musical with “spam” in the title to feel canned. But it’s a shame that the first Broadway revival of “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” now playing at the St.…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMKevin McCollum of "SIX," Diana DiMenna of "Here Lies Love," Jonathan McCrory of National Black Theatre and more share their reasoning behind auxiliary programming — and the results.
SOURCE: Broadway News Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, November 14, 2023
To hear the actress Sierra Boggess tell it, Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s Broadway musical “Harmony” couldn’t have a more apt title. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” po…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:09PMThere’s a narrator in “Harmony,” Bruce Sussman and Barry Manilow’s musical now playing at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater—an elderly rabbi, played ably by Chip Zien, who tells…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:28AMTuesday, September 19, 2023
“What a terrible tragedy.” Indeed. That’s the lyric cried out as, in theory, the famously magnificent Cornish home at the heart of the story burns to the ground at the climax of the mu…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:00PMRachel Bloom remembers the exact moment that she decided her latest stage project, “Death, Let Me Do My Show,” couldn’t be the lightweight standup show she was hoping it would be. It w…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:56PMTuesday, September 5, 2023
Broadway video design is a lot more complicated than it looks. And it already looks pretty complicated. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: On the new episode of “Sta…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:46PM