Once

The New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village is known for its eclectic taste. Recently it housed the one – man play An Iliad by Dennis O’Hare.In the fall of 2010  I witnessed a very bizarre take on Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes there, and  recently a musical based on the low budget Irish film “Once” premiered there too. [Read more...]

Confessions of a one time Helen Hayes judge

When I first moved to Washington, DC to accept a position as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Americans for the Arts, I applied to be a Helen Hayes Judge to help learn about my new home city and to remain connected to the theater world.  I served as a judge for two years—one in the new play category and one in the musical category—starting in 2006. [Read more...]

Leap of Faith

This poor show was treated badly by most of the New York critics, and the Tony committee favored it with only one nomination — but that was for Best Musical! Now how can you be considered a contender for  ”best”when none of the creators of the show are mentioned?  [Read more...]

Once, Original Broadway Cast Recording

My friends and many of my fellow critics/reviewers tell me that Once is a great show. Obviously, the Tony Award nominators agree, having included it in no less than eleven of the categories including Musical, Book for a Musical, Direction, Orchestrations, Choreography, Leading Actor in a Musical and Leading Actress in a Musical.  [Read more...]

Ghost The Musical

In 1990, the screenplay of “Ghost” earned an Oscar for its author, Bruce Joel Rubin. The film was a crowd pleaser, and that made it instantly eligible for the “let’s make a musical of it” crowd.  So Mr. Rubin joined up with Dave Stewart, a British musician, producer, author and entrepreneur, and together they’ve come up with a product called Ghost The Musical.  [Read more...]

End of the Rainbow

We owe the Brits a great debt for gifting  us with the bombshell called Tracie Bennett.

The slim actress/singer, who would appear from her photo to be a contemporarily coiffed blonde, has immersed herself into the psyche and spirit of Judy Garland in the play called End of the Rainbow which exposes us, in grim detail, to the final weeks of Ms. Garland’s life, when she was encamped at the Ritz Hotel and playing a five week engagement at London’s Talk of the Town.   [Read more...]

Kaddish, based on a Nobel winning novel, makes its world premiere in a tiny Baltimore space

Director Barbara Lanciers was ready to premiere Kaddish, her version of Imre Kertesz’s novel “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” at the Baltimore Theatre Project. It’s a production she’s been waiting almost a decade to bring to the stage. And for herself and actor Jacob Goodman, it’s been a labor of love. There was only one thing missing: the Hungarian Nobel Prize Laureate hadn’t given her permission to stage his text. [Read more...]

One Man, Two Guvnors

Richard Bean, prolific British playwright, has landed with a bang with this, his first export to American shores. A great success for two seasons at the National Theatre in London, a transfer to the West End, where it is now booked through the summer with a second cast, which means we get the first cast here at the Music Box, where I imagine it will remain until one or all die of exhaustion from the goings on in their wild and very funny farce.  [Read more...]

The Columnist

I was certainly alive during the reign of Joseph Alsop as a syndicated political columnist, but the truth is he and his writings never attracted me, so I approached David Auburn’s play The Columnist with little background information and no particular interest.  [Read more...]

The Best Man

The interior of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway is decorated to the nines with bunting, campaign photos; hoopla music is playing over the speakers; the management wants you to know  from the get go that you will be attending the July 1960 Presidential convention in Philadelphia, and will be having a look at all the shenanigans that precede it. [Read more...]