Sondheim’s Follies is back on Broadway, and in this time of earthquakes, hurricanes and political chaos, that’s a good thing. Set in 1971, for two and a half hours it permits us escape into the complicated psychological landscape of four very average folks, two of whom graced the stage as chorus girls in an imagined […]
Two Univ of Md Grad Students begin their careers with Book of Mormon
Ariel Benjamin and Jonathan Dillard get their start as “Assistants To Mr. MacDevitt” If you happen to be lucky enough to get a seat to Broadway’s hottest ticket of the year, The Book of Mormon, turn to the back pages of the Playbill. You’ll notice two names listed as Assistant to Mr. MacDevitt. “Mr. MacDevitt” […]
Death Takes a Holiday
Alberto Casella’s play, as re-written for the American stage by Walter Ferris for the Shuberts of Broadway, produced in 1929, is rarely if ever revived. It is set in 1921 in the palazzo of the Duke and Duchess Lamberti and nothing could seem more removed from the New York of the 21st Century.
The Illusion
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) continues to make me question that I was valedictorian at PS 139 once in the long ago. I usually leave theatres in which his plays are playing feeling intellectually inferior, for I have not been moved to laughter or tears at any of his subsequent works.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
It pains me to say it, but the new Spidey musical, which finally came to rest at the Foxwood Theatre on 42nd Street after a very tough start, should more aptly be called Spider-Man: Turn off the Noise.
The People in the Picture
The Roundabout is offering Donna Murphy to its audiences for a run in a new musical with book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart, with music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler.
The Motherf**ker with the Hat
A long long time ago (December 5, 1941) a small thriller called Angel Street opened on Broadway, and it had one thing in common with The Motherf**ker With The Hat, in that both plays’ plots are moved forward by the discovery of a hat left on a table by someone who’d been in the room […]
Jerusalem
I have no argument with the general consensus among the critics I’ve read about Jerusalem, the well intended and occasionally powerful play by Jez Butterworth, which has crossed the Atlantic after a very successful run in London’s West End. I have no argument, but I cannot agree. I’ve now read five reviews from respected colleagues, […]
The Normal Heart
The theatre continues to dispense its magic in mysterious ways. Before visiting the current Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, I’d thought of it as an old warhorse of a tract against the inertia on the part of government when the AIDS epidemic first reared its head in 1980. I remembered it as […]
Picked
It’s an intriguing title, no? Short and sweet, if a little hard to distinguish among This, Doubt, Proof, Contact et al, and equally difficult to probe for meaning. But early on in the first scene we learn that who has been “picked” is an unlikely struggling young actor who’s been, along with his actress girl […]
Born Yesterday
It’s always with fear and trepidation that I approach a revival of a classic Broadway hit of the 1940s or 1950s because some of them were head and shoulders above the crowd in their own time, and some were blessed with star turns that became iconic.
Sister Act
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the transitional phase that the Broadway musical is currently enjoying, or suffering, depending on your personal viewpoint. It’s not always easy to realize you are in the midst of a turnaround or changeover; often it’s not until years later that you look back and realize, “Oh, I see. […]