Sufjan Stevens’s indie folk concept album “Illinois” (2005) is whimsical, earnest, and sorrowful; it weaves together events and figures from Illinois history (including UFO sightings, …
SOURCE: Variety at 02:16PMBebe Neuwirth calls herself a “theater rat.” So it’s natural she’d be sitting in an old-school New York diner on Eighth Avenue, on the edge of the Broadway district, right around the…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:00AMF. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby,” which captured the roaring twenties with shocking clarity, is a staple of high school curricula and has been immortalized in two fa…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PMDirector 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 09:00PMWhen 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 08:14PMWhen 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 10:00PM“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 09:00PMThere’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 11:59PMA 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 10:00PMA 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 10:00PMGrant 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 02:14PMTo 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 10:00PMAccording 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 01:21PMTough 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 10:00PMNo 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 01:53PMThe 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 12:22PMThere 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 10:00PMAt 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 08:00PMEver 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 10:00PMJuliana 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 11:00AMMusical 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 10:00PMEven 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 06:31PMA 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 09:01AMWhat’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 05:41PMOscar 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 02:22PMEnraged 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 01:28PMThe 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 03:53PMWhen 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 01:20PMAt 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 03:36PM