All stories by Gordon Cox on BroadwayStars

Monday, December 2, 2024

Why ‘The Great Gatsby’ Parties On From Page to Stage, 100 Years After Publication by Gordon Cox

A century after the novel first hit shelves, “The Great Gatsby” is the bee’s knees all over again. Just take a look at the New York theater scene, where adaptations of F. Scott Fitzger…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:02AM
Tuesday, November 26, 2024

How Broadway’s James Monroe Iglehart Got Louis Armstrong’s Signature Gravelly Voice Just Right in ‘A Wonderful World’ by Gordon Cox

There’s an unlikely connection between Louis Armstrong and Beetlejuice — or at least there is for James Monroe Iglehart, the Tony-winning Broadway star of the new musical “A Wonderful …

SOURCE: Variety at 09:22AM
Thursday, November 21, 2024

‘Death Becomes Her’ Review: A Laugh-Filled, Tuneful Broadway Musical to Die For by Gordon Cox

In the new Broadway musical “Death Becomes Her,” a so-so 1992 movie gets a stunning makeover. Headlined by Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and a slew of special effects, the film followed two …

SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PM
Wednesday, November 20, 2024

‘Swept Away’ Review: Avett Brothers Musical Fails to Satisfy Despite a Sterling Broadway Staging by Gordon Cox

There’s so much to recommend “Swept Away” — about two brothers from a religious family who get trapped on an ill-fated whaling ship with a crew of doomed heathens — that it seems u…

SOURCE: Variety at 10:53AM
Thursday, November 14, 2024

‘Tammy Faye’ Review: With Forgettable Elton John Score, Televangelist Broadway Musical Doesn’t Find the Light by Gordon Cox

It takes more than a holy spirit and revivalist verve to make “Tammy Faye” divinely suited for musical theater. It would take a creative team knowing what their show wants to be: a campy…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:00PM
Tuesday, November 12, 2024

‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Review: Broadway’s Deeply Moving Robot Musical, Starring Darren Criss, Teaches Us How to Be Human by Gordon Cox

Are we human, or are we… robots? “Maybe Happy Ending,” a Korean musical now making its Broadway debut, asks this exact question — or in some ways, asks the inverse. It examines what …

SOURCE: Variety at 02:00PM

‘Death Becomes Her’ Broadway Stars Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard on How ‘Camp and General Over-the-Topness’ Make the Movie Sing Onstage by Gordon Cox

Megan Hilty always knew “Death Becomes Her” would make a great musical — and now she’s headlining the show on Broadway. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: The …

SOURCE: Variety at 10:52AM
Tuesday, October 29, 2024

How Broadway’s ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Star Darren Criss Makes Robots Human by Embracing the ‘Beep-o-Boop-Bop’ by Gordon Cox

In his latest Broadway project, Emmy winner Darren Criss (“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”) and his co-star, Helen J. Shen, play retired, robotic “helperbot…

SOURCE: Variety at 05:12PM
Thursday, October 24, 2024

‘Romeo and Juliet’ Review: Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler Headline a Shakespeare Tragedy That’s More Fun Than It Should Be by Gordon Cox

You’d think in a world so divided by war and pain as ours, a story about ill-fated young lovers torn apart by their families’ senseless but devastating feud would be treated with more gr…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:00PM
Tuesday, October 15, 2024

New York Audiences Are Noisy — and Nicole Scherzinger Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way: Hear the Stars Dish at Variety’s Business of Broadway by Gordon Cox

Back during Nicole Scherzinger’s run in the West End revival of “Sunset Boulevard”—the show that won her an Olivier Award and has now brought her to Broadway to reprise her performan…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:32PM
Tuesday, October 1, 2024

How Sam Mendes and Jez Butterworth Brought a New and Improved Version of “The Hills of California” to Broadway by Gordon Cox

The playwright Jez Butterworth recently had perhaps the most eventful recording session in the history of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraf…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:48PM
Sunday, September 29, 2024

‘The Hills of California’ Review: Sam Mendes and Jez Butterworth Deliver a Dream of a Broadway Drama by Gordon Cox

Jez Butterworth’s ambitious, captivating and richly rewarding domestic drama “The Hills of California” straddles dual worlds of dreams and reality as it shuttles between two pivotal ti…

SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PM
Friday, September 20, 2024

How the Prince Fellowship has helped launch a rising generation of Broadway producers by Gordon Cox

Producer Aaron Glick, Rachel Sussman, Jamila Ponton Bragg and more share how the fellowship aided their path to the Main Stem.

SOURCE: Broadway News Subscription at 08:30AM
Wednesday, September 18, 2024

How Daniel Dae Kim Finds the Funny in Broadway’s ‘Yellow Face’ by Gordon Cox

A little-known fact about Daniel Dae Kim: He’s really, really into “Saturday Night Live.” “I’m a super fan,” says the actor just a few days before starting performances for the r…

SOURCE: Variety at 05:15PM
Thursday, September 12, 2024

‘The Roommate’ Review: Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone Bring Out Each Other’s Best in a Charming Double Act by Gordon Cox

There’s something loose, rebellious, and even wild hiding within the trappings of “The Roommate,” a new Broadway production of a play written by Jen Silverman. One just has to wait for…

SOURCE: Variety at 09:00PM

‘Why Am I So Single?’ Review: Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’ Musical Follow-Up to ‘Six’ Disappoints in the West End by Gordon Cox

“There is,” as Stephen Sondheim once groaned, “nothing worse than great expectations.” It may seem unfair to evoke a master when reviewing only the second show from a young British m…

SOURCE: Variety at 06:30PM
Friday, September 6, 2024

Football, Meet Broadway: Inside the Making of Peyton and Eli’s Star-Studded ‘ManningCast the Musical’ Short by Gordon Cox

They don’t give out Tony Awards for Most Comically Elaborate Broadway-Themed Promotional Announcement of a Football Telecast Series. But if they did, “ManningCast the Musical” would be…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:00AM
Tuesday, September 3, 2024

How a Tony-Winning Musical Theater Composer Makes Opera by Gordon Cox

If you’re a musical theater composer, Broadway might get you a Tony Award — but it won’t get you 50 voices singing onstage. For that kind of scale, Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning com…

SOURCE: Variety at 05:37PM
Tuesday, August 20, 2024

How an ‘Ivy League Witch’ Brought Broadway to Tarot Cards by Gordon Cox

Broadway fans often talk about theater as a spiritual experience — but most of them aren’t thinking of tarot cards when they say it. That could change thanks to a new tarot deck that’s…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:07PM
Monday, August 12, 2024

‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Review: Sutton Foster Is an Awkward Fit in a Musical That’s Not Quite Broadway Royalty by Gordon Cox

Close to the climax of “Once Upon a Mattress,” now revived on Broadway for the second time, Princess Winnifred (Sutton Foster) has reached the end of her rope. After the frustrations of …

SOURCE: Variety at 10:00PM
Tuesday, August 6, 2024

How Sutton Foster Brings an ‘Unhinged Version of Myself’ to Broadway’s ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ by Gordon Cox

Optimistic, curious, adventurous. Also: Zero complexity. That’s how Sutton Foster describes Princess Fred, the character she plays in the Broadway revival of “Once Upon a Mattress.” Li…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:28PM
Friday, August 2, 2024

‘The Queen of Versailles’ Review: Kristin Chenoweth Shines in a Lavish New Musical With a Social Satire Bite by Gordon Cox

“The Queen of Versailles,” the much-anticipated reunion of “Wicked” collaborators Kristin Chenoweth and Stephen Schwartz, offers the diva her richest opportunity to date to flex her …

SOURCE: Variety at 01:34PM
Thursday, August 1, 2024

‘Moulin Rouge!’ at 5: How The Broadway Musical Overcame the COVID Lockdown and Went Global in Record Time by Gordon Cox

The fifth-anniversary Broadway performance of “Moulin Rouge!” didn’t exactly go as planned. A technical issue with the set delayed the July 25 curtain by some 45 minutes and required c…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:15PM
Tuesday, July 30, 2024

‘JOB’ Review: Taut Broadway Drama Uploads A Journey Through Cyber-Hell by Gordon Cox

It’s no spoiler to say “JOB”, Max Wolf Friedlich’s electrifying synapse of play, features a highly stressed young woman pointing a gun at a therapist in his office. That’s how the …

SOURCE: Variety at 09:30PM
Tuesday, July 23, 2024

How Creators of ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ Are Figuring Out a Future Life for the Hit Show by Gordon Cox

The creators of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” are certain their hit show will have a future life — they just don’t yet know what that future life looks like. Listen to this week’s “…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:55PM
Friday, July 19, 2024

‘Hello, Dolly!’ Review: Imelda Staunton is Marvelous in a Strikingly Sincere West End Revamp by Gordon Cox

Famous for many things, not least Carol Channing playing the title role more than 5,000 times, “Hello, Dolly!” is, happily, one of Broadway’s brashest, splashiest star vehicles whose r…

SOURCE: Variety at 03:30PM
Thursday, July 11, 2024

‘Oh, Mary!’ Review: Cole Escola’s Super-Gay Broadway Comedy Is a Smartly Stupid Riot by Gordon Cox

Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” is the best kind of stupid: a broad, wildly funny comedy that spits in the face of American history and uses it as joke fodder for some endlessly campy humor.…

SOURCE: Variety at 09:22PM
Tuesday, July 9, 2024

‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ Review: Musical Adaptation is a Promising, Boldly Unconventional Retelling Anchored by Standout Performa by Gordon Cox

In the admirably bold, unconventionally self-aware new stage musical version of John Berendt’s 1994 blockbuster bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” transgender icon T…

SOURCE: Variety at 03:36PM
Saturday, July 6, 2024

‘Alma Mater’ Review: A Timely if Overplotted Drama About Feminism and Academia by Gordon Cox

When too many contemporary theatre writers mistake the grinding of political axes for properly developed drama, it’s a relief to realize that Australian playwright Kendall Feaver is more t…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:28PM
Monday, June 17, 2024

Tony Awards 2024 Snubs and Surprises: ‘Outsiders’ Outmaneuvers ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ F-Bombs Fly and More by Gordon Cox

There were a whole lot of sure things heading into the 2024 Tony Awards ceremony — “Stereophonic,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” Daniel Radcliffe. But this year’s full list of winners…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:00AM
Sunday, June 16, 2024

‘Prayer for the French Republic,’ ‘Appropriate’ Among Tony Nominees Tackling Antisemitism, Racism and More Social Issues by Gordon Cox

Live theater always reflects the moment in which it’s presented, but this season, Broadway charged head-on into the politics of today with unusual force: A play that directly addressed ant…

SOURCE: Variety at 01:05PM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 01, 2025: Glengarry Glen Ross
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic
TBA: Ragtime