Thursday, April 23, 2020
Cross-posted from my music blog Train My Ear
In my decades of listening to and thinking about, and occasionally making, music, I’ve had some widely shared crushes and obsessions (Beatles,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:33AMMonday, February 3, 2020
The actors and musicians behind “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” see themselves in the stories they will share, and sing about, onstage.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:42PMWednesday, November 6, 2019
Will Arbery (photo by Korde Tuttle)
Like August: Osage County, Will Arbery’s play Heroes of the Fourth Turning is much, much better than its clunky title. Also like August it’s a veri…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMWednesday, April 24, 2019
It was one thing to deliver lectures in American Legion halls as a teenager. It’s another to stand on a Broadway stage flanked by the photos of 163 staring men.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:24PMSunday, January 27, 2019
Actors Paul Rudd, Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper appear onstage during curtain call at the opening night of “Three Days of Rain” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on April 19, 2006 in N…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMFriday, January 18, 2019
Rob Harvila's much-discussed recent article on the meaning and value of harsh criticism in the age of social media got me thinking back to my days as a more or less full-time critic in New Y…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:18AMMonday, December 17, 2018
Galt MacDermot.It doesn't actually embarrass me to love Galt MacDermot, the composer of Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona, whose death was just announced--I'm just using this opportunity to e…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:12PMTuesday, November 20, 2018
Long story short: I was the last regular critic employed by the ticket-concierge site Broadway.com, for whom I reviewed the 2005-06 season (highlights included Sweeney Todd, Bridge & Tun…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:32PMTuesday, October 2, 2018
Still waiting for her signature role, the versatile Rebecca Naomi Jones is changing things up in a stripped-down new staging of the musical classic.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:54PMTuesday, September 11, 2018
Conor McPherson discusses digging deep into the Dylan catalog for his Depression-era play with music, “Girl From the North Country.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:48AMWednesday, March 21, 2018
How do married clowns make wordless wizardry with balloons, umbrellas, packing peanuts and fabric? Turn on those electric fans.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:21AMSunday, November 26, 2017
Sarah Jones in Bridge & Tunnel. (Photo by Paul Kolnik)Broadway.com, Feb. 1, 2006Bridge & TunnelReviewed by Rob KendtIf the Tonys had an ensemble award, Sarah Jones would be an odds-o…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:12AMTuesday, November 21, 2017
From The Sondheim Review, December 2011Bittersweet HomecomingBy Rob Weinert-KendtThe perfect Follies, it should be admitted by even its most fervent acolytes, does not exist, and may in fact…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:54AMMonday, September 4, 2017
The 1950 Broadway production of As You Like It, with Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind/Ganymede. Tonight I'm taking my eight-year-old son to see his first Shakespeare: Public Works' adaptat…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:54PMFriday, August 25, 2017
Zilah Mendoza in Electricidad at the Mark Taper Forum, 2005. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)Luis Alfaro has been retrofitting Greek tragedy to L.A.'s Latinx gang culture for many years now, and by…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:42PMWednesday, July 19, 2017
I had the pleasure of interviewing the late, great Martin Landau back in 2005 for the shortlived magazine Moving Pictures. Here's my story in its entirety.Martin Landau has been places,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:06AMThursday, May 4, 2017
Vishal Bhardwaj.One of the joys of reporting on the upcoming Monsoon Wedding musical, apart from the chance to chat over chai with one of my idols, director Mira Nair, was that everyone invo…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:36PMWednesday, May 3, 2017
A musical based on the popular 2002 film will debut at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. It has Broadway ambitions.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:31PMMonday, April 17, 2017
Orville Mendoza at Stephen Sondheim's piano.I first saw Orville Mendoza in the lead role of Sweeney Todd at East West Players in 1994; I later had the distinct joy of reviewing him…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:12AMThursday, April 6, 2017
Patrick Wilson and Amanda Peet in Barefoot in the Park. (Photo by Carol Rosegg)Amanda Peet recently contributed this funny, lightly harrowing essay about the weird contortions she put hersel…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:48PMFriday, March 10, 2017
Dear New York theater friends who think this L.A. 99-seat thing sounds like B.S. and a clear-cut case of exploitation that Equity has every good reason to shut down: I might not go so far as…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:06AMThursday, March 9, 2017
Michael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, Manoel Felciano, and Donna Lynne Champlin in "Sweeney Todd" (photo by Paul Kolnik)It's hardly controversial that Sweeney Todd is Sondheim's masterpiece (and, …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:03PMThursday, December 8, 2016
Derrick Lee Weeden and Anthony Heald in Othello at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 1999. (Photo by David Coooper)I'm about to take in New York Theatre Workshop's new production of Othello,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:06AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Patrick J. Adams, Cynthia Mace, Brian Kerwin, and James Eckhouse in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? at the Mark Taper Forum in 2005.I've seen a fair amount of Edward Albee's work in my time, ind…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:04AMWednesday, August 31, 2016
The hoariest question songwriters get asked is: Which comes first, the words or the music? Stephen Sondheim’s answer has always been: the dramatic situation. (With all apologies to Merrily…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:44PMFriday, June 3, 2016
I first saw Stew performing in the mid-1990s with a band improbably named Crazy Sound All-Stars at a place called Onyx Echo in Los Feliz; I was invited by a college friend, Carey Fosse, who …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:12PMWednesday, May 18, 2016
Friday, April 29, 2016
The moving interview between two dear friends and “Mothers.”
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:28AMMonday, April 11, 2016
This interview originally appeared in the April 12, 2001 issue of Back Stage West."How's my light?" asked Laurie Metcalf as the cover photo for this story was being taken, and then she reali…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 09:56PMThursday, January 21, 2016
The poet-playwright Dan O’Brien has a collaborative bond with the former war photographer Paul Watson, manifested in “The Body of an American.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:34AMThursday, January 14, 2016
Mother Courage and Her Children: Alexandria Wailes, Streep, Geoffrey Arend, and Frederick Weller. (photo by Michal Daniel)Improbably, Brecht's Mother Courage is in the news--the theatre news…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:56PM 
