Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Jimmy Nail, who stars in “The Last Ship,” and Sting, who wrote its songs and conceived the show, draw from their hometown, Newcastle-on-Tyne, for inspiration.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:41PMJay Armstrong Johnson, Tony Yazbeck, Clyde AlvesIf I were "officially" reviewing the new Broadway revival of On the Town for hire, I would probably be required to note some of its flaws…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 08:55AMThursday, October 9, 2014
Two new immersive pieces at the Park Avenue Armory have young audiences make their way through the building’s grand rooms.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:48PMAs I learned in my reporting on the new musical of Jonathan Lethem's novel The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem made a two-CD "mixtape" for supplementary listening when the book was published in…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:27PMThe cast of The Fortress of Solitude at Dallas Theater Center (photo by Karen Almond)I've been hearing about this Fortress of Solitude musical for nearly as long as it's been in de…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:11PM“The Fortress of Solitude,” a musical based on Jonathan Lethem’s novel, features music influenced by its setting in the 1970s and early 1980s.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:04PMTuesday, October 7, 2014
I've heard from colleagues that sometimes they don't really know what they think until someone asks them--whether in the context of teaching a course explicating what they do, or just in the…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:14AMWednesday, September 24, 2014
Today my employer American Theatre joins the 21st century and debuts a fully functioning, up-to-the-minute website, Americantheatre.org (apparently "americantheater.org" also takes you there…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:00AMWednesday, September 17, 2014
The New York Philharmonic's live concert staging of Sondheim's masterpiece Sweeney Todd will be broadcast on PBS stations on Sept. 26. I had the privilege of covering the show for curre…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:12PMThursday, September 11, 2014
I felt pretty lonely back in 2005, when as the critic for Broadway.com I raved about the musical version of The Color Purple. My colleagues were largely unimpressed, as you can see here. So …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:28AMTuesday, September 9, 2014
Inside the play’s long-awaited Off-Broadway debut — Tom Stoppard’s characters are seldom at a loss for words, and the chatty creatures of Indian Ink are no exception, debat…
SOURCE: TDF at 05:54PMFriday, August 29, 2014
There's been a fair amount of rumbling from L.A. theater folks I know and/or follow via the indispensable site Bitter Lemons about a coming "war" over the long-contested Equity 99-Seat Plan.…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:39PMTuesday, August 12, 2014
I've mentioned it a few times in this space, but it's official now: Today is the release of a CD I helped make with my old film-school and campus newspaper colleague Susan Lambert: O Baby Mi…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:25AMMonday, August 11, 2014
My first exposure to Dennis Miles' work was inauspicious: His one-act Rosa Mundy, about a strange young woman who alternately lusted for and killed visitors to her lonely home, was staged as…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 08:44PMFriday, August 8, 2014
I spent a fascinating afternoon a few weeks ago at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village talking to some unfailingly gracious Icelanders, and a few slightly baffled American actors, …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:49AMBallinger and NithapalanI had the pleasure of breaking bread (larb, actually) with Erik Patterson yesterday. He's an L.A.-based playwright whose work I admired more than a decade ago at Thea…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:35AMThursday, August 7, 2014
“Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter” is an allegorical tale about economic crisis that’s set in, well, an elbow.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:05PMMonday, July 7, 2014
My heart sank early and often last week at the City Center concert rendition of Randy Newman’s Faust, but never so low as when Newman muffed one of his own best lines. That he was onstage …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:59PMThursday, July 3, 2014
One challenge of my job trying to cover theater with a national perspective, both at American Theatre and, to a certain degree, at the NY Times, is how to keep tabs on work I can't actually …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:16PMThe writer and director of “Sex With Strangers,” opening at the Second Stage Theater, have sought to excavate the inner strength in the wounded female character.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:03PMTuesday, July 1, 2014
I'll be at tonight's one-night-only concert reading of Randy Newman's Faust with bells on. (How 'bout you, George Hunka?) I'd noted the possibility that the show would finally get a hearing …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:07PMThursday, June 26, 2014
photo by Caitlin McNaneyA few years ago, a musical theater colleague of mine told me that someone named "Glen Kelly" was the guy who really wrote the scores of The Producers and Young Franke…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:07PMGlen Kelly, whose Broadway work this season includes “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Aladdin,” is one musical arranger who knows the score.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:57PMTuesday, June 24, 2014
I'm just back from the TCG Conference in San Diego last week--my fourth ever, and despite (or perhaps because of) the perfectly sunny but cool weather in my beloved, much-missed Southern Cal…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:36PMWednesday, June 11, 2014
The Scottish writer-performer Andy Manley returns to the New Victory Theater with a show aimed at the 8-and-older set about a close schoolyard friendship shattered by peer pressure.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:41PMFriday, May 30, 2014
Chris Myers and Danny Wolohan in An Octoroon"I rarely hope for my writing to have any effect. But I confess that I hope this piece makes people feel a certain kind of way." -Ta-Nehisi Coates…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:51PMBlogging has been light for much the same reasons as I noted here, but I feel I should catch readers up with my extra-curricular work.I interviewed Norm Lewis, Broadway's first black Phantom…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:21AMWednesday, April 30, 2014
Norm Lewis, the first black actor to play the title role in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, has longed to tackle the part for years.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:59PMThursday, April 24, 2014
Mark Ruffalo and Laurel Green in Justin Tanner's Still Life With Vacuum Salesman at the Cast Theatre, 1994 (photo by Ed Krieger)I haven't lived in Los Angeles since the summer of 2005 but I'…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:19PMA favorite scene from Foreign Correspondent, referenced in David Rudkin's new play The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock. Some time in the early 1980s, my dad flagged a listing in our loc…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:53AMWednesday, April 23, 2014
“The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock,” part of the Brits Off Broadway series at 59E59 Theaters, looks into the filmmaker’s youth and early career for clues to his later cinematic obses…
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:36PM 
