All stories by Broadway & Me on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Gutsy Women Command the Stage in the Solo Shows "Forever" and "Grounded" by Broadway & Me

Holding a stage all by one’s self takes guts.  But two very talented actors step up to the challenge and, with varying degrees of success, show how it can be done in the new one-woman…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:17AM
Saturday, May 9, 2015

"Zorba!" Lacks the Zest It Needs to Succeed by Broadway & Me

Like so many Americans in the ‘60s, Broadway show makers were swept up in the free-spirit mania of the times and created shows with eccentric characters who thumbed their noses at the esta…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:46AM
Wednesday, May 6, 2015

"Fun Home" Expands the Territory that Truly Ambitious Musicals Can Now Explore by Broadway & Me

The contests for this year’s theater awards are so tight—and so many of the nominees truly worthy—that I hardly know where to cast my allegiance. And that’s especially true in the ca…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:42AM
Saturday, May 2, 2015

People's Choice vs. Critic's Choice for "It Shoulda Been You" and "Something Rotten" by Broadway & Me

The average Broadway theatergoer sees four shows a year, according to the Broadway League. The average theater reviewer routinely sees more shows than that in a week. Which may be one reason…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:35AM
Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Taking Time Out for Tony Talk-2015 Edition by Broadway & Me

It’s hard to argue with the Tony nominations announced yesterday morning. The much-admired An American in Paris and the even more critically beloved Fun Home lead the p…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:35AM
Saturday, April 25, 2015

"Airline Highway" Goes Right into The Heart of the Underside of the American Dream by Broadway & Me

There is a direct line connecting the down and outers waiting for Hickey in The Iceman Cometh and the outcasts who gather in the parking lot of the Hummingbird Motel for the premature funera…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 12:04PM
Wednesday, April 22, 2015

"Hand to God" is a Devilishly Good Play by Broadway & Me

Plays like Hand to God rarely make it to Broadway nowadays. For as its cheeky ad campaign says, the play has no movie stars, isn’t a transfer from London or based on a movie. On the other …

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:26AM
Saturday, April 18, 2015

Ah Paree: "An American in Paris" and "Gigi" by Broadway & Me

Like most Americans, I’m a sucker for the mystique of Paris. And I’ve recently had the chance to overindulge that fascination by seeing the new productions of Gigi and An American in Par…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:15AM
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

"Skylight"—And Its Stars—Shines Brilliantly by Broadway & Me

So much money is now spent on creating spectacles for theatergoers that we sometimes forget that all that’s really needed are a play with something to say and actors who know how to say it…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:28AM
Saturday, April 11, 2015

"Buzzer" Provokes the Right Kind of Noise by Broadway & Me

After-show talkbacks set my teeth on edge. Instead of talking about the show or what it provoked in them, most people just seem to want to show off. So I sighed inwardly when my theatergoing…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:56AM
Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Onboard With "On the Twentieth Century" by Broadway & Me

“They might as well give the Tony to her right now,” my husband K said as we walked out of the American Airlines Theatre after seeing Kristin Chenoweth in the Roundabout Theatr…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:48AM
Saturday, April 4, 2015

"The Undeniable Sound of Right Now” Sings by Broadway & Me

The bathroom at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a tiny space that sits between the backstage and the audience and that can accommodate just a couple of people at a time and so there�…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:52AM
Wednesday, April 1, 2015

"Fish in the Dark" is Light But Satisfying by Broadway & Me

By all accounts (and there have been many of them; click here to read one) Larry David didn’t intend to star in Fish in the Dark, the new farce that is playing at the Cort Theatre. But the…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:55AM
Saturday, March 28, 2015

"The Heidi Chronicles" Still Speaks to Me by Broadway & Me

Several waves of nostalgia swept over me as I watched the revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, which is running at the Music Box Theatre through Aug. 9. The first came beca…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 03:46PM
Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Whose Wish to Win the Just-Released DVD of "Into the Woods" is Going to Come True? by Broadway & Me

As I said, people love Into the Woods. I’ve never gotten more responses for a giveaway than I got for last week’s offer of a free copy of the Blu-ray DVD of Rob Marshall’s all-sta…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:10AM
Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Hi's and Lo's of Four Recent Shows by Broadway & Me

The umpteenth snowstorm of the year and yet another fresh coat of snow on the ground make it hard to believe that spring officially arrived yesterday. But the New York theater season has bee…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:06PM
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Hey, It's an "Into the Woods" DVD Giveaway by Broadway & Me

People love Into the Woods, the Stephen Sondheim musical that interweaves four familiar fairytales into a larger fable about desire, dreams and the tangled bonds between parents and children…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:24AM
Saturday, March 14, 2015

Why "Fashions for Men" Is Just My Style by Broadway & Me

Good guys don’t stand much of a chance in today’s popular culture, as evidenced by the popularity of the school-teacher-turned-drug-dealer series “Breaking Bad” and the beats-up-his-…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:22AM
Wednesday, March 11, 2015

"Lives of the Saints" Has Its Own Virtues by Broadway & Me

On our way into Lives of the Saints, my theatergoing buddy Bill and I ran into a friend who told us that his wife had been in the hospital and he was eager to see something to take his …

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:46AM
Saturday, March 7, 2015

"Bright Half Life" is Only Partly Satisfying by Broadway & Me

Everyone seems to be fracturing narratives these days, from the low-brow antics of TV’s “How to Get Away With Murder” to the high-brow musings in Kate Atkinson’s metaphysical novel �…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:39AM
Wednesday, March 4, 2015

"The Events" Doesn't Live Up to Its Billing by Broadway & Me

Every show is an event of some kind but The Events, the docudrama now playing at New York Theatre Workshop, promised to be a particularly special one. Inspired by the 2011 massacre of 77 peo…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:47AM
Saturday, February 28, 2015

There's Nothing All That Super About the New Superhero Musical "Brooklynite" by Broadway & Me

Maybe it’s because I stopped watching superhero movies around the time Michael Keaton left the "Batman" franchise. Or it could be because I don’t live in Brooklyn and only visit when the…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:36AM
Wednesday, February 25, 2015

"Hamilton" Really is a Revolutionary Show by Broadway & Me

If you care anything about musicals, you must have heard by now about Hamilton, the everybody’s-talking-about-it show that’s playing down at The Public Theater (even David Brooks the Tim…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:52AM
Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Singular Pleasures of Two Solo Shows: "The Lion" and "Every Brilliant Thing" by Broadway & Me

If you’d ask me, I’d say that I’m no fan of one-man shows. But, apparently, I’d be lying. Cause over the past week, I’ve seen and, in varying degrees, really enjoyed two of them. T…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:32AM
Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Rasheeda Speaking: A Review + a Giveaway by Broadway & Me

Talking about race is hard. So instead, most of us talk about talking about race. But playwright Joel Drake Johnson goes full tilt at the main subject in Rasheeda Speaking, now playing in a …

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 01:58PM
Saturday, February 14, 2015

A Very Happy Valentine's Day for You, A Very Happy Anniversary forBroadway & Me by Broadway & Me

Valentine’s Day now means I get to celebrate two big romances in my life. The first, of course, is the ongoing one I share with my incredible husband K. And the second is with those o…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:55AM
Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Cozy At-Home Options for Theater Lovers by Broadway & Me

We’re in that annual lull between the shows that rushed to open before the holidays and those waiting in the wings to make their bows in the spring. A few shows have bravely ventured out o…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:48AM
Saturday, February 7, 2015

"Honeymoon in Vegas" Deserves More Love by Broadway & Me

The new musical Honeymoon in Vegas has been doing terrible business. It’s playing to audiences that are barely three-quarters full and most of those folks have gotten such heavily discount…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:43AM
Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Guest Blogger: Bill Says "Let the Right One In" is a Bloody Good Vampire Story by Broadway & Me

A note from Jan: Scary stuff spooks me. A lot. As in, not able to sleep for nights and so as much as I wanted to see the new John Tiffany-Stephen Hoggett show about vampires, I just couldn'…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:13AM
Saturday, January 31, 2015

"A Month in the Country" Proves Uneventul by Broadway & Me

A Month in the Country, which opened at Classic Stage Company this past Thursday, was written five years before Anton Chekhov was even born. But the setting, the themes and the characters wi…

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:29AM
Wednesday, January 28, 2015

"The Road to Damascus" is Worth the Trip by Broadway & Me

As regular readers know, I’m always griping about how so few plays today grapple with current events. Well, I certainly can’t say that about The Road To Damascus, the political thriller …

SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:42AM