Whimsy is not usually my thing. But, what can I say, I was charmed by Fly By Night, the quirky new musical that is playing at Playwrights Horizons through Sunday.The show was originally crea…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:07AMIntermission had arrived for Arrivals & Departures, the latest Alan Ayckbourn play (reportedly his 77th!) that is running along with two of the master playwright’s earlier works in the…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:23AMSign me up for the Greta Gerwig fan club. A few months ago, I saw—and very much liked—this appealing young actress in “Frances Ha,” the indie movie she and her boyfriend director Noa…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:03AMYou might think that I’d be ready to give Shakespeare a rest after the recent Bard-heavy season on Broadway. But I bought tickets to Kenneth Branagh’s acclaimed production of Macbeth the…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:24AMIf you should ever be invited to a dinner party with the actor Jim Dale, you should go. For Dale has all the qualities anyone would want in a table companion: he's got great stories to tell,…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:54AMNo new post today since I figure you’re probably still making your way through the mammoth one I did on Wednesday. Besides let’s face it, everyone who cares about theater, including me, …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:42AMAs usual, I haven’t gotten around to weighing in on all the shows that opened during the run up to the Tony nominations. Although I have managed to have my say in these posts on all four o…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:01AMCheesy musicals aren’t my thing. Unless, of course, they’re good cheesy musicals. Which is an apt description for The Anthem, the new Culture Project production that opened at the Lynn R…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:30AMWe’re 10 days away from the Tonys and the campaign is in full stride, with nominees in several categories running neck and neck. Which is great for us theater junkies because it means that…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:01AMSome people (the Tea Party, the Republicans in the House) don’t mind being scolds but I find no pleasure in it, which is why I’ve taken so long to say anything about Heathers The Musical…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:07AMThe City of Conversation, now at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse theater through July 6, is the kind of show I love: a well- made drama about big issues and ideas that isn’t afraid to…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:31AMThe first time I saw An Octoroon it was a hot mess. Its director had quit the show, then called The Octoroon: An Adaptation Of The Octoroon Based On The Octoroon, two weeks before it was sch…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:44AMAfter my marathon of non-stop play going over the past few weeks, I’ve developed a serious case of spring fever. So I played hooky over the last couple of days: took long walks, took naps,…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:17AMThe Whale, a play about a 600 lb. man eating himself to death, won Samuel D. Hunter a spot high on the leaderboard of hot young playwrights. But I was so simultaneously fascinated and repuls…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:25AMThe last time I tried to rally support for an underappreciated show, I failed miserably. Despite my appeal for The Bridges of Madison County (click here to read what I wrote) the show failed…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:36AMThis is one of those crazy times when I find that I can either see shows or write about them but not both (cause as much as I love myself some theater—and sharing it with you all—there a…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:47AMThe Tony nominations announced yesterday morning were as perplexing as ever. Maybe even more so. As happens every year, some “sure things” got left out (almost none of the big name movie…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 01:40PMAppearing in a Broadway play has become almost as popular with Hollywood stars as having a charity of their own. Of course, some Hollywood actors—Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:18PMThe spring season is firing along on all cylinders. Six shows are opening this week. The Outer Critics Circle announced its nominations yesterday (click here to see them), the Drama League l…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:35AMStanding ovations have become so much a part of the Broadway theater-going experience that the producer Ken Davenport recently conducted a survey to find out why people keep jumping up at th…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:01AMMoviemaking—the old-fashioned kind with people and plots but no aliens or armageddons—has become so rare in Hollywood that there’s been a mass migration of some of its best talent into…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:26AMIra Aldridge, the first black man to play Othello before a white audience, is a fascinating character. And Adrian Lester, who recently played the Moor in an acclaimed production by London’…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 03:48PMThe new musical The Bridges of Madison County isn’t doing well. And I’m not sure why. It’s based on the 1992 novel about the star-crossed love affair between a war bride turned Iowa ho…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:31AMBack in the days when both writers and audiences prized loving families as much as dysfunctional ones, people couldn’t get enough of the Hansons, a poor but close-knit clan of Norwegian-Am…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:30AMBeau Willimon’s first play, Farragut North, was produced by the Atlantic Theater Company with John Gallagher and Chris Noth in the lead roles and then turned into the movie “The Ides of …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:10AMI can't say exactly how it happened but I've obviously missed the deadline for Wednesday's post and so I'm belatedly turning on the ghost light, the traditional sign that theaters are tempor…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 01:06AMAfter years of seeing dramas about dysfunctional families, I’d begun to wonder if it was even possible for there to be a good play about a happy family. So I suppose I should have been hap…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:18AMThe two previous plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that I’ve seen– Neighbors and The Octoroon: An Adaptation of the Octoroon Based on the Octoroon—featured black actors wearing black fac…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:42AMIf you asked a random sampling of playgoers to list the best living playwrights in the country today, names like Edward Albee, Tony Kushner and Sam Shepard would come up long before anyone g…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 02:31PMTwo shows have recently opened that I’d like to talk about but don’t feel as though I should since I’ve a rooting interest in each. The first is Satchmo at the Waldorf, a one-man (but …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:06AMAlmost everything—the acting, the directing, the costumes, the set, and most especially the play itself—works in Stage Kiss, the romantic comedy now running at Playwrights Horizon throug…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 02:33PM