Saturday, September 10, 2016
In the old days, plays were expected to be well made and largely about people who well mannered and well off. But in the years after World War II the working class playwrights known as the A…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:04AMSaturday, September 3, 2016
Even though the theater world slows down in summer, the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day is my favorite time of the year. And this year, I kicked back and was even lazier than usual (…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:39AMSaturday, August 27, 2016
People write plays for all kinds of reasons and after we saw the new show that opened at Second Stage Theatre this week, my theatergoing buddy Bill speculated that playwright Leslye Headland…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:15AMSaturday, August 20, 2016
The intense drama Quietly extended its run this week and is now scheduled to play at the Irish Repertory Theatre thru Sept. 25. I'm always glad to see a show find a larger audience—ev…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:46AMSaturday, August 13, 2016
"Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" asks the final line of the musical Hamilton. It, of course, famously answers its own question by having black and brown actors play the Foun…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 03:12PMSaturday, August 6, 2016
The hottest ticket of the summer is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened at London's Palace Theatre last weekend and is already sold out through next May. But on this side of the …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 04:51PMSaturday, July 30, 2016
You wouldn't think that the subject of slavery would be an obvious choice for comedy. And yet the writer James McBride pulled it off with "The Good Lord Bird," his comedic novel about a youn…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:30AMWednesday, July 27, 2016
Maybe it's the summer heat. Or maybe too many of you are out of town. Or maybe it's a reluctance to take a chance on an unknown show. Whatever the reason, there weren't as many entrants in t…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:10AMSaturday, July 23, 2016
We're now in the midsummer of this year's theater festival season. It's the time when small companies and fledgling productions get a chance to strut their stuff. Some of these showcases, li…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:51AMSaturday, July 16, 2016
With temperatures climbing into the 90s, we're in the midst of the summer's first real heat wave. And consequently, everything is slowing down, including show openings—and now B&Me. I'…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:21AMSaturday, July 9, 2016
Since getting her B.A. at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and an M.F.A from Columbia University barely a decade ago, Rachel Chavkin, whose acclaimed production of Natasha, Pierre and the Grea…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 02:18PMWednesday, July 6, 2016
Spring's incessant flow of show openings slows to a trickle in the summer so theater junkies like me have to look elsewhere for our fixes. I recently found some solace in theater-related exh…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:58AMSaturday, July 2, 2016
The Tonys and all last season's other theater celebrations are now behind us, several original Hamilton cast members (including the show's creator Lin-Manuel Miranda) are scheduled to take t…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 06:27PMWednesday, June 29, 2016
Outsiders are Samuel D. Hunter's specialty. But his aren't the heroic or charismatic figures that command center stage in most narratives. Instead, they are the more commonplace misfits soci…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:40AMSaturday, June 25, 2016
Now 54, Matthew Broderick made his stage debut as a teenager in the original 1982 production of Torch Song Trilogy, won a Tony Award the next year for his performance in Neil Simon's autobio…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:34AMWednesday, June 22, 2016
The four women who gather for the funeral of a man they all once loved in Out of the Mouth of Babes wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. That feminist litmus test requires tha…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:39AMSaturday, June 18, 2016
Joe Tippett is a terrific actor. He's particularly good at mining humor when playing "bros" and other kinds of macho guys. But he's also great at revealing how his characters want to be…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:38AMWednesday, June 15, 2016
The last two minutes are the only fully satisfying ones in Incognito, the new Nick Payne play that is running at Manhattan Theatre Club through July 10. The problem is that while they really…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 01:50PMSaturday, June 11, 2016
As soon as I finished Wednesday's post on the highs and lows of some of the musicals up for Tonys, I realized that I should give some equal hi-lo time to a few of the nominated plays as well…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:20AMWednesday, June 8, 2016
From the moment that Hamilton's revolutionary troupe stepped onto the stage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre last summer, it was clear that Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop infused celebration of …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:34AMSaturday, June 4, 2016
Sometimes I think John Doyle's middle name must be Minimalist. The British director made his reputation with small-scale productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals in which the actors played i…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 10:56AMWednesday, June 1, 2016
It's been a long time since I walked out of a musical and couldn't wait to hear the score again. Luckily, the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell recorded a concept album for Hadestown, t…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:54AMWednesday, May 25, 2016
Ooops. I've slipped into a hole again. Not to worry; it's all good stuff. I'm working on a freelance piece for one of my favorite publications (more about that in the future) and gearing up …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:45AMSaturday, May 21, 2016
Daphne's Dive, the bar in the play of that same name which opened this week at Signature Theatre, seems to be a great place to hang out. The bar's genial regulars are diverse ethnically and …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:27AMWednesday, May 18, 2016
Show biz people love shows about show business, especially ones in which a band of artists overcome some adversity to put on a show. And right now, two productions about works that broke thr…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 11:12AMSaturday, May 14, 2016
Fully Committed, the one-man show about a reservation clerk at a trendy high-end restaurant, didn't get any Tony nominations. But in a season filled with weightier plays about such downer su…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:36AMWednesday, May 11, 2016
There's been so much going on in the theater (and in my life) over the past few weeks that I haven't had a chance to talk about one of my favorite shows of the spring season: The Effect, whi…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 08:32AMSaturday, May 7, 2016
The nominees for this year's Tony for Best Musical are all the kind of big song-and-dance shows that have for years defined the Broadway musical. But I sometimes think the future of the art …
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 07:16PMWednesday, May 4, 2016
People are always saying "it's an honor to be nominated" when they get a slot on the ballot for a top award like the Tonys. But that's more true than ever for most of the nominees in the mus…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:57AMSaturday, April 30, 2016
It's a shame that the Red Bull Theater's production of The School for Scandal is closing May 8, after barely a two-week run because this is one of the most delightful shows I've seen this se…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 09:01AMWednesday, April 27, 2016
Nearly all my theatergoing friends have been asking me if I've seen, and what I think about, The Royale, which has been running at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse theater for the last sev…
SOURCE: Broadway & Me at 02:16PM 
