Thursday, June 12, 2025
I managed to avoid reading anything about Call Me Izzy except for the obvious fact that it stars Jean Smart and it’s a one-character play. Full disclosure, I am NOT a fan of one-person sho…
SOURCE: The Contending at 11:00PMMonday, June 9, 2025
The last three Oscar ceremonies have had very intense and competitive Best Actress races. Truth to be told, it’s the category that always excites and scares me, because of how much I inves…
SOURCE: The Contending at 03:13PMMonday, June 2, 2025
Now that Patti LuPone has apologized: forgive her, support her or sharpen your pitchforks, but WAIT until after Broadway’s biggest night. This year’s Tony Awards will be one for the book…
SOURCE: The Contending at 07:00AMSunday, June 1, 2025
Who is Jack Stokes? He’s an astonishingly impressive young British actor you may be hearing a lot more about in the coming years. Stokes is currently electrifying audiences in the play She…
SOURCE: The Contending at 06:44PMFriday, May 23, 2025
Tony nominee Julia Knitel seamlessly slips into a slew of characters at each performance of the new Broadway musical sensation Dead Outlaw. The brilliant, non-linear show, which began life o…
SOURCE: The Contending at 09:30PMMonday, May 12, 2025
Tony nominee Conrad Ricamora is currently wowing audiences portraying a closeted, hypermasculine Abraham Lincoln in the wacky Broadway comedy Oh, Mary!, playwright and star Cole Escola’s �…
SOURCE: The Contending at 09:00AMTuesday, May 6, 2025
Every once in a rare while on Broadway, especially in the last two decades, a bold, stirring, wholly original musical opens that dares to combine the darkly comedic with social commentary an…
SOURCE: The Contending at 03:15PMTuesday, April 29, 2025
In doing some geeky Tony Award rabbit hole research. It became clear that we are, happily, in a new golden age on Broadway where there are an abundance of fabulous shows, performances and te…
SOURCE: The Contending at 08:22PMThursday, April 24, 2025
Australian-born musical theater actor extraordinaire Ainsley Melham is quite the sensation this season as Dwayne, the baby-blue-eyed, Jazz-loving beau of Jasmine Amy Roger’s titular charac…
SOURCE: The Contending at 10:00AMWednesday, April 23, 2025
2025 has become one of the most fabulously fierce and competitive years for lead female awards contenders. First we had an Oscar race where no less than four truly worthy performances (Nicol…
SOURCE: The Contending at 02:05PMMonday, April 21, 2025
It is not going where I think it’s going! It is not going where I think it’s going! Oh God, I think it’s going where I think it’s going! This was my near-breathless reaction to exper…
SOURCE: The Contending at 09:45AMTuesday, April 15, 2025
Broadway Diva Jennifer Simard has been killing it on Broadway for almost two decades. Note: I use the word “diva” in the best, most fabulous definition of that word. She’s currently wo…
SOURCE: The Contending at 09:04PMMonday, April 14, 2025
Certain misguided critics (and that one in particular) are gushing over a monumental mess of a musical, loosely based on a TV series, that just hit Broadway — with a thud. Yet some of thos…
SOURCE: The Contending at 01:40PMWednesday, April 9, 2025
Your feelings about the new Sondheim revue, Old Friends, will probably depend on your familiarity with the composer-lyricist’s work as well as whether you enjoy songs sung out of context. …
SOURCE: The Contending at 01:45PMTuesday, April 1, 2025
I haven’t been emotionally slayed at the theater in quite a while. And I can shamefully state that Ghosts is a Henrik Ibsen play I was not completely familiar with. In terms of the Norwegi…
SOURCE: The Contending at 10:00AMMonday, March 31, 2025
One of the many great joys in watching Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ sometimes searing, always riveting new Broadway play, Purpose, is the trio of female performances. Not to take away anything …
SOURCE: The Contending at 10:00AMFriday, March 28, 2025
Strangely, I thought about Luigi Mangione after seeing Sarah Snook’s theatrical tour de force, The Picture of Dorian Gray, at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway–Okay, not really about him…
SOURCE: The Contending at 01:28PMTuesday, March 25, 2025
Operation Mincemeat presents one of the most bizarre premises for a musical, and certainly a wholly odd choice of subject matter for a comedy. Blend the two together and add a British sensib…
SOURCE: The Contending at 02:03PMSunday, January 12, 2025
Stephen Sondheim is my musical theatre god. My top 3 favorite shows of all time are Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd. That said… I’ve never agreed with the…
SOURCE: The Contending at 01:10PMThursday, August 11, 2011
Back in August of 2005 I called the Fringe presentation of Silence! The Musical “hands down the best musical this year so far.” It took way too long for this irreverent, rude and madly e…
SOURCE: www.newyorkcool.com at 10:37AM 
