All stories by Jonathan Mandell on BroadwayStars

Friday, August 9, 2019

Bat Out Of Hell The Musical Review: Loud, Long, Messy…and Sexy. by Jonathan Mandell

Bat Out of Hell is a frequently enjoyable jukebox musical running at New York City Center through September 8, using the muscular rock opera anthems from singer Meat Loaf’s trilogy of bes…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:48AM

Sea Wall/ A Life Review: Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal Talk Modestly About Life and Death by Jonathan Mandell

It’s not at all baffling why these two modest monologues by different playwrights were yoked together into a single show at the Public Theater earlier this year. There’s an even simpler …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:48AM
Thursday, August 8, 2019

Sea Wall/A Life: Review, pics by Jonathan Mandell

Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal are certainly the reason why “Sea Wall/A Life” has now moved uptown to the Hudson… In the lobby of the Hudson, for $20 you can buy a quartet of magnet…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:50PM

Bat Out Of Hell The Musical: Pics, Video and Review by Jonathan Mandell

“Bat Out of Hell” is a frequently enjoyable jukebox musical running at New York City Center through September 8, using the muscular rock opera anthems from singer Meat Loaf’s trilogy …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:15PM
Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Actors Equity’s First Strike, 100 Years Ago Today by Jonathan Mandell

Actors Equity went on strike for the first time on August 7, 1919 — one hundred years ago today. Stars like Ethel Barrymore, W.C. Fields and Marie Dressler joined hundreds of their fellow …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:43PM
Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The 100 Most Important People in Musical Theatre by Jonathan Mandell

It makes sense that George Abbott is the first theater artist profiled in “The 100 Most Important People in Musical Theatre” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 288 pages, publication …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 04:30PM
Monday, August 5, 2019

National Black Theater Festival. Six on Broadway. Mourning Hal Prince. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

I spent much of the week in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, attending the week-long 16th biennial National Black Theatre Festival, which presented 30 plays and musicals from black theaters in…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:53AM
Sunday, August 4, 2019

Mass Shooting and Theater by Jonathan Mandell

Three mass shootings in a single week — in Gilroy, California last Sunday leaving three dead; in El Paso,Texas leaving at least 20 dead Sunday: in Dayton, Ohio, leaving at least nine dead …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:56AM
Saturday, August 3, 2019

Harold Prince’s Broadway Shows, Playbill by Playbill by Jonathan Mandell

Harold Prince, the consummate Broadway producer and director who died on Wednesday at the age of 91, had his first Broadway credit in April 1950, as an assistant stage manager for “Tickets…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:55AM
Friday, August 2, 2019

Hannah Senesh, the Anne Frank of Hungary, the Joan of Arc of Israel. by Jonathan Mandell

In “Hannah Senesh,” a play running through August 18th at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the title character is a Jewish teenager in Europe in the 1930s who starts keeping a diary at age…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:27AM
Thursday, August 1, 2019

August 2019 New York Theater Openings by Jonathan Mandell

Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge deliver back-to-back monologues in the only show opening on Broadway in August. After a promised Broadway run was scrapped, “Bat Out of Hell” is finally…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:24AM
Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Broadway dims its lights tonight for Hal Prince, January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019 by Jonathan Mandell

Harold Prince died this morning at 91 years of age after a brief illness, in Reykjavik, Iceland. There will be no funeral, but a celebration of his life is planned.   The lights of all Bro…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:24PM

Harold Prince, January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019 by Jonathan Mandell

Harold Prince died this morning at 91 years of age after a brief illness, in Reykjavik, Iceland. There will be no funeral, but a celebration of his life is planned.   The lights of all Bro…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 12:43PM
Tuesday, July 30, 2019

New York Theater Quiz July 2019 by Jonathan Mandell

How well were you paying attention to the theater news and views in July, from the Broadway Blackout to the Dunaway Dismissal? Answer these dozen questions and find out.  

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:55AM
Monday, July 29, 2019

NYIT Award Nominations 2019: Off-Off Broadway’s Finest by Jonathan Mandell

Below is the list of nominations announced tonight for the 15th annual New York Innovative Theater Awards, which celebrates the best of the city’s independent theater — aka Off-Off Broad…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:22PM

Festivals Score. Sondheim Soars. Faye Dunaway Sours. Harry Connick Jr. Sings Cole Porter. #Stageworthy News of the Week. by Jonathan Mandell

Other New Yorkers may view midsummer, with its heat waves and general malaise, as time to get out of the city. Theatergoers know it as festival fever. These include some of the familiar annu…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:46AM
Sunday, July 28, 2019

NYMF Reviews: Leaving Eden. Till. Flying Lessons. by Jonathan Mandell

  The three shows reviewed below from this year’s New York Musical Festival are all, each in its own way, naïve…or one of the near synonyms for the word naïve, each of which offers a …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 01:29PM
Saturday, July 27, 2019

Midsummer A Banquet Review. Shortened Shakespeare and Finger Food via Third Rail Projects by Jonathan Mandell

It would be easy to make some wrong assumptions about this dinner theater production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Café Fae, given its title, its marketing, and the fact that it i…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:36AM
Friday, July 26, 2019

Road Show Review: Sondheim Tries Again with Raúl Esparza and Brandon Uranowitz by Jonathan Mandell

Stephen Sondheim, now 89 years old,  first began writing a musical about the real-life eccentric and significant Mizner Brothers when he was 23 years old; paused in his efforts when he lear…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 05:10PM
Thursday, July 25, 2019

Moulin Rouge on Broadway: Peek, pics, videos by Jonathan Mandell

Moulin Rouge, a $28 million jukebox musical that opens tonight at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, is adapted from Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie of the same name, and expands its playlist to some 7…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 02:17PM
Wednesday, July 24, 2019

From Sarah Bernhardt to Samuel Beckett: Broadway Photographs from MCNY by Jonathan Mandell

The Theater Collection at the Museum of the City of New York contains over 190,000 objects that document theatrical performance in New York City from 1785 on. These include more than 30,000 …

SOURCE: New York Theater at 11:57PM

Broadway Bounty Hunter Review: Annie Golden as Actress Turned Badass by Be More Chill’s Joe Iconis. by Jonathan Mandell

The actress Annie Golden (mute Norma in Orange Is the New Black)  stars as the actress Annie Golden, who exchanges the humiliations of auditions for the thrills of a career kick-boxing dan…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54AM
Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Broadway Bounty Hunter: Review and Pics of Joe Iconis Musical Starring Annie Golden by Jonathan Mandell

The actress Annie Golden (mute Norma in Orange Is the New Black)  stars as the actress Annie Golden, who exchanges the humiliations of auditions for the thrills of a career kick-boxing dan…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:32PM
Monday, July 22, 2019

CATS Attacks. Trauma on Stage. Beautiful, Waitress Closing. LBJ back on Broadway. #Stageworthy News of the Week by Jonathan Mandell

  Therapists were busy reassuring theatergoers after seeing Dame Judi Dench in the trailer for the movie CATS. (See below.) Meanwhile, three shows opened Off-Broadway last week about real-l…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 10:22AM
Sunday, July 21, 2019

The Rolling Stone Review: A Gay Teen in Uganda Confronts Hatred and Violence by Jonathan Mandell

“These people recruit, rape and spread disease,” Mama says about homosexuals, not realizing she’s talking to one, in Chris Urch’s play, which takes place in Uganda in 2010.  That wa…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 09:26PM
Saturday, July 20, 2019

The Beatles on Broadway. From John Lennon at age 28….to Paul McCartney at 78? by Jonathan Mandell

Paul McCartney has announced that, at the age of 77, he is writing his first musical – a stage adaptation of Frank Capra’s 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a holiday evergreen i…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 02:18PM
Friday, July 19, 2019

The Bacchae Review: Euripides Tragedy Becomes Harlem Entertainment by Jonathan Mandell

What would Euripides say about the liberties being taken with his tragedies in New York? Medea, one of his last and most-produced plays, has been turned into the harrowing tale of an undocum…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:18PM

The Bacchae outdoors in Harlem: Pics, review by Jonathan Mandell

What would Euripides say about the liberties being taken with his tragedies in New York? Medea,one of his last and most-produced plays, has been turned into the harrowing tale of an undocume…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 04:05PM
Thursday, July 18, 2019

Moscow Moscow Moscow etc Review: Chekhov’s Three Sisters Gone Wild by Jonathan Mandell

Halley Feiffer’s loud, broad, hyperactive, foul-mouthed, unconventionally cast, aggressively playful and generally off-beat adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” was upstaged earli…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 07:55PM
Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Mojada Review: The Medea Story as Tragedy of the Undocumented Immigrant by Jonathan Mandell

Most everybody knows that Medea kills her children to take revenge on their two-timing father Jason. But “Mojada,” playwright Luis Alfaro’s modern-day adaptation at the Public Theater,…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 08:23PM
Tuesday, July 16, 2019

FREE Outdoor Movies in NYC Summer 2019: A Schedule by Jonathan Mandell

Every night from now until the end of the summer, you can watch a free movie somewhere outdoors in New York City  -- and whole movie series every weeknight except Tuesdays. The movies v…

SOURCE: New York Theater at 01:14PM

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