All stories by Marc Miller on BroadwayStars

Monday, March 25, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" - 3/24/24 by Marc Miller

Philadelphia, Here I Come! was Brian Friel's first major success, and the new revival at Irish Repertory Theatre, part of its Friel Project retrospective, offers ample evidence why. It's a s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:42AM
Saturday, March 23, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Teeth" - 3/23/24 by Marc Miller

You've probably heard about it as "the musical about the penis-eating vagina." Yes, but Teeth aims to be something more–a horror musical that also takes in repression, misogyny, violence, …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:11PM
Saturday, March 16, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Corruption" - 3/16/24 by Marc Miller

Rupert Murdoch is a scourge, a reckless power monger whose pursuit of material gain has irrevocably changed and devalued the journalistic universe. On that much many of us will probably agre…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:45PM
Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Brooklyn Laundry" - 2/28/24 by Marc Miller

The New York Times beat me to it yesterday in saying so, but gosh, this is some season John Patrick Shanley is having. First a well-received revival of his early play, Danny and the Deep Blu…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:00PM
Thursday, February 22, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "A Sign of the Times" - 2/22/24 by Marc Miller

It's called A Sign of the Times, and zowie, is it ever. Start with a jukebox score, consisting of rock 'n' roll favorites old enough to be nostalgically remembered by people old enough to be…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:32PM
Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "" - 2/14/24 by Marc Miller

At the Brick, there's not a bad seat in the house. That's because the house is a long, narrow room framing a long, narrow table, plus a few barstool-height chairs against the wall to fill th…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:23PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "I Love You So Much I Could Die" - 2/14/24 by Marc Miller

Storytelling doesn't come much more basic than I Love You So Much I Could Die, Mona Pirnot's autobiographical one-woman show at New York Theatre Workshop. NYTW's mainstage theater usually fe…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:06PM
Friday, February 2, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Jonah" - 2/2/24 by Marc Miller

The first thing about Jonah: It's not much about Jonah. He's a character, to be sure, an endearing one, embodied by Hagan Oliveras with goofy Jesse Eisenberg charm. But Jonah is mostly about…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:40AM
Monday, January 22, 2024

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Aristocrats" - 1/21/24 by Marc Miller

Said my companion as we exited Aristocrats: "It's The Cherry Orchard meets Three Sisters." Not quite, but Brian Friel's 1979 drama, in revival at Irish Repertory Theatre, does have a heavy l…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:33AM
Thursday, November 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Jerusalem Syndrome" - 11/30/23 by Marc Miller

The Jerusalem Syndrome? The timing does not seem propitious for the York Theatre Company to trot out what's meant to be a fizzy, escapist musical comedy set in the present-day Middle East. B…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:36PM
Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Three Solo Shows at Playwrights Horizons" - 11/21/23 by Marc Miller

With Stereophonic blaring happily away on its mainstage, Playwrights Horizons is attempting an intriguing experiment upstairs at the Peter Jay Sharp: three one-acts, all solo shows, each wri…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:18AM
Thursday, November 2, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Poor Yella Rednecks" - 11/1/23 by Marc Miller

The curious thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, Qui Nguyen's Manhattan Theatre Club follow-up to his well-received, autobiographical Vietgone of several seasons back, is that its title characte…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:40AM
Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Merry Me" - 10/31/23 by Marc Miller

Whoo-whee! It's a good thing Hansol Jung's Merry Me, at New York Theatre Workshop, hired an intimacy coordinator (Rocío Mendez). A great deal of shagging permeates the action, of various ge…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:16AM
Sunday, October 29, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Stereophonic" - 10/29/23 by Marc Miller

How much you like Stereophonic, David Adjmi's play with (quite a lot of) music at Playwrights Horizons, may well hinge on how much you like Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Aerosmith, and their ilk…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:04PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Translations" - 10/29/23 by Marc Miller

A word of advice: Before seeing Translations, the opening volley in Irish Repertory Theatre's season-long (Brian) Friel Project, show up early. To get maximum impact out of this beguiling li…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:09PM
Thursday, September 28, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Golden Rainbow" - 9/28/23 by Marc Miller

Winners! Losers! Sinners! Boozers! So goes a line in "24 Hours a Day," the opening number of Golden Rainbow, the 1968 musical being given a rare airing at York Theatre Company's Musicals in …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:51PM
Monday, September 11, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Lieutenant" - 9/11/23 by Marc Miller

Indulge us for a moment, please, we collectors of cast albums and mavens of Tony Awards trivia. In 1975, a lot of Jerry Herman fans were very upset when his favorite among his scores, Mack a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:59PM
Monday, August 28, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "How to Steal an Election" - 8/28/23 by Marc Miller

Sounds current, doesn't it? When I told friends I was reviewing something called How to Steal an Election, at least one responded, "Oh, is it new?" Not at all: The Off-Broadway musical by Wi…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:16PM
Friday, July 14, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Saviour" - 7/13/23 by Marc Miller

It can't be easy to cram two separate plays into one 70-minute running time, but that appears to be what playwright Deirdre Kinahan has done with The Saviour, a compact drama now on Irish Re…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:56AM
Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Wet Brain" - 6/7/23 by Marc Miller

Dysfunctional families rarely emerge as dysfunctional as the one portrayed in Wet Brain, John J. Caswell, Jr.'s high-decibel whatsit of a comedy-drama on Playwrights Horizons' mainstage in a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:47AM
Sunday, June 4, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Love + Science" - 6/4/23 by Marc Miller

Well, it's one way to kick off Pride Month. Love + Science, David J. Glass's drama now at City Center Stage II, recalls the whole horrible 1980s mishandling of the emerging AIDS crisis, as s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM
Thursday, May 25, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Primary Trust" - 5/25/23 by Marc Miller

Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York–the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a coupl…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43PM
Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "King James" - 5/16/23 by Marc Miller

How much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:20PM
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Regretfully, So the Birds Are" - 4/11/23 by Marc Miller

The last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:36AM
Thursday, March 30, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Vanities-The Musical" - 3/30/23 by Marc Miller

As an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PM
Monday, March 13, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "How to Defend Yourself" - 3/13/23 by Marc Miller

Whew, this one really needed an intimacy coordinator. Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself, at New York Theatre Workshop, is mostly about its titular topic, as reflected through the unea…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:23PM
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Best We Could" - 3/1/23 by Marc Miller

There's more than a whiff of Our Town in The Best We Could, Emily Feldman's "family tragedy" now on Manhattan Theatre Club's mainstage. The Wilder influence begins with Lael Jellinek's sceni…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:30PM
Thursday, February 16, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Wanderers" - 2/16/23 by Marc Miller

Who are these people? Why are they sharing a stage? Where are the character details that would help us understand them better? The Wanderers, Anna Ziegler's new drama at the Laura Pels, shar…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:35PM
Thursday, February 2, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Endgame" - 2/2/23 by Marc Miller

Exactly what Samuel Beckett was up to with Endgame has been the source of much speculation. A meditation on the futility of life? A fever dream about the inevitable journey toward death? A p…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:03PM
Thursday, January 26, 2023

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Smuggler" - 1/26/23 by Marc Miller

Moral ambiguity seeps into, permeates, and ultimately overwhelms The Smuggler, Ronán Noone's intelligent little "thriller in rhyme" downstairs at Irish Rep. The one-hander, performed with s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:04PM
Thursday, December 1, 2022

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Stardust Road" - 12/1/22 by Marc Miller

Wedging some 40 songs into a little over 90 minutes, Stardust Road is filled with Great American Songbook treasures, well-known and otherwise. And it mostly sounds terrific, thanks to Lawren…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:17PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards