Tuesday, August 2, 2011
August is the only month in which we don’t have a true official holiday. Oh, August 11 is a big day in India and the day after is a big deal in Armenia. But for Americans, such big days as…
SOURCE: Masterworks Broadway at 12:08AMMonday, August 1, 2011
On Tuesday while writing my Wednesday column on That Championship Season, I went to check a line in my hardcover edition. That's when I noticed the quotations from the 1972 critics' reviews …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMReally, I planned to be good about it. While many of my fellow critics (or "brother wizards," as I like to call them) had already attended and assessed Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, I plann…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt ain't so much a question of not knowing what to do. If one really wanted to mount Oklahoma! exactly the way it was first done in 1943, it could be done. The original Robert Russell Bennet…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMBen Brantley made it easy for me. Ever since I saw Gregory Mosher's production of That Championship Season last week, I've had a criticism I've wanted to make. But there was no way I could…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt was the month that Donald Driver of the Green Bay Packers appeared in the Super Bowl, and - Oh, Brother! He did his own thing in helping his team to win. Not interested in sports? All r…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMOn Part Two of my Broadway Universe Mid-Term Exam, I asked readers, "What would you like in your gift-bag once you've arrived in heaven?" Donald Tesione replied, "Do I have to die to a get r…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMMichael Hartman, Broadway's most handsome press agent, stood before the crowd. "Who went to Catholic schools?" he demanded to know. I dutifully raised my hand with a few others seated before…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMSix Follies logos! Isn't that enough to get you to "Design: Fraver," subtitled "Four Decades of Theatre Poster Art"? As soon as you saunter into The New York Public Library for the Perfo…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMWhen I asked readers "What Broadway songs have you tired of?" I got a number of fascinating answers: Richard Brock: "'Being Alive.' Every singer seems to try to 'improve' it and only end u…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMSome years ago, Jennifer Strome was spending New Year's Eve with friends in California, hoping that the next year would be better. "I'd felt that I'd recently been betrayed, and I poured o…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMDoes Patti LuPone realize how many men imitate her? Well, yes, she probably does. I really didn't. But when I asked readers "Which performers did you imitate when you were a kid - or, for …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMA-14 is an almost great seat to a Broadway show. Depending on the theater, you're in the first or first few rows, but terribly off to the side. But that's not my experience at the press pr…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMRon Schroeder said, "Okay Peter, if a lot of people answer, you've got a lot of reading. The problem with the essay questions is that there are too many answers." He was referring to the s…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt all started in late 2001, after I read A Cat's Diary: How the Broadway Production of 'Cats' Was Born by Stephen Mo Hanan. Near the end of the book, he noted that Cats won seven Tonys -- a…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMSo did we all stay in on Sunday night and watch those Super Bowl commercials? So many loved six-year-old actor Max Page, the mini-Darth Vader in a VW ad. Good Lord, the kid didn't have to …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMInteresting, isn't it, that when Robert Buckner got the assignment to write Yankee Doodle Dandy -- that 1942 biopic of George M. Cohan -- he decided to start with I'd Rather Be Right? Buck…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt was the month Chicago lost in football but was still winning on Broadway. How does it do it? And to think that in only six months, it'll pass in number of performances the show that origi…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMSo Encores! is getting pretty serious. The wonderful series at City Center has since 1993 allowed us to see a panoply of musical styles: operetta (The New Moon), revue (The Ziegfeld Follies …
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMCongratulations to Fred Abramowitz, Val Addams, Peter Alfano, AnyaToes, John Atkins, Susan Berlin, Brigadude, Richard Brock, Jeremy Fassler, Lara Fodor, Laura Frankos, John Greene, John Grif…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMAt the after-party at of The Little Dog Laughed at the Bickford Theatre in Morris Township, New Jersey, people were talking, and Liz McCartney's name came up. And I realized I never have iss…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMBashville. Not Nashvile. Bashville. Ever heard of it? It's a 1983 London musical that's based on The Admirable Bashville, a 1902 play by George Bernard Shaw.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMThey did the first musical for money, and wrote the second one for the love and the fun of it.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AM"New York is the center of New York," snarls Rose in Gypsy. Well, perhaps it is only that, but it's certainly the center of the Broadway musical.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMOn Monday, we had the first part of the 2011 Broadway University Mid-Term. It was, as virtually all of my quizzes have been, a list of 50 lines and lyrics which you're to identify by song an…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMToo early to be thinking about Toronto in June? Not after you hear what's happening theatrically in the city that's often referred to as Broadway North. Actually, a more popular nickname…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt all started in rural Illinois when she was three. "My great aunt was a honky-tonk pianist," says Marianne Challis. "And soon I was in front of people singing 'Twenty Froggies Went to Scho…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AM89 years ago this week, Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped opened on Broadway. Do you know this fascinating play?
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMHave you ever noticed that the final line of The Importance of Being Earnest isn't quite the title of the play?
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMSo La Bete is closing a little early, and will log in a mere 101 performances when it shutters this Sunday. It couldn't even fulfill its limited engagement and make it to February 13.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AMIt was the month that I had even greater respect for Jim Miller, Joe Miller, Paul Roberts, Thom Snode and Ed Weissman. They're the ones who knew the answer to my seemingly impossible Brainte…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 07:54AM 
