All stories by Richard Seff on BroadwayStars

Thursday, January 31, 2019

“True West” at the American Airlines Theatre by Richard Seff

Sam Shepard was born in 1943 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois; and by 1964 he was ready to start becoming a highly original and prolific playwright. From his first work (“Cowboys”) to his last…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:44PM
Wednesday, January 30, 2019

“Carmelina” at the York Theatre by Richard Seff

The priceless York Theatre Company, under the excellent leadership of James Morgan, is now presenting three Alan J. Lerner musicals in its series called “Musicals In Mufti” (Mufti is an …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 06:39PM
Saturday, January 26, 2019

“Choir Boy” at Manhattan Theatre Club by Richard Seff

The  Manhattan Theatre Club has dusted off Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play which it first presented off Broadway in 2013, and it is now creating buzz on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedma…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 10:14PM
Tuesday, January 22, 2019

“Beach Blanket Babylon” at Club Fugazi in San Francisco by Richard Seff

There is a phenomenon in San Francisco that has been running for over 6,000 performances ever since 1974; and, in my recent visit with family, I was  taken to see it.  I went as a …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 04:18PM
Tuesday, December 11, 2018

“Network” at the Belasco Theatre by Richard Seff

T’is the season of the Titans on Broadway: Janet McTeer has tackled the roles of  Hamlet and Sarah Bernhardt; Glenda Jackson is about to play King Lear; Elaine May is monumental as sh…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 04:34PM
Friday, December 7, 2018

“Downstairs” at The Cherry Lane Theater by Richard Seff

The lights come up on a total wreck of a basement room in which a lifetime of junk has been accumulated. It’s under the house in which Irene and Jerry are living out their marriage; and at…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 03:35PM
Tuesday, December 4, 2018

“The Hello Girls” at 59 East 59th Street by Richard Seff

Ten talented actor-singer-musicians are filling the jam packed tiny stage in Theatre A at 59 East 59th Street. They are five men and five women who play the essential  bi-lingual telephone …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 04:51PM
Sunday, December 2, 2018

“The Lifespan of a Fact” at Studio 54 by Richard Seff

Take three playwrights, each making his Broadway debut, to write a play. Have them base it on a published book and essay by two other writers which described a real event. Mix thoroughly; th…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 12:31PM
Sunday, November 25, 2018

“The Prom” at the Longacre Theatre by Richard Seff

Shout it from the rooftops, “Musical Comedy is back on Broadway!” I mean a NEW musical, not a revival or an adaptation. One that’s all about putting “Your Best Foot Forward” (a…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 11:22AM
Monday, November 19, 2018

Two Actors Equals Two Plays; “Thom Pain (based on nothing)” and “The New One” by Richard Seff

In this bountiful Broadway season there is the phenomenon known as the one-man play. Most recently, on November 11th, two of them arrived on the same night. Will Eno’s “Thom Pain (based …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:25PM
Thursday, November 15, 2018

“King Kong” at The Broadway Theatre by Richard Seff

My suggestion is that the Tony Awards committee should place King Kong as a nominee for best leading actor in a musical. He doesn’t sing very well, but I think he would win by beating out …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 06:51PM
Thursday, November 8, 2018

“American Son” at the Booth Theatre by Richard Seff

Christopher Demos-Brown, the author of this new play, was unknown to me, although his more than a dozen earlier works for the stage have been recognized by the Laurents/Hatcher Award and mul…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 06:41PM
Monday, November 5, 2018

Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song” at the Helen Hayes Theatre by Richard Seff

Michael Urie is lighting up the stage of the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway eight times a week with his virtuoso performance in Harvey Fierstein’s play. It’s an adaptation of his earlie…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 04:11PM
Saturday, November 3, 2018

“Days of Rage” at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater by Richard Seff

It begins with an explosion of angry rock music that lets us know the play is not misnamed. When the music fades we find ourselves inside the living quarters of a ramshackle old house in ups…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:49PM
Sunday, October 28, 2018

“The Ferryman” at The Bernard Jacobs Theatre by Richard Seff

The New York theater season has barely begun and already we have several marvelous plays on which theater fans can feast. Some are revivals; some are newly minted; but all have impeccable cr…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:08PM

“The Waverly Gallery” at The John Golden Theatre by Richard Seff

Kenneth Lonergan has been writing important and nourishing plays since The New Group presented his “This Is Our Youth” in 1997. That Drama Desk Award nominee was revived in 2015 and won …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 03:50PM
Saturday, October 20, 2018

“Apologia” at the Laura Pels Theatre by Richard Seff

On the cover of the Playbill, it says quite clearly that the title means “vindication, justification, explanation.” It is not, in other words, an apology. Alexi Kaye Campbell has written…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 02:07PM
Saturday, October 13, 2018

“Ordinary Days” at the Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row by Richard Seff

Out of the simplest and most available tools, composer/lyricist Adam Gwon has created an eloquent and moving small musical that does indeed deal with ordinary things. With just four charact…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 11:54AM
Tuesday, October 9, 2018

“A LOVELY SUNDAY FOR CREVE COEUR” at the Theatre at St. Clements by Richard Seff

How good of La Femme Theatre Productions to mount the little known Tennessee Williams play at Theatre St. Clements, for anything Williams wrote should be of interest to anyone who loves thea…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 01:27PM
Wednesday, October 3, 2018

“The Nap” at The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre by Richard Seff

For starters, I had expected this oddly titled play to offer information on what went on in someone’s mind during an afternoon siesta. Once the play started I found that no, it deals with …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:07PM
Sunday, September 30, 2018

“Bernhardt/Hamlet” at the American Airlines Theatre by Richard Seff

The first of two acts of this new play by Theresa Rebeck invites us all into a rehearsal for “Hamlet” with a company of actors working hard to support Sarah Bernhardt, as played by Janet…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 05:36PM
Sunday, September 23, 2018

“The True” at The Pershing Square Signature Center by Richard Seff

Once upon a time, circa 1977, there was a woman with a powerful voice and a caring mind who had intimate access to the long term mayor of Albany, New York. Her name was Dorothea “Polly” …

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 02:36PM
Sunday, September 9, 2018

“Heartbreak House” at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row by Richard Seff

Every now and then, Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House” returns to us in times of national stress to request that we (or the folks in Britain) examine our present life styles and attitud…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 08:00PM
Monday, August 27, 2018

“Days to Come” at the Beckett on Theatre Row by Richard Seff

Lillian Hellman first conceived the idea for this play in 1930 but did not complete it and only went back to it five years later following her first production, the successful “The Childre…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 07:04PM
Friday, August 24, 2018

“Pretty Woman The Musical” at the Nederlander Theatre by Richard Seff

Composers and lyricists have long been attracted to successful films as source material for adaptation into Broadway musicals. “Saturday Night Fever,” “Groundhog Day,” “Rocky,&…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 12:28PM
Tuesday, August 7, 2018

“Head Over Heels” at the Hudson Theatre by Richard Seff

I admit that forty years ago, when the Go-Go’s female rock stardom was in full bloom, when their punk scene was all the rage amongst the hip, I was very happy with musical theatre as it wa…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 06:27PM
Saturday, August 4, 2018

“Straight White Men” at the Helen Hayes Theatre by Richard Seff

I was confused when I entered the small Helen Hayes Theater for I thought I’d entered the wrong building. I was ushered into the small foyer, and from the auditorium I could hear ear split…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 01:34PM
Monday, July 30, 2018

“SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ: THE SONGS OF LEIBER AND STOLLER” at Stage 42 by Richard Seff

Once again, we have a new production of an old success from the school of “And Then I Wrote…” musicals. This time out the writers are Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who, over the course…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 08:54PM
Thursday, June 21, 2018

“Conflict” at the Beckett on Theatre Row by Richard Seff

The Mint Theatre’s Artistic Director, Jonathan Bank, has an uncanny eye for the best of the old obscure plays that deserve a crack at a contemporary audience for re-examination. A perf…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 08:13PM
Friday, June 15, 2018

I sponsor an award by Richard Seff

I was introduced to professional theater when I was twelve. A friend of my parents worked for the owners of a Broadway playhouse and she invited my mother and me to a matinee of a long runni…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 12:22PM

“Dan Cody’s Yacht” at The Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage One by Richard Seff

The Manhattan Theatre Club has opened this new play by Anthony Giardina, and director Doug Hughes has cast it impeccably, staged it fluidly with help from John Lee Beatty’s rapidly tur…

SOURCE: onandoffbroadwaytheaterreviews.com at 10:50AM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Nov 17, 2024: Elf - Marquis Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre