Friday, November 14, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Oedipus" 11/13/25 by Howard Miller

The great filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock described the art of suspense as providing the audience with foreknowledge of some terrible event that is about to unfold on unsuspecting characters. We …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:43AM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Seat of Our Pants" - 11/13/25 by Howard Miller

The Seat of our Pants, opening tonight at the Public Theater and blessed with a first-rate cast of theatre stalwarts, is a new version of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Skin of…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:43AM
Thursday, November 13, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Queens" - 11/13/25 by Marc Miller

Isn't it annoying when a pair of characters onstage start jabbering back and forth in a language you don't know, furthering the plot in ways you'll never understand? It happens at least twic…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:37PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Archduke" - 11/12/25 by Marc Miller

Sandwiches. A strange commodity on which to hang a plotline, but they're a persistent leitmotif in Archduke, Rajiv Joseph's speculative history of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Jos…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:40AM
Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Baker's Wife" - 11/11/25 by James Wilson

You'd never know that things are amiss in the tiny village of Concorde in Provence, France. The denizens cheerfully toss metal balls in games of pétanque, rehash old grudges, and enjoy leis…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:10AM
Monday, November 10, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Richard II" - 11/10/25 by Howard Miller

Shakespeare's play Richard II is not a comedy. Nor was it meant to be. Yet you wouldn't know it judging from the random outbursts of titters and even the occasional guffaw from among audienc…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:10PM

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "The Queen of Versailles" 11/9/25 by Howard Miller

How can you sell your soul if you don't have one to begin with? That's just one of the many confounding aspects inherent in the flavorless new musical The Queen of Versailles that opened ton…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:04AM
Sunday, November 9, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire" - 11/9/25 by James Wilson

Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry" describes an instructor's efforts to encourage students to engage with a poem both intuitively and emotionally. Instead, "All they want to do," the s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:24PM
Friday, November 7, 2025

Minneapolis/St. Paul - "Purple Rain" - 11/7/25 by Arthur Dorman

When the announcement was made a few years ago that the Prince movie Purple Rain would be made into a stage musical, reactions ranged from euphoria among diehard Prince fans to boos from tho…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:02PM
Friday, October 31, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Bat Boy" - 10/31/25 by Howard Miller

Bat Boy: The Musical, with a story and book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe (who, along with Kevin Murphy, also did the honors for Heathers: The …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:17PM
Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Liberation" 10/28/25 by James Wilson

Gloria Steinem famously stated, "We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach." As an academic who often leads courses in gender and sexuality s…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:00AM
Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Talkin' Broadway - "All About Sweeney: New Book Chronicles the Life of Musical Theatre's Demon Barber" - 10/27/25 by Mark Dundas Wood

In 2021, Rick Pender finished work on The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, a hefty labor of love that weighed in at 652 pages. Published by Rowman & Littlefield, it included detailed informati…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:23PM
Monday, October 20, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Oh Happy Day!" - 10/20/25 by Marc Miller

You have to suspend a lot of disbelief–really, shouldn't the phrase be "suspend belief?"–to get the most out of Oh Happy Day!, Jordan E. Cooper's uncategorizable comedy-drama-musical-spe…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:15PM
Friday, October 17, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Ragtime" 10/16/25 by Howard Miller

Wow! That's the interjection of the day and the singular way to describe the powerful and emotionally stirring revival of Ragtime that opened tonight at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Thea…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:12AM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Oratorio for Living Things" - 10/16/25 by James Wilson

Missing the Ars Nova production of Oratorio for Living Things is one of my great theatre disappointments of the last several years. The production had performed only twice in 2019 before bei…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:12AM
Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Let's Love!" - 10/15/25 by Kimberly Ramírez

Though it tries hard to shock and amuse, Let's Love! never earns its exclamation point. Ethan Coen's dramatic experiment attempts a triptych on the theme of love but delivers vulgar irritati…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:01PM
Monday, October 13, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God" - 10/13/25 by Marc Miller

Mellow jazz is playing, and the Playwrights Horizons stage is plainly dressed: Emmie Finckel's set design consists of two folding chairs, a small table in between with two coffee cups and a …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:28PM
Thursday, October 9, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Crooked Cross" - 10/9/25 by James Wilson

1937 was a very good year for new shows in the West End. In addition to the smash hit Me and My Girl, London also saw premieres of Ivor Novello's The Crest of the Wave, the frothy musical co…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:07PM
Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Caroline" - 9/30/25 by Kimberly Ramírez

MCC Theater's world premiere of Caroline, written by Preston Max Allen and directed with measured intensity by David Cromer, may at first seem deceptively simple, but it gradually reveals a …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:15PM
Monday, September 29, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Punch" 9/29/25 by Howard Miller

Accept if you can, even if you can't forgive. Forgive if you can, even if you can't forget. That's the idea behind restorative justice, a systematic supportive approach to seeking healing fo…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:46PM
Sunday, September 28, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Murdoch: The Final Interview" - 9/28/25 by Marc Miller

So, Eric Krebs, who runs a theater on far West 42nd, treks to work one morning and is greeted by a large manila envelope resting by the door. Intrigued, he opens it to find a script and a no…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:10PM
Thursday, September 25, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Other Americans" - 9/25/25 by Howard Miller

As a playwright and performer, John Leguizamo is best known for offering up sharp-eyed and thought-provoking takes on Latino identity and culture. Given the current state of affairs with res…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:17PM
Friday, September 19, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Saturday Church" - 9/19/25 by Marc Miller

The 2017 indie film Saturday Church is a musical, of sorts. But all of the songs are happening in the head of its protagonist, Ulysses, a troubled Black teen in some vaguely defined New York…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:52PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "This Is Not a Drill" - 9/19/25 by Marc Miller

On the morning of January 13, 2018, Hawaii's Emergency Alert System issued a warning of an impending ballistic missile attack, widely believed to have emanated from North Korea and plunging …

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:37AM
Thursday, September 18, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Mexodus" - 9/18/25 by James Wilson

At the top of Mexodus, the new, two-person musical produced by Audible Theater, audiences are given permission–indeed, are encouraged–to "yell, dance, and shake your asses." Typically, I…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:42PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "The Essentialisn't" - 9/18/25 by Michael Dale

"Black women, you know how you have had to show and prove. Your authenticity has been challenged if you don't hit that Jennifer Holliday or Jennifer Hudson note just right. That Aretha note.…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:39PM
Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Talkin' Broadway on Broadway Review: "Art" 9/16/25 by Howard Miller

When Yasmina Reza's Art kicked off its initial Broadway run in 1998, New York Times critic Ben Brantley gave it a genial pat on the head, calling it a "sleek, pleasant comedy of manners." No…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:01AM
Thursday, September 11, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Sound Advice: "Floyd Collins," "Dead Outlaw," "Winchell" - 9/11/25 by Rob Lester

Floyd Collins and Elmer McCurdy were true-life figures (and, in the latter case, a true-death figure), born several years apart and both dying in their 30s. They captured public attention in…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:02PM
Thursday, August 21, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Twelfth Night" - 8/21/25 by Howard Miller

Unbridled joy has returned to a special corner of Manhattan with the unveiling and reopening of the newly refurbished Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where the Public Theater is serving u…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:28PM

Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - "Road Kills" - 8/21/25 by Michael Dale

"The Midwestern urge to keep a friendly conversation going by any means possible is a powerful motivator," explains Wisconsin-raised New York playwright Sophie McIntosh in the press script p…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:50AM
Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Talkin' Broadway Sound Advice: Songs of Peter Foley, George M. Cohan Tonight!, and Orchestrator Emulator - 8/19/25 by Rob Lester

Let's begin with a recording of a compelling concert presenting low profile/high quality songs of Peter Foley. Moving from Peter to Peterson, it was Jon J Peterson who portrayed a Broadway a…

SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:39AM

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