Dissent is necessary to democracy, sure. But how much does it cost? That’s the fundamental question posed by Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” — and, in highly dramatic fashion, by the preview I attended of its latest Broadway revival. At that performance, on Thursday, just as the play reached its climax in a […]
Read MoreTag: Theater (Broadway)
Four Years After Covid-19 Shutdown, Are Audiences Back?
It was four years ago — on March 12, 2020 — that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half. The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums […]
Read MoreHow Ingrid Michaelson Made ‘The Notebook’ Into a Musical
The stage manager’s office on the second floor of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater in Times Square is about the size of a half bathroom and has the charm of a utility closet. It’s crowded and overlit, thanks to a high-wattage vanity mirror situated near a 1970s-era mini sink. Ingrid Michaelson surveyed the room where we […]
Read MoreReview: In ‘Doubt,’ What He Knows, She Knows, God Knows
Here are a few things Sister Aloysius cannot abide: ballpoint pens, “Frosty the Snowman,” long fingernails like Father Flynn’s, Father Flynn himself. She is what you’d call a forbidding nun, a Sister of Charity without much of it. (Her name means something like “warrior.”) The principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, […]
Read MoreHow Sutton Foster Juggled ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Once Upon a Mattress’
There’s busy, and then there’s bonkers. Sutton Foster, one of musical theater’s most celebrated performers, had already committed to starring in a City Center production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” on top of developing concert shows for Carnegie Hall and Café Carlyle, when she was approached last fall about stepping into the lead female role […]
Read MoreThe Vocal Coach Who Keeps Broadway (and Patti LuPone) in Tune
For 41 years, Joan Lader has rented a slender studio apartment just west of Union Square in Manhattan. Through its door, a narrow entryway leads to a doll-size bathroom and an efficiency kitchen. In the main space, where a visitor might expect to find a bed, Lader has arranged the instruments of her trade — […]
Read MoreChita Rivera Lived to Entertain. Here Are 9 Memorable Performances.
Chita Rivera, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, was known for her extraordinary artistry. Yet, it is hard to comprehend the full scope of her talent because, like so many Broadway performers of her generation, much of her best work was not captured on-screen. Her Anita in the landmark 1957 Broadway production […]
Read MoreChita Rivera, Finding Her Voice
Yes, the legs. Yes, the line. Yes, the look. But also, less commented on, the voice. Chita Rivera, who died on Tuesday at 91, was a Broadway star as long as anyone — and maybe longer. At first, making her way up in the 1950s, from the chorus of “Guys and Dolls” to Anita in […]
Read MoreChita Rivera Found Her Emotional Voice for Shows Like ‘West Side Story’
Yes, the legs. Yes, the line. Yes, the look. But also, less commented on, the voice. Chita Rivera, who died on Tuesday at 91, was a Broadway star as long as anyone — and maybe longer. At first, making her way up in the 1950s, from the chorus of “Guys and Dolls” to Anita in […]
Read MoreHow ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Became Their Passion Project
As origin stories go, the transformation of “Days of Wine and Roses” from a movie into a musical is a straight shot, with a twist. Kelli O’Hara and Adam Guettel had the inkling more than 20 years ago, when she was a Broadway ingénue, working on what became her breakthrough Tony-nominated role in “Light in […]
Read MoreBroadway Shows to See This Winter and Spring
A guide to the shows onstage now and scheduled to arrive this winter and spring, including “Cabaret,” “Hell’s Kitchen” and “The Outsiders.” What to See | Getting Tickets What to See And suddenly, Broadway is packed again. After an autumn that wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with openings, spring is looking absolutely jammed, with 19 productions currently […]
Read MoreThe EGOT Winner Behind Sondheim’s Signature Sound
To understand the role of the Broadway orchestrator, seek out the composer Stephen Sondheim’s piano demo for the song “Losing My Mind” from the musical “Follies” and then compare it to the version on the original cast recording. The demo’s tone is wistful and resigned, with a touch of the whiskey bar about it. In […]
Read MoreVinie Burrows, Acclaimed Actress Who Became an Activist, Dies at 99
Vinie Burrows, a Harlem-born stage actress who made her mark on Broadway in the 1950s, but who grew frustrated by how few choice roles were available for Black women and turned her focus to one-woman shows exploring the legacies of racism and sexism, died on Dec. 25 in Queens. She was 99. Her death, at […]
Read MoreNew Year, New Show: An Original ‘& Juliet’ Star Heads Home
Melanie La Barrie thought she would make it through her last performance of “& Juliet” without succumbing to tears. She was mistaken — though contributing factors include that it was the end of a nine-show holiday week; that she originated the role of Angélique, Juliet’s nurse, in this British jukebox-musical riff on “Romeo and Juliet” […]
Read MoreMbongeni Ngema, Playwright Best Known for ‘Sarafina!,’ Dies at 68
Mbongeni Ngema, a South African playwright, lyricist and director whose stage works, including the Tony-nominated musical “Sarafina!,” challenged and mocked his homeland’s longtime policy of racial apartheid, died on Wednesday in a hospital in Mbizana, South Africa, after a car accident. He was 68. Mr. Ngema was a passenger in a car that was struck […]
Read MoreSondheim Was a Critical Darling. Since His Death, He’s a Hitmaker, Too.
Stephen Sondheim, the great musical theater composer and lyricist, was widely acclaimed as a genius, but during his lifetime he had a bumpy track record at the box office, with many of his shows losing money. In death, however, his shows have flourished. A revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” — which was so unpopular […]
Read MoreFantasia Barrino-Taylor on ‘The Color Purple’ and a Painful Role
In the film, Celie’s self-awareness and confidence builds steadily in the presence of Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), the free-spirited, local celebrity and, later, Celie’s lover and friend. While still suffering at home, Celie comes into her own much sooner than in the original film. She’s comfortable wearing sequins and lipstick, and her bond with […]
Read MoreBranden Jacobs-Jenkins Revisits His ‘Illusion of Suffering’ on Broadway
As with so many family reunion plays, the squabbling Lafayette siblings in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate” dislodge their share of skeletons from the closets of their childhood home, a former plantation in southern Arkansas. But here those secrets, hovering over everything and everyone, may be actual skeletons, and worse. The increasingly unsettling revelations power what The […]
Read MoreBest Theater of 2023
It sounds slightly deranged to credit Anton Chekhov with having written one of the best scenes of sexual and romantic tension in the canon, but he did: in “Uncle Vanya,” whose Sonya and Astrov have a middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête over cheese in the dining room, exchanging confidences, igniting hopes. Her hopes, mainly, because she’s the hardworking […]
Read MoreStephen Sondheim Doesn’t Want to Be Your Savior
Then there are the books — the new biographies and deconstructions and collected interviews. He permeates our cultural oxygen like a latter-day Shakespeare. As with Shakespeare, his words are often applied in ways that their creator most likely never intended. To borrow from W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”: “The words of a dead […]
Read MoreIt Is Not Dead Yet! ‘Spamalot’ Returns to Broadway. (Cue the Coconuts.)
The terrifying knights still say “Ni!” The dead? Well, they are not quite dead yet. And King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (not dawn, not dusk, not late afternoon, but knights) still trot around to the sounds of coconuts banging together. All that is to say: “Spamalot” is back on Broadway, and […]
Read MoreJoanna Merlin, Known for Her Work Both Onstage and Off, Dies at 92
Joanna Merlin, who, after originating the role of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” became a renowned casting director, notably for Stephen Sondheim musicals including “Into the Woods” and “Follies,” died on Oct. 15 at her younger daughter’s home in Los Angeles. She was 92. Her older daughter, […]
Read MoreDanny DeVito, His Daughter and a Lot of Baggage (Onstage)
The first time Lucy DeVito acted onstage — an electrifying turn as an ant in a second-grade play about insects — her father, Danny DeVito, watched proudly from the back of the room. (DeVito, who had already starred in the television series “Taxi” and appeared in films like “Terms of Endearment” and “Throw Momma From […]
Read MoreMichael McGrath, Tony Winner and ‘Spamalot’ Veteran, Dies at 65
Michael McGrath, who won a Tony Award in 2012 for his work in the musical “Nice Work if You Can Get It” and was a regular on Broadway, Off Broadway and regional stages, known especially for comedic roles and for his ability to conjure the likes of Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan and Jackie Gleason, […]
Read MoreDaniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez Star in ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ on Broadway
Groff, who grew up in Lancaster, Pa., said, “I know when I was a kid, theater was like an escape for me, as a closeted teenager. And I think I really relate to when Frank says, ‘Music is my life, without music, I would die.’ Musical theater at that age was, like, lifesaving. And so […]
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