311 stories by "Broadway & Me"
The fall preview lists started streaming out soon after this summer's blue moon appeared at the end of July. The New York Times' comprehensive list of this season's new shows went online Thu…
No one is a bigger fan of Signature Theatre than I am. For 25 years now, the company has centered its seasons around the work of one playwright, providing theater lovers the rare chance to t…
It's been a glorious summer. The weather, for the most part, has lingered in a sweet spot where it's warm enough to sit outside late into the night (in my case, on my terrace) and yet not so…
Are we humans the creation of a Supreme Being or just the product of genetic mutation? Should a benefit for the larger good supersede the rights of a small group? Is race just a construct or…
Quentin Maré and Lilli Stein in SchooledThe New York International Fringe Festival prides itself on being eclectic. Which means you never know what you're going to get when you attend one o…
OShakespeare scholars say that Cymbeline is one of the Bard's problem plays. That's in part because it's perversely named after a secondary character and is classified as a tragedy…
Strong, successful women don't fare well in most contemporary plays. As I've complained before, something always seems to come along to cut them down to size. And so at the risk of violating…
There'll be no regular post until Saturday since I'm on my summer schedule but I'm writing now to let you know that I've set up a special Flipboard magazine in honor of Hamilton's official a…
The dog days of summer are really here. Big show openings are slowing down and I am too. Which suggests it's time for a break. So while I'll still see a few things here and there, I'll only …
The title of the new play Three Days to See comes from a 1933 magazine article in which Helen Keller, blind and deaf since she was a toddler, wrote about what she'd do if given just 72 hours…
Whatever happens to Amazing Grace, the first musical to open in this new Broadway season, Christopher Smith, the main creative force behind the show, should consider himself a winner. For ag…
Summer was once a slow time in the New York theater world but the number of summer theater festivals has been rising so fast that even the most avid theatergoer would have a hard time keepin…
Right before my husband K and I went to see the Encores! Off-Center production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party, I re-read the 1928 narrative poem on which the musical is based. I found it t…
You can't say that Of Good Stock doesn't aim to please. It's set in a spacious Cape Cod vacation home that's been appealingly designed and lit by Santo Loquasto and Peter Kaczorowski. Its ch…
Shows for Days is Douglas Carter Beane's paean to the power of theater to change lives. But theater is most powerful when a playwright transforms his personal experience into a story that te…
Having never seen Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, I approached the production that's now playing at The Flea Theater through July 18 in the same way that many people approach a bowl of Brussels…
Some people claim Memorial Day as the beginning of summer. Other say the season starts when the school year ends and people begin to skip out from work early on Fridays. Sticklers insist tha…
June is the Indian summer of the New York theater season. Falling between the heat of the shows rushing out to qualify for the Tonys and other awards and the relative freeze that settles ove…
The gay best friend has become a stock character in contemporary plays. From The Heidi Chronicles to If/Then, he's the sidekick there with a shoulder to cry on, a snappy wisecrack to ad…
In some ways, Gloria, which has been extended at the Vineyard Theatre through July 18, isn't remarkable at all. Like a growing number of books, movies, magazine articles and even other plays…
Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus was "The Exorcist" of its day. Sixteenth century theatergoers were so horrified by Marlowe's retelling of the tragic story of the ambitious scholar who s…
Office Politics is the kind of show that I rarely see. Its playwright, director and actors are all new to me. Its entire run, including previews, is just two weeks (it closes this weekend). …
Anne Washburn clearly loves the theater. Her 2013 play Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play was an ode to theater's power to crate order out of chaos. I'll confess that I was lukewarm about it (c…
A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the number of non-believers"atheists, agnostics, people who check the "none of the above" box when asked about their religious affiliatio…
Once again, Tony time has rolled around before I've had a chance to sound off on all the shows that are in contention for the big prizes. And as anyone who pays even the slightest attention …
