272 stories by "Christopher Caggiano"
In the arts-criticism course that I teach at the Boston Conservatory, one of the DVDs that I've had my students watch almost every semester is Pippin. This isn't because I necessarily like t…
When I was in eighth grade, our class produced a little mimeographed yearbook, of which I was the editor. The yearbook contained individual student profiles, essays about class trips, a clas…
Dear Reader: With this post, I've finally caught up on my blogging backlog. I've still got some posts in the pipeline (including my Best and Worst Musicals of 2012, as well as my review of P…
[Dear reader: The musical Giant played an extended run at the Public Theater from October 26th to December 16th, 2012. I saw the show twice, once in previews and once after it opened. Then I…
During the build-up to Christmas 2012, there was something very actively on the minds of theater fans across the country and around the world, and it didn't have anything to do with the usua…
I love blogging. I love teaching. But they do tend to conflict with each other. The two busiest times of the year for New York theater tend to be right before Christmas and then right before…
Shortly after I saw the new musical Scandalous on Broadway, I received an email asking me to "spread the word" about the show. Nothing strange there, I suppose. But the show was still in pre…
I guess we're running out of musicals worth reviving. That's what has been going through my mind recently as I've contemplated recent announcements of upcoming musical revivals on Broadway. …
I was saving this in case Romney won, but the point is thankfully moot. Four more years.
Here's my latest review for TheaterMania: Something's Afoot at the venerable Goodspeed Opera House. Did I find the comic murder mystery either funny or mysterious? Click here to find out.
Gee, you folks really like lists, don't you? Well, I'm more than happy to comply. I recently posted this semester's list of the "most overrated" musicals, as selected and defended by my curr…
Whodunnit? Who cares?
That's the impression I was left with at the end of
Something's Afoot a a trifle of a musical murder mystery by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach, current…
"Oh, my God. That show is soooooo overrated." One thing that musical-theater majors are never short on is attitude. And when I started teaching musical-theater history at the Boston Conserva…
Dear Reader: As part of my course on the history of msuical theater at the Boston Conservatory, I'm currently directing a staged reading of the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee.…
I love the fall. I've always been the type of nerd who couldn't wait to get back to school. And now that I teach full-time, that nerd-liness continues unabated. Of course, one of the things …
Some bad musicals make you angry. Ghost was one, mostly due to the arrogance of the pop-music dilettantes who blithely thought that, just because they could write hit songs, they could autom…
Like many of you, I'm sure, I was skeptical when I first heard that Bring It On: The Musical was to become a musical. "Great," I thought. "Another movie-to-musical franchise show." And we're…
Because I spent so much time at NYMF this summer, I didn't really have plans to take in any shows at the NY Fringe Festival. I think it's partly because I'm kind of over the four-hour bus ri…
The idea of setting by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods in the actual woods may seem, at first, to be a stroke of genius, or at the very least an obvious but cool idea. It …
One of the great things about getting down to New York City as frequently as I do now is having the opportunity to catch revivals of obscure shows at some of the Off-Broadway non-profit thea…
Here's the fourth and final installment of my capsule reviews from this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first, second, and third installments. My since…
Here's my third of what will be four installments of capsule reviews from the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here for my first and second installments. One of the break…
Here's the latest of my reviews for TheaterMania. This time it's a production of Carousel at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. There are those who think, in terms of the innova…
Goodspeed serves up a genuinely thrilling production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's classic musical.
My latest review for TheaterMania. It's of a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons out at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, Mass. The last time I saw this play, it was the 2008 Broadway re…
