460 stories by "Jacob Malizio"
COME ONE, COME ALL " The Jellicle Cats are having a BALL. Based on T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber's worldwide phenomenon CATS is reimagined in a produc…
If you're lucky enough to have a knowledgeable and prepared audience around you, the atmosphere at the ball crackles " literally. Those sitting close, at the set's little bar tables, egg on …
It works. It works because the ballroom setting lends weight and specificity to a narrative world that previously felt airless, abstract to the point of nothingness. It works because Webber'…
This is a culture steeped in tradition and history. The chosen family is its bedrock, and elders hold a place of high esteem, though there are too few. This is not the story about queer peop…
What wasn't preordained is just how beautifully executed the entire venture turns out to be. You'd have to be a real stickler for tradition to begrudge Jellicle Ball its innovations, and one…
Broadway is burning " and that's something to celebrate. "Cats: The Jellicle Ball," a refreshed version of the downtown 2024 hit, blazes anew, having made the trek uptown with its extravagan…
The production makes a thrilling number of choices to update and revise and comment on the bizarre musical entity borne of a posh Brit's love of T.S. Eliot's poems for children, but it retai…
Through it all, there's a euphoric energy pulsing through the theater, manifesting in several moving ways. Quiet weeping, dropped jaws, fervent applause and the occasional attendee literally…
"Cats: The Jellicle Ball" is overflowing with so much unbridled joy that you may sometimes catch yourself shedding tears, for no other reason than you simply don't want it to end. It's a tra…
Without fail, the best Broadway shows are the off-the-charts inventive ones that could not have possibly originated anywhere else but the five boroughs. This season, that's "The Jellicle Bal…
A blind date spirals spectacularly off the rails in Becky Shaw, the razor-sharp dark comedy from two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Gina Gionfriddo. When it made its New York premiere Off-Broa…
These characters aren't likable at all. Yet they do the job so well, we don't need them to be.
The post Funny vs. Likable? Funny Wins. appeared first on Did They Like It?.
Second Stage, which produced its off-Broadway premiere, has brought it back for a Broadway premiere that's damn near perfect. Directed by Trip Cullman with a dynamism that perfectly matches …
It's Gina Gionfriddo's iron guts that make an incisive, observant, scathing, and hilarious play like Becky Shaw possible.
The post Broadway Finally Meets Becky Shaw, and She's Got a Sharp To…
Seventeen years after being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Gina Gionfriddo's dark, sometimes giddy comedy Becky Shaw finally arrives on Broadway, and noting that it was worth the wait is an…
Ehrenreich delivers an astonishing Broadway debut. He's a raging, roiling alpha " a successful money manager who wields words like a battering ram, never happier than when he's engaged in fe…
And in a moment when so much theater puts on kid gloves to handle its material and its audience, it can be bracing to have a play walk right up and slap you across the face. That's how Trip …
That the show can't sustain this charge through its erratic second act is more a book issue than performance. The aftermath of Becky and Max's (unseen) date are downstream conversations betw…
Ehrenreich, a major talent who's been dealt an unfair hand by Hollywood, is given the meatiest material of the cast. But the unique charm and liveliness he brings to it is vital. His idiosyn…
On the merit of its script alone, Becky Shaw is a rousing success. Not only is it deliciously, darkly hilarious, it's excitingly clever in its simplicity. Arguably, not much happens onstage,…
Step back into the sweltering summer of 1972, New York City"a time when the Vietnam War looms large, Watergate headlines flood the news, and one man's desperate act captivates the nation. Em…
But the comic bits and the raucous sound design, which includes deafening helicopter propellers and blaring '70s pop hits, belong to a more cartoonish entertainment. While Bernthal is chewin…
Oddly, it is during that act one closer, when Sonny rallies the audience into chanting the film's famous "Attica!" cry, that the production feels most itself. It's essentially Disney for Dad…
Guirgis and director Rupert Goold have certainly leaned hard into the funny aspects of the plot"too hard. Now, this ultimately tragic story of two desperate bunglers comes off as a sitcom wi…
As a piece of stagecraft, "Dog Day Afternoon," directed by Rupert Goold, does a canny job of translating the film's logistics, keeping the flow of action taut and invigorating. But it also d…
