5,788 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
As the season has revved up, and a new show is opening nearly every day, they tend to run together, in more ways than one. This is obvious of course in "Forbidden Broadway," which depends on…
The confrontation in "The Ask" involves no guns, nor even any shouting. It's not a confrontation at all, by any typical definition these days in either theater or politics. Greta, a long-tim…
Pedro Antonio Garcia, who is a criminal defense attorney as well as a playwright, explains in a program note that he wrote "The Witness Room" in "an attempt to explore moral issues within th…
Alvin Ailey was a New York actor " performing, yes, in Broadway musicals with Lena Horne and Pearl Bailey starting in 1954, the very year he arrived in New York at the age of 23. But he wasÃ…
The parodies in this latest edition of Forbidden Broadway range from hilarious (Cabaret) to clever but not especially funny (Back to the Future) to lame (Wicked.) In other words, it's hit an…
It's been compared to a psychedelic trip, and the latest video game, but Basil Twist's dazzling hour-long abstract journey through mind-bending optical illusions and mythical beasts  "…
In "Our Class," the classmates whom we have watched grow up together in their small village in Poland " five Jews and five Catholics " attend a wedding together right before intermission. In…
Alex Edelman was a winner at the 76th annual Emmys for "Just for Us," in Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, which this year could be considered the 2024 Emmy Awards theater cat…
Among the dozens of categories at the 76th Emmy Awards, which will be broadcast tonight live on ABC, one is virtually a theater award. True, it's virtually, not officially. Three of the n…
Counting and Cracking" tells the story of four generations of one family from Sri Lanka "  once called Ceylon, an island nation off the coast of India " whose later generations were fo…
"The Roommate" is like a female "The Odd Couple" that's more odd and less funny, and worth a Broadway production for two reasons: Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone. The show tacitly acknowledges t…
The opening of the new performing arts center at the World Trade Center site a year ago has done what the rebuilders had hoped it would, at least for me. On the twenty-third anniversary o…
A dozen cartoonists offer their take on the Presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, which is happening tonight for 90 minutes starting at …
James Earl Jones, the shy kid from Arkabutla, Mississippi who grew up to be an commanding actor of the stage and screen for some seven decades " so admired as a stage actor that he had a Bro…
Everything these days is debatable. Politics of course: Tuesday night the Presidential candidates are debating. But theater too. The Broadway Fall season begins two days after the debate, wi…
About halfway through "Life and Trust,"  a mammoth site-specific show that is set spectacularly in the heart of the Financial District,  I was rewarded with the immersive theate…
As the Fall season begins, pick your top three choices out of the 16 shows that are currently scheduled to open  on Broadway in September, October, November and December 2024. The show…
There was a time when Billy Rose " Broadway producer, impresario, lyricist, columnist, and all-around theatrical showman " was a leading figure on Broadway. Born 125 years ago on September 6…
Audra McDonald as Madame Rose; Robert Downey Jr's Broadway debut; Elton John's first new Broadway musical in a dozen years. It's hard to resist the lure of the big musicals and starry debuts…
Broadway Week, a two-for-one ticket discount to current Broadway shows, begins today, the start of a busy month and a starry season.  In September alone, three Broadway shows are op…
Labor Day means something different to Colm Summers, the new artistic director of  Working Theater, a New York company about to launch its fortieth season as (in the words of their mis…
Below is a selection of theater opening* in New York in September, Including three new plays on Broadway " featuring the Broadway debut of Robert Downey Jr., and the return of Patti LuPon…
How well were you following the theater in August? By theater this month, that includes political theater, as well as the past and future on stage, not just the present. Answer the quiz belo…
 Following up on the recent Broadway revival of his Tony and Pulitzer-winning play "Doubt" and his new Off-Broadway hit "Brooklyn Laundry," John Patrick Shanley has written another new p…
It would be silly to dismiss "Hurricane Season" just because the production has no curtain call, and the cast is made to work during the entire intermission, performing a kind of robotic con…
