5,790 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
When, near the end of the new movie musical "The Color Purple,"  Fantasia Barrino as Celie sings "I don't need you to love me….I'm beautiful, yes I'm beautiful, and I'm here," …
Below are some of the people from the theater community who died in 2023, listed alphabetically. Click on any photograph (and click the ⌽ button) to read the caption, most of which link…
"Merrily We Roll Along" is the most acclaimed show among theater critics whose lists of top 10 New York theater for 2023 are featured below, and in a poll I took of some 250 theatergoers.…
From the Ukrainian infant-actress breastfed on stage at the beginning of the year, to the four old bums who collapse on top of one another at the end, 2023 has been full of memorable moments…
Below are my favorite stage performances from 2023, listed (more or less) alphabetically " first by 20 outstanding individual human beings (some of them in pairs or trios), then four ensembl…
Below is a list of worthwhile shows I saw in 2023 that are still running, but closing within the next month. Some I liked better than others; a few I loved. I list them according to their…
"Appropriate," the last play to open on Broadway in 2023 and one of the best-acted productions of the year,  tells the story of a dysfunctional family who reunite after the death of th…
I asked Charles Dickens yesterday why  "A Christmas Carol" has been adapted for the stage more often, and on more stages, than any other novella in history. "I believe it is because th…
"Buena Vista Social Club" is electrifying as a concert of fifteen classic Cuban songs performed in Spanish by multitalented singers, dancers and musicians who are easily as vibrant as the ve…
American Fiction" is both a smart, funny satire of the way the white establishment pigeonholes Black artists, and a warmhearted if cool-eyed family drama. No small reason for its appeal …
Below is the schedule of Broadway shows for Christmas Week. Only three shows have performances on Christmas Day, which falls on a Monday this year, the traditional day off for most of Broadw…
It's refreshing to come across a theater book entitled "Crisis" that's not about the crisis in theater, but about every other crisis in the world " a book that makes the case that theater ha…
In the videos below, Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez record the song "Old Friends" and the title song from "Merrily We Roll Along," the Stephen Sondheim/ George Furth mu…
In a glitzy silver pantsuit, Rachel Bloom enters on stage and at once introduces us to her dog, who is sitting in the lap of a handler (or is it Bloom's husband?) in the front row of the Orp…
It wasn't until Jenn Freeman was thirty-three years old and a well-established dancer and choreographer that her therapist diagnosed her as having Autism Spectrum Disorder. "To arrive at a d…
Theater in 2023 was barely surviving but also thriving, depending on which end-of-year assessment you read (see below), but everybody agrees on Stephen Sondheim as the bright spot of the yea…
"How To Dance in Ohio" is a musical adaptation of a 2015 documentary film of the same name about a group of autistic young adults at a counseling center in Columbus, Ohio, who, as part of th…
What did you think was the best of the thirty-five shows opened on Broadway in 2023? Which was the worst? Take the two polls below. Judge the quality of the show as you see it, not how it di…
Watch the video below of the cast of the Broadway musical Harmony celebrating the first night of Hanukkah with a special post-matinee menorah lighting outside the Barrymore…
The ten videos below were the most viewed in 2023 of those that I've posted either on this blog or on my YouTube channel, @NewYorkTheaterme, arranged in order of popularity. I'm not sure …
Choose your favorite Broadway cast recording released in 2023* from among the 12 in the poll below, ordered alphabetically. If I've somehow missed your favorite, fill in the "Other" slot. (I…
"Manahatta" dramatizes two pivotal, and shameful, moments in New York City history, occurring four centuries apart " the Dutch West India Company's "purchase" of the island of Manhattan from…
There is a stunning kind of poetry in the puppetry employed to dramatize Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee's forty-year-old novel about a simple man who makes an epic journey through the physicall…
Jewish theater artists in the three alternate magazine covers: Clockwise from left: Jesse Eisenberg, Matthew Broderick, Sam Gold, Amy Herzog, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer and…
