5,760 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
For every well-known showcase of Black Broadway " "Porgy and Bess," 1935; "A Raisin in the Sun" 1959; last year's "Purpose," winner of both the Tony and Pulitzer " there are little-remembere…
It took until the twenty-first century for the extraordinary story of Hans Litten to reach the public at large. In 1930, stormtroopers attacked the patrons of Eden Dance Palace in Berlin. Th…
Anna Fierling, the spokesperson for the National Rifle Association who tells her story in "And Her Children," is a fictional character clearly inspired by former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch…
Tickets are now on sale for Off-Broadway Week, where you can buy two tickets for the price of one for 26 shows, for performances from February 16 through March 12. Sixteen of the shows are n…
In a year when one of the ten Oscar nominees for best picture ends with scenes from one of the greatest plays ever written, another is about a theater actress and her film director father, a…
"Buena Vista Social Club" won the Grammy for best musical theater album, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande won for Best Pop Duo/Group Performances. Nazareth Hassan's "Bowl EP," Carmelita…
Buena Vista Social Club has won the 2026 best musical theater album at the 68th annual Grammy Awards, beating out five other nominees, all current or recent Broadway shows (the fourth con…
Below is a calendar of selected theater opening* this month in New York. None are on Broadway, but there is enough happening Off and Off-Off Broadway to see a new show nearly every night in …
The 69th annual Obie Awards, honoring achievement Off and Off Off Broadway, were announced tonight. Below is the complete list, which includes lifetime achievement awards to Carmelita Tro…
How well were you paying attention to the New York theater news, views and reviews in the month of January. Take this ten-question quiz and find out. Loading…
The war on culture has played out in many ways over the past year, as chronicled by the bloggers/substackers,podcasters to whom I link below. There's famously the mess at the Kennedy Center,…
"Masquerade"Â Â has just been extended through July 5 " proof, if you needed it, that the immersive version of "The Phantom of the Opera" has caught on.This wasn't a given when it took o…
Anne Gridley's favorite neurologist has told her that people can only concentrate on walking for about eight seconds; human beings are designed to walk without thinking about it.  But …
A record-breaking 11.4 inches of snow reportedly fell on Central Park on Sunday, and the shows went on " mostly: Ten of the 31 shows currently running on Broadway did cancel. A storm warning…
"I don't want to be an ambassador for Asians, but that's part of the job when you're in a country, and you work in an industry, that continues to see us as perpetual foreigners, incapable of…
"Data" speaks to the precise moment in which we are living to an astonishing degree, and not just because of our concerns about AI. It begins and ends with characters playing ping pong! It f…
A massive snow storm is expected to reach New York City Sunday morning, January 25, 2026 leading New Yorkers to ask one question " how bad will it get? " and New York theatergoers…
Below are two videos of LJ Benet, who will be making his Broadway debut as Michael Emerson in the forthcoming musical "The Lost Boys," explaining the show, and singing one of the numbers fro…
Ed Schmidt, a playwright and performer who should be better known, stood behind a table with twenty-seven objects on it, which he said were found in a box belonging to a man named Edward O'C…
"Sinners" received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, followed by "One Battle After Another" with 13. Several theater-related films received nods, including nine (including Best Picture…
When this is over…things will have changed forever,"Â Â Ian McKellen told me near the start of "An Ark," staring directly at me. I didn't roll my eyes. At first that was only because m…
Last week was full of theater news, and politics. Hell's Kitchen is closing; Darren Criss is leaving; Adrien Brody is making his Broadway debut. Dylvan Mulvaney is joining the cast of "Six."…
The day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr delivered what is usually called the "I've Been To The Mountaintop" speech because of its stirring final moments. But i…
The unnamed central character in Katie Kitamura's acclaimed novel "Audition" (Riverhead Books, 197 pages) is a middle-aged actress of some repute and of great perception, who offers some ric…
Why do the four opera singers repeat "This is Mad'line X" forty-one times? What's with the big ducks and why are they playing golf? Is the ensemble a group of courtiers or a deck of card…
