74 stories by "Linda Winer"
The Lincoln Center Festival has never made sense, not really. Why would New York, which already is a culture festival, need another one in the summer when, supposedly, everyone who claims to…
Anyone smitten with the idea of Shakespeare comedies as role models for idealized love doesn't know "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well That Ends Well," the disturbing and twisted works be…
For the past two summers, director Daniel Sullivan has worked magic with the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park -- first with an enchanting "Twelfth Night" starring Anne Hathaway,…
So, is it better? Yes, the story makes sense now and, so far, no one has fallen down.
"The Book of Mormon," the dirty-talking hit musical comedy, cleaned up big time at the 65th annual Tony Awards Sunday night at the Beacon Theatre, winning nine major awards including best mu…
Two other major Off-Broadway companies, Playwrights Horizons and the New York Theatre Workshop, have collaborated on a very different moment in American cultural history. "The Shaggs: Philos…
Tennessee Williams wrote a prison short story called "One Arm" in the '40s, adapted it into a screenplay in 1967 and spent a chunk of his disappointed late life trying to get it filmed.
I don't care who wins many of the Tony Awards Sunday night, but don't get the wrong idea. Indifference has nothing to do with it.
Although most of the world knows Ingmar Bergman through his movies, New Yorkers had the privilege of sharing another visceral part of his vision through regular visits to Brooklyn Academy of…
In a way, it feels right to close the Signature Theatre Company's 14 invaluable years at its space on the far west side of 42nd Street with "The Illusion," Tony Kushner's free adaptation of …
If things had gone as planned, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" would now be tallying its potential wins on next Sunday's Tony Awards broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. If the mega-musical had opened…
There was a time, not so long ago, when the engaging, jazzy, high-gloss melodies of Cy Coleman kept Broadway happy in the trough between the musical-theater's golden age and the onslaught of…
This paper ran a letter from a reader recently that took me by surprise.
Colleagues are still teasing me about the expression on my face during "War Horse."
Two years ago, Lynn Nottage won a Pulitzer Prize for "Ruined," a devastating fiction based on horrible stories of sexual mutilation as warfare in Congo.
In tone, of course, "By the Way, Mee…
Don't go to "A Minister's Wife" expecting "My Fair Lady." Although the new musical at Lincoln Center Theater is an adaptation of a play by George Bernard Shaw, this one is far less a Broadwa…
The Tony nominations must have been especially hard to pick this year. The season was busy, varied and filled with many plays and a few musicals I'd tell my best friends to see. (Now you kno…
Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-winning master of the form-busting, socially subversive, gorgeously written epic, was prescient about the collapse of the Soviet Union in "Angels in America" and a…
It feels ungrateful to dismiss any new musical that offers Donna Murphy a chance to play a Nazi-oppressed Polish star of the Yiddish theater and an old Jewish grandmother in New York, to be …
If asked two months ago to assess the impact of the 2010-11 Broadway season, my answer would have amounted to Al Pacino and Lily Rabe in "The Merchant of Venice," Vanessa Redgrave and James …
The obvious purpose of reviving "Born Yesterday" is to make Nina Arianda, Off-Broadway's blazing new comet, into a great big Broadway star. A collateral benefit is to lure back Robert Sean L…
News that the guys from "Hairspray" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" were making a musical based on the movie "Catch Me If You Can" raised a couple of intriguing -- also daunting -- questions. …
He sings. He dances. Yes, the British mega-star formerly known as young Harry Potter even shaves, proudly, while delivering that irresistibly all-American self-love ballad, "I Believe in You…
Lanford Wilson wrote with gentleness and fury about everyday people, often facing the ends of their eras. His death at 73 Wednesday, from complications of pneumonia, feels like the end of on…
