969 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Warner Bros.) Andrew Lloyd Webber found his greatest commercial success in the era of the British pop-opera blockbusters, so it's easy to forget that he fir…
The year 1912 was a bad one for certain trans-Atlantic ship passengers"and, based on what happens in the first scene of Stanley Houghton's 1912 play Hindle Wakes, currently on view in a rare…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) Kid Victory premiered at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA in 2015, and played a limited run Off Broadway at the Vineyard in 2017.…
It's demonstrably true that people who think they're supposed to hate each other due to cultural, racial, religious, ideological, and other differences amplified by tribalism can actually li…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Ghostlight) Based on the real-life rivalry between cosmetics titans Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, with a score by Grey Gardens team Michael Korie and S…
Director Julie Taymor has stated that a Chinese puzzle box was the metaphor that came to her mind as the jumping-off point for her new Broadway production of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Hollywood Records) One wants to applaud In Transit, Broadway's first a cappella musical, about the semi-connected lives of a small group of New Yorkers played o…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Rhino Warner Classics) The 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet film Amélie caused a major resurgence in American audiences' interest in French cinema and at least briefly …
Original Off-Broadway Cast (PS Classics, 2011) Bernard Shaw's plays do not easily adapt into musicals; My Fair Lady took Lerner and Loewe two tries, and only worked when they opened up the a…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) A tragic true-life story inspired this musical about The UpStairs Lounge, a popular gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans that was …
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Broadway Records) In Bandstand, composer Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor, who co-wrote the book and lyrics with Oberacker, created an original musical set i…
 Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (The Musical Company) Alhough they've been a songwriting team for years, husband and wife David Hein and Irene Sankoff made their Broadway debut with the mus…
Original Broadway Cast, 2016 (Ghostlight) Steve Martin is a man of many talents: actor, playwright, stand up comic, novelist. And here, with Edie Brickell as his collaborator, he adds musica…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Masterworks Broadway/Broadway Records) After the immense artistic and commercial success of Matilda, Tim Minchin turned his efforts next towards adapting the be…
Original Broadway Cast, 2017 (Ghostlight) In 1989, Chazz Palminteri told the story of his youth in the Bronx as a one-man play, chronicling his conflicting loyalties to his working-class fat…
Film Soundtrack, 2007 (Columbia) This is the deservedly popular soundtrack album of a gorgeously bittersweet indie film, set in Dublin, about the brief but intense romance and songwriting pa…
Off Broadway Cast, 2016 (Jay Records) Here is a major revisal of the 1970 musical The Rothschilds, cut down to one-act and including several previously unheard Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick son…
When it was first announced that there would be a show celebrating the Broadway career of Harold Prince, some people expressed the opinion that this did not sound like a good idea.
In Michael Moore's Broadway show, he makes the powerful point that a single person can effect tremendous change for the better in our world, and he gives several examples. . . .
Have you seen the electoral map of New York City for the 2016 Presidential election?
Original Broadway Cast, 2016 (Ghostlight) In 1939, Irving Berlin imagined a themed revue set at an inn that opens only on holidays, with songs highlighting seasonal celebrations. It didn't m…
Premiere Recording, 2006 (Ghostlight) Librettists David Ives and Paul Blake based this Irving Berlin songfest on the 1954 film of the same title, which starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as …
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Ghostlight)  Weddings have inspired musicals since at least as early as the 1920s (often with multiple couples overcoming ridiculous obstacles before tying …
Dark comedies don't get much darker that Scott McPherson's funny, sad, beautiful play Marvin's Room, about a caregiver who contracts a serious illness herself.
The dystopia depicted by George Orwell (real name, Eric Arthur Blair) in his chillingly prescient novel 1984 has not come true in all of its nightmarish particulars, at least not to the…
