911 stories by "Michael Riedel"
Happy New Year!
Now let's attack!
It's only January, but the 2013 booby prize for silliest bit of direction on Broadway goes to " drum roll, please! " Rob Ashford, for adding "Ghost Skipper"…
Ever since his Tony-winning performance in the hit revival of August Wilson's "Fences" two years ago, Denzel Washington has been on the hunt for another Broadway play.
He and Kenny Leon, who…
Ever since he starred on Broadway in "The Boy From Oz," Hugh Jackman has been the musical theater's most sought-after leading man. Now he's taken his act to the big screen, starring as Jean …
Five hundred million dollars. That's the magic number.
If the movie version of "Les Misérables" pulls in $500 million or more at the box office, producer Cameron Mackintosh and Universal Pi…
If you've got $40 million lying around, you, too, can be a Broadway theater owner.
That, I'm told, is the asking price for the Foxwoods Theatre, that white elephant on West 42nd Street, wher…
When the gorgeous Heather Headley entered the ballroom of 8 Northumberland Avenue, a swanky London nightclub, Nick Scandalios, vice president of the powerful Nederlander Organization, fell t…
It's a jolly holiday all over the city " except on Broadway, where many of the theaters are stuffed with coal.What a dreadful fall theater season!The flops are piling up faster than wrapping…
At last Broadway has a hit!
The only trouble is, you won't find it on the stage.
The theater world's buzzing about Cameron Mackintosh's "Les Misérables" movie. Not since "Chicago" has a fil…
Broadway's twinkling lights lost some of their sparkle this week with the death of Marty Richards, one of the street's last, larger-than-life impresarios.
Eccentric doesn't begin to describe…
The late, great Peter Stone, who wrote such shows as "1776" and "The Will Rogers Follies," loved a good anecdote, and one of his favorites was about the 1983 Tony Awards.
Stone had been nomi…
The Mercer Williams House is to Savannah what Broadway is to New York " one of the city's premier tourist attractions.
For it was in this house, one night in 1981, that an antiques dealer na…
With the opening last night of the Roundabout's revival of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," it seems fitting to recall a wonderful actor who was once a staple of the New York stage " and whose …
'Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane fancies himself a crooner of the old school " a Frank Sinatra wannabe.
And so the New York Pops was thrilled when MacFarlane, who's hosting next year's O…
Hurricane Sandy can come in handy when your star's not dandy.
The producers of "Glengarry Glen Ross" announced this week that they're pushing back opening night nearly a month because Sandy …
After a couple of false starts " and a dilettante producer who couldn't get his act together " it looks as if "Prince of Broadway" is, happily, on its way.
A retrospective of the career of t…
The show must go on.
Unless Sandy comes to town.
Broadway, which grosses more than $1 billion a year and pumps about $30 million a week into New York's economy, went dark Monday and Tuesday …
TONY-winning playwright John Logan is at work on a onewoman show about Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers, who died last year.
And he wants Bette Midler to play her.
Midler hasn't done a Broa…
Al Pacino is Broadway's $6 million man.
At a time when every producer is looking for money, when the desperate, pathetic producers of "Rebecca" have sold their souls to the devil to bankrol…
The "Rebecca" scandal has made me nostalgic for the Broadway of the '70s and '80s, when the street had a colorful selection of rascals and rogues and ticky-tacky productions that closed over…
The "Rebecca" scandal has made me nostalgic for the Broadway of the '70s and '80s, when the street had a colorful selection of rascals and rogues and ticky-tacky productions that closed over…
When news of the "Rebecca" scandal first broke, the sense around Broadway was that lead producer Ben Sprecher was either a criminal mastermind or a fool.
Well, the verdict's in, and it's tim…
You gotta love that Arthur Laurents. Broadway's King Cobra is still spewing venom " from the grave!His posthumous memoir, "The Rest of the Story," has just been published by Applause Books, …
The cast of "Finding Neverland," Harvey Weinstein's lavish new musical that's trying out in Leicester, England, looked out into the audience during the first preview and saw a man hunched ov…
Manderley has been torched.
"Rebecca," the foundering $12 million Broadway musical slated to open next month at the Broadhurst, has been cancelled due to lack of financing, theater sources s…
It may be cold comfort, but Ben Sprecher, the beleaguered lead producer of "Rebecca," isn't the only Broadway type out there on the street with his tin cup.
The producers of the upcoming mus…
