240 stories by "Michael Schulman"
Oscar winners aren't the best barometers by which to gauge the national mood. Movies and politics work at different speeds, reshaping themselves"and absorbing each other"in unpredictable bur…
Jason Sudeikis sat at the back of the Bowery Poetry Club, waiting for open-mike night to begin. He had parked his black Vespa outside, having motored in from Clinton Hill, where he lives wit…
Dear Vice-President-elect Pence,
It's an odd fact of "Othello" that Iago has more lines than the title character. But inconspicuousness"the ability to keep his own name out of the spotlight while cruelly manipulating events…
Around three-thirty yesterday afternoon, Richard Nelson made his final edits to a project that has spanned this parlous political season: a trilogy of quiet and sad dramas called "The Gabrie…
Is Queen Elizabeth II interesting? Not in a world-historical sense"the dwindling power of the monarchy in the postcolonial age, the assortment of turmoils that have raged around her durin…
Few living actors can match the raw star power of Cate Blanchett, whose hypnotic self-possession"she has the gravitational pull of a small planet"made her a natural for roles like Queen Eliz…
In seventh grade, I became completely obsessed with the 1981 musical "Merrily We Roll Along," by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. It was my introduction to cynicism, set to a brassy Broadw…
In an era of binge-watching, live-tweeting, and the Oculus Rift, how can theatre compete as all-consuming entertainment? Perhaps it's our desire to be more than spectators"to be sucked headl…
It's become a cliché of this election season that, if you were to present the current Presidential race as fiction, no one would believe it. So what better time to hear from a group of fict…
Karina Longworth is the host of the popular show "You Must Remember This," which covers the golden age of cinema.
The thirty-eight-year-old actor Andrew Rannells is part of a new crop of gay stars"like Chris Colfer and Tituss Burgess"who never had to bother to be closeted in the public eye. Lean and boy…
What were you up to on Friday, September 16th? Did you think about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Did you talk about the election with the people you encountered? Chances are that you did,…
George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon are two Upper West Side alter kakers who are partial to turtlenecks, cultural programs at the Y, and the oeuvre of Alan Alda. For a time, they hosted a …
A few days before graduating from Columbia University, in May, 2015, the actress and model Hari Nef showed up at a Flatiron office building to meet Ivan Bart, the president of IMG, the agenc…
Growing up in Manhattan in the eighties, I loved the TV commercials for the electronics chain "Crazy Eddie." What kid wouldn't? The pitchman, an unholy mashup of Pee-wee Herman and Donald Tr…
Most theatregoers I know have an almost physical aversion to audience participation. That's probably because audience members are often cast in the role of patsy"set up to look awkward, outs…
For more than a year now, any half-conscious prognosticator could have told you that the 2016 Antoinette Perry Awards would unofficially be the "Hamilton" Tonys. Mostly, it was. Nominated fo…
On April 5, 1895, Oscar Wilde was holed up at the Cadogan Hotel, in London, torn between fleeing the country and facing a parlous fate. Spurred by his sometime paramour Lord Alfred Douglas, …
Yesterday, the Asian American Performers Action Coalition released its annual report of "Ethnic Representation on New York Stages." On Broadway and Off, thirty per cent of available roles we…
Not long ago, a resident of the Financial District named Evan Miles settled in for a theatrical production on Forty-second Street. He was not an experienced playgoer"actually, this was his f…
Of the many allusions woven throughout Lin-Manuel Miranda's score for "Hamilton"""The Pirates of Penzance," the Notorious B.I.G."one of the funniest comes in Act II, when Alexander Hamilton …
Until a few weeks ago, if you wanted to see Africa represented in a Broadway show, you had two options, both ridiculous. There is the colorful puppet wilderness of "The Lion King," in which …
The theatre has the power"more like the prerogative"to warp reality to suit its own ends, exiting the literal world through whatever trapdoors it creates. Why does an angel crash through a g…
Movie stars crash-landing on Broadway seems de rigueur, but last season "Fun Home" and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" led the pack without famous names. This fall, star …
