499 stories by "Rob Weinert-Kendt"
For a time around the turn of the aughts, I and the crew at Back Stage West did an annual "Actors We Love" issue. Over the years the folks I wrote about included Alyson Hannigan, Bob Balaban…
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.For a blessed few years I was among the New York Times's freelance theater correspondents most likely to be assigned features about new rock or pop musicals…
The cast of Backbeat. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
Cross-posted on Train My Ear.Some years ago I was hired to write the program notes for the Center Theatre Group's production of Backbeat, a s…
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.Some years ago Adam Feldman at Time Out New York asked me to contribute some entries for a grand list of "Best Broadway Songs of All Time."Â I had nothing to…
Cross-posted from Train My Ear.If you forced me to make a list of favorite composers, Kurt Weill would be at the top, Maurice Ravel would be second, and, though I'm not exactly sure about th…
When I first arrived in New York City 15 years ago I didn't land a full-time job right away"it took me more than a year before I landed one writing web features for TDF"but among my freelanc…
Cross-posted from my music blog Train My Ear.With the music I cherish most, it's the sound that matters first and above all. I don't just mean sound in the purely aural sense"i.e., the timbr…
Cross-posted from my music blog Train My Ear
In my decades of listening to and thinking about, and occasionally making, music, I've had some widely shared crushes and obsessions (Beatles, J…
The actors and musicians behind "Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)" see themselves in the stories they will share, and sing about, onstage.
Will Arbery (photo by Korde Tuttle)
Like August: Osage County, Will Arbery's play Heroes of the Fourth Turning is much, much better than its clunky title. Also like August it's a veritabl…
It was one thing to deliver lectures in American Legion halls as a teenager. It's another to stand on a Broadway stage flanked by the photos of 163 staring men.
Actors Paul Rudd, Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper appear onstage during curtain call at the opening night of "Three Days of Rain" at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on April 19, 2006 in New Y…
Rob Harvila's much-discussed recent article on the meaning and value of harsh criticism in the age of social media got me thinking back to my days as a more or less full-time critic in New Y…
Galt MacDermot.It doesn't actually embarrass me to love Galt MacDermot, the composer of Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona, whose death was just announced--I'm just using this opportunity to e…
Long story short: I was the last regular critic employed by the ticket-concierge site Broadway.com, for whom I reviewed the 2005-06 season (highlights included Sweeney Todd, Bridge & Tun…
Still waiting for her signature role, the versatile Rebecca Naomi Jones is changing things up in a stripped-down new staging of the musical classic.
Conor McPherson discusses digging deep into the Dylan catalog for his Depression-era play with music, "Girl From the North Country."
How do married clowns make wordless wizardry with balloons, umbrellas, packing peanuts and fabric? Turn on those electric fans.
Sarah Jones in Bridge & Tunnel. (Photo by Paul Kolnik)Broadway.com, Feb. 1, 2006Bridge & TunnelReviewed by Rob KendtIf the Tonys had an ensemble award, Sarah Jones would be an odds-o…
From The Sondheim Review, December 2011Bittersweet HomecomingBy Rob Weinert-KendtThe perfect Follies, it should be admitted by even its most fervent acolytes, does not exist, and may in fact…
The 1950 Broadway production of As You Like It, with Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind/Ganymede. Tonight I'm taking my eight-year-old son to see his first Shakespeare: Public Works' adaptat…
Zilah Mendoza in Electricidad at the Mark Taper Forum, 2005. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)Luis Alfaro has been retrofitting Greek tragedy to L.A.'s Latinx gang culture for many years now, and by…
I had the pleasure of interviewing the late, great Martin Landau back in 2005 for the shortlived magazine Moving Pictures. Here's my story in its entirety.Martin Landau has been places,…
Vishal Bhardwaj.One of the joys of reporting on the upcoming Monsoon Wedding musical, apart from the chance to chat over chai with one of my idols, director Mira Nair, was that everyone invo…
A musical based on the popular 2002 film will debut at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. It has Broadway ambitions.
