1,085 stories from Show Showdown
The extraordinary American soprano Latonia Moore sang only her second complete operatic performance at the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday night. Like her company debut -- as Aida, in 2012 -…
It's easy to assume--especially in diverse, concentrated and comparatively liberal areas--that at this point in our country's history, coming out of the closet is just no longer a very big d…
Playwright Hazel Ellis seems to have had a low opinion of women, with an even lower opinion of powerless women stuck together in lives harshly circumscribed by need. Premiering in Ireland in…
Familiar, by the in-demand playwright and actress Danai Gurira (Eclipsed, The Walking Dead), is a kitchen sink comedy-drama with an African twist. It focuses on the Chinyamwira family, a Zim…
If you (1) love Stephen Sondheim; (2) adore A Little Night Music; (3) treasure gorgeous singing; and/or (4) value a bargain, get thee to Theatre 2020 in Brooklyn Heights. Running through Mar…
She Loves Me is my favorite musical, hands down. The book is funny and drum-tight; the score is comprised of one sparkling number after another. It has no fewer than eight knockout roles. Sa…
Sam Shepard's Buried Child presents the American nightmare. Family is poisonous; religion is useless; ambition is pointless; nothing has been planted in over 30 years. A bizarre, rotted Norm…
Disaster! totally isn't one. Sure, it could maybe be shorter by about fifteen minutes, and maybe a little sharper in spots, but I saw it during the third preview and it was already pretty da…
The Encores! presentation of Cabin in the Sky is over, so I'm going to limit this post to three comments:1. I am so glad that musicals have evolved over the years. Cabin in the Sky, whi…
Chris (an unusually subdued James Kautz) wants Amber (the superb Vanessa Vache) to take him back. They've been together on and off since they were teens, and Chris admits that he's messed up…
Dr. Seuss, renowned children's author, managed to tuck away some pretty radical thoughts in his accessible, funny, tightly rhymed, and sweetly illustrated books. Seussical, the musical based…
If you follow the musical theatre world on Twitter or Tumblr at all, you may have noticed an explosion of the hashtag - #BroadwayCon. This past weekend (January 22-24), the first annual conv…
My latest Art Times essay is up: Every now and then, a controversy breaks out about leaving shows during intermission. Is it fair, acceptable, reasonable, and/or kosher? (rea…
A short time into the future, Queen Elizabeth has died, and Charles is king. Lacking his mother's presence, popularity, and willingness to play the game, he initiates a national crisis by re…
David Bowie's death hasn't suddenly made me like Lazarus any more than I did when I saw it, but it sure has put me in touch with the power of collective mourning. Over the past week, I've li…
It's fitting that Marilyn Maye ended her recent show at the Metropolitan Room with "The Secret of Life" followed by "Here's to Life," since she clearly lives by both songs. At 87, she's dyna…
It may be redundant at this point, but I want to echo my colleagues and reiterate that it's really just gob-smacking to be able to live in a time of such bounteous creation, and to have the …
This wasn't my favorite theater season. Yes, it had the sublime Fun Home, but more often I felt mixed about the just-under two-dozen shows I saw. I enjoyed parts, but not always the whole ex…
Although Ben Brantley's opinion can change the fate of a show, and yours and mine can't, in a deeper sense his is no more valuable than ours. Some of us may bring more experience to the tabl…
I share Liz Wollman's wonder at the sheer volume of art in this beautiful city of ours. In 2015, I saw 80 shows and there are easily 80 more I wish I had seen. But even with "only" 80 s…
In the introduction to Ethan Mordden's On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide, Mordden writes, "My intention is to bring the reader closer to Sondheim's oeuvre, to explore his unique ap…
It's humbling, really, just how much theater happens in this town--and just how much talent there is making it. Because I've been on sabbatical this year, I've seen many, many more shows tha…
My latest article is up at Art Times: An odd thing happens to some people when faced with the existence of musicals. They start saying very strange things:"I don't like musicals, except Caba…
About halfway through Lazarus, the self-important mess that is currently a hot ticket at New York Theatre Workshop, the dude next to me started repeatedly noodling with his Apple watch. Now,…
When it comes to biographical jukebox musicals that are produced by the same people being depicted, you could do worse than On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan. The musical …
