179 stories from Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals
Who turns documentaries into musicals? Why, Doug Wright does, that's who. In collaboration with Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, Wright trandformed the the cult documentary Grey Gardens into…
Dear Reader: My humblest apologies for my extended absence from the blogosphere. I've been caught up in teaching, and the semester has really gone into high gear. But one of the things that …
A confession: I love Annie. Yes, it's sappy. Yes, the characters are two-dimensional. Yes, there are songs that serve no purpose except to cover a costume change. And yet it gives me joy. It…
One of my favorite theatrical experiences last season was One Man, Two Guvnors, a British import that rollicked at the good old Music Box Theatre for 159 performances, three at which I was i…
Last week, the Off-Broadway production of the musical Bare announced that it would be closing this coming weekend after 21 previews and 65 regular performances. I wish I could say I was eith…
Bad theater is a gift. I genuinely believe that. I know plenty of people who only go to see shows that they're already pretty sure they're going to like, or that have received strong reviews…
In the arts-criticism course that I teach at the Boston Conservatory, one of the DVDs that I've had my students watch almost every semester is Pippin. This isn't because I necessarily like t…
When I was in eighth grade, our class produced a little mimeographed yearbook, of which I was the editor. The yearbook contained individual student profiles, essays about class trips, a clas…
Dear Reader: With this post, I've finally caught up on my blogging backlog. I've still got some posts in the pipeline (including my Best and Worst Musicals of 2012, as well as my review of P…
[Dear reader: The musical Giant played an extended run at the Public Theater from October 26th to December 16th, 2012. I saw the show twice, once in previews and once after it opened. Then I…
During the build-up to Christmas 2012, there was something very actively on the minds of theater fans across the country and around the world, and it didn't have anything to do with the usua…
I love blogging. I love teaching. But they do tend to conflict with each other. The two busiest times of the year for New York theater tend to be right before Christmas and then right before…
Shortly after I saw the new musical Scandalous on Broadway, I received an email asking me to "spread the word" about the show. Nothing strange there, I suppose. But the show was still in pre…
I guess we're running out of musicals worth reviving. That's what has been going through my mind recently as I've contemplated recent announcements of upcoming musical revivals on Broadway. …
I was saving this in case Romney won, but the point is thankfully moot. Four more years.
Here's my latest review for TheaterMania: Something's Afoot at the venerable Goodspeed Opera House. Did I find the comic murder mystery either funny or mysterious? Click here to find out.
Gee, you folks really like lists, don't you? Well, I'm more than happy to comply. I recently posted this semester's list of the "most overrated" musicals, as selected and defended by my curr…
"Oh, my God. That show is soooooo overrated." One thing that musical-theater majors are never short on is attitude. And when I started teaching musical-theater history at the Boston Conserva…
Dear Reader: As part of my course on the history of msuical theater at the Boston Conservatory, I'm currently directing a staged reading of the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee.…
I love the fall. I've always been the type of nerd who couldn't wait to get back to school. And now that I teach full-time, that nerd-liness continues unabated. Of course, one of the things …
Some bad musicals make you angry. Ghost was one, mostly due to the arrogance of the pop-music dilettantes who blithely thought that, just because they could write hit songs, they could autom…
Like many of you, I'm sure, I was skeptical when I first heard that Bring It On: The Musical was to become a musical. "Great," I thought. "Another movie-to-musical franchise show." And we're…
Because I spent so much time at NYMF this summer, I didn't really have plans to take in any shows at the NY Fringe Festival. I think it's partly because I'm kind of over the four-hour bus ri…
The idea of setting by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods in the actual woods may seem, at first, to be a stroke of genius, or at the very least an obvious but cool idea. It …
One of the great things about getting down to New York City as frequently as I do now is having the opportunity to catch revivals of obscure shows at some of the Off-Broadway non-profit thea…
