892 stories from Broadway & Me
Despite the projection of the date 1879 on the brick wall at the back of the Hudson Theatre, the new revival of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House could be taking place in so…
Thousands of dollars and countless hours have been spent trying to figure out how to get young people into the theater. But I've got a hunch that the answer is simple: offer things they want…
Lorraine Hansberry only lived long enough to see two of her plays produced. The first was A Raisin in the Sun, celebrated when it opened in 1959 as the first play by an African-American woma…
So here we are celebrating"albeit slightly belatedly"the 16th anniversary of Broadway & Me. My first post went up on Feb. 14, 2007 and in the intervening years, I've seen so many wond…
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Around 1982 the photographer Larry Sultan began taking photos of his parents at their home in California's affluent San Fernando Valley. And he kept at it over the next 10 years, final…
A frigid cold front is sweeping across a large part of the country this weekend. And that can be a disincentive to go outside for even the most avid theatergoer. Luckily, there are"thanks to…
Giving awards can be tricky. We all want to"and should"celebrate extraordinary theatrical talent. But every time one person is ushered into the winner's circle, a whole lot of other folks ar…
January can be a quiet time on Broadway. Lots of shows close (click here for a list of some of them). Very few open. Which makes it a good time to catch up with the ones still running that y…
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Wishing you a year filled with all of the above, plus, of course, lots of great theater...
Theater worked hard this year to come back from the pandemic. As part of those efforts, Broadway dropped its requirement that theatergoers show proof of being vaccinated and made mask wearin…
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The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust announced this week that it is awarding its $100,000 Mimi Award to two mid-career playwrights: James Ijames and Lloyd Suh. I'm pleased for both…
The world of musical theater is divided right now between the people who saw KPOP before it came to Broadway and those who saw it afterward. I sadly fall into the latter group.Â
The origi…
Bruce Norris has a knack for making people uncomfortable. His 2006 play The Pain and the Itch featured a 4-year-old with a genital rash, a metaphor for her family's dysfunction that call…
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& Juliet, the exuberant new musical that mashes up Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with the songbook of the pop hitmaker Max Martin wasn't made for me. It was made for the tween gir…
The writer Joan Didion once said that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live." But lately an increasing number of theater makers have not only been telling the stories of their lives bu…
My friend Seymour "Red" Press died yesterday. Although to call him a friend doesn't really describe what he meant to my husband K and me. Red was a longtime musical contractor and K, a trump…
As a recent story in the online magazine TDF Stages noted, James Baldwin is having a theatrical moment (click here to read more about it). The black writer and intellectual, who died in 1987…
Revivals used to be fairly simple. A producer would take a beloved title or maybe even an underappreciated one, cast it with a star or two and voilà , a show. But that's not how it goes no…
The very limited six-day run of Burn, Alan Cumming's solo performance piece at The Joyce Theater, ends this weekend but there is so much joy in it that I can't resist celebrating it.Â
Cu…
Monday is Labor Day, which means that it's time for my annual tribute to some of the people whose labor makes the theater we all love work. I've been doing this for 15 years now and I can't …
Everyone who loves serious theater loves the idea of giving talented new writers a chance to show what they can do. The question is the timing. Too many workshops (and the notes that come al…
Greek tragedies don't get done a lot. Which is why I really try to see them when I can. So my theatergoing buddy Bill and I bought tickets for the new production of the Oresteia that is play…
So many musicals nowadays are based on movies or other pop culture IP (by which I mean jukebox musicals of one kind or another) that it's nicely retro to have one based on a book. That's the…
Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. At least that's the approach two recent plays have taken with the current political morass in which we all find ourselves. Selina Filling…
