Richard Seff

Review: ‘Present Laughter’ at the St. James Theatre

It doesn’t take much to create a smash Broadway hit. All you need for starters is a witty script that isn’t in a hurry (not a 90-minute mini-play, but a full-size evening that keeps you interested and...

Review: ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ at The Lyceum Theatre

The Lyceum Theatre on Broadway is playing host to a most unusual guest.. It has brought in the Cornley University Drama Society’s production of The Murder at Haversham Manor and because of a number of...

Review: ‘AMÉLIE’ at The Walter Kerr Theatre

Based on a charming French film, Amélie the musical begins with a narrator letting us know we’re going to be in Paris and its surroundings for the next 90 minutes, and as he and the music box music...

Review: ‘Sweat’ at Studio 54

It took a while, but the Oregon Shakespeare Festival helped by staging this remarkable play in the summer of 2014. It caused enough of a stir for the Public Theatre in New York to pick it up for a run...

Review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at The Belasco Theatre

This is the play that introduced me to the writings of Tennessee Williams long ago, in 1945! That was the original production at the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway, and it contained the now legendary...

Review: ‘The New Yorkers’ at New York City Center’s Encores!

Producer Jack Viertel and his merry band of music makers at Encores! have unearthed another great example of the beginnings of American dominance in the field of musical theatre. Our heritage is so...

‘COME HEAR THE MUSIC PLAY:’ Memories of My Twenty Years as Agent For John Kander by Richard Seff: Part Three: ’70 Girls 70,’ ‘Chicago,’ ‘The Rink,” ‘The World Goes Round,’ ‘The Act,’ ‘Woman of the Year,’ and ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

ACT TWO. Two years later, in 1970, I once again tried to put together a package of my clients – in the show that became 70 Girls 70 – for I’d enjoyed looking after Chita Rivera, Ron Field, Kander and...

Review: ‘Come From Away’ at The Schoenfeld Theatre

One thing is certain about this new musical, now on Broadway at The Schoenfeld Theatre – it had the youngsters in the audience hooting and hollering and having themselves a fine time from start to...

Review: ‘The Price’ at Roundabout Theatre Company at The American Airlines Theatre

This is one of Arthur Miller’s successes, and though it’s been revived three times on Broadway since it first appeared in 1968, it has never attracted the audiences that flocked to Death of a...

Review: ‘The Gravedigger’s Lullaby’ at TACT

Jeff Talbott established himself as a writer of great promise with the MCC Theater production of his first play The Submission in 2011. This excellent actor/playwright joined The Actors Company...

Review: ‘Evening at the Talk House’ at Pershing Square Signature Center

With the spate of openings in March, I wasn’t able to get to Wallace Shawn’s new play, the New Group’s production which played a strictly limited engagement through March 12, 2017, only until the day...

Review: ‘Linda’ at Manhattan Theatre Club

I don’t know all the works of author Penelope Skinner, but based on The Village Bike and the currently running New York production of Linda, I suspect she is now on the short list of the best female...

‘COME HEAR THE MUSIC PLAY:’ Memories of My Twenty Years as Agent For John Kander by Richard Seff: Part Two: ‘The Curtain Rises’: ‘Flora, the Red Menace,’ ‘Cabaret,’ ‘Zorba,’ and ‘The Happy Time’

John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Richard Seff at a dinner honoring Harold Prince. Photo courtesy of Richard Seff. THE CURTAIN RISES. One of the properties for which I tried to get this new team hired was...

Review: ‘If I Forget’ at The Laura Pels Theatre in the Steinberg Center

I know Playwright Steven Levenson only from his work as librettist on the musical Dear Evan Hansen, so this for me is his first play. It more than fulfills the promise shown in the musical, where his...

‘COME HEAR THE MUSIC PLAY:’ Memories of My Twenty Years as Agent For John Kander by Richard Seff: Part One: The House Lights Dim’

COME HEAR THE MUSIC PLAY: Memories of My Twenty Years as Agent For John Kander by Richard Seff OVERTURE. John Kander and Fred Ebb have written some fifteen musicals for Broadway as well as an...

‘Come Hear The Music Play’-A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Kander and Ebb’s Musicals by Their Former Agent Richard Seff Begins Tomorrow on DCMetroTheaterArts

On March 18th composer John Kander will mark his 90th Birthday and to honor that happy occasion I’m going to unearth some of the memories I have of the twenty years in which I represented him as his...

Review: ‘Jonah and Otto’ at The Lion Theatre

Robert Holman is a British playwright whose plays have been done under the auspices of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, he’s had productions of his many plays at half a dozen...

Review #1: ‘Kid Victory’ at Vineyard Theatre

John Kander, who will soon be celebrating his 90th birthday, has now confirmed that his collaboration with 39 year-old playwright Greg Pierce, is on solid ground, and offers us great promise for more...

Review: ‘Sunset Boulevard’ at The Palace Theatre

The Palace Theatre is back in business with a big time headliner on the bill. It’s Glenn Close, returning to the role of Norma Desmond, direct from her recent great success in it at London’s Coliseum...

Review: ‘Georgie: My Adventures with George Rose’ at The Loft at the Davenport Theatre

There is a delightful surprise in store for any of you who can manage to get to the Davenport’s 75-seat Loft Theatre to watch Ed Dixon’s one-man play in which he brings to vivid life the late great...

Review: ‘The Originalist’ at Asolo Repertory Theatre

Playing now in repertoire with The Great Society, a stunning new play that New York has not yet seen, called The Originalist, is keeping the good citizens of Sarasota who clearly love good theatre...

Review: ‘The Great Society’ at Asolo Rep Theatre

All The Way by Robert Schenkkan dealt with Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to influence the 88th U.S. congress to vote in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It first appeared in 2012 at the Oregon Shakespeare...

Review: ‘Yours Unfaithfully’ at the Mint Theater Company

I regret to say that until I saw Mint Theater Company’s production of Miles Malleson’s comedy Yours Unfaithfully, I wasn’t aware of the author, hadn’t heard of him. A great lack on my part, because as...

Review: ‘Jitney’ at Manhattan Theatre Club at The Samuel J Friedman Theatre

A remarkable new production of August Wilson’s play Jitney is now available to us all, thanks to the Manhattan Theatre Club, which has staged it on Broadway as the last of the Wilson 10 play cycle to...

Review: ‘The Present’ at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre

In the beginning there was a play by Anton Chekov that was simply called “a long play without a title”. He’d written a first draft of it in 1878, later called it Fatherlessness. He gave it to his...

Review: ‘Ride the Cyclone’ at The Lucille Lortel Theatre

In 1964 Bob Dylan wrote that ‘the times they are a-changin’, and he might just as well have been referring to the musical theatre in America as he was to the war in Vietnam. Ever since Galt McDermott...

Review: ‘In Transit’ at Circle in the Square Theatre

I first ran into this musical which deals with the lives of several New York subway commuters in 2010 when it first bounced into town onstage at the 59 East 59th Street Theatre off/Broadway. It was a...

Review: ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ at The Music Box Theatre in NYC

This highly imaginative and moving musical was presented off Broadway by the Second Stage company in May of this year. It enjoyed a sold out run for a month, and was honored by a dozen awards for...

Review: ‘A Bronx Tale’ at The Longacre Theatre in NYC

Chazz Palminteri’s career as actor and writer was given a big boost when his one-man play A Bronx Tale began its life off Broadway with the author as its star. The material was honed from his early...

Review: ‘A Name for a Ghost to Mutter’ at Urban Stages

In the summer of 2008 a group of artists, business people and supporters gathered to talk theatre, which led to the formation of Theatre East and an inaugural benefit in July 2009. Its core belief was...

Review: ‘Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812’ at the Imperial Theatre in NYC

A most elaborate and tastefully glamorous musical has arrived in town to brighten the holiday season. That’s Natasha, Pierre and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts plus a few lovers,...

Review: ‘Falsettos’ at The Walter Kerr Theatre in NYC

We must thank Andre Bishop and his staff at Lincoln Center Theatre for gifting us with a very early Christmas present called Falsettos, composer William Finn’s musical with a book he co-wrote with...

Review: ‘Les Liasons Dangereuses’ at The Booth Theatre in NYC

Christopher Hampton’s play, Les Liasons Dangereuses, based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, a story presented through a series of the characters’ personal letters, was first published in four...

Review: ‘The Front Page’ at the Broadhurst Theatre in NYC

This three act comedy – The Front Page –by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, currently packing them in at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, is the best revival ever from the day when Broadway was...

Review: ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ at The Actors Company Theatre at the Clurman Theatre in NYC

Anglo-Irish Playwright Oliver Goldsmith’s “laughing comedy”- She Stoops to Conquer- was first performed in London in 1773. It’s been a favorite for study in English literature, and theatre classes...

Review: ‘HEISENBERG’ at Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in NYC

Let’s get the title out of the way for starters. Simon Stephens, the author of this play, uses it to remind us that the German physicist Werner Heisenberg introduced his Uncertainty Principle in...

Review: “Oh, Hello on Broadway” at the Lyceum Theatre in NYC

I imagine there is a first time for everything. There I was, sixth row on the aisle at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, at an early performance of an evening called Oh, Hello On Broadway. I did not...

Review: ‘Holiday Inn’ at Studio 54 in New York City

The gifted director Michael Blakemore once said, “When the curtain goes up, the audience is in trouble.” What he meant was that we out front want to know what we’re in for in the 2 hours traffic...

Review: ‘The Encounter’ at The Golden Theatre in NYC

Simon McBurney is one of European theatre’s most original and controversial artists working today. For more than 30 years he has led Complicite, the theatre company he co-founded in 1983 and his works...

Seven Days in Italy with Playbill’s ‘Broadway on the High Seas 7’

I took me a busman’s holiday from September 20 to 30, 2016, by joining Playbill on its seventh cruise featuring Broadway stars and Broadway “Ambassadors” who are on board to mix, mingle and entertain...

Review: ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ at The Goodspeed

I have been viscerally connected to this charming musical about teenage life during the mid-1950s, when pop music was surrendering to the hot wave of rock ‘n roll started more or less by icon of the...

‘Something Rotten’ Revisited at The St. James Theatre in NYC

I first reviewed this unselfconsciously entertaining musical comedy at the beginning of its run in April 2015. I wanted to see it again to determine how it was holding up now that five of its...

Review: ‘Shining City’ at The Irish Rep Theatre in NYC

It’s been only 10 years since Conor McPherson’s word fest of a play ran at the Biltmore Theatre for 101 performance including 21 previews. It was well received not only for the eloquence of the...

Review: ‘Hadestown’ at The New York Theatre Workshop

You have until July 31st to treat yourself to a trip to the East Village where you will find Hadestown, a rich plum cake of a folk opera, happily ensconced at the New York Theatre Workshop. I came to...

Review: ‘Shuffle Along’ at the Music Box in NYC

There is so much talent on stage at the Music Box that it’s difficult to know where to begin giving credit where its due. The first elements that deserve “Original! Exciting! Broadway at its best!”...

Review: ‘The Judas Kiss’ at The Harvey Theatre in the Brooklyn Academy of Music in NYC

David Hare’s play about a very specific time in the life of Oscar Wilde first appeared in New York in 1998, with Liam Neeson playing the brilliant Irish playwright Wilde, thus establishing himself as...

Review: ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ at The York Theatre Company

This charming piece of work has a long history. Its original run was off Broadway at Theater 80 in the East Village, where it settled in for a smashing run of 1697 performances. Arthur Whitelaw was...

Review: ‘Cirque du Soleil Paramour’ at The Lyric Theatre in NYC

It will be interesting to keep an eye on this new spectacular show – Paramour – calling itself a New Broadway Musical, for it’s a combination of circus, swanky cabaret floorshow and old world musical...

Review: ‘Tuck Everlasting’ at The Broadhurst Theatre in NYC

This pretty-as-a picture new musical is by newcomers to the musical theatre, book writers Claudia Shear and Tim Federle, Composer Chris Miller, and lyricist Nathan Tysen. The story, based on a novel...

Review: ‘Do I Hear a Waltz?’ at Encores! at City Center in NYC

This vintage musical, now over 50 years old, was written by a team of masters of musical theatre. It is the perfect piece with which the Encores! series continues to fulfill its mandate, which is to...