New York Theater News

Review: ‘Julius Caesar’ at The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park

We are in the streets of Rome. The lights onstage bump up and immediately we are in the midst of controversy. Flavius and Marullus are admonishing the crowd to break up and get on with their business....

Review: ‘An Enemy of the People’ at Wheelhouse Theater Company

Economic self-interest, an ‘inconvenient truth,’ a ruthless politician, a whistleblower, ‘fake news,’ closed-door meetings, a bureaucratic cover-up, the refusal to work together for the common good,...

Review: ‘Cost of Living’ at The Manhattan Theatre Club

The Manhattan Theatre Club is presently offering a 4-character play set in “the urban east of America” in the “near present day.” That description in the Playbill is a bit cryptic, but that may be...

Review: ‘Fun Home’ at the Forrest Theatre

Winner of five Tony Awards in 2015 – including the first-ever Best Musical honors given to a show written entirely by a team of women – Fun Home, with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine...

Review: ‘The Government Inspector’ at Red Bull Theater

The New York theatre scene continues to offer variety and great fun with this post-Tony production of Nikolai Gogol’s masterpiece, The Government Inspector, as adapted by American playwright Jeffrey...

Review: ‘Golden Cockerel’ at New Opera NYC

Golden Cockerel (Coq d’Or) is a musical fantasy that was popular in the first half of the twentieth century but rarely seen since. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed it in 1907 with splashy orchestral...

Review: ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ at Vineyard Theatre

“I’ve made bad choices. And I’ve made them . . . knowingly,” says 27-year-old Tanya – a single mom and bar waitress in a South Jersey beach town – in the opening scene of Gina Gionfriddo’s latest dark...

Review: ‘RENT’ at Gateway Playhouse

The Gateway Playhouse opened its 68th Season with the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning musical, RENT. With book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, this artistic musical is loosely based on Giacomo...

Review: ‘Building the Wall’ at New World Stages

Out of his imaginative mind comes another powerful theatre piece by Robert Shenkkan, author of 15 plays including two dealing with LBJ (All the Way and The Great Society.) This time, he proposes what...

Review: ‘The Lucky One’ at Mint Theater Company

Every now and then it’s refreshing to turn on the time travel clock and return to what we then called “civilization” circa 1920. You know, after the war to end all wars, before the jazz babies really...

Review: ‘Oklahoma!’ at John W. Engeman Theater

The John W. Engeman Theater at Northport is closing its 10th season with the rousing classic, Oklahoma! With book and lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein, this beloved musical has been a family favorite...

Review: ‘Marry Harry’ at The York Theatre Company

With apologies to James Morgan and the York Theatre Company (“York Theatre”) for this very late review of their current offering Marry Harry. I saw this new musical on April 30, but in the last-minute...

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at the Golden Theatre

In 1982 a distinguished group of Broadway pros, including Hal Prince, Betty Comden and Aldolph Green, came up with what was then thought to be a misbegotten idea: what happened to Nora Helmer after...

Review: ‘Bandstand’ at the Bernard F. Jacobs Theatre

Eleven new musicals have opened since War Paint and here comes the last before the April 30th deadline for Tony Nomination. It’s called Bandstand and it didn’t offer us Bette Midler or Patti LuPone or...

Review: ‘Marry Harry’ at The York Theatre Company

If you’re in the mood for some pure light-hearted entertainment, Marry Harry, now making its Off-Broadway debut in a limited engagement with The York Theatre Company, is a delightful new musical...

Review: ‘Anastasia’ at the Broadhurst Theatre

As the theatre season races to the end of its nomination deadline for the Tony Awards, musical shows are exploding all over the place. We’ve had half a dozen in the last two weeks, and Anastasia...

DC Favorites ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ and ‘Come From Away’ Vie for Best Musical as the 2017 Tony Award Nominations Are Announced

DC Mega-hits Dear Evan Hansen and Come From Away, which wowed audiences during their sold out runs at Arena Stage and Ford’s Theatre, will be vying for Best Musical, as the 207 were Tony Award...

Review: ‘Baghdaddy’ at St. Luke’s Theater

“Alternative facts” and “fake news” are nothing new with the current presidency; they led to the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq and its still-ongoing dire consequences....

Review: ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre

The night I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the new musical based on Roald Dahl’s novel, the theatre was packed with moms and dads with little kids in tow. All of them seemed to know the story...

Review: ‘Groundhog Day’ at the August Wilson Theatre

Andy Karl is a delightful musical theatre leading man, but he’s been having a bit of bad luck lately. During a late preview of Groundhog Day, his latest outing on stage, he suffered severe damage to...

Review: ‘Return to Spoon River’ at Theatre Row

Published in 1915, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology – a collection of free-verse poems in which the deceased residents of a fictional rural town in Illinois recount episodes from their lives...

Review: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at the Barrymore Theatre

John Guare’s masterpiece from 1990 solidly launched his career, earning a run of 155 performances off-Broadway which extended to a run at the Beaumont Theatre on Broadway of 485 additional showings....

Review: ‘The Little Foxes’ at the Manhattan Theatre Club

I’ve seen this play so many times. As a youngster of 19 I played “Horace” at NYU in a production that helped me along in my burgeoning acting career. Someone saw me in it, and suddenly I was playing...

Review: ‘The Imbible: A Spirited History of Drinking’ at New World Stages

Did you ever wonder what happens when “a duck walks into a bar”? Anthony Caporale (performer, playwright, and Director of Beverage Studies at New York’s Institute of Culinary Education) will tell you,...

Review: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ at the Shubert Theatre

I’m going to tell you a short story before I get to my review of Hello, Dolly! which is now playing at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway. I do so to give what’s now called “transparency” to my words in...

Review: ‘The Reckless Season’ at TheaterLab NYC

What’s so funny about suicide, cremation, drug addiction, PTSD, and familial dysfunction? Playwright Lauren Ferebee finds the dark comedy in all of that, along with the innate tragedy and irreality,...

Review: ‘The Assignment’ at A.R.T./New York Theatres

Socially relevant and thought-provoking, profoundly heartrending and often funny, playwright Camilo Almonacid’s The Assignment – inspired by a true story and developed by Houses on the Moon Theater...

Review: ‘Indecent’ at the Cort Theatre

Playwright Paula Vogel has been writing plays for almost forty years, in which she has dealt with issues that fueled her life. She’s been particularly interested in exploring the need for theatre to...

Review: ‘War Paint’ at the Nederlander Theatre

This project began with a fine title, one that conjurs up a fun musical once you know it’s about the battle for supremacy in the field of female skincare and beauty. It sounded like even more fun when...

Review: ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ at the Forrest Theatre

When John Cameron Mitchell (book) and Stephen Trask (music and lyrics) were developing their gender-bending rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch for its Off-Broadway premiere in 1998, the Berlin...

Michael Biello and Dan Martin Are Grooming for the Opening of ‘Marry Harry’

Philadelphia-based artists Dan Martin (composer) and Michael Biello (lyricist) are about to make their Off-Broadway debut this month with Marry Harry at The York Theatre Company. The longtime creative...

Review: ‘Oslo’ at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center

I had only dim memories of the 1993 agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, which had been secretly arranged by a Norwegian couple, who had spent from April 1992 until September of the...

Review: ‘Daniel’s Husband’ at The Cherry Lane Theatre

Family plays have changed so in the past few decades. They once concerned themselves with sibling rivalry for power and control (The Little Foxes), long held lies that are finally unearthed (All My...

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: ‘Cabaret’ at the Academy of Music

Some shows never get old or lose their impact. The national tour of Roundabout Theatre Company’s Tony Award-winning revival of Cabaret, making its Philadelphia premiere for a limited run this week at...

Review: ‘Luft Gangster’ at the Sheen Center

Developed out of a conversation playwright and lead actor Lowell Byers had with his cousin Lou Fowler – a Sergeant in the US Army Air Corps during World War II – upon their first meeting in 2009, Luft...

The League of Professional Theatre Women’s 2017 Awards Celebration and Big Mingle

Founded in 1981, the mission of the League of Professional Theatre Women, a non-profit advocacy organization headquartered in New York City, is to promote increased opportunities, greater visibility,...

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: ‘Church & State’ at New World Stages

Religion, gun control, and the impact of social media are the hot-button issues addressed by playwright Jason Odell Williams in Church & State, a political dramedy now making its New York premiere at...

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: ‘Sub-Basement’ at Athena Theatre Company

It’s not always easy to decide who you are and what you want to be when you grow up, especially if your father, ex-boyfriend, new date, and society at large, in both Canada and the US, are pulling you...

Review: Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera

Mozart’s Idomeneo is a landmark opera. It is undeniably a great achievement by a 25-year-old composer in the early stage of his career. Unlike the later Mozart operas, Idomeneo was written in the...

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...

Review: ‘Home/Sick’ at The Assembly

The original cast and design team of 2011 return for The Assembly’s powerhouse revival of its critically-acclaimed hit Home/Sick. Presented at Brooklyn’s JACK, and directed by Jess Chayes (recipient...

An Interview with Anna Szapiro and Johnny Smith: Making the Move from Philadelphia to New York

Following a year of critical acclaim in Philadelphia, which culminated in nominations for both for the Barrymore Award for Best Ensemble, the talented young couple Anna Zaida Szapiro (nominated for A...

Review: ‘Deconstruction’ at The Storm Theatre Company

“Who are you?” That is the philosophical question and moral issue raised in playwright Jonathan Leaf’s Deconstruction, a world-premiere three-hander (presented in conjunction with Christopher Ekstrom...

‘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...