By Marilyn Lester   It’s not often that the usually stellar Irish Repertory Theatre misses the mark on one of its productions, but with this mounting of Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol, the lost opportunities for consequence are evident. There are extraordinary moments...

 Nancy McGraw celebrated Johnny Mercer with Mark Nadler at the piano – a perfect collaboration!     by Linda Amiel Burns   On October 20, 2019 at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Nancy McGraw’s latest show “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” celebrated the lyrics of the...

    By Marilyn Lester   For nearly 40 years, Gerard Alessandrini’s capacity to pump out high-quality musical satire with wit and jollity has been seemingly unstoppable. His various iterations of Forbidden Broadway over the years have sent up, spoofed, skewered and otherwise...

      By Ron Fassler   In full disclosure, I was first introduced to the skills and talents of Emily Koch (pronounced “cook”) when she was fourteen years old in a Los Angeles middle school production of Les Miserables. As Eponine, that cap-wearing gamine, she not only sang...

    by Adam Cohen   Linda Purl, actress/singer, held court at The Green Room 42, last week singing the heck of a ton of standards with panache.  Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, and raised in Japan, becoming the only foreigner to train at the Toho Geino Academy. At the Imperial...

  by Carol Rocamora     “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” as the quote goes – unless, of course, you’re in hell already. And that’s where Yasmin, protagonist of the powerful new play Power Strip, finds herself. Sylvia Khoury’s searing, suspenseful drama is set in 2016...

            By Samuel L. Leiter   Maybe you’ve heard the unusual name Reality Winner. Maybe you haven’t, or, if you have, can’t recall why. And, unless you make the absolutely necessary effort to learn who she is, what she did, and what happened to her...

    By Tania Fisher   The SoHo Playhouse doesn’t disappoint with audiences being able to continually rely on good quality productions and being thoroughly entertained. Henry Naylor’s award winning “Games” is now playing as part of their Fringe Encore Series. We are taken back...

    By Steve Nardoni   This tribute to a premier songwriter of the Motown era finally arrived in New York City after a number of well-received performances at the famous Catalina Jazz in Los Angeles. The musical contributions made by the interesting Ron Miller are significantly...

An Amusement Column   by Harry Haun   AND THE BAND DANCED ON: The phenomenon of movable musicians marching on Broadway is set to occur Sunday night at the Hudson Theater—a barefoot band wearing gray flannel and various instruments hooked or harnessed to their bodies. Utterly...

  By Brian Scott Lipton   A slight altering of one’s stance, a small change in vocal timbre, an ability to effortlessly seem 17 or 47 – or even a woman. These attributes combine to make Jeremy Jordan one of musical theater’s most treasured (if sadly underused) leading men, and all...

    By Sandi Durell   The powerful and marvelous Marilyn Maye is back at her favorite haunt, Feinstein’s/54 Below, for a run through October 26 with her old friend (she knows him since he was 18) . . . the incomparable Billy Stritch on piano, along with Tom Hubbard on bass and...

Producer/Director Daniel Dunlow and Host/Creator Alexandra Silber pay a 94th Birthday Tribute to the legendary Angela Lansbury at The Green Room 42 on Oct. 16, 2019 with a host of Broadway singers.     by Linda Amiel Burns     The Green Room 42 celebrated the 94th birthday...

    By Sandi Durell   DNA – it’s amazing how it actually works and creates spectacular vocals when three sisters merge their talents into one project CD entitled DNA – The Vivino Sisters. When they say apples don’t fall far from trees, or it runs in the family . . . here’s a...

            By Samuel L. Leiter   Audrey II is back, as ravenous as ever. She, of course, is the carnivorous, ever-growing, deep-voiced plant in the hilariously horrific Off-Broadway rock musical, Little Shop of Horrors, the theatre’s answer to Jaws....

    by Edward Medina   Reeve Carney may work on Broadway, with a resume that includes featured roles in Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark and the current multiple Tony Award winning fan fueled megahit Hadestown, but he’s a rock star at heart. One of his side gigs, at the moment, is...

  by Alana Silber   Tawni O’Dell’s theatrical debut, When It Happens to You, begins with O’Dell herself ascending a scarcely furnished stage, wearing a simple blue sweater and jeans. “I am not an actress,” O’Dell explains to the audience, in a way that was both vulnerable and...

        By Samuel L. Leiter   I admit it. I’m guilty. I sat through Linda Vista, by actor-playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theatre, and enjoyed nearly every one of its 160 minutes, even when it made me squirm. This is, after...

  The Mabel Mercer Foundation celebrates The 30th Annual New York Cabaret Convention Monday October 28 thru Thursday October 31 at The Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center. It’s the place to be for all your favorite performers . . . snazzy, classy and jazzy. Same-day Rush tickets...

BEST IN SHOWS 2019 – ANOTHER BIG SUCCESS HONORING ORFEH AND ANDY KARL   Watch the video for performances by all the Legends who helped make the evening a huge success.     By Sandi Durell   I don’t know about you, but for me. . . this is my favorite fundraising event of...

  By Tania Fisher   Powerful live and unscripted storytelling returned to Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center on October 12, bringing with it a slew of devoted fans of the Moth Mainstage Shows, and its Peabody Award-winning Moth Radio Hour and podcast. Since its inception in 1997,...

  What a treat to see theater in such an elaborate and history-laden setting as the Park Avenue Armory.  And so, here’s information about what’s up and coming at the Wade Thompson Drill Hall December 5 thru Janary 11. Park Avenue Armory announced the cast for its December...

    By Sandi Durell   It doesn’t take but a moment to feel the electricity in The Café Carlyle when Wynonna Judd enters and takes the stage, accompanied by her husband (guitarist, drummer-producer) Cactus Moser. She’s a country and pop music legend from Appalachia – Ashland,...

    By Ron Fassler   In sixty superbly packed minutes, Christian Dante White performed his New York City solo concert debut at The Green Room 42 to a sold-out crowd that literally begged for more. As it was also his birthday, it was packed with friends and family, from his...

    By Sandi Durell   Is there a specific gene that’s the predisposition to alcoholism? Otherwise it’s difficult to find a good Mormon Boy (or was he a bad one?) who, at a young tender age, was already tasting and liking beer, ongoing through college at Brigham Young and...

    by Alix Cohen   “When you’re practicing, don’t go for the sound. Go for the feeling. You know what the feeling is like.” Rosamond Hirschorn We’ve seen the cap, caps really, for years; a wardrobe of colors and sequins marking unbridled fan Rosamond Hirschorn’s...

    By Myra Chanin   After a considerable absence, Eric Michael Gillett hopped up on the stage of the Laurie Beechman Theater and once again astounded 100+ sophisticated arts aficionados with his incomparable talent, craft and humanity. The depth and breadth of both his music...

          By JK Clarke   Fans of both Andrus Nichols and Kate Hamill were recently thrilled by the news that the two had formed a new theater company, The Coop. Nichols’ conspicuous absence of late from Bedlam (of which Nichols was a co-founder and which had...

  by Adam Cohen   Lynda Carter regaled the audience within Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room Saturday night with songs that mattered to her.  Born in Arizona, Lynda Carter is best known for winning hearts and teen’s minds as TV’s iconic Wonder Woman. In addition to her...

  By Ron Fassler   If Chita Rivera isn’t a living legend, then who is? At eighty-six, she has been working primarily in the musical theatre for sixty-two years. The recipient of two Best Actress Tony Awards, with a special one voted for Lifetime Achievement, she and the late Julie...

    By Marilyn Lester   As if a CD release isn’t enough to celebrate on its own, the féte for singer-songwriter Sara Zahn’s newly released Both Sides of Bernstein came with a happy-making bonus: its wonderful story of the nearly 30-year journey from inception to fruition. The...

An Amusement Column     by Harry Haun   HEWES-FUSED NEWS: When he reached his 20th year as theater critic for Saturday Review, Henry Hewes II was only 55 but opted for premature retirement. Henry Hewes I had passed away at 56, and Henry II decided not to press it. He lived to...

          By JK Clarke   Tennessee Williams’ very accomodating production notes in The Glass Menagerie—a play for which he coined the term “memory play”—encourages a freedom of convention, suggesting a departure from the realism (i.e. using real ice cubes on set)...

The Lightning Thief – The Percy Jackson Musical   The Creatives Joe Tracz (book – Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Be More Chill), Rob Rokicki (score – Broadway debut), and Stephen Brackett (director – A Strange Loop, Fall Springs, Be More Chill) and Cast members Chris...

    by Adam Cohen   As you enter Paper Mill Playhouse for Chasing Rainbows:  The Road to Oz, a scrim with MGM movie posters and a black and white film plays.  As the musical begins, the scrim rises and we see Judy (Ruby Rakos) in front of a mirror stepping into the famous ruby...

      by Carol Rocamora   Given the trauma of the current American presidency, it’s a welcome distraction to focus on another one.   Indeed, it’s therapeutic to be reminded that things were pretty precarious in other times, too. The Great Society, part two of Robert...

Photos/Video: Sandi Durell     Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! star Rebecca Naomi Jones was thrilled and honored to join the legendary wall of caricatures at Sardi’s on October 10, 2019. Her caricature was presented to her by artist Richard Baratz where she signed...

            By JK Clarke   Theatrical productions at the Park Avenue Armory are notoriously high-falutin—extravagant, intellectual, elaborately produced, and almost always of unparalleled quality. Tickets are difficult to come by, even for reviewers such as...

    By Elyse Orecchio   “This shit is brutal, but it’s also an acting trap,” playwright Chad Beckim writes as a script note in his new work, Nothing Gold Can Stay, presented by Partial Comfort Productions. “Don’t get mired in the brutality; find the humor and light. I think...

    By Sandi Durell   The opportunity to interview playwright Deb Margolin was a revealing and delightful experience. Deb, a playwright- performance artist, is a founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of eight full-length solo performance pieces,...

    By Marilyn Lester   “A guy walks into a bar…” …opening words for many a joke. But in the new hip-hop/rap musical by Ross Golan, The Wrong Man, the joke’s on the eponymous leading character whose life takes a nosedive into chilling tragedy when he walks into that bar. With...

  by Hazen Cuyler   The setting is a dilapidated Manhattan loft in the 1950’s and 60’s juxtaposed with the same location in the present day. In the present it’s cold, abandoned and isolating. In the 50’s/60’s, the loft is buzzing with deranged, drunken, drugged up brilliant artists...

        By Brian Scott Lipton   If your TV dial is stuck on MSNBC and you’ve never switched (even once) to Fox News; if you are a Jew who has never looked at the New Testament; if you’re a member of the ACLU who has never talked with someone protesting outside Planned...

    By Ron Fassler   NY Summerfest has come and gone much like summer itself, and as fall has crept in, so has an original musical titled Aussie Song, part of the yearlong New York Theater Festival, which I saw at one of its four performances this weekend at the Hudson Guild...

    by Carol Rocamora   “And on the seventh day, God said: “There shall be theatre.”   So begins a work that represents the jewel in the crown of Peter Brook’s 76-year directing career. It’s the newest offering on his continuing lifelong journey around the world for the...

  The much anticipated Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz opened at the Paper Mill Playhouse on October 6 with book by Marc Acito, music adapted by and additional music by David Libby. Tina Marie Casamento is responsible for concept and added lyrics. The cast stars Stephen DeRosa, Colin...

An Amusement Column             by Harry Haun   MICHAEL IN THE LOO: One can’t help but wonder how bathroom showstoppers will go down with the priggish Brits. Come 2020, we should see clearly. Be More Chill starts chilling ‘em Feb. 12 at The Other Palace in...

      EXTENDED THRU JANUARY 19   ****SPOILER ALERT***** Herein lie spoilers. If you do not wish to have certain plot points given away prior to seeing the play, you should stop here and do not read any further.     by Michael Bracken   Antebellum Sexual...

  by Alix Cohen   Noah Diamond describes himself as a recovering New York City tour guide, but the truth is he loves it. Even with now diversified endeavors, Diamond can periodically be found enthusiastically waxing poetic atop a double deck bus. After seeing this, I’d take the...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   Halloween is around the corner. That makes this the moment when producers of movies, TV shows, and immersive theatrical productions rack their oozing brains for shards of psychological sadism with which to frighten willing masochists into spasms of...

    by Joe Belfatti   On the heels of NY Climate Week, Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman brings his Rap Guide To Climate Chaos to the SoHo Playhouse. Part Hip-hop PowerPoint presentation and part newsreel/horror show of the devastation we are wreaking on the planet, Brinkman’s...

      by Carole Di Tosti   Every family has secrets. What is the efficacy of sharing them when some of the parties have long since died? Is the revelation necessary to expiate guilt, remorse and regret? Or is the disclosure of truth a useful revenge tactic? Paul David...

    By Sandi Durell   Based on the true story of SS Colonel Herbert Kappler, head of the Gestapo in occupied Rome during WW II, he was responsible for the Ardealine massacre that rounded up over 1000 Italian Jews for deportation to Auschwitz, and nearly 1000 more Roman Jews...

    For New York City’s movie lovers, the annual New York Film Festival is a highly anticipated chance to watch some of the year’s best films, listen to Q&As with filmmakers and stars, and enjoy the company of other cinephiles. Hosted by Film at Lincoln Center, the NYFF includes...

  by Myra Chanin   The final Friday of another month has happily materialized!!!! One might well ask why a date that occurs 12 times a year-after-year warrants four exclamation points? Because that’s when the inimitable Ricky Ritzel’s unveils his latest one-performance-only de- and...

  By Tania Fisher   We can’t all be Lucie Arnaz. When I was a little girl watching “Here’s Lucy” (which in the small South Australian town where I grew up we didn’t get to see until the 80s) I wanted to have her life. She was a tall brunette who could dance, sing, act, and do...

  An Amusement Column     By Harry Haun   MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK: Streets seem much meaner today than they were back in 1973 when Martin Scorsese, Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro follow Mean Streets right into their first New York Film Festival. The trio’s latest, which just...

  by Matt Smith   All was buzzy and bright inside Feinstein’s/54 Below last Monday night, when the renowned New York Pops orchestra traded the vast amphitheater of Carnegie Hall for the intimate hotspot to present their annual benefit cabaret: The (aptly titled) New York Pops...

  By Ron Fassler   When it was first produced on Broadway in 1929, Cole Porter and Herbert Fields’s Fifty Million Frenchman didn’t boast a cast near that number, though it did have one hundred people in it- – which by today’s standards might as well be fifty million. It also...

  by Elizabeth Ahlfors   As part of the United Solo Theatre Festival, Tandy Cronyn returned her solo show, The Tall Boy, to Theatre Row for one performance. In 2014, it was judged for “Best Adaptation” and now the play encored for the United Solo Theatre Festival’s tenth anniversary...

    By Ron Fassler   Two of the biggest Broadway hits of the 1970s were inarguably Annie and A Chorus Line. Classics of their individual forms (one a sterling example of the great book musical, the other of the concept musical par excellence), each starred a performer who has...

  By Sandi Durell   Expect to remain in a state of suspended reality and put aside all that is logical in Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm. If you happened to have seen The Father at Manhattan Theatre Club three years ago there was also an André (played by Frank Langella)...

  by Matt Smith   “Thirty-five years and my life is still trying to get up that great big hill of hope for a destination…” Such is the proclamation songstress Krysta Rodriguez makes at a point in her standout debut solo show, which played Midtown hotspot Feinstein’s/54 Below...

    By Tania Fisher   Award winning playwright Joseph P. Krawczyk asks some big questions. Does the afterlife exist or not? Can science and religion really coexist? This extraordinarily interesting and creative thesis of the human condition is indeed a fascinating night of...

  By Brian Scott Lipton   It was harder to tell who was more excited: the roomful of fans who came out to see Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth at Barnes & Noble 86th Street on the evening of Friday, September 27 – or the star herself. The ever-luminous Chenoweth was...

        Tuesday, September 24 saw the opening night of Florian Zeller’s (The Father, Mother) latest Broadway play, Manhattan Theatre Club’s The Height of the Storm at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Directed by Jonathan Kent and starring both Tony Award Winner...

  by Susan Hasho   There is a bit of a problem here. I am reviewing a Mac Wellman play. It is Mac Wellman’s delight/mission to play with logic, sequence of events and shall we say what we like to call reality and heaven knows what else. If I do my job, I should give you a notion of...

  By Linda Amiel Burns   In 2018, Ann Kittredge won the MAC Award for her first cabaret show in the Best Female Debut Category, but she is certainly no novice and has worked extensively on and off-Broadway and regionally for many years. Last spring she debuted “Fancy Meeting...

  By Sandi Durell   Even at tender ages, way back in 1899, it appears that women and young girls, had an angle to climb the ladder of success, at least according to Bernard Shaw in his dramedy Caesar and Cleopatra, getting a revival by the Gingold Theatrical Group by a forward...

  A 17-Gun Salute for their State-of-the-Art Contemporary Interpretation of the Classic Good Old-Fashioned Barber Shop Quartet     By Myra Chanin   Yuh wanna know how I determine the quality of a performance? It’s a totally physical reflex. It’s if and when my eyes glance...

  EXTENDED AGAIN THRU JANUARY 5 ! By Brian Scott Lipton   The challenges of female adolescence is rather familiar fodder these days in books, television and film, but they’re being explored with a remarkably fresh, honest and sometimes hilarious perspective by the young playwright...

  An Amusement Column       by Harry Haun     BYE BYE BETTY: A modern-day theatrical heroine has just passed—Betty Corwin at the gloriously overripe age of 98. Her claim to fame is that she dreamed an impossible dream and made it happen. . . . She grew up with...

    By Brian Scott Lipton   She’s been called a singer of pop, soul, R&B and the blues, but she prefers to be called a “song stylist.” Those cabaret fans who have previously seen Natalie Douglas take the cabaret stage – as she did for the “47 millionth time” on Monday,...

  by Michael Bracken   There’s plenty of energy, of a decidedly athletic bent, in Lee Sunday Evans’s production of Jack Thorne’s Sunday, at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater. Evans, credited as both director and choreographer, has her twenty-something cast stop...

    Broadway stars and student thespians came together in support of the Educational Theatre Foundation at the Edison Ballroom on Sept. 22 Broadway legends Chita Rivera and Patti LuPone, Tony Award winners Laura Benanti, and Gavin Creel, Tony nominees Hunter Bell, John Cariani,...

    By Ron Fassler   Novenas for a Lost Hospital, currently at Off-Broadway’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, beautifully plays itself out at three separate locations. In communal theatre fashion, an audience of sixty literally follows a...

  Taking on Tennessee Williams’ memory play can be exciting, daunting and challenging. But Ruth Stage’s Matt de Rogatis (producer, actor) makes it sound like a cinch when you have people like Pendleton and Bloch steering the wheel of the upcoming production taking place at The Wild...

  by Carol Rocamora   What does it mean to be black in America? What does it mean to be an actor? What does it mean to play Shakespeare? Huge questions, each worthy of a play itself – numerous plays, in fact. So the miracle of American Moor, Keith Hamilton Cobb’s unique and...

        by Adam Cohen   Exuberance, celebration and joy were the key takeaways from The American Songbook Association’s Monday, September 16 honor of the Pulitzer, Tony, and Grammy winning lyricist Sheldon Harnick. Harnick is well known for classic musicals like...

        By JK Clarke   I’ve always contended—as have many others who care about such things—that while editing or abridging Shakespeare’s plays for the purpose of a production is not only acceptable but, in fact, usually necessary. Conversely, adding to the...

EXTENDED THRU OCTOBER 27   by Carol Rocamora   If you dread the idea of assisted living, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Join the hip over-sixty crowd hanging out on 59e59 Theater’s A stage these days. They’ve come up with an intriguing alternative –a commune for married couples,...

    By Ron Fassler   The wonderful Broadway actor and singer Jason Danieley, who opened his solo show “A Heart to Heart” at Feinstein’s/54 Below Wednesday evening for a four-night engagement (through Saturday), admits right off the bat that it’s really not just him on stage. As...

    Theater Pizzazz’ Melissa Griegel met with the cast and creatives at a sneak peek to find out more about Mike Squillante (music and lyrics) and Jess Carson‘ (book) new musical Only Human. The event took place at The Yard at Herald Square on Sept. 17. The pop-rock...

  By Sandi Durell   He’s cool, easy and, boy, does Tony Danza have stories! He gets easily sidetracked with life stories about his Mom, his kids, grandkids and, you know what? He’s a terrific (good and bad) joke teller. And what about his singing and tap-dancing? The man is a bundle...

    Brenda Braxton, Javier Colon, Adam Kantor, Cassandra Kubinski, Beth Leavel, Bonnie Milligan, Christine Pedi and Paige Price will join Andy Karl and Orfeh in Best in Shows, a star- studded cabaret evening benefiting the Humane Society of New York, on Monday, October 14 , 2019 at...

by Magda Katz On Sept 17, 2019 Judi Mark brought her one woman show “Laughing Through Life” to  Don’t Tell Mama in New York City with Jeffrey Klitz on piano. Born in Chicago to a musical family and encouraged to express herself creatively, Ms. Mark would make her family proud as she has years...

  The American Theatre Wing ‘Say YES to Artists Gala’ celebrated the legacy of Jonathan Larson and the Larson Family     The annual Gala celebrated the legacy of Jonathan Larson and the Larson family, dubbed “Say YES to Artists Gala.” Theater Pizzazz’ Melissa Griegel was on the...

  by Matt Smith   There ain’t no party like a Drew Gasparini party, and no one knows that more than his raucous audience at Feinstein’s/54 Below, who gathered at the intimate hotspot last Monday night to ring in the re-release of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s I Could Use a...

    by Sandi Durell   On September 16 at St. Malachy’s Church – The Actor’s Chapel, the new theater season was celebrated by many  Broadway and off-Broadway performers and the The Broadway Blessing Choir and Instrumentalists.  The event was produced by Kathryn...

    by Carol Rocamora   Who says lightning can’t strike twice in the same place? Or, rather, in the same theatre season? While we eagerly await the rock musical megahit Six to come in from London, a playwright on our own shores has already scooped the same hot idea for her own...

    By Ron Fassler   Martin Moran is a master storyteller. That really should be all I have to write for a review to make anyone go see All the Rage, a new production of his one-person show, which won him the 2013 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. His prior...

  By Sandi Durell   Women of today find themselves fighting the feminist battle of equality on so many levels that it was probably time for playwright Jaclyn Backhaus (Men on Boats) to have a go at creating a more absurdist, unique path to victory. With playful, zany, amusing fun,...

  Clearview Energy, the leader in the green energy industry, is proud to announce its partnership with the New York Yankees. As part of the partnership, Clearview Energywill be giving away thousands of tickets to foster children in the New York tri-state area to attend Yankees games...