By Sandi Durell   Melissa Errico’s Michel Legrand show ‘An Even Grander Affair’ extends the celebration and uniqueness of the man who made a great emotional impact not only in her life but her parents (you’ll hear some of the saucy stories that perked a young girls interest...

    by Adam Cohen George Street Playhouse kicks off their new season in a gorgeous space within the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center with the New Jersey premiere of “Last Days of Summer.”  The show is a new musical awash in sepia tones.  And largely concerns itself with a...

    by Adam Cohen   What to make of Liza Birkenmeier’s play “Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”?  Is it a rueful meditation on stumbling into adulthood and avoiding coming to terms with our life choices?  A fun house mirror cautionary tale of wallowing in life and relationship...

    By Brian Scott Lipton   With the 90th birthday of the great Stephen Sondheim set to occur on March 22, 2020, we’ll be hearing plenty of the theatrical master’s music and lyrics on Broadway, in concert halls, and in cabarets over the next several months. Fortunately, there...

  by Matt Smith   ”Come little children I’ll take thee away / into the land of enchantment / Come little children, the time’s come to play / here in my garden of magic…” That’s right… the infamous candle was once again aglow last Monday night when Dani, Max, Allison, Binx,...

  By Marilyn Lester   What fun! And for a worthy cause too— The International Rescue Committee (see more, below). Slay It With Music, book and lyrics by Michael Colby, music by Paul Katz, is a madcap musical first produced Off Broadway in 1989. This abridged version at The Green...

An Amusement Column       by Harry Haun       MUSICAL MYTHS AND MISSTEPS: Merely Marvelous: The Dancing Genius of Gwen Verdon, the documentary anecdote to the abrasive Fosse/Verdon miniseries, has been performing swimmingly on Amazon Prime Video for the past six...

          By Sandi Durell   The weekend conference (Nov. 1-3) is filled with seminars, meetings and events to strengthen how journalists, reviewers and critics can best write and speak about the multitude of shows they see during the course of a season from...

The Mabel Mercer Foundation’s 30th NY Cabaret Convention ended on 10/31 after four successful nights of music and song at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall.     by Linda Amiel Burns   For 30 years, the Mabel Mercer Foundation (founded by the late impresario Donald Smith) has presented...

    by Alix Cohen   This evening’s salute to Judy Garland’s extraordinary 45 year career is bookended by “That’s Judy,” a parody of Howard Dietz/Arthur Schwartz’ “That’s Entertainment.” Penned by Jerry Herman, the song is performed by amiable co-hosts Klea Blackhurst and John...

    Few artists are more in demand, or should we say “popular,” than Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth, who will be dazzling all kinds of audiences over the coming weeks. On November 8, she begins an 8-performance run of her new Broadway concert, For The Girls, at the Nederlander...

        By Steve Nardoni   In celebration of Halloween this year, Sondheim Unplugged showcased two excellent landmark musicals: the grand guignol Sweeney Todd and the fairytale cum “lessons for adults,” Into the Woods. And consistent with this series and the venue of...

  By Myra Chanin     Frank Loesser is considered one of the most versatile of all Broadway composers. He started out writing lyrics for Hollywood movies and ended up writing complete scores for Tony winning musicals. He was born in the summer of 1929 when men were lighting...

  Review by Michael Tingley   Cabarets are a type of time machine, and an evening with Jillian Laurain is a particularly lovely one as the band plays and stepping out on the cabaret stage at Don’t Tell Mama, is Jillian Laurain,a seasoned professional – renowned for her opera...

    By Sandi Durell   My most recent encounter with actress, singer-songwriter Mare Winningham was at the Public Theater in the award winning The Girl From The North Country (Conor McPherson/Bob Dylan) and her memorable performance as the mentally challenged wife Elizabeth....

Celia Keenan-Bolger, Eva Price, and Level Forward Honored at October 28th Event to Celebrate Women’s and Trans Rights   by Melissa Griegel   If Laura Benanti ever decides to leave Broadway, she can have a new career as a stand-up comedienne. The theme of the ACLU/NYCLU Broadway...

    Photos by Genevieve Rafter Keddy   The Drama League honored Sutton Foster at the organization’s 36th Annual Benefit Gala this fall. The black-tie evening honoring Foster – a two-time Tony Award, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Fred Astaire, and Gracie Award winner...

    By Myra Chanin   Ricky Ritzel’s Broadway, now in its Fourth Consecutive Award-Winning Year at Don’t Tell Mama is a totally unique, frequently poignant, relentlessly hilarious and tenaciously outrageous, once-a-month One Night Stand. Its vitality and verve grow out of the...

    By Marcina Zaccaria   Now in its ninth Year, All for One has featured some of the best solo performance in NYC. When we look at solo work, we look for the dynamic potential in the individual, the build in action, and all those fissures, the little breaks through which life...

    By Brian Scott Lipton   It was already dark outside when the 30th New York Cabaret Convention began on Monday night, but there were plenty of stars inside Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center providing a wealth of bright moments for its opening program: “The Sunny Side of...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   A remarkable development during the 1970s was the dynamic, sudden, and historically significant breakout of activity among black dramatists, mostly in nonprofit theatres. However, a then record-breaking nine works also made it to the Great White Way. Two—The...

  By Carol Rocamora   Inspiration often comes from the most unexpected sources. In the case of the American playwright David Henry Hwang, it was a stabbing on the streets of Brooklyn in 2015 that left him close to death. From that traumatic event came the idea for Soft Power, his...

  EXTENDED THRU DECEMBER 22   By Sandi Durell   Pulitzer Prize Finalist Theresa Rebeck’s (Bernhardt/Hamlet) latest comedy dish, Seared, tastes good. It even smells good in Harry’s (Four time Tony Nominee Raul Esparza) well-stocked but small kitchen in Park Slope, Brooklyn...

  By Marilyn Lester   The York Theatre Company’s Musicals in Mufti Series is a real blessing. Over its 25-year history, Mufti has presented the rare opportunity for theater works of the past to be seen and experienced again. With 1940’s Panama Hattie, what’s resulted is the mounting...

 An Amusement Column                                                              by Harry Haun   A STAR IS STILLBORN?: Paper Mill Playhouse stopped Chasing Rainbows Sunday, and nobody—least of all the producers—will say whether the show is going forward or, indeed, going at all. This...

    by Alix Cohen   Continuing successful monthly residency at the intimate Beach Café, Karen Akers gives us an evening of Cole Porter, accompanied by Alex Rybeck, epitomizing both his wry sophistication and tenderness. The show is clear effort to bring cheer to an audience...

  by Carol Rocamora   I still can’t get used to it. The Shakespearean tragedy known as “the Scottish play” – whose name we dared not utter for fear of incurring the wrath of the theatre gods – is now the one most frequently revived in New York and London. I count almost...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   Rakugo is a Japanese storytelling genre going back hundreds of years. The brief description in my Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre says: A narrative art in which a single reciter tells stories, often comic, while seated on a small...

      By Sandi Durell   An encounter with the character of Bernie Madoff immediately raises red light signals that flash scoundrel, deceitful, liar, insincere . . . you know the kind, expensively dressed, big talker, know-it-all, never admitting any wrong doing. And such...

    By Ron Fassler   If a play is presented to the theatergoing public as a thriller it has to offer a thrill or two. And as a personal fan of the genre, I live in hope of the comeback it richly deserves. Broadway hasn’t given us a successful one since Ira Levin’s Deathtrap...

    By Sandi Durell   And such is the setting for the fierce and feisty Bella Abzug, know for her numerous hats and years of activism as a leading feminist lawyer who fought the battles for women and the less fortunate – the true liberal of the day. Harvey Fierstein, a great...

  by Alix Cohen     Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family who valued culture and traveled extensively. Determined to be an artist, she studied at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, then lived in Paris, already acquainted with the city, fluent in...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   My ho-hum response to Adam Rapp’s widely lauded The Sound Inside, starring Mary-Louise Parker, brings to mind a common critics’ problem. The job requires offering objective reasons for subjective reactions, which can raise the hackles of those with different...

  by Susan Hasho   Michele Brourman set out to play songs of hers that she had not performed in New York, that perhaps were more unfamiliar to her New York audience. And the intention was to feature little bon bons of love songs. But “Love Notes” doesn’t quite describe the total...

   Theater Pizzazz mantra: “If music was everywhere and in everyone’s life, the world would surely be a better place” (words to live by!)   by Sandi Durell   The leaves are dropping as are the temperatures but inside the cabarets and clubs the performers are hot and raring to...

  by Carol Rocamora   A comedy… by Tennessee Williams? Who knew?!   Actually, we should have known. The author tells us so himself. “The Rose Tattoo was my love-play to the world,” he wrote. “I have been, for the first time in my life, happy. [The play is] a monument to that...

  by Adam Cohen   The best concerts at Feinstein’s/54 Below – like the best musicals – have an uncanny alchemic frisson.  Punchy music, apt and wise lyrics, performers committed to fun, and that sense of discovering something bound to be amazing.  This was absolutely the case Monday...

    By Brian Scott Lipton   Do you ever eat fast food? How you react to Big Macs and McNuggets is likely to be similar to how well you may digest Scotland, PA, the rather silly new musical (based on the 2001 cult film of the same name), now at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels...

    By Marilyn Lester   Long considered one of the titans of English-language theater, Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney is rich in the themes the playwright most often sought to explore––private anxieties, family ties, cultural identity, authority and personal myth as a way to cope...

  By Tania Fisher   Theater of the highest caliber is yours to enjoy at Urban Stages with their production of “Bars and Measures.”  Written by an award winning playwright, music composed by a Grammy and Obie winner, four electrifying and multi-talented actors, and an award winning...

  By Brian Scott Lipton   Let’s make a list of who won’t love Mario Cantone’s new show at the Café Carlyle: people who hate the “F” word; devotees of the Kardashian clan (especially dad/stepdad Caitlyn Jenner); gays who are super-sensitive about their desire to have children; fans...

    by Sandi Durell   Lauren Gunderson, America’s most-produced living playwright, has written The Half-Life of Marie Curie, a commissioned piece by Audible, Inc. The press was invited to interview its cast Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black, Equus) in the role of...

    A little celebration was in order at Joe Allen’s for Marianne Elliott’s Company as it keeps growing and growing as more stars join the gender-blind revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony winning musical. The cast already features Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone....

  On October 22, during rehearsals for the 2019 Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes,  all 80 Rockettes rehearsed choreography from the stunning finale scene, “Christmas Lights,” which was introduced in 2018, as well as the iconic kickline from the fan-favorite number,...

  by Matt Smith   “It is impossible to describe Marin Mazzie’s ability to make a song that you know well, sound like you’ve never heard it before…. every time she sings.” Quite a bold statement, to say the least — even if expressed so eloquently by someone so distinguished as actor...

    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...

        REOPENS DEC. 20 THRU JAN. 19, 2020   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,...

    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...