“What the hell just happened?” My first words when the curtain closed are indicative of where this piece is headed, so take a deep breath with me. Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Old Times may be unintelligible, but the fault does not necessarily lie with the director, Douglas Hodge, the three-person cast of Clive […]
As I toiled at my college dorm desk in December of 2006, cursing my political science methodology thesis, my classmates were breaking dorm policy by blaring music during quiet hours. Not just any music – the same iTunes playlist that had been on repeat all day. Most type A personalities would have been infuriated, but, […]
Who tells your story? For generations to come, Alexander Hamilton can be thankful that Lin-Manuel Miranda chose to tell his in the new musical Hamilton, inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography on the former Treasury Secretary, which Miranda picked up to read on vacation back in 2008.1 Miranda’s hip-hop charged show integrates modern sound and style […]
Christian or not, religious or not, chances are that you have probably heard the hymn Amazing Grace. A song of redemption, of rediscovery, of renewal, Amazing Grace is a poignant and powerful anthem, yet very few people know anything about the man who penned the hymn, John Newton, nor how he came to write such […]
Love, lust, power, and control – sounds like the central themes of a new season of the reality show Real Housewives; however those concepts actually unite in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Wolf Hall, presented in two parts, at the Winter Garden. PBS recently aired a six part miniseries based upon the popular novel […]
The new musical An American in Paris is less a musical than a ballet with a few Gershwin numbers sprinkled about a dance-laden plot. “New” is also a bit of a misnomer – An American in Paris is based upon the 1951 musical film of the same name with Gene Kelly. Like most Gene Kelly […]
The Bard is back on Broadway – just don’t go looking for any of his plays. No, Shakespeare is actually playing leading man in the new musical Something Rotten! playing at the beautiful St. James Theatre. Something Rotten! is a meta-musical that is just a little too cute for its own good and, ultimately, it […]
There is one thing that struck me immediately about the new musical Fun Home: the audience, which was unique. The lesbian couple to my left had never been to a Broadway show before (a point that they stressed repeatedly while we chatted before curtain), and the older gentleman to my right was a seasoned theatre […]