Writer
Journalist Deirdre Donovan has written for the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, among others. Her theater writing has been published in The Brooklyn Paper, Our Town, West Side Spirit, Curtainup, Theaterscene, and Offoffonline.
Scott Siegel Photos by Maryann Lopinto by Deirdre Donovan It was fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk weather outside. But that didn’t keep Scott Siegel from putting on his Broadway Unplugged concert at Town Hall on July 20th (the original event was cancelled due to the fake blizzard last January). Showing a great deal of sang froid on a…
by Deirdre Donovan The artist, the state, the church, and the critic are all alive and kicking in Howard Baker’s Scenes from an Execution, now in a potent revival at Atlantic Stage 2. And with Jan Maxwell leading the cast, who could ask for anything more? If you are an aficionado of Baker’s canon,…
by Deirdre Donovan Theater impresario Scott Siegel wrapped up his signature concert series, Broadway By The Year(BBTY), with a cadre of top-notch talent at Town Hall on June 22nd. This one-night-only event focused on the last two decades of Broadway musicals, stretching from 1991 to the present day. Siegel, who created, wrote, and hosted the event, presented the…
Chris Noth and Zach Grenier in DOCTOR FAUSTUS. … Joan Marcus by Deirdre Donovan Christopher Marlowe’s warhorse Doctor Faustus gets new legs at the Classical Stage Company this season. As adapted by David Bridel and Andrei Belgrader, who also directs, it may lose some of its grandeur but gains a lot of levity and comic bite with its…
Taylor Mac (Photo: Hollis King) Prosperous Fools By Deirdre Donovan In Prosperous Fools, playwright-provocateur Taylor Mac lobs a glitter bomb straight at the glitterati, skewering the pomp, pretension, and performative philanthropy of the nonprofit gala circuit. Loosely riffing on Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and staged with gleeful excess by director Darko Tresnjak, this biting new…
Brad Heberlee as Sganarelle and Chris Mixon as the Statue (Photo credit: Russ Rowland) by Deirdre Donovan Don Juan–that legendary lover who faked many a marriage-can now be glimpsed on the Pearl Theatre’s boards. And with Justin Adams slipping into the skin of Moliere’s most hypocritical lover, one should seize the day and go to this new…
The company in “The Gondoliers” photo credit William Reynolds by Deirdre Donovan Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1889 opera The Gondoliers returns with delicious verve to NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts with the redoubtable New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP). This comic opera might not reach the exotic heights of The Mikado or…
Photos by Erin Baiano by Deirdre Donovan Kurt Weill might be best-known for his edgy song “Mack the Knife” from his Three Penny Opera, but New Yorkers who dropped by Carnegie Hall on either May 7th or 8th soon learned that Weill had a bent for Judah-themed works as well. His 1937 opera-oratorio…
by Deirdre Donovan Dael Orlandersmith returns to New York Theatre Workshop with her new semi-autobiographical show Forever. If you have never seen this gifted author-actress on stage, now is your chance to catch her in a tour de force performance. Forget about gilding the lily! Orlandersmith goes for the truth here. She boldly explores…
Bill Nighy and Carrie Mulligan Photos by John Haynes by Deirdre Donovan “I mean, to be a teacher, the only thing you really have going for you … there’s only one thing that makes the whole thing make sense, and that is finding one really good pupil.” Kyra, the schoolteacher character who is devoting…