Writer
Marc Miller has been going to the theater since seeing I Married an Angel with Don Ameche and Margaret Whiting at Shady Grove Music Fair in 1964. When not theatergoing, he bikes, works out, writes songs, and binges on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The 2024 Sony Pictures release Saturday Night dramatizes, and I use the term loosely, the chaos and anarchy that preceded the launch of NBC’s Saturday Night (the Live didn’t happen till the second season) on October 11, 1975. While it illustrates the frantic tugs-of-war among cast members, producer Lorne Michaels, and the NBC brass, it…
There’s a 1940 movie, The Mortal Storm, wherein an average family in the German Alps is divided and undone by the rise of the Third Reich, with tragic results. Since these earnest young Germans are played by James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, and Robert Stack, it’s a bit of a challenge to take at…
She was, press agents were fond of asserting, “the most fascinating woman in the world.” Most critics, herself included, thought her not much of an actress, but she embodied a sensuality and glamour that virtually defined the Hollywood culture of the 1950s and the influence it exerted on everyday lives. And she capped that with…
Lisa Emery, Reed Birney (Photo: Joan Marcus) Lunar Eclipse By Marc Miller The 21st century theater has distinguished itself by consistently being a welcoming space for viewpoints that might have a hard time finding safe harbor elsewhere. Minorities-racial, sexual, whatever-can confidently assert their opinions and identities, with little fear of political opponents shouting them down…
When Jonathan Groff finishes a big number in Just in Time—and there are quite a few—he’s a mess. Bent over, breathing heavily from holding that long last note, wet hair in his face, sweating so profusely that the authors slipped a joke about it into the script, he has given, given, given. And when he’s…
Are there two Kieran Culkins? The one who shows up in the first act of the uneven revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is, let’s say it, something of a disaster. He’s slower and softer than everyone who has preceded him, throwing Mamet’s galloping but precise rhythms totally off. Intermission passes, and the Culkin…
Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) Death Becomes Her By Marc Miller “Musical Comedy Revitalized,” goes the subtitle for Death Becomes Her, and by thunder, that’s what it delivers. The new musical at the Lunt-Fontanne, adapted from Robert Zemeckis’ dark 1992 film satire on the pursuit of youth and beauty, is…
Julia Brothers, Lukey Klein, Richard Brothers, Joy Avigail Sudduth (Photo: Maria Baranova) Sump’n Like Wings By Marc Miller Lynn Riggs, if he’s remembered at all today, is remembered as the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, a minor Theater Guild flop of 1931 that achieved unexpected immortality a dozen years later, when Rodgers and Hammerstein…
The Hills of California, to begin with, isn’t about California, or even hills. The title of Jez Butterworth’s great big Broadway play refers to some mid-20th century Johnny Mercer pop ballad, not a famous one, that receives several renditions here, along with Rodgers and Hart and other American songbook standards. At once a searing look…
The Ensemble of Patriots (Photo: Matthew Murphy) Patriots By Marc Miller It’s a constant issue with Peter Morgan: How much are we to believe? The playwright/ screenwriter/ TV writer traffics in dramatizations of 20th and 21st century historic figures and is responsible for, among other works, The Queen, The Crown, Frost/Nixon, and The Audience. So……