The new Alicia Keys-scored musical Hell’s Kitchen is now heating up the boards at the Shubert Theatre. Inspired by the life of Alicia Keys—global megastar and winner of fifteen Grammy Awards—it focuses on several months in the life of a musically precocious seventeen-year-old girl in New York in the 1990s. Hell’s Kitchen got its stage…
The Cast of Heart of Rock and Roll (Photo: Matthew Murphy) The Heart of Rock and Roll By Julia Polinsky Sometimes, musical theater is charming and predictable and silly and hummable and fun. Sometimes, that’s just what you want. The Heart of Rock and Roll delivers one of those times. Delightfully. In 2024, the…
Cabaret has seen several revivals since its Broadway debut in 1966. The Kander-Ebb musical, set in early 1930s Weimar Berlin, was based on “I Am A Camera,” the 1951 play by John Van Druten, which in turn, was based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel “Goodbye to Berlin.” The show’s provenance is important, because history matters….
Shaina Taub (Photo: Joan Marcus) Suffs By Fern Siegel Suffs is to women’s rights and the suffragette movement what Hamilton was to the founding father. It bursts with energy, sass and smarts. And that’s thanks to Shaina Taub, whose talent is extraordinary. As Alice Paul, a young suffragette passionate about a woman’s right to vote,…
A new theatrical adaption of Sarah Gruen’s popular 2006 novel, Water for Elephants, has set up its Big Top smack in Times Square. Wonder of wonders, it culls much from the novel and trims the excess to streamline the drama to its fullest extent. As in most adaptations, there inevitably are dry patches with the…
Ali Louis Bourzgui (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) The Who’s Tommy By Julia Polinsky Hold on to your hats. It’s going to be a loud, stunning, bumpy ride. Worshipped by many, the revered subject of Boomer nostalgia and rocker adoration, The Who’s Tommy has held a unique place in the pop music world since…
Bring your tissues! The Notebook, Nicolas Sparks’ breakout romantic novel, which later became a blockbuster film, is now retold as a Broadway musical. This optimistic tearjerker is true to the book except it uses three pairs of actors portraying the same couple at different stages of their lives. It’s told from the point of view…
If you were in high school in the late ’60s or early ’70s and had a streak of rebellious youth in you, chances are you got around to The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel. Hinton, who was Susan Eloise Hinton but felt it better to use her initials because who wants to read a gang-warfare…
Merrily We Roll Along By Deirdre Donovan Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe (Photo: Matthew Murphy) The Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Merrily We Roll Along, the problem child in the American musical theater, is back on Broadway! This new revival, deftly helmed by Maria Friedman, has Sondheim aficionados smiling. Theatergoers of a certain age…
The company of How to Dance in Ohio (Photo: Curtis Brown) By Deirdre Donovan Of all the musicals opening on the Great White Way this season, How to Dance in Ohio is by far the most groundbreaking. With its seven lead performers identifying as autistic in real-life, this musical brings autism out of the closet…