The Roundabout Theatre Company’s 1776 cast. (Photo: Joan Marcus) 1776 By Fern Siegel The Broadway musical 1776, which chronicles the founding of the United States, opens with 10 pairs of shoes on an empty stage. And as the cast enters – female, nonbinary and trans – they step into history. When it first debuted in…
The ensemble cast confronts danger in Into the Woods. (Matthew Murphy) Into the Woods By Fern Siegel “Are you certain what you wish is what you want?” asks the Baker in Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork Into the Woods. The interlocking stories of fairy-tale characters offering a treasure trove of psychological insights has its latest Broadway revival…
(l-r) Beanie Feldstein, Ramin Karimloo Funny Girl By Fern Siegel Fanny Brice was a funny girl — a funny Jewish girl who worked in burlesque and was a headliner for the great Florenz Ziegfeld. A hit on radio, the multi-talented Brice was beloved by many at a time when ethnic humor was in…
Reza Salazar, Kara Young, Ron Cephas Jones, Edmund Donovan (Joan Marcus) Clyde’s By Lynn Nottage Directed by Kate Whoriskey Reviewed by Julia Polinsky It’s such a relief to laugh in the theater again that it might escape you that, really, Clyde’s is a morality play: a demon and a boddhisattva wrestle for the…
(l to r): Michael Zegen ( Al Manners ) , Alex Mickiewicz ( Eddie Fenton ) , Don Stephenson ( Bill O’Wray ) Photo: Joan Marcus Trouble in Mind By Alice Childress Reviewed by Julia Polinsky Originally an off-Broadway success in the 1950s, the play was slated to move to Broadway, but the producers wanted…
Chicken & Biscuits by Deirdre Donovan What’s cookin’ on Broadway? Douglas Lyons’ uproarious new comedy that recently opened at Circle in the Square. Under the direction of Zhailon Levingston, it’s overly long, but if you want to see a play…
Jerry O’Connell Blair Underwood photos by Joan Marcus A Soldier’s Play By Eugene Paul Playwright Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize play, A Soldier’s Play is finally getting its Broadway due in this gripping Roundabout Theatre production and I hope it runs as long as it did when the Negro Ensemble Company produced it back in…
Jane Alexander, and James Cromwell Joan Marcus Grand Horizons by Eugene Paul Carole Rothman, artistic director of 2ndStage has done us an enormous favor by braving the winds of juke box musicals currently sweeping through town and bestowing upon the Great White Way a mostly comedy – New Yorkers love to laugh – family…
Laura Linney Photo by: Matthew Murphy My Name Is Lucy Barton By Fern Siegel Tony-nominated actress Laura Linney (The Little Foxes, Time Stands Still) can probably count on another nomination for her exquisite performance in My Name Is Lucy Barton, a solo play based on the Elizabeth Strout novel. As Lucy Brown recounts her nine-week…
The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical By Rachel Pacelli Lightning doesn’t strike twice in this musical adaptation of a beloved series. It was 2005 when Rick Riordan’s smash children’s book The Lightning Thief was first introduced. In a post-Harry Potter world, young readers were excitedly gobbling up the next fantasy-adventure series, and this…