I saw the title The Balusters and thought OK, this will be about Mr. and Mrs. Baluster. Wrong! Turns out a baluster is “any of the small posts that support the upper rail of a railing, as on a staircase,” as Webster has it. They’re of concern to architectural preservationists and hardly anybody else, and…
Schmigadoon! is a triumph of choreography and the chorus are first-rate singers and dancers. The show, however, is musical lite. The premise: Two Manhattan doctors hope to salvage their troubled relationship at a Catskills retreat. Instead, a hike leads them across a bridge to Schmigadoon, an early 20th-century hamlet that eagerly breaks into song whenever…
Here’s an idea. Let’s take Beaches, an iconic, cult classic movie, replace the award-winning soundtrack, and put it on stage, without its famous stars! After all, it’s a slam dunk, adapting a Broadway show from a film. Oh, that’s right, it’s NOT. Examples? Despite stars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was…
The tradition dates back at least to Oh, Boy! in 1917, and though it’s since fallen out of favor, it held sway for decades: the notion that an unlikely character getting inebriated was automatically hilarious. Comic drunk scenes were a staple of pre-Code movie comedies, and they populated plenty of plays, too. Fallen Angels, Noel…
Love. Intelligence. Genius, even. Betrayal. Sacrifice. The revival of David Auburn’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Proof, now at the Booth, has all this and more: great structure, superb writing, knockout performances. Proof centers around Catherine (Ayo Edebiri), a slouchy, visibly depressed 25-year-old college dropout, the daughter of Robert, (Don Cheadle) who in his younger days was…
Who would have thought watching people behaving badly could be so much fun? Now at the Hayes Theatre, and directed by Trip Cullman with bloodthirsty zeal, this revival of the Pulitzer-nominated Becky Shaw seems even fresher than it did in its Off-Broadway run almost 20 years ago. Playwright Gina Gionfriddo toys with our initial perception…
The woman behind me kept murmuring, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” She was responding to the parade of indignities and setbacks being visited upon our protagonist in The Fear of 13, Lindsey Ferrentino’s docudrama at the James Earl Jones. She was also perhaps more involved than she’d otherwise have been because that protagonist was…
A deliriously camp send-up that gleefully rewrites pop culture history, Titanique finds Céline Dion commandeering the Titanic’s legacy with a jukebox score and a wink that never fades. Yet for all its riotous invention and winning performances, this Broadway transfer can feel like a tidal wave of gags—so relentless at times that audiences may find…
“What’s a Jellicle Cat?” In 1982, when Cats first prowled onto Broadway, the answer was strange but straightforward. In Cats: The Jellicle Ball, that question lands very differently. Still drawing from T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, this revival trades the junkyard for the Ballroom, reimagining the…
The walls of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway are shaking, as the overpowering revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman takes the stage. Directed by Joe Mantello, featuring a formidable ensemble, this landmark production reminds us why critic Kennth Tynan called it the greatest American play ever written. This cavernous Broadway theatre is…