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…
Eden Espinosa (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) Lempicka By Fern Siegel Tamara de Lempicka, the famed Art Deco artist, is a captivating subject for a musical. And Lempicka, the ravishing Broadway musical at the Longacre, brings her art and extraordinary life to a new generation. Lempicka is one of the rare original musicals, not…
Michael Esper, Corey Stoll, Sarah Paulson (Photo: Joan Marcus) Appropriate By Fern Siegel Appropriate opens with the deafening sound of cicadas. It’s an unusual choice, given that male cicadas chirp as a mating call. But there is no connection in this Arkansas plantation home. The Lafayette children have come to auction off their father’s estate…
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….
David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, meticulously directed by Daniel Aukin, comes to Broadway with a ton of buzz. Following its sold-out run at Playwrights Horizons last season, it has winged five blocks over to the Golden Theatre, bringing all of its theatrical magic with it. The premise: The year is 1976, and a British-American band on the…
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,…
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……
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…