Josh Segarra and Ana Villafane by Eugene Paul There are so many ways to look at this endearing, heart warming monster musical that it would be a shame not to enumerate some of them: first: there’s the smart money Broadway savvy, far from visionaries who see clearly that this show would be totally out of…
Kristine Nielsen, Tom Phelan Photos: Joan Marcus by Michall Jeffers Every now and then a play comes along that’s so specific, people either love it or hate it. This season, we have HIR. Burning topics of the day are pushed to the extreme; the audience either roars with laughter, or sits in bewildered silence….
by R. Pikser In the early 1960s Martin Duberman culled historical records of both Blacks and whites. With this information, he wrote a play about the Black experience in the United States: In White America. His selection of materials and how he arranged them, made those records live. It must have been gratifying,…
Photo: Getty Images By Michall Jeffers Trip of Love is a recreation, through music, of a particular moment in the history of our country. When the audience enters the theater, the very walls throb with psychedelic images of mushrooms and ephemera, all done in neon shades of blue, purple, red, and pink. The…
by Marc Miller When Dames at Sea was announced for the Broadway stage, the main worry was: Would bigger be better? The formerly off-Broadway musical by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller (book and lyrics) and Jim Wise (music), a 1968 hit that first got Bernadette Peters noticed, satirizes the large Warner Brothers Busby…
Betsy Morgan, Barbara Walsh, and Caissie Levy . Photo Credit: Joan Marcus By Michall Jeffers There is real brilliance in Michael John LaChiusa’s First Daughter Suite, but it’s not always easy to take. For anyone who’s been enmeshed in a difficult mother/daughter scenario, for anyone who shares a sisterhood that teeters between love and rivalry,…
by Eugene Paul Sixty plus Mattie (Susan Pellegrino) all adither, frightened delight on her face, waves ditherishly out the huge windows at someone, then skitters off. Seventy plus Norton (Ray Baker) comes down the front stairs, looks around, darts into the living room and climbs to his favorite spot up the library…
If you like neat, tidy plays that lay out everything in an easy to digest manner, with a comfortable resolution, don’t go to this play. If you relish seeing a play that strikes out for unknown territories, that disturbs and provokes in equal measure then make a beeline to the play in question. This wide-ranging…
Robert Cuccioli as Mayer Rothschild by Eugene Paul In a rich and moving reworking of the well remembered Bock/Harnick musical, The Rothschilds, new ground has been plowed which gives book writer Sherman Yellen reason to make positive changes in his original book, the astounding story of that family, baring the bite that was carefully…
Ella Briggs, Duke Lafoon and the cast Photo Credit: Diane Sobolewski By Ed Lieberman Christmas came early to the Goodspeed Opera House this year, in the form of a new production of A Wonderful Life, the Sheldon Harnick (book and lyrics)/Joe Raposo (music) adaptation of the iconic Frank Capra holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life, which…