By Eugene Paul If you want to know where The Front Page was written in 1927, it was down the road from Charlie and Helen MacArthur’s Nyack home, “Pretty Penny”, in little old Piermont, New York, at a no longer used girl’s school which he and Ben Hecht took over. And every day,…
Elizabeth Van Dyke By R. Pikser Not only important history but breathtaking performances A theatrical biography could be tedious, but Laurence Holder’s 20 year old piece about the life of Zora Neale Hurston, mounted again in celebration of the 125th anniversary of her birth, is stunning. As narrated by Ms. Hurston at…
David Hyde Pierce By Michall Jeffers David Hyde Pierce is lovable. There’s a vulnerability and a wry humor that’s totally endearing; from the moment he steps on stage, the audience is with him. This proves to be almost a liability as the play progresses. The show opens with Pierce, as Nate Martin, delivering a…
by Deirdre Donovan Chekhov is always a tough go on Broadway. But you must admire the British director Simon Godwin, who’s at the helm of the Roundabout’s new production of The Cherry Orchard (at the American Airlines Theatre), for his courage in staging the Russian master’s last play. But in spite of Godwin’s earnest…
Patrick Graver and Jessica Ernest; photos by Michael Portantiere. By Marc Miller If you know “Funny Face” at all, it’s probably from the classic 1957 film version, which shares with its 1927 stage counterpart 1) Fred Astaire, 2) a handful of George and Ira Gershwin standards, and 3) little else. For a look at…
Sheldon Harnick, Margery Gray Harnick, Penny Fuller, Charles Strouse, Anita Gillette Photos by Maryann Lopinto By Marc Miller Want to know why the finale to the 27th New York Cabaret Convention (that’s right, it’s been around since 1990) was a can’t-miss? Simply glance at the subtitle: A Salute to Sheldon Harnick and…
By EUGENE PAUL Werner Heisenberg gave the world of quantum physics his Uncertainty Principle in 1927: the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known and vice versa. And even though the Heisenberg name is blazoned as the play’s title, that’s the last of…
Colin Donnell, Steven Reineke, Laura Osnes and Nathan Gunn photo by Richard Termine by Julia Polinsky In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the original staging of My Fair Lady, the opening concert of the 2016 New York Pops season offered up the lovely music of Lerner and Loewe. How wonderful it was, to…
Nick Kroll and John Mulaney (Photo: Joan Marcus) By Ron Cohen The fun stuff at Oh, Hello on Broadway starts with the Playbill. As expected, it contains headshots of the show’s two creators and performers, Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, but under their photos, are two much more recognizable guys you didn’t know…
Andy Striph and Mary Adams Photos by Michael Blase By Marc Miller Folk music is not at the forefront of American popular culture these days. There was the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis a couple of years back, and Christopher Guest and the Second City bunch’s hilarious A Mighty Wind some years before…