I attended last night's performance of "Catch Me If You Can," a new Broadway musical with music by Marc Shaiman, book by Terrence McNally, and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman, at the Neil Simon Theatre.  Interestingly, earlier yesterday the nominating committee announced that the show would be up for a Tony award as best musical and co-star Norbert Leo Butz for a Tony as best actor in a musical, but that the other co-star, Aaron Tveit, … <Read More>

I had never seen the musical show based on the film "La Cage aux Folles."  I remembered the original French film fondly from when it was first shown in the U.S., and I remembered, a bit less fondly, the American knock-off film, the title of which, "The Birdcage," was a literal translation of the French title… the story shifted from a French coastal city to Miami.  Somehow I had never stirred my self to see … <Read More>

I'll go to see anything that Mark Rylance is in…  The man is a most wonderful actor, who totally transforms himself to inhabit each role, and brings such sheer zest to his work that he is always a pleasure to watch.  I loved his performances in La B

I wasn't sure what to expect when I attended the matinee of "WarHorse" at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Sunday, April 24.  The reviews had suggested a miraculous theatrical accomplishment in the context of an illustrated children's novel.   And that's definitely what it is.  The characters are a bit two-dimensional, the plotting predictable – and predictably tear-jerking at the end – but this is an extraordinary accomplishment in the theatrical arts of staging, choreography, costuming … <Read More>

Tonight I attended a performance of "A Minister's Wife," a musical theater adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's "Candida" with book by Austin Pendleton, music by Joshua Schmidt, and lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen.  Marc Kudisch played the minister, Kate Fry played his wife, and Bobby Steggert played the young Eugene Marchbanks, who has a crush on the minister's wife and tries to win her away from him.  Also cast were Liz Baltes as the minister's … <Read More>

Paid a visit last night to this extravaganza.  I loved the film.  Was it crying out to be done as a musical?  Actually, yes.  The combination of the driving disco beat, the fantastic costumes, the energetic choreography and the hard-working cast and crew made it a diverting evening, holding the attention if not exactly gripping the emotions with character development.  The characters are all cartoons.  So this was an occasion for watching gorgeous guys and … <Read More>

I attended the matinee performance of "Compulsion" at the Public Theater this afternoon.  Mandy Patinkin stars, with a supporting cast of Hannah Cabell and Matte Osian.  Patinkin plays a thinly disguised version of Meyer Levin, under the name of Sid Silver.  This is a dramatization of the struggles of Levin over the dramatization of The Diary of Anne Frank. 

The Silver character served in the US military in Europe during WWII, participating in the liberation … <Read More>

On Saturday I attended the matinee performance of City Center Encores' presentation of the musical "Lost in the Stars," by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson.  This show, first presented on Broadway in 1949, was based on the novel "Cry, The Beloved Country," by Alan Paton.  It presents a vignette from pre-apartheid South Africa, in which a black minister and a white farmer ultimately become friends and reconcile with each other after the minister's son is … <Read More>

This afternoon I attended a preview performance of "The Whipping Man," a play by Matthew Lopez that is scheduled to open on February 1 at Manhattan Theatre Club (New York City Center Stage I).  While it is "bad form" to review a preview performance, this one is so close to opening that I have no reservation in giving it my two thumbs up based on what I saw and heard this afternoon.

Inspired by a … <Read More>