Category Archives: theatre

Review: Wit

One might be concerned that a play about a woman dealing with ovarian cancer would be at best dull, at worst depressing. How welcome it is, then, that for most of its hour and a half length, playwright Margaret Edson’s … Continue reading

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Review: Gob Squad’s “Kitchen”

I have a very special relationship to the 1965 Andy Warhol film Kitchen. In the years following Kitchen‘s very limited art house cinema release, Ron Tavel, Warhol’s scenario writer, adapted Kitchen into a stage play called Kitchenette, which in various … Continue reading

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Review: The Road to Mecca

I’m not the biggest fan of South African playwright Athol Fugard, but this revival of his The Road to Mecca has raised my opinion of what he has to offer as a writer and a thinker. The things I don’t … Continue reading

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Review: Stick Fly

Back in the late 1970s Ashford & Simpson wrote a classic, elegant instrumental disco song “Bourgie Bourgie”, to which they later added lyrics for Gladys Knight. The vocal version of the song is an anthem of African-American upper mobility, celebrating … Continue reading

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Review: Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway

What can you say? The man is almost supernaturally good-looking, has the charisma of a sun god, can sing and dance like Gene Kelly – so much so that he has become this generation’s definition of a song and dance … Continue reading

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Review: Seminar

I’ve been following playwright Teresa Rebeck for a very long time, and I’ve always been impressed with her ability to create sparkling, cutting dialogue that actually gets to the heart of important issues with a truly provocative level of insight. … Continue reading

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Review: Michael Feinstein and Barbara Cook

This is a great match: the vocal styles of Barbara Cook and Michael Feinstein pair perfectly. They both have smooth, warm voices with a creamy, even vibrato, and both veer towards the lightly romantic in the way they interpret lyrics. … Continue reading

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Filed under cabaret, musical, review

CD Review: Follies

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is revered in the theater community, and I think rightly so. It contains some of the best musical comedy songs ever written – funny and poignant, often at the same time. Thank goodness, then, that the new … Continue reading

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Review: Private Lives

I’m a big fan of Noël Coward – here’s a gay playwright who married queer wit to a penetrating understanding of human emotions. Director Richard Eyre’s breezy new production of his Private Lives largely does right by my boy Noël, … Continue reading

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Review: Other Desert Cities

I’m so thrilled that 2011 can be marked as the year that two very promising American playwrights crossed over into visibly being really great writers. David Lindsay-Abaire did it on Broadway in the spring with Good People, and Jon Robin … Continue reading

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