Category Archives: Broadway
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Review: Chinglish
While visiting mainland China some years back, playwright David Henry Hwang was invited to see a new arts center in a large provincial city. He was very impressed with the state-of-the-art facility; he was also thoroughly taken aback by the … Continue reading
Review: Venus In Fur
How do you adapt one of the cornerstones of kinky culture, without creating pornography? Playwright David Ives has come up with a very creative solution for this smart, sexy show, by showing us an extended, out-of-control audition in which a … Continue reading
