New York

NOTHINGS IS SOMETHING ELSE Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters around the world, a slew of stage and cabaret favorites got together at Joe’s Pub to celebrate the vibrancy of NYC’s hidden gay community in the 1920s and ’30s. This terrific concert is just a taste of things to come: Life Jacket Theatre…

HERE’S HOPING SMASH IS A SMASH The 2012 NBC TV series, Smash, which had as many loyalists as detractors in its short burst of life, is headed to Broadway, which is where some critics thought it belonged in the first place. Subtitled A New Musical, Smash will be co-produced by Steven Spielberg, whose original idea…

UPCOMING STAR-FILLED ONE-NIGHT-ONLY LIVESTREAM EVENTS TO BENEFIT THE ACTORS FUND Broadway’s Best Shows is about to launch the weekly one-night-only “Spotlight On Plays” series beginning this Thursday, May 7, 2020 to benefit The Actors Fund. These one-night-only events will be livestreamed each subsequent Thursday on The Actors Fund YouTube channel and Broadway’s Best Shows’  YouTube and…

EVERYTHING IS HAPPY INDEED In Jesse Eisenberg’s very funny and poignant one-act Happy Talk the excellent Susan Sarandon plays Lorraine, an amateur actress whose rosy, self-serving delusions lead to tragic consequences. We first meet Lorraine when she arrives late to her suburban home from rehearsal; she’s playing the part of Bloody Mary in a production…

SO WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE? As Shakespeare said, “Good wine needs no bush.” Thus, there is no need to add to what New Yorkers have already discovered, that no matter how many productions of Fiddler on the Roof you’ve sat through, you ain’t seen nothing yet until you’ve seen it in Yiddish, until you’ve heard…

TOOT-TOOT-TOOTSIE, HELLO! I’m here to sing the praises of all those musical comedy freaks who have been jonesing for a contemporary musical that will bring back, in some new form, the golden age of Broadway musicals, because one has come their way. You know the kind I mean. Each song, complete with entrancing melody and…

SEND IN THE CLOWNS A bloody war is ended. The bodies pile up. Who will clean up the mess? What to do? What to do? Oh, yes. Send in the clowns. On this note, Taylor Mac, the certified genius whose A 24-Decade History of Popular Music was the most dazzling, mesmerizing, audacious, life-changing theater experience…

SOC ON THIS Perhaps one of the reasons Socrates has become a god-like figure in the world of philosophy is that we know very little about the actual man who existed during the dawn of writing. He kept no diaries and wrote no treatises, yet philosophies attributed to the classical Greek thinker — Socratic Method,  Socratic…

PRETTY HURTS SO GOOD The title of Tori Sampson’s If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka is a sly retort to Beyoncé’s 2013 song “Pretty Hurts,” both of which lament the negative impacts of rigid, Eurocentric beauty standards on young women — especially young black women. Beyoncé is not the only iconically beautiful woman…

BLONDE, YES: SMART? WELL… It’s tempting, if unfair, to compare Willy Holtzman’s Smart Blonde to the 1963 Broadway musical Funny Girl: both use flashback to frame the biographies of young Jewish girls from New York City who defy expectations and become superstars, with all the highs and lows that accompany it. However, Funny Girl’s tale…

DON’T MIES IT In Mies Julie, Yaël Farber’s contemporary adaptation of August Strindberg’s 1889 play Miss Julie, Farber swaps out Strindberg’s Swedish estate for a prosperous farm in the barren South African desert. Playing through March 10 at Classic Stage Company, Strindberg’s examination of class structure takes a backseat to themes of racial stratification and…

DANCING AROUND DEATH “I thought we might show more decorum by keeping our long miserable mistake to ourselves,” Alice tells Edgar after he expresses his intention to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. “Oh come, Alice!” responds the aging artillery captain. “We’ve had fun. Now and then. And soon it will all be over. We’ll be…