New York

PLENTY OF NOTHING Even before The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway, it was fraught with controversy.    A New York Times puff piece on the Boston American Repertory Theater production was pitched in such a way that director Diane Paulus, adaptor Suzan Lori-Parks, and star Audra McDonald came across as arrogant, which  inspired Stephen Sondheim to…

Stage and Cinema sent Harvey Perr back to the east coast to catch up on this very busy time of the season in New York City theater, when new shows open one right after the other and Tony fever is in the air.   Here’s a hearty and tasty stew of what he saw go down….

DON’T EVEN BOTHER Broadway producers often hope lightning will strike twice as they mount shows very similar to past successes. We have recently seen the creative team of Hairspray unsuccessfully try to replicate that triumph with the flop Cry Baby. The folks who brought you a competent Lombardi are now serving us a mediocre Magic/Bird.  …

LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP Americans love popular stories of miracles and redemption. And really, who doesn’t? Few things are more gratifying than God taking time out of His schedule to break all the rules of Nature, which He created, just to do you a favor. How uplifting is a tale of a corrupted soul that…

THEATER OF THE ADVENTUROUS I hadn’t realized how deeply entrenched in my unconsciousness the Peter Pan legend was; that is, until I found myself, in the last minutes of the rousing and miraculously innovative Peter and the Starcatcher, gently weeping.   Not that the show in any way jerked tears out of me – make no…

BEYOND REALISM The living room and foyer of the modest house on 9th Street in the South Philadelphia of 1986, created by David Meyer, is as dank and dreary as social realism will allow.   And when the door to the kitchen opens, we may not see the kitchen sink, but we can readily imagine exactly…

THEATRE GHOST In uncertain times such as these, audiences crave familiarity and nostalgia.   Broadway, which once turned plays into movies, is now glutted with adaptations of popular films because it’s easier to sell a show as a known quantity based on a “title.”   While producers play on our nostalgia, they usually diminish the source material,…

YOU’RE GONNA STAND UP: Sometimes in the theater, all you need are four chairs and four actors and a director who knows how to move them around so that everything they do is as natural as breathing.   Welcome to You Better Sit Down: Tales From My Parents’ Divorce, the newest project of the innovative and…

BLOODY MASSACRE, DULL SONG As they march through (or are flung through) the doors of an abandoned slaughterhouse, their bodies bloodied, one wonders what battle zone of what war they have come from.   But it turns out that this group of survivors have merely killed a mean neighbor.   Who would have thought there’d be so…

LIVING EVITA LOCA Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber – together with lyricist Tim Rice – released the Evita “rock opera concept album” in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical production came to life on the West End and ultimately Broadway, a production that I vividly remember.   It was truly exhilarating to witness Patty LuPone…

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD Ever since Crimes of the Heart won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, a cloud of skepticism has followed the award.   The announcement that last year’s winner Clybourne Park was coming to Broadway was met with a blend of excitement and cynicism.   While Clybourne Park also won several major new…

ONE HIT, TWO GUVNORS Once upon a time, you could attend theatre by Americans and watch actors who had worked together for decades.   Long rehearsal periods to explore classical texts were commonplace until Reagan cut the NEA.   Acting companies were devastated.   Today American audiences rarely get to see finely honed ensembles perform collaboratively developed classical…

POLITICS AS USUAL Given the nastiness of the recent Republican primary debates and a sense of even worse nastiness to come with the next election, it is no surprise that thoughts of reviving Gore Vidal’s The Best Man would be imminent. Vidal’s gimlet-eyed insight into the peculiarities of the Washington political scene and his trenchant…

A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you’ve never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly revelatory play about Judy Garland’s last days; I am talking about Tracie Bennett’s devastating portrait of a Ritalin-addled, vodka-soaked, emotionally greedy and equally needy,…

SIMON’S LOST IS FOUND The disappointing turnout for The Neil Simon Plays on Broadway in 2009 suggested that Neil Simon’s style of dysfunctional family comedy, a mainstay of The Great White Way, was suddenly passé.   Brighton Beach Memoirs barely drew an audience, closing within two months, and the planned companion production of Broadway Bound never…

MILES OF TALENT AT LINCOLN CENTER As a reviewer, I don’t like to pander in hyperbole, but since this year has been such a second-rate season in New York, I think it’s safe to say that 4000 Miles will be remembered as one of the best shows of the season. Upon its opening, fortunately, Amy…

MCC GETS CARRIE-D AWAY The myth that youth market musicals are a low-risk venture has gained strength over the last few years in New York City.   Short-sighted producers will overlook disasters  such as  Glory Days in favor of mounting the next potential Spring Awakening.   This phenomenon has never more clearly been on display than in Manhattan Class…

GOOD NEWSIES, BAD NEWSIES A few months ago, the New York theatre community was all abuzz with the announcement that the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Newsies was transferring to Broadway for a limited run.   Cynical insiders were convinced the move was solely for the benefit of Disney’s legal team who could finally control all…

A TAWNY STAR IS BORN Tawny Heatherton is the fictional drag persona created by David Drake, the star of My Tawny Valentine at The Laurie Beecham Theatre. As the niece of Joey Heatherton, Tawny is best known to the world as a one-hit wonder for her single, “Run, Crazy Man,” a song that was huge…