By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There are times when the special effects in Beetlejuice, the latest musical to occupy the historic space at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, occur at such a dizzying pace, one can only compare them to serotonin and dopamine, the potent chemicals that douse the brain during […]
By AARON KRAUSE He is entering his 50th and final season as TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s Artistic Director and has garnered many awards for his work with the Bay Area company. And to top off Robert Kelley’s five decades at its helm, one of the longest of any professional regional theater, the founding artistic director recently […]
The nominees for the 2019 Antoinette Perry Awards (Tony Awards) were announced April 30. They were announced by Tony winner Bebe Neuwirth and Tony nominee Brandon Victor Dixon at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The 73rd annual ceremony will be broadcast by CBS from Radio City Music Hall […]
By ROY BERKO What do Rogers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter all have in common? Yes, they are all composers of American musicals, but they are also just some of those who attempted, and failed, to make George Bernard Shaw’s classical Pygmalion into a musical. At one point, Shaw had given permission […]
By EDWARD RUBIN There are few examples of jukebox musicals – a denigrating term if ever – that have blown me away. In fact, without overtaxing my brain, Jersey Boys, which dramatizes the formation, success and eventual breakup of the 1960s rock ‘n roll group The Four Seasons, is the only jukebox musical of import […]
By ANNE SIEGEL NEW YORK – With the Broadway success of The Lion King more than 20 years ago (and still pumping millions into Disney coffers), it was no surprise that “Frozen,” the top-grossing animated film of all time, was soon going to join its jungle-inspired predecessor. In early November, The Lion King was still […]
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK, N.Y.– Yes, that really is a live goat on stage. It’s leading its handler toward the audience in the astonishing, breathtaking, visually enthralling, vivacious, but most importantly, healing and life-affirming, current Tony-winning revival of the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical Once On This Island. In fact, the animal’s owner […]
By ALAN SMASON For those of you living under a rock, King Kong opened on Broadway last Thursday (Nov. 8) and, as one would expect, most every critic panned the newest addition to the Great White Way as being shallow or lacking in theatrical achievement in song and dance. In many ways they are right. […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out’) Imagination has always been the spark in literature that establishes domain over the hearts and consciences of mankind. Love and the search for it has been the impetus for so many characters and the motivation for so many recorded works that it is hard to find anything […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Producers of Broadway shows oftentimes wait for the passing out of coveted Tony Awards before determining whether they will pull the plug on a production. Receiving one or more awards typically will guarantee that a weak show at the box office will get a second or third […]