By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic Following his 2019 Tony Award win for Tootsie, writer Robert Horn was offered several projects of his choosing, but none seemed more appropriate than reviving his concept of a musical relating to corn and simple country life. Horn had set his sights prior in 2015 on a musical that…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) “Harmony: A New Musical,” the Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman work is hardly a “new” musical, having simmered off the Broadway range for more than 26 years. The musical finally had its fateful opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York on Nov. 13 and is…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The history of Here Lies Love dates back almost two decades ago when David Byrne and Fatboy Slim came up with an improbable concept album about Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, the despots of the Philippines who were overthrown by the civil disobedience movement People Power Revolution in…
By EDWARD RUBIN Little did Andrew Lloyd Webber know when he saddled his most recent musical with the ill-chosen name Bad Cinderella that he was handing theater critics here in New York a cudgel with which to beat his latest Broadway production to a pulp. And beat it they did, savagely so, to the point…
(NEW YORK) – The United Palace, the opulent and spectacular movie theater that was once home to minister Reverend Ike, served as the glamorous backdrop for Broadway’s night to honor its own, the 2023 Tony Awards on June 11. The evening was peppered by remarkable wins for gay, non-binary and trans artists including J. Harrison…
By EDWARD RUBIN Alfred Uhry’s musical Parade, co-conceived by Hal Prince with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is now playing to sell-out crowds and rave reviews, and back on Broadway after 25 years (for a limited run through Sunday, August 6) at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City. A long…
(NEW YORK) – Tony Awards nominations were announced this morning by Lea Michele and 2022 Tony Award winner Myles Frost. The full list of nominations follows. A total of 38 shows were eligible for Tony Awards, having opened between April 29, 2022 and April 27, 2023. Some Like It Hot, based on the 1959 Billy Wilder…
By EDWARD RUBIN Pictures from Home currently running thru April 30 is the most delightful and thought-provoking play currently gracing the Broadway stages at this very moment. Featuring the tried-and-true Danny Burstein, Nathan Lane, and Zoë Wanamaker – three stellar actors at their very best – the play is wowing audiences with loads of laughter,…
By JASON ROBERT BROWN February 22, 2023, Nyack, NY So, the Neo-Nazis. There is a website about the Leo Frank case that is not hard to find on Google. It has been around in some form or other since we first opened Parade in the late 1990’s, and perhaps even before then. It’s quite extensive…
By EDWARD RUBIN Having lived in New York City’s East Village for many decades –I know the very neighborhood where much of the action in Anthony McCarten’s currently running Broadway play The Collaboration takes place, and where art world legends Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) – here channeled by actors Paul Bettany and…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (‘Steppin’ Out“) When A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical opened on Broadway nearly eight weeks ago, there was some bellyaching from first night critics that book writer Anthony McCarten’s conceit of a former rock star and multi-Platinum selling songwriter in an ongoing therapy session was hardly worthy of a…
By ALAN SMASON There are a plethora of plays that have become the basis of successful Broadway musicals. A classic example is Lynn Riggs’ Green Grow the Lilacs, which became Oklahoma. Thronton Wilder’s A Yonker’s Tale was rewritten to become The Matchmaker which, in turn, was made into Hello, Dolly! Despite George Bernard Shaw’s intransigence while he was alive that Pygmalion must never become…
