The Tony Awards nominating committee showed a lot of love this morning to A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, the small, clever musical about mercenary homicide, which will compete for best musical and nine other categories honoring the just completed Broadway season. A Gentleman’s Guide was the top nominations-getter, but the awards remain up for grabs with no clear … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2014
Sundays: Lost in the bewilderness
By Myles Ludwig Picture this. A giant grasping hand, a hand big enough and powerful enough to punch an IMAX Godzilla in the snout, suddenly plunges through the accumulated cumulus clouds — the Google Cloud, the Microsoft cloud, the Amazon cloud — flicks aside the jet drones of Google, Amazon and Facebook, swipes aside WhatsApp, etc., snatches ups the shattered pieces of the … [Read more...]
Soprano adds extra luster to fine Master Chorale outing
The progress that the Master Chorale of South Florida made in its first concert of the current season was gratifyingly on display again Saturday night for its second and last concert of the season, this one devoted to music by child prodigies. New artistic director Brett Karlin chose three very eminent prodigies (rather than say, William Crotch or Camille Saint-Saëns) for the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 9: ‘Mothers and Sons’ and ‘Buyer & Cellar’
Last day of theatergoing in New York for me this trip, and another doubleheader. In 1990, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Terrence McNally expanded a brief play into a made-for-public-television movie, Andre's Mother, about an intractable woman grieving over the death of her gay son. It has now been expanded further, updated and produced on Broadway with the new title, … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 8: ‘Beautiful’ has star turn, but script is too weak
Few people were expecting much when a jukebox musical biography about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons came to Broadway years ago, but Jersey Boys floored the theater world with such shabby tricks as a good surprise-laden story, sharp writing and first-rate staging. Ever since, producers have been in search of the next Jersey Boys. Sorry to report, Beautiful: The Carole … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 7: ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Casa Valentina’
Twenty years ago, the movie dynamo Disney Studios tried its hand at a Broadway musical with Beauty and the Beast, a stage clone of its Oscar-winning animated film. The show was rudimentary at best, not much more than a theme park diversion, but audiences ate it up and the show ran for 13 years. Since then, Disney has been a major producer of theater product, ranging from such … [Read more...]
‘Railway Man’ too manipulative to earn redemption
The Railway Man is a few things: a war movie (mostly), a love story (nominally) and one of those myopic Liam Neeson-style revenge thrillers that seems to coalesce in a bloody catharsis between hero and villain. This adaptation of a best-selling memoir by British Army POW Eric Lomax is the sort of the hybrid that we’d decry as head-shakingly implausible if it weren’t kinda, … [Read more...]
Community theater: LW Playhouse does Python in rollicking style
By Dale King If history had unfolded the way it does in the wacky musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, we might all be riding imaginary horses, negotiating with the knights who say “Ni,” fending off insults from surly Frenchmen and slapping each other with fish. Lake Worth Playhouse drops the curtain on its 2013-14 season with a rollicking rendition of the show adapted from the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 6: ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ ‘If/Then’
What are you doing next Wednesday, April 30? Take some time that day and lift a glass to lyricist Sheldon Harnick with a toast of “L’chaim,” for he turns 90 that day. Yesterday morning, I spent some time with Harnick in his Central Park West apartment, interviewing him about his career, pegged to his milestone birthday and the release of a new double-CD retrospective album, … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 5: ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ fizzles
One reason I usually come to New York this week each year is that it marks the deadline for Tony Award eligibility, and many shows open at the last opportunity, like doing homework in home room just before it is due. But the main reason is to catch The Easter Bonnet Competition, a two-day event that marks the end of the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising season. To … [Read more...]