Often compared to Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County is an exploration of yet another dysfunctional family, an epic play that also was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It premiered in 2007 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where Letts is a company member and resident playwright. It quickly transferred to Broadway, … [Read more...]
Female ‘Odd Couple’ falls flat at Boca Stage
In his heyday, Neil Simon would write a new play each season. In 1985, however, when he didn’t have a good idea for a play, he rewrote one of his finest, funniest comedies, The Odd Couple, changing the gender of the characters and tinkering with many of his previously well-crafted laugh lines. While he never asked me for my opinion, I would have advised him with that … [Read more...]
Strong lead performances make ‘Oliver!’ a solid Maltz closer
In the early 1960s, long before Andrew Lloyd Webber and others sent a steady stream of mega-musicals from Britain to Broadway, a London songwriter named Lionel Bart scored a big hit on both sides of the pond with Oliver! Based, of course, on Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist, Bart erased much of its crusading social message in favor of bouncy tunes and adorable … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 6: Quirky musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ delights
I finished my week of theater-going in New York on a high note, seeing a quirky new musical called Kimberly Akimbo, with music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Caroline or Change) and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Good People), based on his play of the same name. Both play and musical center on a teenager named Kimberly who has a rare aging disorder that gives … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 5: A powerful ‘Parade,’ and a joyful ‘Some Like It Hot’
Wednesday is a two-show day on Broadway, and I saw a couple of major productions of the season. At the matinee I saw Parade (after the canceled performance when I first arrived in town on Saturday), and in the evening, I saw Some Like It Hot, the new musical adaptation based on the 1959 Billy Wilder classic film comedy. Parade is a revival of the show that first opened … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 4: A high-energy ‘& Juliet’ captivates
Yesterday’s show was the tongue-in-cheek take on Shakespeare, & Juliet, a jukebox musical with pop hits from the recent past that asks what might have happened if Juliet Capulet had lived instead of taking her own life. The infectious results are a little heavy-handed with its female empowerment message, but is ultimately a winner thanks to some clever plotting and a … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 3: New Broadway museum worth a visit
Those who are envious of my being in New York this week should know that the temperature is in the 30s, and when the wind whips up it is bitter cold. So it is an ideal day to get off the street and into the new Museum of Broadway at 145 W. 45th St., an interactive collection of hundreds of original costumes, props and artifacts that bring Broadway history to life. … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 2: Stoppard’s stunning swan song
NEW YORK --- At 84, Tom Stoppard concedes that Leopoldstadt will probably be his final play, If so, he concludes a major career at the top of his game with this epic, deeply personal history of a Jewish family moving through the first half of the 20th century and, inevitably, encountering and falling prey to the Holocaust. Absent is Stoppard’s affection for whimsy and … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway, No. 1: The ‘Parade’ passes by
I’m here in New York for a week of theatergoing, but it did not start well. On Saturday night, I had tickets for a designated press preview of Parade, the revival of the Alfred Uhry-Jason Robert Brown musical that got Brown his first Tony Award for best score. This production, which stars Ben Platt (of Dear Evan Hansen), began in CityCenter’s Encores series with enough … [Read more...]
Wick production winningly revives enduring charms of ‘Damn Yankees’
Baseball and musicals are two purely American institutions, so why not put them together, reasoned songwriters Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The year was 1955, and they had just struck gold with The Pajama Game, so Broadway was eager to see what they would come up with next. Improbably — in the way that most ideas for musicals seem improbable until they work — they became … [Read more...]