By Dale King The stage at The Plaza Theatre in Manalapan will be bare this season. No music or dialogue will be heard. The lights will remain dark and the seats empty. The owner of the cash-strapped, nearly three-year-old entertainment venue that replaced Florida Stage, which operated for 19 of its 24 years in the same storefront location at Plaza Del Mar, locked the place up … [Read more...]
Letter From Paris: The accidental flâneuse
By Chloe Elder In 21st-century society, the onetime symbol of Paris, the flâneur, is nearly extinct. In its native city, the numbers are dangerously low. Conservation efforts have done little to protect those who remain in the wild and all attempts to breed in captivity have been futile. And awkward. The flâneur is one who strolls, wanders, and traverses the city streets … [Read more...]
‘Pencil’ full of itself, but recounts an admirable idea
Growing up in wealthy Greenwich, Conn., Adam Braun developed an “obsession” with Wall Street and dreamed of “becoming a billionaire. While in college he traveled abroad in the Semester at Sea program, which introduces students to different cultures. Braun decided to ask children he encountered in each nation what they would choose if they could have anything in the world. In … [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...]
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...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 4: Theaters dark, but Legos illuminating
Mondays are even harder to find a show to see than Sunday nights. In fact, with most of the city’s museums closed, it was shaping up as a day without art. Until... After breakfast, I was walking the streets around Times Square when I spied a poster for the Discovery Museum and “the world's largest display of Lego art.” It seems there is a guy named Nathan Sawaya, a lapsed … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 3: A little Easter, and ‘Heathers’
“Does anyone still wear a hat?” asked Elaine Stritch derisively in her legendary performance in 1970’s Company. I can now categorically answer “Yes,” having spent some time on Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when the swells and swell-wannabes strolled the street, open only to pedestrians for much of the day. But my chapeau-spying was brief, for my wife and I — both certified … [Read more...]