Wednesday was a real dessert day at the theater ― two musicals, Matilda and Kinky Boots, widely expected to be competing against each other for the top Tony Award. Matilda arrives from London weighed down with Olivier Awards and is the front runner to win over here, but I think it could be a closer race than anticipated. Matilda is based on a Roald Dahl kid’s book about a … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York, No. 4: Easter Bonnet show, ‘Vanya and Sonia’
The reason I come up to New York at this specific time of the year is that it is the final week of Tony Award eligibility, when there is a last burst of openings for the season. But in addition, this is the week of the Easter Bonnet Competition, a two-performance celebration of the end of the annual fund-raising begathon drive at New York theaters for Broadway Cares/Equity … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York, No. 3: ‘Finks’ addresses dark pages in show-biz history
Mondays are sparse on Broadway, but I’d go through withdrawal symptoms without a play to see. I was scheduled to see a new musical called Hands on a Hardbody, based on the little-seen film about a truck dealership's marathon promotion, but it failed to attract much of an audience and closed two weeks ago. Instead, it was back to off-Broadway, to Ensemble Studio Theatre far on … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York No. 2: Bette’s back in ‘I’ll Eat You Last’
Sunday in New York, a two-show day after a tasty brunch at the Brooklyn Diner, a justifiably popular theater district eatery. This afternoon it was I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers, a one-woman show about the mega-powerful Hollywood talent agent of the ’80s and ’90s, starring Bette Midler in her first return to Broadway since appearing in Fiddler in the Roof in her … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York, No. 1: ‘The Trip to Bountiful’
I arrived in New York Saturday morning for an eight-day visit, during which I will see 10 or 11 plays and musicals, the most promising productions on Broadway and off, as the season winds to a close. Less than six hours after I took off from West Palm Beach, I was in a fourth row center seat at the Sondheim Theatre for one of the final previews of Horton Foote’s The Trip to … [Read more...]
Letter from Louisville: ‘Gnit’ stands out at Humana new plays festival
LOUISVILLE, Ky. ― Since 1976 ― 37 years, said to be the longest continuous corporate underwriting of the arts ― the Humana Foundation has been funding an annual festival of new American plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. That means hundreds of world premieres, many of which have subsequent lives in New York ― The Gin Game, Agnes of God, Dinner with Friends, etc. ― or at … [Read more...]
Frank Wildhorn: This time, the ‘Jekyll’ he’s always wanted
Theater and pop music composer Frank Wildhorn, who grew up in Hollywood, Fla., has eight Broadway shows to his credit — from long-running cult favorites like Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel to such one-month flops as Wonderland and Bonnie and Clyde. On Tuesday, a newly redesigned and reconceived production of Jekyll & Hyde arrives at the Kravis Center for a weeklong … [Read more...]
From Burt to Broadway, Lake Worth Playhouse marks 60 years
The Lake Worth Playhouse, a fixture in Palm Beach County since 1953, celebrates its 60th anniversary this month with a diamond jubilee Saturday night and its most famous alumnus, Burt Reynolds, the Oscar-nominated, two-time Golden Globe award-winning actor, scheduled to appear as the honored guest. The theme of the jubilee celebration is Decades, a retrospective of the past … [Read more...]
A strong debut from a promising writer
Ayana Mathis was stunned when Oprah Winfrey called recently to say that she had selected Mathis’s debut work of fiction, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, as her next book club selection. Mathis’s well-crafted first novel tells the story of Hattie Shepherd, a teenager who leaves Georgia in 1923 and heads north to Philadelphia in search of a better life. Hattie and her lazy, … [Read more...]
Medeski, Martin and Wood: From scrappy trio to jam band royalty
It isn't exactly John Belushi's "seven years of college" quote from Animal House, but Medeski, Martin and Wood keyboardist John Medeski has an admission regarding his own higher learning at the New England Conservatory in Boston. “It took me about five-and-a-half years to finish there,” he says with a laugh. “I had a scholarship, but I got so busy that I dropped to part-time … [Read more...]