If Wednesday was a dessert day where all I had to do was watch two splashy musicals, Thursday I had to do actual work. I ran around the city doing four different interviews about shows coming to the Kravis Center next season. First it was downtown to talk to Hal Luftig, producer of the Evita revival that is on the Kravis on Broadway schedule next year, then back up to the … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York No. 5: ‘Matilda,’ ‘Kinky Boots’
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...]
Community theater: Voices stand out in Lake Worth’s ‘Barnum’
By Dale King In his day, master showman Phineas Taylor Barnum could probably have followed you into a revolving door and come out ahead of you. Such was the reputation of the legendary P.T. Barnum, fast-talking wheeler-dealer, circus icon and consummate con man whose life is celebrated in the frantic and festive musical, Barnum, now playing at the Lake Worth Playhouse. The … [Read more...]
New World’s bracing concert at Boca Fest deserved bigger audience
By Donald Waxman On the next-to-the-last evening of the 2013 Festival of the Arts Boca, Peter Oundjian, the Canadian conductor and violinist, led the New World Symphony of Miami in three early 20th-century works. The guest soloist was the Russian-American pianist Valentina Lisitsa, whose career in recent years has flourished in an unprecedented way. The program promised to be … [Read more...]
New curator to bring fresh eyes to Norton’s American collection
“I like to put things in a historical context. I think like my father,” said Ellen Roberts, the new Harold and Anne Berkley Smith Curator of American Art at the Norton Museum of Art, about why she loves being a curator. “He’s a 20th-century European intellectual historian.” This kind of thinking will help in her new post, where she’ll document and educate the public and … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York: ‘Woolf’ still has bite; ‘13 Things’ and The Ride
NEW YORK ― I spent last weekend in Manhattan, checking out the holiday lights and the department store window decorations. And a few shows, too, to see whether they are naughty or nice. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Fifty years ago, Edward Albee burst onto Broadway with his take-no-prisoners view of marriage, academia division. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? cemented his … [Read more...]