Broadway Takes on Stallone's Rocky
Yo, Adrian! I’m on Broadway!It might not be the last movie you ever expected to see turned into a Broadway musical, but it’s probably not one of the first either. Nevertheless, here it is: “Rocky,” the...
View ArticleLes Miserables Returns to Broadway
Les Miz s back. (Did you know it had ever gone away?) The original Cameron Mackintosh theatrical colossus ran for more than 15 years before closing in 2003, then came back for a brief encore in 2006....
View ArticlePlaywright Will Eno Debuts on Broadway
A star-packed cast — Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Marisa Tomei — is assembled for the Broadway debut of a playwright known for “experimental theater.”Will Eno’s previous plays have...
View ArticleViolet Blooms on Broadway
The Off-Broadway musical Violet has found new life on Broadway in a revival by the Roundabout Theater Company. Directed by Leigh Silverman, the production features Broadway star Sutton Foster.The...
View ArticleTalking Tony Nominations
Nominations for the 68th annual Tony Awards were announced Tuesday, with tough competition in several categories. For instance, Tyne Daly, Cherry Jones and Audra McDonald are among the nominees for...
View ArticleWoody Allen's Bullets Comes to Broadway
The latest silver-screener to migrate to the Great White Way is Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen’s 1994 film about a playwright who becomes entangled with mobsters. The musical-comedy, set in the...
View ArticleThe '90s Jukebox Sounds Different
Broadway's latest jukebox musical — a show built around pre-existing songs — is a new twist on this now-familiar theatrical form. Holler If Ya Hear Me is inspired by music of the late rap star Tupac...
View ArticleFall Theater Previews and Picks
New York City’s new theater season is a great way to cure those end-of-summer blues. There are plenty of revivals and a few choice new offerings. There are musicals and straight plays. There are...
View ArticleLove Letters, It’s All in the Words
In the late 1980s, A.R. Gurney created an unusual play consisting only of a long correspondence between two people. But that play, Love Letters, has endured and has been seen in innumerable regional...
View ArticleAll-Star Cast Makes It's Only a Play a Hot Ticket
The hottest-selling show on Broadway this fall is, surprisingly, not a musical. Instead, it’s the revival of Terrence McNally’s 1982 comedy It’s Only a Play, set in a theater producer’s lavish New York...
View ArticleBroadway Graced by Disgraced
A short Off-Broadway run in 2012 was New York’s introduction to Disgraced. Novelist and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar’s drama is about the stresses placed on an American Muslim man struggling to resolve...
View ArticleAlbee's A Delicate Balance Returns to Broadway
Edward Albee’s 1966 play A Delicate Balance won him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes. It has become one of his most highly regarded and frequently produced works, and returns for its third run on...
View ArticleLife on an Alien World That's Ours
In 2003, Mark Haddon wrote a well-received novel about a 15-year-old boy solving a mystery that's become a literary staple. But “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is atypical of the...
View ArticleSoprano Renée Fleming Set to Make Broadway Debut
Soprano Renée Fleming — who has triumphed in the worlds of opera, recording and the sports arena — is moving on to the Great White Way. Fleming will make her Broadway debut on the stage of the Longacre...
View ArticleA Look at the London Theater Scene
The New York Times recently sent theater critic Charles Isherwood on a trip to London, where he saw Shakespeare, quasi-Shakespeare and Kristin Scott Thomas onstage. While there, Isherwood took note of...
View ArticleVideo Webcast: An American in Paris Preview
The romantic story of a young American soldier, a beautiful French girl and an indomitable European city, each yearning for a new beginning in the aftermath of war, is the stuff of Broadway dreams. The...
View ArticleStill Heidi After All These Years
The late Wendy Wasserstein hit the playwright’s jackpot in 1989, when The Heidi Chronicles took home the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Desk and New York Critic’s Circle Awards for best new...
View ArticleThe Not-For-Tourists Dark Comedy 'Hand to God' Opens on Broadway
Robert Askins’s dark comedy Hand to God has already had two productions Off Broadway, at Ensemble Studio Theatre and MCC Theater. Now it’s making the leap to the big time, opening on Broadway’s Booth...
View ArticleDo Broadway Musicals Have a Place on the Opera Stage?
Chicago Tribune chief theater critic Chris Jones tells Naomi Lewin that nothing lights up his e-mail inbox like an opera company staging a Broadway musical using full amplification. "It's full of...
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Review: Renée Fleming Makes Broadway Debut as Vain Diva in 'Living on Love'
Already, the Broadway show Living on Love has given Renée Fleming followers much to get used to. First performance and opening night aren't the same thing and are separated by weeks. (It's the preview...
View Article'Gigi' Takes Broadway, Again
The 1958 movie musical “Gigi,” about a young woman being groomed for a life as a courtesan, won an impressive nine Oscars, including Best Picture. But a 1973 theatrical production did not enjoy similar...
View ArticleClassical Music that Turned into Musical Theater
If the story of the Broadway musical "Rent" sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same one that Puccini used in his opera "La Boheme." Tune into Classics for Kids this week to hear about other...
View Article'American in Paris,' 'Fun Home' Get a Leading 12 Tony Noms
NEW YORK (AP) -- The musicals "An American in Paris" and "Fun Home" each received a leading 12 Tony Award nominations on Tuesday, showing two very different sides of this Broadway season.One side is...
View ArticleA Beautiful Gershwin Broadway Ballet
Broadway has been going to the movies for so long now that it’s almost surprising that the beloved 1951 movie-musical “An American in Paris” has only now been turned into a stage show.The man who...
View ArticleCompetition for The Bard and The Tony
A show that can take on both Shakespeare and a group of Tony nominees sounds like a wonder and “Something Rotten” appears to be just that. The new musical has racked up an impressive 10 Tony Award...
View ArticleThe Almighty Jim Parsons
An awkward sweetness and a laconic wit are qualities the actor Jim Parsons wields with Emmy Award-winning skill in his role as Sheldon Cooper on the television series “The Big Bang Theory.” Those are...
View ArticlePoignant 'Fun Home' Wins 2015 Best Musical Tony Award
NEW YORK (AP) -- There's finally reason to be happy in a funeral home – "Fun Home" has won the best musical Tony Award.The poignant show, based on Alison Bechdel's graphic novel memoir about growing up...
View ArticleThe Tonys Report 2015
The 2015 Tony Awards ceremony was Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall. The new musical "Fun Home" had the most fun, winning awards for Best Musical, Book, Score, Leading Actor and Director. "The...
View ArticleA Fall Theater Preview
Labor Day, the semi-official end to the summer, is now in the rearview mirror. Which means that theater-watchers will be eagerly getting ready for the fall season. Broadway already has seen one smash...
View Article'Spring Awakening' Returns to Broadway With Deaf and Hearing Cast
The Tony-winning musical "Spring Awakening," a coming-of-age musical about teenagers and sex, has returned to Broadway. The original production of the musical by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik closed...
View ArticleThrowback Thursday: Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats' Opens on Broadway
Cats. They’re everywhere that videos are shared on the Internet, and they’ve also gained a bit of fame recently for their place in New York City’s bodegas. Thirty-three years ago last night they began...
View ArticleGeorge Takai Takes to Broadway in 'Allegiance'
Actor George Takai is best known as Sulu from "Star Trek," as well as for his LGBT activism and funny posts on Facebook. He and Lea Salonga, the original Kim in “Miss Saigon,” are the headliners in the...
View ArticleThe Rock and Roll Return of Andrew Lloyd Webber
One of the world’s most successful musicians returns to his musical roots in his latest Broadway show. Andrew Lloyd Webber, best-known for "Phantom of the Opera," "Evita" and other shows that feature...
View ArticleA New 'View From the Bridge' on Broadway
Arthur Miller’s "A View from the Bridge" hasn’t exactly been a stranger to Broadway. It has already been revived three times, most recently in 2010 in a production starring Liev Schreiber. But it’s...
View ArticleLinda Lavin Stars in 'Our Mother's Brief Affair'
While on the latest of her many supposed deathbeds, a "tart-tongued" mother, played by Tony-winner Linda Lavin, reveals to her children the details of a tryst from decades past that may resonate in the...
View ArticleTheatre Pipes
Ken Double of the American Theatre Organ Society joins host Michael Barone to explore the use of the instrument in popular musical entertainment and show tunes by Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Jules...
View ArticleSeth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick Bring 'Disaster!' to Broadway
With its suggestive exclamation point, the title of the new Broadway musical Disaster! hints at the campy, over-the-top qualities it brings to the Nederlander Theatre. Set on a cruise ship precariously...
View Article'Bright Star' by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell Shines on Broadway
With a book by comedian/actor/author Steve Martin, lyrics by singer/songwriter Edie Brickell and a bluegrass-inflected score by both, Bright Star comes to Broadway music with its creators as the most...
View Article3 Kings, 4 Plays, 12 Hours, a Shakespeare Cycle at BAM
This spring, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company has taken up residence at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's presenting four of Shakespeare’s plays — Richard II; Henry IV, Parts...
View ArticleIn 'Mary Page Marlowe' a Role so Big It Requires 6 Actresses
Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (August: Osage County) and Tony Award-winning actor (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), has a new play running at his home company, Chicago-based...
View Article'Waitress' Serves Up a New Recipe for Movie-to-Musical Adaptations
Broadway is home to another a new musical based on a movie. Waitress springs from the 2007 film of the same name and tells the story of a small-town girl, who dreams of an escape from her small-town...
View Article'Hamilton' Receives Record 16 Tony Nominations
The 2016 Tony nominees were announced on Tuesday, and Charles Isherwood, theater critic of The New York Times, joins WQXR morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, to gab about the big news. Most notably, the...
View Article'Shuffle Along,' an Unusual Revival Finds Its Way Back to Broadway
One of the most interesting musicals to appear on Broadway this season brings a new look to an almost century-old story. Ninety-five years ago, Shuffle Along was an unprecedented sight on the Great...
View ArticleDid Gershwin Get His ‘Rhythm’ from African-American Composer William Grant...
The new Broadway musical Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed is up for 10 Tony awards this Sunday. It tells of how an all-black musical became a hit on...
View ArticleListen Live: Kelli O'Hara Opens the Caramoor Festival
On Saturday at 8:30 pm, join WQXR host Elliott Forrest and Tony Award-winner Kelli O'Hara for the opening night concert of the Caramoor Festival.O'Hara, who starred in The King and I and South Pacific...
View ArticleMarni Nixon, Voice Behind Movie Musicals, Dies at 86
Marni Nixon, who gave lyrical song and soaring high notes to Natalie Wood's Maria in West Side Story, Audrey Hepburn's Eliza in My Fair Lady and Deborah Kerr's Anna in The King and I, died Sunday of...
View ArticleBryan Cranston debuts on Broadway in All the Way
Actor Bryan Cranston’s roles keep getting bigger. He gained fame for his work on the TV sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle,” then went on to even greater acclaim — and three Emmy awards — for his work on...
View ArticleThe Irish Romance of 'Outside Mullingar'
Two Irish farmers, Anthony and Rosemary, are deeply tied to the land. Because they grew up as neighbors, they also have deep ties to one another, but their personal connections are not all...
View ArticleBombers on Broadway
A lineup of famous Yankees from several eras past and present are on the same stage in Bronx Bombers, a new play now running at the Circle in the Square Theatre.Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter are the roster...
View ArticleJohn Kander Speaks with Candor to Marilyn Horne
This Saturday at 12:30 pm, Marilyn Horne speaks with the American Broadway composer John Kander about the opera he loves and reveals why he never composed for the opera stage. Kander also reveals...
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