Sometimes fascinating failures inspire more thoughts to explore than straightforward successes. Such is the case for the SpongeBob SquarePants Broadway musical, a show that indirectly touches upon a wide range of subjects regarding the state of theatre (and other topics). In the coming days, I’ll excavate some of these ideas in a series dubbed The SpongeBob SquarePapers:
The title John Lithgow: Stories By Heart succinctly describes this one-man play starring, who else, John Lithgow, currently running at the Roundabout Theatre Club’s American Airlines Theatre:
Continue reading “JOHN LITHGOW: STORIES BY HEART (Roundabout)”
Fellowship for Performing Arts’ revival of William Nicholson’s 30-year-old, Tony Award-nominated Shadowlands — directed at a monotonously dull pace by Christa Scott-Reed at Theatre Row — is a period play that persistently plays the artificial period, not its timelessly human truth.
Continue reading “SHADOWLANDS (Fellowship for Performing Arts)”
At a time when so many curmudgeons complain that every story has already been told on the stage and screen, Birthright remains a surprisingly untapped subject. A group of horny, wealthy adolescents partying their way through an exotic foreign locale? WHERE’S MY TICKET?!
If you’re even remotely tapped into the theatre world, then you’ve already read all the much-deserved praise regarding Lila Neugebauer’s direction of the true-ensemble in Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, currently winding down its third (3rd!) production in New York City, this time at Lincoln Center’s off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. As such, hopefully you won’t fault me for not repeating it here.
Dirtying up a beloved childhood icon is one of the most reliable comedic formulas available to comic artists; it also tends to be a reliable formula to get sued.
Continue reading “WHO’S HOLIDAY! (Westside Theatre): How the Grinch Stole Seuss!”
What better time than the holiday season to re-don my Scrooge costume and rail against old theatres undergoing ahistorical facelifts…
Anna Ziegler earned the privilege of two prominent off-Broadway theatre companies simultaneously staging a duo of her new plays this winter.
Continue reading “Anna Ziegler’s Impressive Double-Edged Sword”
People, Places & Things will go down as one of this theatre season’s very best shows.
Continue reading “PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS: A Transatlantic Journey (To Another Website)”
Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush is my favorite Broadway production that I never actually experienced in person.
Continue reading “Will and George, Alec and Donald, Jim and Andy…and Tony”
Write All Nite 