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“The Doctor” – written and directed by Robert Icke
I do wish that Robert Icke the director had trusted Robert Icke the writer a bit more. Icke the writer has composed a script about a doctor named Ruth Wolff who strides through her life utterly certain of her ethical imperatives at every turn. Well, whenever you introduce a character so full of certitude, you… Continue reading
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“Days of Wine and Roses”
Popular culture has stamped the Fifties in our minds with images of Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Mickey Mantle and Annette Funicello. The war was over, the economy was booming, bebop and abstract expressionism were bringing new ideas to music and art, and musicals like Guys and Dolls, Bells Are Ringing and The Music… Continue reading
Broadway, film adaptation, Golden Age of Television, movies, musicals, New York, off-Broadway, playwriting, television, theater12 Angry Men, 1950s, Adam Guettal, Atlantic Theater, Blake Edwards, Cliff Robertson, Craig Lucas, Criterion, Executive Suite, Fred Coe, Jack Lemmon, John Frankenheimer, JP Miller, Judgment at Nuremberg, Lee Remick, Leonard Bernstein, Mad Men, Marty, Michael Greif, Patterns, Philco Playhouse, Piper Laurie, Playhouse 90, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The, The Apartment, The Trip to Bountiful, United States Steel Hour, Westinghouse Studio One -
Jamie Lloyd Reminds Us of Some Essentials
A New York Post writer named John Oleksinski recently wrote an article in which he chided Broadway producers for productions that charge big money but offer skimpy production values. Oleksinski claims that chintziness in scenery is based in a desire to cut budgets. If you go to Broadway (or any theater) for the fun of… Continue reading
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Homeless, Lizzie Borden and Three Plays With Brooklyn Connections
A few days ago, as I was leaving the Upper West Side building where my wife and I live, I ran into one of our neighbors, a former state Supreme Court judge. She knows I’m a playwright and a theater journalist and she wanted my take on a play. A minute or two later we… Continue reading
A Doll's House, A Raisin in the Sun, Alexander Zelden, Anne Kauffman, August Wilson, Becomes a Woman, Betty Smith, Brooklyn, Crumbs From the Table of Joy, David Mamet, Eric Tucker, Fall River Fishing, Frederick Wiseman, Herman D. Farrell III, Jamie Lloyd, L:loyd Richards, Lorraine Hansberry, Love, Lynn Nottage, Mint Theater, National Theater of Great Britain, Oscar Isaac, Rachel Brosnahan, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window -
Shakespeare as Springboard
“Shakespeare lied.When Juliet died,Romeo didn’t take poison just because he’d lost his bride.What did he do?He got over it.He went back to junior high, and he got over it.And so will you.You’ll get over it.” A lyric by Carolyn Leigh from the musical How Now Dow Jones (with music by Elmer Bernstein) suggesting a different… Continue reading
AR Gurney, Bedlam Theater, Chimes at Midnight, Eric Tucker, Falstaff, Fat Ham, Hamlet, Henry IV, How Now Dow Jones, James Ijames, Jay O. Sanders, Keith Baxter, King Lear, Lanford Wilson, Love and Let Love, Margaret Thatcher, Merchant of Venice, Moira Buffini, Orson welles, Peter Ustinov, Queen Elizabeth II, Saint Flashlight, Shakespeare, The Will of the City, Theatre for a New Audience, Tom Stoppard, Twelfth Night, Your Own Thing -
“The Far Country,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and Revues
I should declare a conflict of interest. Lloyd Suh is a former student of mine. I have no idea what, if anything, he got from our classes a couple of decades ago at the New School, but he made a vivid impression on me at the time and I have followed his work with particular… Continue reading
Adolph Green, Atlantic Theater, Betty Comden, Daniel Radcliffe, Dramatists Guild, Eric Ting, George Furth, George S. Kaufman, Hal Prince, Hello Dolly!, Jerry Herman, John F. Kennedy, Jonathan Groff, Lee S.Wilkof, Lindsay Mendez, Lloyd Suh, Milk and Honey, Moss Hart, New York Theater Workshop, Roger Ailses, Stephen Rosenfeld, Stephen Sondheim, The Far Country -
Chasing Stories
If you took a census of all of the characters who are alive in my mind, it wouldn’t surprise me if the number reached into the thousands. Sherlock Holmes and Mama Rose, Clytemnestra and Walter Lee Younger, Jackie Brown and Zatoichi – leading, supporting and cameo characters reside uneasily in an ever-expanding repertory company and… Continue reading
Bedlam Theater, Chris Chibnall, Christopher Walken, Doctor Who, Eric Tucker, Henrik Ibsen, Jennifer Westfeldt, Jodie Whitaker, Liba Vaynberg, Mike Birbiglia, Othello, Pygmalion, Rattlestick Theater, Saint Joan, Sense and Sensibility, Shakespeare, Susannah Millonzi, The Gett, The Old Man and the Pool, The Winter's Tale -
“Raisin in the Sun” at the Public
The first grown-up straight play I remember seeing was Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in Chicago. I didn’t see it the first time it played Chicago, when it stopped there on its way to Broadway in February 1959 and, to the surprise of its author, received a rave review in the Chicago Tribune… Continue reading
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A New “1776”
I’m going to guess I’m not the only person who learned about the triangle trade from a musical. Late in the action of the show of 1776, a delegate to the Continental Congress from South Carolina named Edward Rutledge reacts to his northern colleagues’ concern for black people held in bondage in the south by… Continue reading
"Molasses to Rum", 1776, AnnMarie Milazzo, Benjamin Franklein, Carolee Carmello, Clifford David, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Declaration of Independence, Diane Paulus, Eddie Sauter, Edward Rutledge, Jeffrey L. Page, John Adams, John Cullum, Patrena Murray, Peter Hunt, Peter Stone, Roundabout Theater, Sara Prokalob, Sherman Edwards
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Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 