Broadway Reviews

Review of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Jeff Daniels, on Broadway

A regrettably sour note has hung over this new Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Shubert Theatre, when the theatrical rights for an adaptation of Harper Lee's historic novel were assigned to it by Lee and subsequently her estate (who then challenged the version produced by playwright and television writer Aaron Sorkin that led to litigation that was settled in court).But the producer Scott Rudin in turn threatened other planned productions of a previous long-established version...

Review of Hadestown on Broadway

Going to hell has never been as much fun as seeing a performance of Anaïs Mitchell's musical Hadestown, now playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre. And don't let its origins in Greek mythology scare you off because there's a built-in narrator in the form of the god Hermes (André De Shields) whose job was to guide souls into the afterlife. In Hadestown, his first task is to introduce all the characters in a rollicking number "Road to Hell."Mitchell, the talented singer/songwriter who is responsible...

Review of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! on Broadway

If you are looking for that sweet Oklahoma! where Aunt Eller spends her spare time churning butter on her porch and the corn IS as high as an elephant's eye, well pardner, y'all better mosey right on by this trolley stop. Just to be sure you get this message before you sit down, there are 20 racks of rifles lining the walls of the Circle in the Square Theatre.In THIS story, Oklahoma is still Indian Territory on its way to becoming a state. It's being argued over by farmers and ranchers. Located...

Review of What the Constitution Means to Me on Broadway

Midway through What the Constitution Means to Me, the captivating history lesson cum family memoir that has moved to the Hayes Theater after a triumphant off-Broadway run, the show's writer and star, Heidi Schreck, makes one of her many seemingly unscripted comments. Holding her hands to her cheeks, she confides that her face "hurts from smiling." It is at that point that Schreck drops any last pretence of being a character in a play, rather than the intimate confidant that the audience by then...

Review of Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations on Broadway

When the curtain came up at the Imperial Theatre and as the stage directions say "Lights up on a stage exploding in lights and energy. Five men dressed in fly suits and hair slicked like bullets are center stage. They move as smooth as melted butter on a biscuit;" and then they began to sing the familiar words "You've got a smile so bright/You know you could have been a candle," all I could think was, wow, the vocals aren't very tight for a Broadway show. And then I realized, the audience was...

Review of The Illusionists: Magic Of The Holidays on Broadway

PLEASE NOTE: This is a review of the 2018 Broadway engagement of The Illusionists: Magic of the Holidays at the Marquis Theatre.The Illusionists: Magic of the Holidays will blow your mind! Starring five differently talented magicians (and featuring the audience), the show is undeniably enjoyable, if sometimes over-produced. While some tricks felt sadly small for the big stage and some of the tech overly stylized for the varying scales of illusion, I found myself laughing and aweing at the mind...

Review of Mike Birbiglia's The New One on Broadway

The audience waits with a blank stage, exposing the brick of the theater walls and framing the playing space with an array of theatrical lighting that will shift seamlessly between each new beat of the story (lighting design by Aaron Copp). Mike Birbiglia, an actor, comedian, and storyteller, who has performed several live shows (a few of which were made into movies or Netflix specials), animates the full space in The New One, playing at the Cort Theatre on Broadway.Birbiglia is an expert...

Review of Pretty Woman: The Musical, starring Samantha Barks & Andy Karl, on Broadway

Pretty Woman, the 1990 film that married the story of Pygmalion to the annoying trope of the 'hooker with a heart of gold,' has found its way to Broadway in a musical that aims high but falls short of the mark. Burdened by a lackluster score by Bryan Adams, whose style is more suited to country/pop than the stage, Pretty Woman: The Musical is what you get when bad music happens to good singers.Vivian Ward (Samantha Barks), a prostitute one can never imagine actually turning a trick, picks up...

Review of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical on Broadway

Anyone who has been to a disco or a wedding in the last 35 or 40 years has heard and danced to Donna Summer. She was rightly known as the Queen of Disco and was the most successful recording artist of the period during her heyday. So, it was inevitable that we would eventually have Summer: The Donna Summer Musical on Broadway.Judging by the wry faces I got when I told friends I was going to be reviewing Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, as contrasted to the very enthusiastic and packed audience...

Review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway

Today I've got magic on my mind. The Harry Potter kind. Apparently so does the rest of the world. After seeing this spectacular Harry Potter and the Cursed Child I decided to borrow a book from the Library. I have NEVER seen a book available in so many languages. Some of which I don't even recognize. But who can blame them? Don't we all want to take a couple of classes at Hogwarts? Perhaps they have some adult education offerings. And about the owls. Henceforth I want all my mail delivered by a...