Broadway Reviews

Review of Harry Connick, Jr. - A Celebration of Cole Porter on Broadway

The story I always heard from my cousins in New Orleans about Harry Connick, Jr. was that, as a child prodigy he would frighten his mother, a judge, by sneaking out at night to perform in jazz clubs on Bourbon Street, with his father collecting his son in the early hours of the morning. I hope that legend is true, but I highly recommend that everyone get to Harry Connick, Jr. - A Celebration of Cole Porter, the new show at the Nederlander Theatre, and just sit back and enjoy yourself.The band -...

Review of Jagged Little Pill on Broadway

It was a ritual in 1995. Friday nights, often feeling hopeless and ignorant about Slobodan Milošević, I would come home to my Brooklyn apartment. Diminished by a corporate day job, an unrequited love in my heart and an artist's very light pockets, I would combine flour, olive oil, yeast, salt and engage my roommate's glorious sound system with Alanis Morissette's debut album. On my hands and knees I scrubbed Murphy's Oil into my hardwood floors rising to beat, knead, repeat and bake. I would...

Review of The Illusionists: Magic Of The Holidays 2019 on Broadway

There are probably over 70 holiday shows in the New York area vying for your entertainment dollar this season: several Scrooges both traditional and modern, numerous Nutcrackers, holiday music concerts and musicals, nostalgic, contemporary, blended, ones that will leave you covered with snow, a smile on your face and a song in your heart, but mostly striving to make you happy. That's what holiday shows are about. So where do you leave your discretionary funds this year?Are you thirsty for some...

Review of A Christmas Carol, starring Campbell Scott, on Broadway

This version of A Christmas Carol at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, adapted by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus, is a nifty bit of business. An unusual take on Charles Dickens' story, it is Redemption à la Mode. And it works.The story of Scrooge is known so well that the name itself means the meanest of the mean. Closed off from love, alone and daring anyone to approach with an outstretched appendage. This particular Ebenezer Scrooge (Campbell Scott), in addition to being mean, is...

Review of The Inheritance on Broadway

The arrival of The Inheritance at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway is a momentous homecoming for a play that, despite receiving its world premiere in London last year (first at the Young Vic in March before transferring to the West End's Noel Coward last September), not only belongs in New York City but is also mostly set there. It speaks directly to and about a community that was on the frontline of the AIDS epidemic that swept through the city in the 1980s, and the long shadows that have been...

Review of Slava's Snowshow on Broadway

You see, it's like this: Slava Polunin is back in New York and you MUST see him.Slava's Snowshow needs to be on the top of your holiday list of shows. It will remind you about the beauty of our world. About simple acts of love and kindness. It is the epitome of empathy, vulnerability, and childlike wonderment. The clown, the pantomime, is unsurpassable in their ability to surprise through what can only be described as magic in expressing the musicality of life, the beautiful singular moments in...

Review of The Rose Tattoo, starring Marisa Tomei, on Broadway

It is difficult not to think of Anna Magnani and the 1995 film adaptation of The Rose Tattoo when watching this Roundabout Theatre Company revival at the American Airlines Theatre. Hers was such a stunning performance, that I kept waiting for that Serafina to erupt out of Marisa Tomei. This is unfair to Tomei, of course. But it does say something about this production that was neither here nor there. Like the waves on the shore, and the clouds in the sky, in the astonishing projection design by...

Review of Kristin Chenoweth: For The Girls on Broadway

Curtains are up and we see Kristin Chenoweth in an undershirt inside out with tags exposed working on lyrics at the piano. What happened to curtain call warning? How can they start the show without me ready? She encourages fans to take out their cell phones and take photos of her scantily clad. She assures us there are underpants under the oversized tee. The undershirts are available to purchase at intermission. Curtain goes down. Reba McEntire is telling us to turn off our cell phones.A Tony...

Review of David Byrne's American Utopia on Broadway

Donald J Trump famously invoked the prospect of "American carnage" in his inauguration speech in 2017, but rock musician (and occasional theatrical composer) David Byrne's reply, in his 7th solo studio album, was to focus on more positive emotions, with the title American Utopia.Now the Scottish-born New Wave pop star, who co-founded the celebrated group Talking Heads back in 1975, has brought a vivid live touring stage version of that album, with added greatest hits, to America's theatrical...

Review of The Sound Inside, starring Mary-Louise Parker, on Broadway

Who said critics don't matter anymore? Adam Rapp's The Sound Inside got a rave review from Jesse Green in the New York Times when it premiered at Berkshire's powerhouse Williamstown Theatre Festival in northwest Massachusetts in July 2018, and now it has been propelled on to a Broadway transfer to Studio 54, under the auspices of Lincoln Centre Theater and some 17 commercial producing partners. That it has taken some heavy lifting (and no doubt a considerable financial commitment) to do so is a...