Michael Dale
After 20-odd years singing, dancing and acting in dinner theatres, summer stocks and the ever-popular audience participation murder mysteries (try improvising with audiences after they?ve had two hours of open bar), Michael Dale segued his theatrical ambitions into playwriting. The buildings which once housed the 5 Off-Off Broadway plays he penned have all been destroyed or turned into a Starbucks, but his name remains the answer to the trivia question, "Who wrote the official play of Babe Ruth's 100th Birthday?" He served as Artistic Director for The Play's The Thing Theatre Company, helping to bring free live theatre to underserved communities, and dabbled a bit in stage managing and in directing cabaret shows before answering the call (it was an email, actually) to become BroadwayWorld.com's first Chief Theatre Critic. While not attending shows Michael can be seen at Citi Field pleading for the Mets to stop imploding. Likes: Strong book musicals and ambitious new works. Dislikes: Unprepared celebrities making their stage acting debuts by starring on Broadway and weak bullpens.
BWW Review: Edie Falco, Michael McKean, Peter Scolari in THE TRUE
BWW Review: Musical Dating Adventure NEUROSIS
BWW Review: A LOVELY SUNDAY FOR CREVE COEUR
BWW Review: Richard Nelson Gives UNCLE VANYA Rhinebeck Treatment
April 1 - Sondheim To Make Guest Appearance On Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
BWW Review: Company XIV's CINDERELLA by Austin McCormick
BWW Review: Taylor Trensch in DEAR EVAN HANSEN
BWW Review: FLIGHT at McKittrick Hotel
BWW Review: Aasif Mandvi Offers New Yorkers Seconds of His Obie-Winning SAKINA'S RESTAURANTOctober 14, 2018
Savvy New Yorkers will immediately have a clear picture of the work environment when Azgi, the narrating character of playwright/actor Aasif Mandvi's solo piece SAKINA'S RESTAURANT, says he's moving from a village in India to Manhattan to work as a waiter at a restaurant located at 400 E. 6th Street.
BWW Review: Eddie Korbich Plays Brilliant But Bigoted Richard Wagner in Allan Leicht's MY PARSIFAL CONDUCTOROctober 12, 2018
'A Jew? In heaven? Jews?' an incredulous 92-year-old Cosima Wagner asks her delirium-induced vision of her long-gone husband, Richard, at the outset of Allan Leicht's history-based My Parsifal Conductor.
BWW Review: Heidi Schreck's Inescapably Truthful WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO MEOctober 10, 2018
Though designer Rachel Hauck's set for Heidi Schreck's inescapably truthful, yet eventually hopeful autobiographical performance piece WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME is based on the author/performer's memories of her home town's VFW Hall, it's likely that many audience members entering the auditorium of New York Theatre Workshop will take one look and be reminded of recent photos depicting Christine Blasey Ford's view of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
BWW Review: Beautifully Sung and Acted GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY Matches Storytellers Conor McPherson and Bob DylanOctober 2, 2018
Do not expect a rousing 'Rainy Day Woman'/'Blowin' In The Wind'/'Mr. Tambourine Man' dance mega-mix.at the end of Girl from the North Country, playwright/director Conor McPherson's lovely, introspective drama that incorporates twenty selections from the extraordinary songbook of American folk legend Bob Dylan.
BWW Review: Richard Bean's Eccentric Comedy THE NAP Introduces Snooker To BroadwaySeptember 27, 2018
British playwright Richard Bean made a riotous Broadway debut six years ago with the knockabout farce ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, but his newest hit to cross the Atlantic, The Nap, while full of good-natured fun, partakes in subtler eccentricities.
BWW Review: Janet McTeer Speaks The Speeches Ever So Trippingly in Theresa Rebeck's BERNHARDT/HAMLETSeptember 25, 2018
'All that privilege and he can't figure out how to do anything?,' ponders one of the world's greatest actors as she attempts to delve into the psyche of one of the world's greatest theatrical characters.
BWW Review: Craig Lucas' Job-Inspired Drama, I WAS MOST ALIVE WITH YOU, Performed in Both Spoken English and ASLSeptember 25, 2018
The press script provided to critics reviewing Craig Lucas' somber and overstuffed drama, I WAS MOST ALIVE WITH YOU, specifies that the play 'was created to be performed by Deaf and hearing actors for Deaf and hearing audiences' and that all productions 'must provide full access for hearing and Deaf audiences at all performances.'
BWW Review: Kristine Nielsen and Annette O'Toole in Tennessee Williams Rarity A LOVELY SUNDAY FOR CREVE COEURSeptember 23, 2018
Don't be surprised to immediately sense a bit of familiarity in the dynamic between the two main characters as director Austin Pendleton's very fine La Femme Theatre production of the lesser-known Tennessee Williams drama A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur commences.
BWW Review: Edie Falco, Michael McKean and Peter Scolari Tackle Politics and Marriage in Sharr White's THE TRUESeptember 21, 2018
Dorothea "Polly" Noonan, the real-life central character of Sharr White's new political drama, THE TRUE, was the grandmother of current United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. If times were different, she might have been in the Senate herself, keeping the seat warm for her.
BWW Review: Musical Dating Adventure NEUROSIS Is Extremely Enjoyable FluffSeptember 19, 2018
While the exact location of composer Ben Green, lyricist Greg Edwards and bookwriter Allan Rice's funny and frothy new musical dating adventure, Neurosis, is never revealed, it's a safe bet that New Yorkers, who have glamorized and romanticized neurotic tendencies into a beloved badge of honor, will mightily relate to its wacky antics in the name of love.
BWW Review: Richard Nelson Gives UNCLE VANYA The Rhinebeck TreatmentSeptember 17, 2018
For the better part of the present decade, playwright/director Richard Nelson has been going seriously Chekhovian, first with a quartet of plays set during the Obama years in the Rhinebeck, New York home of a family named Apple and then with a trio of visits during the 2016 presidential campaign with the nearby Gabriel family.
BWW Review: Jen Silverman's Weird and Wonderful COLLECTIVE RAGESeptember 13, 2018
Eat your heart out, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. Paul Weiss' 1963 historical drama, better known as MARAT/SADE, now hands over the crown for play with the longest title to mount a major New York production to Jen Silverman's delightful bit of heartfelt absurdism, COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES; IN ESSENCE, A QUEER AND OCCASIONALLY HAZARDOUS EXPLORATION; DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND YOU READ ABOUT SHACKLETON AND HOW HE EXPLORED THE ANTARTIC? IMAGINE THE ANTARCTIC AS A PUSSY AND IT'S SORT OF LIKE THAT.
BWW Review: R.R.R.E.D. Warns of Genetic Extinction of RedheadsSeptember 7, 2018
There are times in musical theatre when a talented cast performing their hearts out can make questionable material not only endurable, but even somewhat enjoyable. Sadly, this is not the case with R.R.R.E.D., which, while given a game try by a quartet of enthusiastic belters displaying ample showbiz pizzazz, begins with a potentially interesting idea and never goes anywhere with it.
BWW Review: The Mint Revives Lillian Hellman's Intriguing Labor Drama DAYS TO COMEAugust 27, 2018
Perhaps if Clifford Odets' landmark pro-union drama, WAITING FOR LEFTY, hadn't opened the year before,Lillian Hellman's 1936 labor drama, DAYS TO COME, the sophomore Broadway effort of the playwright who made a huge name for herself two years earlier with THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, might have been better received.
BWW Review: Bland PRETTY WOMAN Is Not An Affair To RememberAugust 20, 2018
With an innocuous book more focused on moving to plot points than creating interesting leading characters and a platitude-heavy score that tends to linger on moments instead of expanding on them, PRETTY WOMAN, based on the hit 1990 film, is the blandest musical to hit Broadway in recent memory.
BWW Review: GETTIN' THE BAND BACK TOGETHER Salutes A Different Breed of Jersey BoysAugust 16, 2018
The past several Broadway seasons have seen extraordinary developments in musical theatre, with a steady stream of new shows, usually transferring from non-profit Off-Broadway, offering smart writing, inventive storytelling and expanded notions of the subject matter and musical styles that can be welcomed into the art form.
BWW Review: Austin Pendleton Creates a Shakespearean Combo in WARS OF THE ROSES: HENRY VI & RICHARD IIIAugust 13, 2018
The stage is quite empty, save for a makeshift throne in a corner and a couple of rows of ordinary looking chairs in the back, where actors not involved with scenes sit. The costumes are contemporary clothes, mostly black, with the occasional embellishment to suggest the 15th Century setting. When a character is in need of a dagger, he'll grab one of the two hanging from ropes on either side of the stage.
BWW Review: Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz's Hard-Rocking, Super-Charged and Very Well Written BE MORE CHILLAugust 11, 2018
It may not have the romantic sweep of 'Some Enchanted Evening' or the driving intensity of 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' but so far, the best new theatre song of this young season is a finely-crafted emotional shut-down carrying the unlikely title 'Michael In The Bathroom.'
BWW Review: Renee Taylor's MY LIFE ON A DIET Is a Comedy FeastAugust 8, 2018
Back in the days, really not very long ago, when self-effacing gags about failed diets were one of the few topics of discussion deemed acceptable for women in comedy, the punchline Renee Taylor uses after telling about the time when she ate nothing but meatballs every day because it was the diet that helped Lou Costello shed twenty pounds before filming 'Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy,' would have been regarded as gold.
BWW Review: Israeli Star Sasson Gabay Revisits His Film Role in Broadway's THE BAND'S VISITAugust 7, 2018
The last time an actor appeared in a Broadway musical playing a role he had previously essayed on film, it was 1983, when Anthony Quinn opened in the revival of ZORBA. Sharing that unusual distinction with him now is Israeli actor Sasson Gabay who has taken over as leading man of this past season's 10-time Tony winning musical, THE BAND'S VISIT.
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