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: Carole King and Maurice Sendak's REALLY ROSIE
BWW Review: The York's JERRY'S GIRLS
BWW Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
BWW Review: Michael Moore's THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDER
COME FROM AWAY's Gander Township Rejects Trump Hotel/Casino
East Village Bea Arthur Residence For Homeless LGBT Set To Open in 2017
BWW Review: CURVY WIDOW is a Fun and Frisky Showcase For Nancy OpelAugust 22, 2017
It doesn't take long before Nancy Opel starts tearing your heart out as the title character of the new musical, Curvy Widow.
BWW Review: Anita Gillette Takes Celia Keenan-Bolger Through Time in Bruce Norris' A PARALLELOGRAMAugust 15, 2017
'If you knew in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn't do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?'
BWW Review: New Cast Members Add New Dynamics To A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2August 13, 2017
When this reviewer first critiqued Lucas Hnath's clever and intriguing A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2, he envisioned much discussion being provoked over the fact that a new Broadway play that debates issues regarding a woman's fight against institutionalized sexism was written and directed by men.
BWW Review: Christine Pedi, Stephanie Umoh and
Stephanie D'Abruzzo Shine Brightly in The York's JERRY'S GIRLSAugust 12, 2017
After Florenz Ziegfeld spent the early decades of Broadway's 20th Century 'glorifying the American Girl,' a young composer/lyricist named Jerry Herman spent a good hunk of the second half showcasing extraordinary women.
BWW Review: The Resistance Hits Broadway in Michael Moore's THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDERAugust 11, 2017
Red, white and blue bunting is draped across a stage left box at the Belasco Theatre because, as Michael Moore explains at the beginning of his more-or-less solo Broadway performance, THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDER, it is reserved for President Donald Trump to sit in at any performance he chooses.
BWW Review: Tina Howe's SINGING BEACH Addresses Deteriorating People and a Deteriorating EarthAugust 9, 2017
Given her distinguished career that includes such significant works at PAINTING CHURCHES, COASTAL DISTURBANCES and PRIDE'S CROSSING, a new play by Tina Howe is certainly a noteworthy event.
BWW Review: Taylor Caldwell Leads a Terrific Young Cast in Carole King and Maurice Sendak's REALLY ROSIEAugust 6, 2017
New York City wasn't exactly the most magical place for a child to grow up in back in 1975. Crime and poverty rates were inhumanely high and when the city begged for federal assistance, the president, at least according to a Daily News headline, replied 'Drop Dead.'
BWW Review: Director Lear deBessonet's Luscious, Lusty and Laugh-Out-Loud Funny A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAMAugust 5, 2017
It was fifty years ago that The Summer of Love attracted throngs of lunatics, lovers and poets to New York's Central Park in a free-spirited embrace of life's passions and pleasures. That same spirit is now joyously celebrated in the park's Delacorte Theater, where director Lear deBessonet's luscious, lusty and laugh-out-loud funny production of Shakespeare's fantasy comedy, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM offers an evening of ravishing enchantment.
BWW Review: Kirsten Childs' THE BUBBLY BLACK GIRL SHEDS HER CHAMELEON SKIN Tackles Racial Identity IssuesJuly 31, 2017
Connoisseurs of American musical theatre wishing to make a point about the genre's ability to dramatize even the most unlikely of subjects often cite examples like SWEENEY TODD's vengeful barber on a killing spree or THE PAJAMA GAME's labor/management dispute, but bookwriter/lyricist/composer Kirsten Childs may have topped them all in 2000 when Playwrights Horizons premiered THE BUBBLY BLACK GIRL SHEDS HER CHAMELEON SKIN.
BWW Review: Andrea Frierson's ME & ELLA Pays Tribute To Her Legendary InfluenceJuly 23, 2017
Even if you've never heard a note sung by Ella Fitzgerald (and if that's the case, you should stop reading this review immediately and look up some of her recordings on YouTube) Andrea Frierson's duo-bio solo show, ME & ELLA, can be related to by anyone whose life was influenced by a popular artist they've never met.
BWW Review: Oscar Isaac Stars in Sam Gold's Jaunty Rendering of HAMLETJuly 20, 2017
Though your ticket says you're seated at The Public's Anspacher Theater, don't be surprised if once director Sam Gold's jaunty mounting of Shakespeare's Hamlet shifts into gear, you find yourself wondering if you may have stumbled into some indie production playing in the back room of a hipster bar on the Brooklyn side of the L train.
BWW Review: In Anne Kauffman's Incisive Encores! Production, ASSASSINS Seems More Relevant Than EverJuly 15, 2017
A folk-singing black man with an optimistic view of America looks back at our nation's history of angry white people finding no better way to cope with their grievances than by firing a gun at the president.
BWW Review: Dominique Morisseau Attacks The School-To-Prison System in PIPELINEJuly 11, 2017
In December of 2015, shortly before her excellent drama SKELETON CREW opened Off-Broadway, playwright Dominique Morisseau essayed an article for American Theatre titled 'Why I Almost Slapped a Fellow Theatre Patron, and What That Says About Our Theatres.'
BWW Review: Cirque du Soleil Hatches Up OVOJuly 9, 2017
After PARAMOUR, last season's ambitious but underwritten attempt to incorporate their world-class circus arts performers into a book and score Broadway musical, Cirque du Soleil returns to town doing what they do best.
BWW Review: Madcap Frolic BASTARD JONES Riffs On Henry Fielding's Bawdy ClassicJuly 7, 2017
While it's not unexpected to have the title character of a musical based on Henry Fielding's infamously bawdy 1749 novel "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" be introduced to the audience while enjoying the afterglow of a lusty time with an agreeable lass, what's a bit surprising at first about BASTARD JONES is that while singing of juicy peaches, pulsing blood, bees, flowers and whatnot, their post-coital intimacy includes her helping to strap on his wooden leg.
BWW Review: Director Anne Kauffman Finally Hits Broadway With Scott McPherson's MARVIN'S ROOMJune 30, 2017
After thirteen years and eighteen directing credits for major Off-Broadway companies such as Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard, Lincoln Center Theatre and The New York Theatre Workshop, another accomplished New York stage talent, Anne Kauffman, takes her overdue Broadway bow with Roundabout's revival of Scott McPherson's 1990 darkly comic drama MARVIN'S ROOM.
BWW Review: Horton Foote's THE TRAVELING LADY Arrives At The Cherry LaneJuly 2, 2017
As America's great playwrights go, Horton Foote, who passed on in 2009, just shy of his 93rd birthday, was perhaps the most understated of them all. In a prolific career that involved golden age television dramas, Academy Award winning screenplays and dozens of stage works, his favorite source of inspiration was the relatives and neighbors he observed growing up in the quiet comfort of East Texas.
BWW Review: The Romance of Backstage Haunts Third Rail Projects' GHOST LIGHTJune 27, 2017
The newest offering at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater features a beautiful dreamscape depicting a woman in a small boat being guided through swelling ocean waves by a friendly face painted on the moon. As designed by Brett J. Banakis (set), Montana Levi Blanco (costumes) and Eric Southern (lights), it's a romantic tribute to a style of theatre that made box offices buzz over a hundred years ago.
BWW Review: 1984 Takes Playgoers Back To The FutureJune 23, 2017
Ronald Reagan was re-elected president, the first human baby conceived by artificial insemination was born and the Tigers won the World Series, but for much of the world, the public perception of the year 1984 was forever shaped in 1949, with the publishing of George Orwell's dystopian novel, titled 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
BWW Review: Gentlemen Prefer Booty in Kirsten Childs' BELLA: AN AMERICAN TALL TALEJune 24, 2017
The recent Signature Theatre revival of Suzan Lori-Parks' VENUS, based on the true story of Saartjie Baartman, depicted a 19th Century African woman who was subjected to exploitation because of white people's fascination with her prominent posterior. But the mood is considerably lighter over at Playwrights Horizons these days, where the title character of Kirsten Childs' joyfully old-fashioned, but sneakily subversive new musical, BELLA: AN AMERICAN TALL TALE, is a 19th Century African-American woman who celebrates the attention her queenly derriere receives and uses it as a source of empowerment.
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