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.
Austin McCormick's Company XIV riffs on a holiday favorite with a sumptuously sensual blend of erotic dance, jazzy vocals and stunning baroque fashions filtered through a neo-burlesque sensibility.
While more Americans would be familiar with Bart's adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist from its Oscar-winning film version, the stage show is a craftier invention.
Half British music hall and half Grand Guignol, the rollicking good musical is a smashing Broadway debut for composer/lyricist Steven Lutvak, bookwriter/lyricist Robert L.
Winton Marsalis adds jazz arrangements and John Doyle whips up a narrative for an evening that vividly showcases the great dramatist's songs at fresh angles.
Faster than a speeding Les Miserables revival, Billy Crystal's solo performance of family memories returns to Broadway a mere 386 Sundays after its Tony-winning original production gave its regards.
Beth Henley's Southern Gothic comedy/drama pulls you in with its attention-grabbing characters and atmosphere but then leaves you wondering if it's ever going to take you anywhere.
The new production of Pinter's power play follows the new millennium's trend of easily digestible, surface skimming, star vehicle commercial Broadway revivals of Twentieth Century dramas.
The new song and dance review features an all-star jazz orchestra and a dazzling company saluting the music and styles of Duke Ellington and The Harlem Renaissance.