BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Alice Sommer Herz, the world's oldest living Holocaust survivor and a prolific concert pianist, once said, 'Music saved my life, and Music saves me still.' On Yom Hashoah, a day devoted to honoring the lives lost in the Holocaust, a group of artists visited Pangea to pay tribute to souls saved throu...

After producer Fred Hamlin christened Columbus Circle's Majestic Theatre with a spectacular musical extravaganza based on L. Frank Baum's 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (The show had nothing to do with the classic MGM film.), he sought to follow up with another memorable production with a family-frien...

At the most recent BROADWAY BY THE YEAR presentation on March 27, at its usual home of the Town Hall, the 1940s was the sent-up decade from which the evening's performers sang. At a time in the country that currently bears striking and cryptic similarity to that grim period of global history, the re...

With a regal violet gown covered in jewels for days and a mile-high bouffant that would leave Priscilla Presley gagging, Latrice Royale ambled up to the stage of the Laurie Beechman Theatre. When her hair, teased to the gods, soon brushed against the ceiling, she said, with a cackle, "My hair's too ...

In her new show, RED, WHITE AND INDIGO, Lady Rizo is all about coming to terms with that "very bad boyfriend" she calls America. "I think he reads my email," she joked with a wry smile, during her first show of a three-night run at Joe's Pub on March 23. "And I know he's f**king with my birth con...

'That's really niche.' Those words from one of the night's emcees, Feinstein's/54 Below Programming Director Jennifer Ashley Tepper, were technically used in reference to Linda Lavin's propensity to play love interests for superheroes. But, really, they could've been used to describe BROADWAY BOU...

Suzanne Vega is not a firecracker; she's a sparkler. In the first night of her run at Cafe Carlyle on March 15---since the previous day's show was nixed due to a rude winter storm named Stella---Vega was dazzling, but in the smallest, most personal way possible. Getting up onstage, she spoke with...

Though all of Harvey Granat's midday events are illuminating and entertaining, his most recent SONGS AND STORIES on March 16 at 92Y could've easily continued at least another half hour buoyed by audience enthusiasm. The event's special guests, author/producer/journalist Will Friedwald (who has his o...

BROADWAY BY THE YEAR, the musical revue series created, written, directed, and hosted by Scott Siegel and which pays tribute to a different era of Broadway composers each program, is a stroke of brilliance. Occurring once a month, each evening is dedicated specifically to one decade of American musi...

Like the Criminologist in ROCKY HORROR, Erin Markey is here to take you on a strange journey. Well, technically, said journey has been going on since 2013. And, after years of working on her original musical, A RIDE ON THE IRISH CREAM, this was more of a victory lap for Markey, in the form of an ...

One generally associates megaphones as the staple of high school gym teachers, used to amplify their punitive requests of portly students to run faster. Naturally, Carmen Cusack, the once-unsung supernova who made her craterous impact on Broadway in last season's BRIGHT STAR, subverted preconceived ...

'Too soon' is a phrase you often hear in regards to a celebrity passing away. It usually refers to making some sort of joke or cruel remark about them, devoid of the inherent understanding that, in death, celebrities are deserving of unwavering respect, even if that respect eluded them in life. B...

At the 32nd Bistro Awards on March 13, produced by Sherry Eaker, attendees hunkered down at Gotham Comedy Club in the hours before a blizzard hit Manhattan to honor the best in the year's cabaret, comedy and jazz performances. Of course, the prospect of a little snow wouldn't deter honorees from com...

At the 32nd Bistro Awards on March 13, produced by Sherry Eaker, attendees hunkered down at Gotham Comedy Club in the hours before a blizzard hit Manhattan to honor the best in the year's cabaret, comedy and jazz performances. Of course, the prospect of a little snow wouldn't deter honorees from com...

No one can accuse the Met of skimping when it put together its current revival of Mozart's opera seria IDOMENEO. Yes, the production's 35 years old, but with this cast, it hardly mattered: tenor Matthew Polenzani in the title role, elegant and Mozartian to the nth degree, the suave and poignant mezz...

On the evening of March 3, 2017, the Kathak Ensemble & Friends, under the artistic direction of Janki Patrik, presented a new Indian-influenced contemporary dance at the Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery. This new work entitled WE SINFUL WOMEN, draws upon the theme of universal rep...

Don't ever underestimate the importance of chemistry when it comes to pulling off an opera performance--and there was animal magnetism galore in the Met's revival of its Willy Decker production of Verdi's LA TRAVIATA. From the moment tenor Michael Fabiano came on stage, at Friday's performance of LA...

Stumbling onstage, Salty Brine was divinely off-kilter as the reincarnation of Dean Martin in DEAN. MAYBE FRANK. MAYBE SAMMY. at Pangea. Newly returned from Vegas and looking worse for wear in the role, the performer was sporting bandages and a neck brace from a recent car crash, he later explai...

If Nikka Graff Lanzarone was going to make sure of one thing through her Feinstein's/54 Below debut show HERO WORSHIP on February 23, it was that her audience would leave knowing how to properly say her name. Lanzarone, a true-blue triple threat who most recently starred in the Off-Broadway produ...

Opera Layfeyette presented LEONORE, OU L'AMOUR CONJUGAL in NYC at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on February 23rd....

They say, in life, it's all about who you know. Luckily for Don Scardino and his audiences at his two shows at Feinstein's/54 Below on February 18, he has friends in very high places. The show, DON SCARDINO WITH JOHN MILLER: NOTHING TO HIDE, was Scardino's first at the cabaret venue, and the seas...

Monteverdi's L'INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA--THE CORONATION OF POPPEA--is considered the oldest opera in existence, but the version performed by Concerto Italiano at Carnegie Hall the other night, as part of the La Serenissima Festival (celebrating all things Venetian), showed it is also one of the fresh...

Tenor Vittorio Grigolo always seems most at home on stage when he's living close to the edge--portraying a character who's losing control (or about to) of his emotions. It was true earlier this season as Romeo, in Gounod's ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met opposite Diana Damrau and, in 2015, as Chevalier...

A funny thing happened on the way to Emperor Claudius' death scene: He didn't die. At least, that's what happens in Handel's opera AGRIPPINA, setting the convoluted plot in motion and giving the young singers of Juilliard Opera and its Juilliard415 period-instrument ensemble a heck of a ride, direct...

Audiences at the New York Philharmonic have been known to come for the soloists and then slip out for the symphony. There didn't seem to be a lot of that at last Thursday's performance led by maestro Manfred Honeck, which began with a wonderful Beethoven Piano Concerto #1 in C Major from Inon Barnat...