BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

There was a segment in Brandon Uranowitz' debut show at Feinstein's/54 Below on February 8 which culminated in his explanation as to how he remained in the closet to his family for four additional years, following an instance where he had a clear opportunity to come out. The bit was a confluence of ...

Isaac Mizrahi has a simple question to ask: Does this song make me look fat? Any variation of that prompt is normally a strong cue to walk on eggshells, but making his Cafe Carlyle debut on January 31 with a show named for and based on that query, Mizrahi took a no-holds-barred approach to the hu...

"Millennial" as a descriptor is used with far too much frequency and carries with it connotations that are both unnecessary and inaccurate. However, at the first of a sold-out four-show run at Joe's Pub on January 31, John Early and Kate Berlant were undeniably of their generation....

During the opening sequence of NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812--the extravagant, whirlwind of a show now playing at Broadway's Imperial (how fitting) Theatre--I couldn't help thinking how the Met could learn a thing or two from a show like this. No, I don't mean encouraging the audience ...

Nellie McKay's return to Feinstein's/54 Below went up in smoke. No, literally....

Majesty and Terror: Barenboim conducts Bruckner 9th...

With the provocative and brilliant guidance of choreographer, Arthur Pita, the subculture of Chicago in the 1960s was reborn. "Hooka Tooka Soda Cracker" with painting turtles and paint brushes in the mouth in place of cigarettes created an essence of sexual symbolism and a starburst for the soul....

Jill Kargman is a pleasant singer. Her voice is lovely, in fact, but that is not why audiences joined her inside the legendary Cafe Carlyle for a string of sold-out performances which began on January 17. No, patrons made their way to the Upper East Side venue on this damp winter evening to hear ...

Michael Mayer's revised production of Rigoletto in Las Vegas, complete with Vegas dancers, mobsters and a topless pole dancer is GREAT ENTERTAINMENT...

At last month's concert in Carnegie Hall, Joyce DiDonato was glorious musically but less-than-cheery philosophically--and that was before the guy in the White House started taking aim at arts and education funding. Taking the stage at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on Saturday, at THE MARILYN HORNE SONG CEL...

On January 24, Will Friedwald, producer, feature writer for The Wall Street Journal, author of nine books on popular music, countless articles, and liner notes, moved his nostalgic CLIP JOINT series to Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street Y. For the uninitiated, CLIP JOINT offers curated video clips---ma...

Outside of an arena, few performers can earn a minutes-long ovation without even opening their mouths. But the inimitable Marilyn Maye is certainly one of those performers....

It didn't strike me until the lights were going down for the start of CARMEN last Thursday that this was the second night in a row that Met audiences were being transported to the same town in sunny Spain. Truth be told, “sunny” is hardly an adjective I'd hardly use to describe Bizet's tragedy i...

Alex Leonard is a classy performer. His relaxed, minimalist style and adherence to vocals as written take one back to an agreeable past. Jazz riffs weave around rather than obscure melody. Lyric meaning is gracefully maintained. Aided and abetted by expert veterans Jay Leonhart on bass and Al Gafa o...

For her two-show debut engagement at Feinstein's/54 Below, the first of which took place on January 11, Tracie Thoms's set list was surprisingly short. In fact, on paper, it looked as though the concert might not even fill an entire hour. It speaks, then, to her performative nature as an equal parts...

The life and times of the spy-as-femme-fatale, Mata Hari, has always attracted the interest of film and stage artists. Now we have the Matt Marks-Paul Peers opera MATA HARI—which opened New York's fifth Prototype Festival last week and continues through Saturday the 14th—though I think of it as ...

The opening fanfare of one of the most exhilarating overtures ever to hit Broadway signals the joyous return of New York City Opera. After financial woes threatened to pull down the curtain for good in 2013, the company that was christened in 1943 as 'the people's opera' by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia...

A woman of many talents, one of Sandra Bernhard's greatest gifts has been her finely-honed ability to satirize Hollywood from the inside. Luckily, her latest residency at Joe's Pub, the year-ending SANDRA MONICA BLVD: COAST TO COAST, gave her plenty of opportunities to keep sharpening that blade....

When I saw that New York City Opera was doing Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE at the same time as New York's Prototype Festival--with Missy Mazzoli's BREAKING THE WAVES opening the festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre on the same night—I thought that it was great counter-programming. After all,...

Starting in the back of the packed Feinstein's/54 Below house with 'It's a New World' (Harold Arlen/Ira Gershwin), Molly Pope has your attention. The band has played the overture; now it is her turn, crooning in silence. As suddenly as the first number ends, you're launched into the energetic 'Go...

"Power to the people" could very well be the mantra for the gorgeous opera Nabucco highlighted by the inspiring Va Pensiero chorus sung by the Hebrew slaves as they pray to G-d for their dream to return to their homeland of Jerusalem to take flight. As I sat in the Metropolitan opera house recent...

'Not every drag queen can belt that high.' Throwing out that quip early on in CHRISTMAS MOURNING at the Laurie Beechman Theatre during the December 15 show, Jinkx Monsoon isn't wrong. It's part of what makes the RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE star, otherwise known as Jerick Hoffer, a rare bird: a genuine tal...

The Museum of Modern Art delivers a stunning one-artist showcase, and puts forward powerful evidence of Francis Picabia's sly, sensitive genius....

New York theatre stuck it to the patriarchy this year with healthy-for-the-soul offerings like A 24 Decade History of Popular Music, O, Earth, The Wolves, and more!...

Early on the morning of November 19, Donald Trump took to Twitter (as he has a tendency to do) to make the assertion that "The Theater must always be a safe and special place." On December 19, one month to the day after Trump's Broadway-fueled Twitter deluge, Liz Meriwether and Shira Milikowsky p...