BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

In traversing her career through the songs and stories that have brought her to this point, it is clear that Jennifer Damiano's journey belies her age. Yet, through her one-woman show Jennuinely at Feinstein's/54 Below on July 29, the second of what was originally a three-performance engagement (two...

South African soprano Elza van den Heever has long had a 'date' with Beethoven's Leonore, in his only completed opera FIDELIO. It wasn't exactly a blind date—she has known for years that, eventually, she would take it on, she told me—but it was a roaring success in her role debut, at the Veneti...

Fresh off her 2016 MAC Award for best original song after a successful revival of Portraits (1993) for Stephen Hanks' New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits series, Meg Flather paid tribute in Carly & Me to the 'artist who gave [her] her voice.' With her longtime musical director Paul Greenwood on piano a...

Treadwell Park is the hot spot on the Upper East Side that everyone is flocking to. You'll love the vibe and the food and drink are fantastic....

Opening night on August 1st 2016 of a shared week at the Joyce presented by the venerable American Dance Festival got the six-day run off to an auspicious start. Provincial Dances Theatre, a company from Russia, treated dancegoers to two mesmerizing contemporary works by Tatiana Baganova that will a...

'Broad: A term originated in the 1930s meaning woman. Less respectable than 'lady,' but much more respectable than 'bitch.' Broad: An independent, aggressive, assertive woman, usually in show business. Broads sing loud, are sarcastic, and are in your face. Broads are generally moderately attractive ...

Three men engage in acrobatic entanglements that transform from free-moving sculptural configurations to crumpled masses of bodies that roll all over the floor of a darkly lit fog filled stage. Resembling an improv-ed floor-work exercise full of incongruously musical acrobatic manipulations, this in...

Though it was hot and muggy on the evening of July 24th, 2016, the jam-packed audience at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center was grinning agog like newly minted parents infatuated with their brood. The cause: a troupe of adorable bambine from Staten Island Ballet performing Ellen Tharp's 'Tarantella'....

Alt-cabaret star Lady Rizo (aka Amelia Zirin-Brown) made her way to the stage to join her multi-instrumental accompanist, Yair Evnine. Threading regally through the audience, she held a translucent umbrella over her head, singing (my favorite Prince song) 'The Beautiful Ones' to Evnine's cello in a ...

BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! offered New Yorkers a free evening of empowering music and dance at the Prospect Park Bandshell on July 21st 2016.  The program began with Brandee Younger's glistening jazzy harp music following the traditions of Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane.  Younger's mellow jazzy mu...

In her A-line black and white polka dot dress with petticoats, a lively (and lithe!) Maureen Taylor delivered an entertaining tribute to lyricist Bob Merrill at the Metropolitan Room (on July 13). Originally directed by Peter Napolitano when the show debuted in 2008-09, Taylor Made is the latest ins...

If we've been here before, why aren't the returns diminishing? The sequence repeats itself all night long in continuous loops and yet the eye never wanders. To the contrary one is drawn in deeper with each new repetition. Is it the weather-beaten beauty of the performers and the total investment wit...

“The word and genre 'opera' is much broader and more inclusive in the 21st century than it was in the past,” says Huang Ruo, composer/co-librettist of PARADISE INTERRUPTED, his mesmerizing, tantalizing opera that was one of the opening selections of this year's Lincoln Center Festival....

Seasoned choreographer Twyla Tharp presents two classic pieces and one New York City premier for her 2016 summer season at the Joyce Theatre.  Tharp's choreography ranges from intense to silly and playful blending classical ballet and modern lines with pedestrian movement.  While at times her chor...

The maxim 'Go big or go home' holds. That's one thing that can be said for Korea National University of Art's 'K Arts; Rising Stars of Korea Gala': they dance big; Bolshoi big. The leg extensions were never below 9 o'clock and more often than not floated past 12 o'clock; the pirouettes were never fe...

Robert Creighton, embodying the spirit of James Cagney in this energetic, fast-paced, biographical musical, Cagney, playing at the Westside Theater/Upstairs, Off-Broadway, brings the Hollywood icon to life. He has the physical plant of Cagney, as well as a dynamic talent for tap dancing, singing, ...

Sitting through BalletX's 10th anniversary season performance at Philadelphia's Wilma Theater on July 6, 2016, I was struck with some deep pangs of disappointment. It wasn't that the new works presented that evening were bad, quite the contrary. But how does one say that something more was expected,...

Taking a break from Carnegie Hall, The New York Pops travels to Forest Hills Stadium for summer fun with two Broadway favorites....

On June 29, 2016, The Black Iris Project, under the direction of the award-winning choreographer Jeremy McQueen, performed their new ballet entitled Black Iris at Central Park as part of SummerStage- the largest free performing arts festival in New York City. It was such a beautiful evening- a perfe...

Lines of light illuminate the pathway of a woman in flight. Her focus is razor sharp as she surveys men soaring around her in configurations that fluctuate between the flight patterns of birds and planes. Eventually these men hoist and entangle her in a never-ending series of lifts that keep her sus...

Alexei Ratmansky's 2015 version of 'Sleeping Beauty,' based on the Stepanov notation of the original 1890 version, as well as Diaghilev's production in 1921, has always posed a problem for me. I saw it last year with a friend, and our reaction was the same: why do we need this new 'Sleeping Beauty?'...

When preparing to watch Lorna Luft perform in concert, it is impossible not to feel nostalgic about her late mother, the legendary Judy Garland. Perhaps no one is more aware of this conundrum than Luft herself. And yet, at her return engagement to Feinstein's/54 Below on June 22 (the opening of a th...

Sir Kenneth MacMillan silenced the Bard to the wordless storytelling of corporeal movement. His three-act Romeo & Juliet remounted at MetOpera this June 20-25, ennobled by three decades in American Ballet Theatre repertory....

Jack Ferver never let up on his drag delivery. Switching arbitrarily from bad French to English or from danse to dance passed for plot in this cabaret act. The scantily clad men in the audience - I attended the June 30th, 2016 performance - lapped it up before they even had a chance to hear the next...

If Lorelai Gilmore, with her lightning fast speech, did political satire while rapping and playing both the piano and acoustic guitar, it would look something like Katie Goodman's hybrid comedy and cabaret act. Her latest show, I Didn't F*ck It Up, ran at Stage 72 (The Triad) on June 17, her cabaret...