Michael Dale News

The always pleasing Gregg Edelman is an actor with a special knack for revealing the educated, articulate side of America's Average Joe and in Black Tie, A.R. Gurney's latest comedy inspired by his WASPy Buffalo upbringing, that talent is put to exceptional use.

Variety reports that Evelyn Page, the actress who appeared in a myriad of stage productions on Broadway during the 1950s and 60s, died of natural causes on Sunday, February 6th. She was 90 years old.

The Red Bull Theater, those specialists in making Jacobean drama hip without going hipster, have assembled an excellent company for Jesse Berger's vividly realized mounting of the 1621 rarity, The Witch of Edmonton.

The biggest Broadway event of 1937 was undoubtedly the gala opening night of I'd Rather Be Right.  Not only did the new musical boast a score by Richard Rodger and Lorenz Hart and a book by George S. Kaufman (who also directed) and Moss Hart (the pair had just won that year's Pulitzer for You Can't Take It With You), but the star was no less than the grand old man of Broadway - who many will argue invented the book song and dance musical comedy as we know it today - George M. Cohan, playing the role of then-President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Never before and never since has a sitting U.S. president been the leading character in a Broadway musical.

From the Cast of ANYTHING GOES and SPIDER-MAN, to the Ladies of THE VIEW, Raul Esparza, Barbra Streisand, Alan Menken, Bernadette Peters, Susan Boyle, Kelsey Grammer, GLEE and everyone in between...it's the BroadwayWorld.com 2011 Valentine's Day Special! Its Biggest Ever!

Name your musical The Road To Qatar! and in less than five words and an exclamation point you've communicated to your audience what to expect; a zany, lightweight, tuneful fish-out-of-water comedy set in an exotic locale featuring a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby-ish pair with a healthy dose of sex and romance provided by a Dorothy Lamour-ish babe.  And for a good deal of their pocket-sized ninety-minute musical, Stephen Cole (book and lyrics) and David Krane (music) deliver as promised.  At its best, The Road To Qatar! is a funny, breezy musical comedy hoot with some legitimately toe-tapping melodies.  But while enjoyable, the material isn't quite memorable, though the current production at The York has the feel of an early version of something that could be whipped into a pretty terrific show.

SPIDER-MAN's lead producer, Michael Cohl spoke exclusively to Entertainment Weekly and told them that 'Any of the people who review the show and say that it has no redeeming value are just not legitmate reviewers, period. It's hard to have people that don't get pop culture reviewing a pop culture event, isn't it?'

Spider-Man spokesperson Rick Miramontez gave an exclusive statement to Entertainment Weekly about his reaction to the show's reviews. What'd he say? 'The PILE-ON by the critics was ridiculous and uncalled for. Their actions are unprecedented and UNCOOL!' Click Here for the EW piece.

Last night's reviews of SPIDER-MAN turned out to be the most negative in recent memory. BroadwayWorld.com has a complete round-up of all of the reviews here, as well as our own critic, Michael Dale's 'nonReview' take that he'd be bucking the trend and waiting for the show's official opening on March 15th to weigh in.

Why you won't see a review of Spider-Man from BroadwayWorld today.

In April of 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein shocked the Theatre World by writing a song for their new musical professing that humans developed racial prejudice by nurture and not by nature.  Later that same year, a scene in the new musical by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill showed two racially different young boys innocently striking up a quick friendship, unaware of why anyone would object.

The New York stage is often a haven for self-destructive couples on display, but rarely is that self-destruction so bluntly in view as in Rajiv Joseph's intriguing Gruesome Playground Injuries.  The work of this imaginative playwright, who'll be making his Broadway debut later this season with his Pulitzer finalist, A Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, grows more interesting with each new piece to hit town and director Scott Ellis' darkly funny Second Stage production is terrifically unsettling.

Though I try to avoid pronouncing century-old plays as being as relevant today they were a hundred years ago, a little tweaking here and there - perhaps the mentioning of a critically acclaimed musical that fails at the box office while another that suffers from horrible pre-opening word of mouth nevertheless enjoys a healthy advance sale - would make Arnold Bennett's 1909 media satire, What The Public Wants, feel as though it were written last night.

When one of the wittiest satirists of our time and his comedienne sister write a play together, you know it can't be anything short of hilarious. From Grammy-nominated humorist/author David Sedaris and his sister Amy Sedaris comes the crazy comedy The Book of Liz, running February 4 - 27 at the Costa Mesa Playhouse. The play is directed by Michael Dale Brown.

Back in the 1930s, when hip New Yorkers got their doses of political satire by taking in the latest Broadway musical comedy, it wasn't uncommon for then-President FDR to pop up in a show; either in person, as played by George M. Cohan in Rodgers and Hart's I'd Rather Be Right or, more frequently, through comical lyrics, such as those penned by Harold Rome in Pins and Needles and Cole Porter in Leave It To Me!

I'm usually not one to sit in judgment of my journalistic colleagues but when one of them is up on stage performing, what's a theatre critic to do?  Fortunately, I can honestly report that Matt Windman, known for his snappy reviews in amNew York and on Theatremania.com, did a fine job in the small role of 'Matt Windman,' on opening night of Paper Mill's funny and heart-tugging production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  (Actually, the role would have been a little larger if he knew how to spell 'palestra' correctly.)

Actors who bear a substantial resemblance to a legendary celebrity or historical figure are often inspired to turn that stroke of luck into a one-person show.  If Bern Cohen ever had any doubts about his resemblance to political activist Abbie Hoffman, they were certainly dissolved one evening in the 1970s when Ohio police arrested him and put him through a brutal interrogation under the assumption that he was the famous 'Clown Prince of the Revolution' who co-founded the Youth International Party (the Yippies), was a member of the 'Chicago Eight' who were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot after disruptive demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention and wrote a New York Times bestseller, even though it was titled Steal This Book.

When one of the wittiest satirists of our time and his comedienne sister write a play together, you know it can't be anything short of hilarious. From Grammy-nominated humorist/author David Sedaris and his sister Amy Sedaris comes the crazy comedy The Book of Liz, running February 4 - 27 at the Costa Mesa Playhouse. The play is directed by Michael Dale Brown.

The central figure of Diana Amsterdam's tragedy of manners is a young, terminally ill accountant named Paul (Ted Caine) who spends most of the evening silently lying in a hospital bed surrounded by a carnival of denial.  Unable to communicate, it's unclear how much of his wife, Sheila's (Christine Rowan),  mask of perkiness he must endure as she forces positive energy into the room with plans for their future and uses an annoyingly motherly tone to praise the fact that he ate a whole half a banana today and kept it all down.

First-time playwright Tommy Nohilly seems intent on ramming edgy family dysfunctions in the audience's faces with Blood From A Stone.  Unfortunately there's no play underneath to support it all.  Director Scott Elliott and The New Group do a heck of a good job covering up the flaws of the text most of the time, but the nearly three hours of animosity and head-banging symbolism can't help looking very silly now and then, despite the skilled ensemble.