Michael Dale News

Anika Noni Rose and Raul Esparza star in Marc Blitzstein's historic pro-labor protest musical.

In the midst of its highest ever year-to-year gain in visitor traffic, BroadwayWorld.com, the largest theatre site on the net is pleased to announce a major expansion of its unmatched team of live entertainment critics.

N.C. Hunter's bittersweet drama of aging parents is filled with pathos and charm.

If the sexiest part of the body is the brain, Jeff Gould's comedy is an effective argument for celibacy.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Jonathan Tolins' comical Streisand fantasy re-opens at Barrow Street Theater.

Though I'll admit it strikes the ear rather oddly to hear a character referred to as another one's slave in a play set in 1930s upstate New York, that's just one of the risks involved when transporting Shakespeare into a more modern setting. Nevertheless, director Daniel Sullivan's zippy new Delacorte Theater production of The Comedy of Errors hits the ears and eyes just right for 90 minutes of good laughs and snazzy dancing.

Jenny Schwartz's Somewhere Fun, receiving a splendidly performed and whimsically mounted production from director Anne Kauffman at the Vineyard, is one of those plays where an author's traditional response to the traditional post-viewing question is, 'Well, what do you think it means?'

The Public Theater's THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, the first show of The Public's 2013 season of free Shakespeare in the Park, opened tonight, June 18, at the Delacorte. Directed by Daniel Sullivan, THE COMEDY OF ERRORS features Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater as Dromio and Antipholus respectively and will run through Sunday, June 30. Let's see what the critics had to say...

The argument for using the pop music method of 'slant rhyming' (frowned on by musical theatre lyricists as 'false rhyming' or using 'sound-a-likes') is that by not limiting lyricists to using perfect rhymes it greatly expands the number of ideas that can be expressed.  If that's so, the number of slant rhymes used in Venice, the new hip-hop/rock musical riff on Shakespeare's Othello, could potentially contain enough ideas to fill up a First Folio.

Through clever use of multimedia, playwright/performer Moe Angelos' Sontag: Reborn offers glimpses at both the precocious enthusiasm of youth and the wry remembrances of one looking back upon those same years.  ('Childhood: a terrible waste of time.')  Both come in the form of novelist, essayist, literary critic and inspiration for at least one Broadway showtune, Susan Sontag.

I must admit to smirking a bit when, only a few minutes into Israel's Gesher Theater Company's stage adaption of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies: A Love Story, the main character removed his clothing and started soaking in a bathtub, contributing to the odd trend that has hit New York stages in the past couple of seasons of plays and musicals featuring nude (or almost nude or suggested nudity) bathtub scenes.  (Bonnie and Clyde, Macbeth, Sleep No More, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Nance, If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, Through The Yellow Hour, Nice Work If You Can Get It… Have I missed any?)

By Disney standards the year and a half run of the original Broadway production of The Little Mermaid was a bit of a disappointment.  In theory, a competently created musical based on the hit animated film would probably run for a year and a half based on the title recognition alone.  My opinion of that show was higher than most of my colleagues.  I enjoyed it, but mostly for the vaudevillian pleasure of seeing a cast of terrific Broadway performers each getting a star turn or two.  But after some script revisions and a whole new visual concept, director Glenn Casale's production of the new Mermaid that just opened at Paper Mill is a well-crafted, delightfully designed and performed charmer.

Hottest Articles on BroadwayWorld.com from this weekend Sunday, June 9, 2013 - Sunday, June 9, 2013.

Here's the Tallys....

We'll be updating the Tony winners all night long in real-time, including the pre-show and during the commercials creative awards. Keep refreshing for updates!

Carrie Dunn's live from London and ready to dish out her opinions on this year's Tony winners and nominees...

It's today! The 2013 Tony Awards will air on CBS tonight at 8pm and, as usual, BroadwayWorld.com will be your one-stop shop for all things Tonys on Tony Day, Night and Beyond!

As the summer days near, BroadwayWorld rounded up our worldwide community - from Australia to Spain, California and beyond! - to bring you our top picks for the best of summer theater in each of our main markets! Looking for the best of the summer venue and production offerings in your area? Let's hear from a sampling of the BroadwayWorld experts!

I'd be hard-pressed to find a more accurate musical theatre representation of the idealized fantasy of 1950s suburbia than the lovely Kelli O'Hara in a lovely housedress singing in her lovely soprano of her enrapturement with her lovely life via Far From Heaven's opening song, 'Autumn in Connecticut.'  It's a magical height from which she will surely descend in Richard Greenberg (book), Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie's (lyrics) enrapturing new musical drama that features a gorgeously textured score and the actress' finest New York performance to date.