Michael Dale News

The controversy remains fresh as a Daisey down at The Public Theater, where extemporaneous monologist Mike Daisy returns for a new engagement of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Lonny Price, Raul Esparza and a fellow singing it in Hebrew.

Oddly enough, the most interesting personal observation to be pondered in Shatner's World: We Just Live In It is spoken, not by the titular William Shatner, but by Patrick Stewart.  In a television clip, a conversation between the two captains of the Starship Enterprise, Stewart explains how, despite his acclaim as a classical actor of the stage, he's quite certain that his role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is what he will ultimately be remembered for.  And he's fine with that.

Given its pedigree as a Pulitzer winner that swept every playwriting award an Off-Broadway entry could win during its premiere run in 1997, you would think that Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive would follow the lead of other Off-Broadway successes like Driving Miss Daisy, Steel Magnolias and, most recently, Wit, and return to New York in a Broadway production.

The original Broadway cast album of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along is one of those handful of recordings - like Mack and Mabel and Candide - that a musical theatre lover can listen to hundreds of times without hearing a clue as to why the show flopped.  The quick answer, and usually the most unfair one, is 'the book.'  More often, though, the more complete answer is ambition.

From Nick Jonas and Michael Urie to the Ladies of THE VIEW to Adam Pascal, Raul Esparza, Barbra Streisand to Alan Menken, Bernadette Peters to Susan Boyle, Colin Quinn to GLEE and Everything in Between - It's the BroadwayWorld.com 2012 Valentine's Day Special - It's the Biggest Ever!

When The Public Theater premiered Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns in 1998 - under the title Saturn Returns - it was presented as a simple song cycle using chamber arrangements of pop, gospel and classical styles in a loose theme of exploring the human relationship to faith, utilizing traditional hymns and ancient myths.  In the new production presented by Prospect Theater Company, director Elizabeth Lucas, through snippets of connecting dialogue and short, silent scenes, gives the evening a bit of a narrative.  The result is too thin to add any dramatic heft, but not so intrusive as to distract from the poetry of the material and the tender and touching performances of her beautifully singing cast.

'If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research,' explains a pharmaceutical professional in Rx, Kate Fodor's comic romance set around the big business of health care.

Let's face it, nobody produces a song and sketch revue based on the plays of Ionesco in a theatre on the western outskirts of 55th Street expecting a commercial smash.  During the ten days in 1974 when the original production of Ionescopade ran Off-Broadway, lovers of musical theatre were lining up at box offices to see stars like Carol Channing in Lorelei, Debbie Reynolds in Irene, and Patty and Maxene Andrews in Over Here!  Younger playgoers were discovering themselves with Pippin and rocking out to Grease, while those who go for intellectual snob hits had their choice of the revival of Candide or the new Sondheim/Prince romance A Little Night Music.  Those venturing to Off-Broadway were still flocking to that fresh new musical, The Fantasticks, then in only its fifteenth year.

Despite its title, it's easy to forget what a funny play Margaret Edson's Wit is.  But then, this Pulitzer winner is as much about humor - the dry, detached kind - and its power to attack and defend as it is about a woman's slow and painful death from late stage ovarian cancer.

The week's big casting news includes Megan Hilty in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for Encores! and Samantha Barks in the screen version of Les Miserables.

'It's not fair,' the 14-year-old girl complains to her mom.

Let's just say, for the moment, that I owned the Venus de Milo.  I don't know how it happened.  Maybe some ancient Greek stone cuttings were found that led to a Middle Ages parchment that inspired someone to do some research on ancestry.com, but in any case, it has been indisputably determined that I am the sole owner of sculptor Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo.

Is it possible to recreate someone else's authenticity seven times a week doing the same Off-Broadway show?  If last Saturday night's performance of Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good) is any indication, the answer is a resounding... I'm not sure.  But in any case, the lighthearted madness inhabiting The Public Theater's Newman space, devised by the German/British theatrical squad named in the title, makes for a rollicking good time.

There's a beautiful softness that bathes every artistic aspect of director Gordon Edelstein's graceful and endearing production of Athol Fugard's meditation on independence through creativity, The Road To Mecca.

In these days of ever-shrinking Broadway orchestras, it's rather refreshing to walk into a cabaret room and find that seats have been removed from an otherwise sold-out house in order to fit a nine-piece musical ensemble.

A few selections from Broadway's beloved videographer Bradshaw Smith.

I've heard it said that there was this Australian fellow playing the Broadhurst recently who regularly had his audiences whipped up into quite a frenzy.  I've also heard of a Liverpool quartet that could pack screaming fans into a sold out Shea Stadium.  Now, I couldn't tell you if the decibel level was just as high at The Metropolitan Room last week when an American gal named Marilyn Maye was frequently honored with roaring ovations on the final night of her quickie engagement called Marilyn By Request, but I bet Messrs. Jackman, McCartney and Starr would be quite delighted to be still inspiring such boisterous affection as they were approaching their 84th birthdays.

By my count, Outside People is the third theatre piece about a white American in contemporary China to hit town this season.  On the tails of Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and David Henry Hwang's Chinglish, Zayd Dohrn's dark comedy deals with Yankee naiveté regarding cultural differences when it comes to sex and business overseas.

If the Occupy Wall Street movement had an official musical, it would likely be The Cradle Will Rock, Marc Blitzstein's allegorical tale of a union leader who leads a fight against a wealthy businessman who controls his town's police, press, church, elected officials and even some artists.