Lovely to Look At 2004

Irish National Opera bring a touring production to London in what might prove to be a show for the purists

Just wondering: Do people still engage in cybersex, or has it – like electronic pagers, AOL and video rental stores – gone the way of the dodo? I ask because cybersex provides a salient plot point in Patrick Marber’s 1997 play Closer, which currently is the inaugural production from Nashville’s IS Productions, the more serious, yet less drunken theater producing arm of Inebriated Shakespeare, the entity that’s been serving up the Bard along with a cocktail or two, for the past few years in various Music City (and now in Houston, Texas, if memory serves) locales.

Head from the aisle to the isles in the official Stock Aitken Waterman musical featuring the soundtrack of a generation with music from pop royalty including Kylie Minogue (I Should Be So Lucky), Rick Astley (Never Gonna Give You Up), Jason Donovan (Especially for You), Bananarama (Love In The First Degree) and more, all intertwined in an original story of love, laughter and last-minute getaways!

St. Ann's Warehouse presents Mira Nair's musical theater vision of her endlessly resonant and romantic love story, welcoming audiences inside the frenzied leadup to an arranged marriage beset by modern tensions. Read the reviews for Monsoon Wedding here!

The Skivvies are keeping it just as fresh as it was when they first started.

Like Wilde, Denzel Westley-Sanderson, winner of the RTST Sir Peter Hall Award for young directors, pushes boundaries and brings fresh ideas to the social comedy: an all-black cast, a drag queen as Lady Bracknell and a lesbian twist.

Two actors, Her (Emmanuelle Laborit) and Him (Ramesh Meyyappan) rehearse backstage for a performance. When the curtain goes up, a clown and the woman the clown adores perform the rehearsed routines. But things go wrong. They argue. Who is it arguing though? Her and Him or their characters?

What did our critic think of MSMT's Sound of Music? What happens when one of the most beloved musicals in the canon comes to the stage at the very point in time when history and a harsh pandemic seem to intersect with an iconic story?

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that dancer and actor Marge Champion has died at age 101.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the best film musicals since the sound era began; see if your favorites made the list!

West Side Story/book by Arthur Laurents/music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim/directed by Larry Raben/choreographed by Karl Warden/music director:Jeff Rizzo/ 5 Star Theatricals at Thousand Oaks Plaza, Fred Kavli Theatre/ through August 4 Ask actors/actresses to name their favorite Broadway musical of all time and they most often concur, West Side Story. Why? It has phenomenal music by Leonard Bernstein, with concise poetic lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a tight and gripping book by Arthur Laurents ... and ... brilliant choreography established in 1957 by Jerome Robbins. It is one of the most powerful love stories ever penned, next to Romeo and Juliet. With all these elements complementing one another, from the first downbeat of the orchestra and the appearance of the Jets creeping in one by one on a half-lit stage, the show pulls you in and doesn't let go for its almostr three hours ... and its message and images of love linger long after.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's CINDERELLA on Hale Centre Theatre's Centre Stage is a lush fantasy come to life.

Superhero officially opened last night, February 28, 2019 at the Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street). Let's see what the critics are saying...

What amazes me about Oscar Wilde''s classic The Importance of Being Earnest is how well it holds up. First performed in 1895 it is a wildly funny satire on Victorian manners and customs. Lady Bracknell (Michael Mullen, pictured above) abhors the very thought of any engagement of marriage of her niece to someone beneath her class, but as the play progresses, Wilde's take on the whole idea of marriage becomes far less serious. Changing one's identity to meet and date a woman is practiced with the utmost glee, akin to contemporary deceit and infidelity. Currently onstage at Crown City Theatre in NoHo, Earnest receives a terrific production, directed with flair by Michaerl J. Marchak and boasting a deliciously comedic cast.

A LOVELY LINEAGE, based on an original concept by Michael Sterling, captures the historic Broadway and Hollywood lineage of Kristin Towers-Rowles starting with her grandmother, the legendary Kathryn Grayson who was an MGM darling and a Hollywood pioneer having starred in some of the most beloved movie musicals of the 1950s including Kiss Me, Kate and Show Boat. Her famous lineage does not stop there - Kristin's grandfather was the dashing and talented Broadway leading man Johnnie Johnston; her mother, Patricia Towers, was a Las Vegas headliner; and her father is the prolific character actor Robert Towers.

PLAYBILL Productions at The Masque Theatre presents "LOVELY TO LOOK AT", A Sensational Fashion Show Musical.

In 2018, I saw 101 productions ranging from black box theatres with more actors in the cast than punters in the stalls to huge productions at the Royal Opera House and London Coliseum.

Dance telling the story of how only some stories are told.

Bonnie & Clyde/book by Ivan Menchell/music by Frank Wildhorn; lyrics by Don Black/directed by Victor Hernandez/music director: Ryan O'Connell/Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Claremont/through October 14 When people read that the violent story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was musicalized in 2009, they cringe at the thought of it making a decent musical. But it is, and much more than just decent. It's really quite wonderful in every way.

Previous attempts have been made to bring George M. Cohan's life to the stage. None is remembered, however, as much as the 1942 film starring James Cagney. Book writer David Armstrong has constructed a much more realistic account of Yankee Doodle Dandy, tryimg to avoid the traps of Hollywood glamor and tinsel, currently onstage at MTW Long Beach at the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts through July 22 In spite of the fantastic cast and sturdy direction and scintillating choreography by James Rocco, it turns in a rather weak account of the father of the American musical comedy (1878-1942). Not that you shouldn't see it; go for the cast and the sheer entertainment value of the music alone that set the scene for Rodgers nd Hammerstein and others to follow.

A curious tone in this bold adaptation that doesn't get everything right, but it's Chekhov, so there's more than enough to enjoy!

Let's make one thing perfectly clear from the start. If you are expecting a sequel to Phantom of the Opera in Love Never Dies, you may be let down. This new show that is making its American premiere in the tour across North America, after a dismal opening in London in 2010, has been rewritten and reworked many times over, and is based on Frederick Forsyth's The Phantom of Manhattan, not on Gaston Leroux's Le Phantome de l'Opera upon which the first Phantom was based. Even Lloyd Webber stated emphatically that it is not a sequel, but a different story with the same characters. If you open your imagination and find it in your heart to believe that the Phantom and Christine consummated their love for one another by having sex and producing a son, you will enjoy much of the show. If not, and you want this production to follow the original from 1986, it will most likely not suit you.

In 1952, the famous dancer, singer and film star Fred Astaire teamed up with the brilliant pianist Oscar Peterson and an all-star jazz sextet to record jazz versions of many of the songs that he helped introduce and make famous in the 1930s and '40s.

Frankenstein, likes its eponymous anti-hero, is often brilliant but flounders on its ambition.