The newly renovated and former Cort Theatre on 48th street in the heart of the Broadway theatre district is now the James Earl Jones theatre, named after the beloved eponymous actor.
She’s charming, self-deprecating, and pulled out all the stops tonight to celebrate and honor a career and life on stage. She proved she could both reminisce on her teenage stardom and deliver the American songbook to us.
An Unbalanced Mind is an exciting full-scale musical theater event with singing, dancing, and live music provided by great musicians. The show boasts marvelous costuming, choreography, lighting, and sound in a marvelous intimate theater space.
Reynolds and Price are passionate creators and intellectuals of their art. Their work is an alchemy of surpassingly inventive and sympathetic creative minds. They prove that great prose creates great music just as each informs and enhances the other. They are direct descendants of the great songwriting teams who came before them like Kern and Hammerstein, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, and Lerner and Loewe. Their music is fresh, emotional, rich in character, sophisticated, and affects listeners in a memorable and important way.
Hammerstein’s legacy lives on, not only because the musicals and films he touched continue to draw audiences but because of the work of the Oscar Hammerstein Museum & Theatre Education Center (aka OHMTEC). This not-for-profit 501c3 organization is currently soliciting donations to purchase Hammerstein’s former home Highland Farm in Doylestown PA to serve, as noted on their site, as a “creative epicenter to make it accessible to people the world over.”
Neil Simon’s clever use of humor to tell soulful stories about the suburbs of New York City and the friction of ordinary lives is spellbinding. He wrote what he knew, which were primarily autobiographical pieces he termed “urban neuroses.” Barefoot in the Park depicted his marriage to his first love and wife. They lived every detail.
The President has blurted out another gaffe, and everyone is scurrying to fix his latest blunder. Sound all too familiar? Well, in this case, it takes more than his wife and favorable news reporters to cover up this mess. It’s so bad that the care of seven women is needed for damage control.
The women carry the show. Memorable, and the highlight is Mrs. Laine (Mare Winningham). She has dementia and lost her filter years ago. She is rip-roaring hilarious and made the otherwise severe, sad, and depressing depiction of life wake up the audience. Another resident Mrs. Burke (Luba Mason), takes off and starts playing the drums – in heels!
The brother Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell created the book and are back at it again to make music and lyrics of pure unadulterated fun. Mrs. Doubtfire at the Stephen Sondheim theater is an update of the 1993 film starring Robin Williams, but funnier and more entertaining.
54 Sings Broadway’s Greatest Hits! is a celebration of the American Songbook, performed by fabulous artists at the peak of their powers?
