Historically, both straight plays and musicals have been a little biased when it comes to maternal characters.
"Ghostlight" is a disarmingly intimate collection of songs, spanning several decades and a breadth of genres—a carefully curated mix ranging from Irving Berlin to Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jacques Brel to Tom Waits. It was designed to transport you to "a mysterious, smoky place."
Magic is at the core of "Finding Neverland." The main theme is that believing is all-important. We must find ways to keep or recapture the joys of childhood, or we perish. Will "Neverland" be a hit on Broadway?
"At the Flea we say that we want to go places artistically that you might not feel comfortable going," says Carol Ostrow, the theater's producing director. "Our work can be very transgressive and in your face. We exist on a playing field where we want to get in front of you.”
If you, too, love the theater, there was very little not to love about this year’s Tony Awards program. All in all, it was a delight. Speeches were sincere and brief. Excerpts from nominated shows were exhilarating. This was a celebration of the men—and particularly, the women—who give it their all eight shows a week.
She was the successful manager of a well-regarded restaurant. She was in her forties and had lost all her contacts. Still, she had to go back to the theater: “When you walk away from something you love, it doesn’t really go away. It simmers. It hides. It never lets you engage fully in what you’ve chosen to do. And then comes the lightning bolt.”
"There's No Business Like Show Business," the song proclaims.This past Sunday night, the crowd at Radio City Music Hall—along with millions of people watching the 67th Annual Tony Awards online and from home—would have agreed wholeheartedly. With so much extraordinary singing and dancing and acting, the level of joy was downright show-stopping.
My No. 1 passion was the theater. So when a headhunter presented me with the role of Executive Director of the Broadway League, I knew it was the perfect role for my second act. Who gets to take her avocation and make it her vocation?
There will be a lot of talented women waiting in the wings at Sunday night’s Tony Awards (June 9, 8.m. EST, on CBS). There’s a distinct possibility that women will win both Best Direction of a Play and Best Direction of a Musical. And, if Cyndi Lauper wins Best Original Score, she will be the first woman to do so.
"Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me" is an always-entertaining, often startling, paean to an often irascible, fiercely perfectionistic, always independent, long-lived woman who has no intention of leaving the followspot behind.
"Sojourner Truth was an architect of democracy as we know it! She was the first black woman feminist ever!" the opera director mused. "I started to get grumpy—Who has tucked this woman under the coffee table, and why have they done it?”
Sojourner Truth's stemwinder of a speech, set to music—with one change.