There was a significant buzz around the New York City Center’s Gala in October 2016 when movie star Jake Gyllenhaal took on the leading role of Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. He had performed as Seymour for City Center’s Encores! presentation of Little Shop of Horrors […]
Read MoreFORUM: Energy and Anarchy in Philadelphia
Burt Shevelove informally referred to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the 1962 Stephen Sondheim musical he co-authored with Larry Gelbart, as “A Scenario for Vaudevillians.” It’s only fitting that an internationally known impersonator of legendary vaudevillian Groucho Marx, Frank Ferrante, would essay the role of Pseudolus for Walnut Street Theatre […]
Read MoreLondon’s MERRILY came to Boston
In keeping with the reverse-chronology concept of Merrily We Roll Along, let’s start with the ending. It was gorgeous in Maria Friedman’s production at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston (Sept. 8-Oct. 15, 2017). A sky just this side of black was studded with stars, but even brighter were the ones in the eyes of […]
Read MoreMaria & Lenny & Steve
Does Maria Friedman remind you a little of Barbara Cook? Though her blond hair is a short bob rather than a flowing mane, Friedman seems to be reinventing herself in mid-career just as Cook did in her 50s, and Stephen Sondheim’s music is playing a big part. From Sept. 19 to 23, 2017, she brought […]
Read MoreAssassins in Sydney
The Hayes Theatre Company in Sydney delivers a riveting, high energy and highly accomplished production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s 1990 musical Assassins (Sept. 15-Oct. 22, 2017). The political backdrop of the production strongly evokes a Trumpesque universe that is divisive, bizarre, threatening and unpredictable. On the show’s September opening night the Sydney audience […]
Read More(Hal) Prince of Broadway
Stephen Sondheim once joked that an album of his chart-topping songs would have to be titled Sondheim’s Greatest Hit, since he had only one, “Send In the Clowns.” Hal Prince, the legendary producer and director, has had a few more. Prince of Broadway, the revue that finally had its Broadway opening (Aug. 24, 2017) after […]
Read MoreChilling Images for ASSASSINS at Encores!
Both New York City Center’s Encores! series and its near contemporary, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, have appreciated in value and estimation since their premieres in the early 1990s. The mission of Encores! was to give obscure or overlooked musicals new life in one-week runs of semi-staged concert versions. In the early days, that meant actors on […]
Read More“Sondheim on Sondheim” at Tanglewood
“God” wasn’t there, though Stephen Sondheim was. Neither were “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “Now You Know,” “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs” and other staples of the Roundabout Theater Company’s 2010 Sondheim on Sondheim on Broadway. In fact, the concert version presented on July 8, 2018, at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony […]
Read MoreMERRILY and otherwise
No show in the annals of the American musical theater has risen so promisingly, crashed so quickly and become such an iconic work as Merrily We Roll Along — Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1981 show directed by Harold Prince. How did the team of Sondheim and Prince, collaborators on five groundbreaking musicals in […]
Read MoreExpatriates in their own country
In the wake of the most recent election cycle, there seems to be “another national anthem” playing for many disenfranchised and marginalized Americans. If only for that reason, Yale Rep’s spring production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins (March 17-April 8, 2017) was not only timely but also troubling. However, James Bundy’s production went […]
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