BY MICHAEL MUSTO | No, the Broadway musical Hell’s Kitchen isn’t about gay guys who live in affordable walkups and go to Empanada Mama. With songs by 16-Grammy-winner Alicia Keys, it loosely draws on the long-running music star’s experiences, using Keys’ own hits (and three new songs she wrote) to illustrate a 17-year-old girl’s relationships […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | If you think the idea of suffragists bursting into song is absurd, you’re forgetting Mary Poppins. (“We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats/And dauntless crusaders for women’s votes.”) Well, now, they’re crusading for Tony award votes with the ambitious musical Suffs, based on the American women’s suffrage movement, with a book and score […]
Easter came early this year, putting all of its eggs in a basket that saw plastic pastel-colored straw, dyed eggs, marshmallow peeps, and hollow chocolate rabbits high-tailing it to March 31. Some say a super-funky lunar calendar is the cause, while others wonder if these beloved springtime traditions simply thought it best to cede full […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | If you care about honoring quality, tune in to the Oscars on March 10—but if you’re like me and you think it’s more fun to shoot spitballs at schlock, you’re in the right place. I’m the esteemed host of the Annual Gaffie Awards, and there are no losers here. No, wait […]
BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER | If, after a serious dose of the latest dance technology—via February 9-12’s Dance on Camera festival—your idea of a good terpsichorean time still involves sharing a room with live dancers moving to music, get yourself to the Joyce Theater, where Twyla Tharp, now in her ninth decade and as sharp as […]
A show whose thematic “Oomh!” comes from the Broadway songbook’s emotional depth and camp-friendly absurdities has arrived on West 42nd Street—the very doorstep of its source material—to throw down the gauntlet. Fortunately for us, the gauntlet is actually two pairs of long satin evening gloves worn with confident, comedic ferocity by native-to-Florida drag queens Ginger […]
BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER | The 2024 Dance on Camera festival, running February 9-12 at Lincoln Center, is particularly rich and diverse. The world’s longest-running assemblage of dance film—now in its 52nd year—presents, in 11 different programs, a mix of shorts and features from around the world. Up first (Feb. 9, 7pm) is the full-length Swan […]
BY MAX BURBANK December 12, 2019: A cluster of patients in China’s Hubei Province, in the city of Wuhan, begin to experience the symptoms of an atypical pneumonia-like illness that does not respond well to standard treatment.—The CDC Museum’s COVID-19 Timeline March 11, 2020: With 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 deaths, the World […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | The Broadway transfer of the award-winning Off-Broadway play Prayer for the French Republic could not be more timely. As written by Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews, Significant Other), it concerns various clashes within a Jewish family in France in 2016-17 as nerves fray due to the latest rise of antisemitism. Arriving at […]
BY TRAV S.D. | One never knows what to expect when one sees a show at the Torn Page space on West 22nd Street—but you can usually count on surprise, and can certainly bank on an intimate experience. Based in the old Chelsea townhouse of stage and screen giants Rip Torn and Geraldine Page, most […]