Friday 12 September 2008 On Disc: Best of All Possible Bernstein SO how will the music world celebrate Leonard Bernstein’s centenary? Fortunately it has 10 years to ponder, because the celebrations planned this season for his 90th birthday may be as hard an act to follow as, for London, the Beijing Olympic Games.
Monday 16 June 2008 The Tonys Spread the Glory Around Reflecting an eclectic Broadway season, the 62nd Annual Tony Awards crowned a salsa-flavored musical written by a theater novice, a nostalgic glamorous revival, a sweeping melodrama from a writer making his Broadway debut, and the revival of a ’60s sex farce.
Murder Most MusicalTim Burton makes fantasy movies. Stephen Sondheim writes musicals. It is hard to think of two more optimistic genres of popular art, or of two popular artists who have so systematically subverted that optimism
London cast of Hairspray performing You Can't Stop the Beat. Featuring Leanne Jones, Ben Ellis, Michael Ball, Mel Smith and many more. Enjoy!!
Monday 16 July 2007 What Ever Happened to Momma Rose?
By BEN BRANTLEY
If any actress of her generation seemed fated to play the juggernaut of a stage mother in the musical “Gypsy,” it was Patti LuPone, the juggernaut of a Broadway star.
Sunday 03 June 2007 The Tony Awards The best actor competition is among the strongest in 30 years, writes Ben Brantley. A special section featuring multimedia with Times critics.
Going Out an Orphan, Coming Back a Star After a shaky start, this "Annie" is an elating piece of family theater that deserves to become the mass-entertainment holiday staple it aspires to be. Saturday 02 December 2006 nyt Audio Slide Show: Patriotism and Sex Bill Nighy performs two excerpts from David Hare's new play "The Vertical Hour."
• Related Review
June 16, 2006 LEMON chiffon confections don't come any lighter than "The Drowsy Chaperone," the hit musical whose affable narrator, the Man in Chair (Bob Martin), gleefully extols the quaint Broadway values embodied by this imaginary 1928 show. "It does what a musical is supposed to do," he declares. "It takes you to another world, and it gives you a little tune to carry in your head when you're feeling blue."
Audio Slide Show: Show Tune Snapshots
Tuesday May 9, 2006 'The Caine Mutiny' Returns to Broadway It is possible that a stint weighing a worker's compensation case could offer more thrills than this eye-glazing attempt to resurrect Herman Wouk's 1953 play.
Friday Feb 24, 2006 nyt Dresses Are Fine, but Pajamas Are Divine Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli O'Hara pulse in this revival with an immediacy that makes them, hands down, the hottest couple in the New York theater.
Wednesday Jan 4, 2006
THEATRE
Weathering the Storm in London
Kristin Scott Thomas and Janet McTeer are portraying characters that are doomed by their refusal to be other than themselves. With a slide show.
Tuesday Jan 3, 2006 ts Aspects of Andrew
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's name provokes an instant, often negative, response but a showcase of his music at the Hummingbird highlights his unparalleled success, writes Richard Ouzounian. More than just the Phantom
2005
Tuesday Dec 13, 2005 ts THEATER REVIEW | 'CHITA RIVERA: THE DANCER'S LIFE' You Just Can't Keep a Good Broadway Diva Down By BEN BRANTLEY "The Dancer's Life" is not, sad to say, an electric show. But it cannot disguise the electricity of the woman at its center.
Monday Oct 31, 2005 rci STRATFORD: FAMED SHAKESPEAREAN ACTOR ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT
William Hutt, an actor who participated in the first season at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, in 1953, retired from the stage on Saturday. He played his last role on the same stage. During the intervening years, he gained fame in many title roles. Mr. Hutt is 85.
Cabaret in New York
A great cabaret performance provides a more transporting emotional experience than a musical. With an audio slide show.
Friday Feb 14, 2003
Holbrook's Half Century as Twain
By BRUCE WEBER
Hal Holbrook, 78, is approaching half a century of performances with his now-legendary channeling act, "Mark Twain Tonight!"
2002
Tuesday Dec 31, 2002 bbc Curtin down on theatre's 2002
Monday Dec 9, 2002 nyt 'LA BOHEME' Sudden Streak of Red Warms a Cold Garret
By BEN BRANTLEY
Baz Lurhmann's production of Puccini's opera turns out to be an enchanted mixture of self-conscious artistry and emotional richness.
Friday Jun 21, 2002 Spencer favourite for Brother eviction
Big Brother contestant Spencer Smith is favourite to be voted out of the reality TV house on Friday, with all bets on him suspended.
Friday Jun 21, 2002 'Les Mis' ready for China
French revolutionary musical Les Miserables is to make its debut in China on Saturday at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
Wednesday Jun 5, 2002 Slide Show: Tony Night
56th annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday night
Saturday May 11, 2002 Entertainment
End of the tale for Cats
The musical Cats is to close in the West End on Saturday with the star-pack final show being beamed to fans outside the theatre.
Garth H. Drabinsky, the Canadian impresario wanted on charges of orchestrating criminal fraud, is planning a Broadway production for next year.
Monday Apr 29, 2002 nytimes Take Hate, Add Love and Shake Tenderly
In this revival of Noël Coward's best-known work, starring Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman, the erotic bloom is restored to one of the funniest comedies of the 20th century.
Monday Feb 18, 2002 nytimes Anne Hathaway: An A for Aplomb On Stage race"Oklahoma!" story: shortly before rehearsals began, one of the show's producers, Theresa Helburn, told the librettist Oscar Hammerstein II that he and the composer Richard Rodgers ought to write "a song about the earth."
Saturday Feb 23, 2002 IT'S OFFICIAL — MSO GETS ITS HALL Montreal - It's been a long wait, but the Montreal Symphony Orchestra will finally get a new downtown concert hall. Premier Bernard Landry has approved plans for a $97 million hall which would be ready for the orchestra's use by 2006. ...The $281 million construction will include the concert hall. ...The construction will include an office tower for 2000 provincial civil servants, as well as the concert hall.
The conservatories of music and dramatic arts will also be housed in the new construction, and will share the concert hall facilities.
Monday Feb 18, 2002 bbc Anne Hathaway: An A for Aplomb On Stage race Playing Lili, the 16-year-old innocent in "Carnival," the first show of this year's Encores! series of musicals in concert at City Center, Ms. Hathaway not only held her own alongside some of the best-known performers on Broadway, but earned that rare critical notice that hails a new star.
"Give thanks this morning for Anne Hathaway," wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times, "who just completed her freshman year at Vassar and who somehow makes unspotted purity look like the latest fashion."
Friday Feb 15, 2002 bbc Musicals lead Olivier race
Kiss Me Kate and My Fair Lady battle it out at the Laurence Olivier theatre awards, as backstage workers protest outside the ceremony. ...West End hit show My Fair Lady has broken even in fewer than four months - a rare feat for such a lavish musical.
Sunday Feb 10, 2002 nytimes A Historic Whodunit: If Shakespeare Didn't, Who Did?
It is a position long argued, and one that has gathered momentum in recent years. The question, which was the title of a Smithsonian Institution seminar in Washington last month, has divided families, friends and English departments. Do we care about Shakespeare? You bet. Shakespeare has more theater companies and festivals devoted to him every year. But more than being at the top of the theatrical heap, he helped to create the English language.
Most of the academic world has ignored the authorship question for generations, or belittled it as the obsession of idiosyncratic amateur scholars, while building altars in students' minds to the image the tragedian David Garrick promoted during the 1769 Shakespeare jubilee that created the Stratford tourism business: the man of humble origins who rose to the literary pantheon. The vast majority of academics still subscribe to that belief Interactive Graphic: Look Here, Upon This Picture
Audio Slide Show: That Carrie White
BBC
Cirque
Take Hate, Add Love and Shake Tenderly
Anne Hathaway: An A for Aplomb On Stage race
Musicals lead Olivier race
A Historic Whodunit: If Shakespeare Didn't, Who Did?
