Category: theatre

At 64, Ian McKellan is playing his first King Lear. “I’ve only begun to get a grip on it after 30 performances. Every speech, every word can be mined. It’s so rich, so fraught; it makes such sense.”

“The relatively high price of Nederlander’s purchase — coming hot on the heels of the deal by Madison Square Garden Entertainment to buy the Chicago Theatre — appears to reflect both the growing value of Chicago’s downtown entertainment venues and Nederlander’s wish to remain in full control of an increasingly buoyant market for Broadway shows.”

There’s plenty of liberal theatre in Britain. But “where is the theatre that challenges that liberal consensus, which makes those of us who consider ourselves a part of it think a little? Where is the theatre of the right?”

“It was a second day of dark Broadway theaters and disappointed audiences as striking stagehands reaffirmed their commitment Sunday to remain off the job until producers started acting ‘honorably’ at the negotiating table.”

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks “hasn’t decided what her story’s central theme should be. Is it Ray’s redemption through music? The necessity of personal pain as a motivator for great art? The power of music to overcome racism and other ills? All of these issues are melded into Parks’ script, but they don’t form a synthesis. The show comes off as a leisurely catalog-survey through Ray Charles’ life and career, fitfully fascinating but without a through-line.”

“We’re following New York on this. Producers are saying if scalpers are going to scalp our tickets why don’t we take the best seats and scalp our own. In fact, we’re beginning to hear stories of these [Bushnell] $100 tickets selling on the open market for more than $100,”

Most of Broadway’s theaters went dark on Saturday when stagehands went out on strike in a dispute with theater owners and producers, leaving thousands of ticket holders seeking refunds and entertainment alternatives.

No, it is not nearly as good as “The Producers,” Mr. Brooks’s previous Broadway musical. No, it is not as much fun as the 1974 Mel Brooks movie, also called “Young Frankenstein,” on which it is based. No, it does not provide $450 worth of pleasure (that being its record-setting price for “premier seating”).

Mel Brooks’s “eagerly awaited musical version of “Young Frankenstein,” which opened last night at the Hilton Theatre, is such a teeter-tottering patchwork of slipshod gags, recycled dance routines and tinny tunes that even some of the better material ends up feeling a bit shrill and hollow.”

“Sure, the new musical — replete with the kind of pastiche novelty songs that Brooks has made his specialty — has deliciously diverting patches, but too often it leaves us noticeably shy of that laugh-induced state of delirium he has always been better at instigating than sustaining.”