By Sandi Durell   Mike Birbiglia is a force of nature whether he is dubbed new or old! His wry, slow and direct delivery about life, his life in particular, is filled with a lot of what people think but don’t talk about, at least not in a theater to a packed house of...

  by Carol Rocamora   EXTENDED THRU NOVEMBER 18!   Move over, Medea.   Sorry, Joan. Later, Nora. A new female protagonist has blazed onto the New York stage, and you’d better get out of her way. Her name is Sarah Bernhardt, her mission is to play Hamlet, and nothing will stop...

Being dazzling and dismaying at the very same time!     By Myra Chanin   Let’s do dazzling first. Mike Birbiglia’s latest, The New One, is one of the two best one-man shows I’ve seen in my longer-than-I-prefer-to-admit life. Wanna know the runner-up? I can’t think of it off the...

A True Miracle of Miracles – The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s (NYTF) Fiddler Oifn Darch EXTENDED AGAIN THRU NOVEMBER 10!       By Myra Chanin   For starters, let me tell you that if you haven’t seen or gotten tickets for this Fiddler, get them before they’re...

       by Alix Cohen   Never underestimate the power of superbly performed, old fashioned, rock n’ roll. Director/ Choreographer Joshua Bergasse imbues this exceptional production with attitude, soul, winking humor, ebullience, and energy. Creative, often synchronized...

  by Adam Cohen   Scott Joplin’s classic rag “The Entertainer” is highly recognizable. It was used to great effect in an Oscar winning movie called “The Sting” which happed to star Paul Newman and Robert Redford.  Joplin was born in Texas and found his true calling as a ragtime...

  Wednesday, November 29 saw the Broadway opening of Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower at the historic Booth Theatre. The comedy starring Amy Schumer, Keegan Michael Key, Tony winner Laura Benanti, and Jeremy Shamos  is directed by four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks.   Theater...

  by Adam Cohen   The classic Harold Gray comic strip “Little Orphan Annie” was turned into a musical which opened on Broadway 40 years ago, with a Dickensian book by Thomas Meehan, and memorable music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin who also directed. Annie would...

  by Sandi Durell   Facing aging comes with a lot of new challenges. But in Susan Miller’s new play 20th Century Blues, the complexity broadens and goes even deeper when a group of four friends come together for an annual reunion to be photographed, chronicling the changes that have...

      By Sandi Durell   The press was invited on board the luxurious Princess Regal docked at the Brooklyn Terminal on Saturday October 7 for the latest peek of shipboard entertainment. Theater Pizzazz  first attended a luncheon before being escorted into the theater to...

    Matthew Perry’s ‘The End of Longing’ opened last night at the Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street) with quite a list of first nighters including Allison Janney, Matthew Morrison, Sarah Stiles, Halley Feiffer, Austin Smith, Matthew Lopez, Sandra Caldwell,...

    by Carol Rocamora   In case you haven’t noticed (but how could you not?!), there’s a Sondheim festival going on in New York this spring.   Three splendid Sondheim revivals have opened recently, offering dramatically different directorial interpretations in strikingly...

      By Sandi Durell     The island of La Grande Jatte is alive and pulsating with the complexity of Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine’s (book) revival (the last revival 2008) of Sunday in the Park with George, a mystical, magical production at the...

            by JK Clarke   The timing couldn’t be better for the powers that be to release the musical version of the story of life growing up in the 1960s in New York City’s outer borough. America is presently awash in fetishization of nostalgia, and A...

  by Samuel L. Leiter   I had two incentives for visiting the touring production of Annie at the Kings Theatre on Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue. One, of course, was to see the musical itself, in the company of family members and a friend; and the other, even more persuasive, was to...

          by: Carol Rocamora           Oh, those unfortunate 19th century heroines of the page and stage. They’re trapped in loveless marriages, suffocated by society, frustrated, desperate, driven to self-destruction. And yet, they still...