At a recent performance of “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” the new musical hit in a carnival tent next to the Standard High Line, a nasty altercation between two patrons provided a new wrinkle into the dangers of creating an environment in which the audience is an integral part of the experience. The space, fitted out to be a luxuriant café in 1812 Tsarist Russia with the audience packed into its tables and banquettes, provided much of the playing area for the large cast of actors.
Patrick Pacheco's inside look at the world of theater, and the crazy people who inhabit it
PLAY BY PLAY: Patrick Pacheco's inside look at the world of theater, and the crazy people who inhabit it
“Natasha” and the Perils of Immersive Theater
May 17, 2013, 2:46 pm
Curtain Comes Down on “Smash” and With It a Lost Opportunity
May 13, 2013, 4:19 pm
Finally bowing to the public’s thumbs-down verdict, NBC-TV yielded to the inevitable and recently announced that its multi-million dollar gamble on “Smash” had come up snake eyes. After two seasons of struggling ratings, the highly-publicized show, about a group of dreamers putting on Broadway musicals, will end for good on Sunday, May 26, with a two-hour finale set at the Tony Awards. It’s a black eye for Robert Greenblatt, the network’s chairman of entertainment who fiercely championed the show, as well as its executive producer and head writer, Josh Safran (“Gossip Girl”). It’s also a rare failure for Steven Spielberg, who conceived of the project and whose DreamWorks TV had backed it. Continue Reading
The Legend of Barbra Streisand Shines on the New York Stage
May 10, 2013, 12:29 pm
One of the fascinating footnotes of this season is that Barbra Streisand is being reincarnated both off-Broadway, in Jonathan Tolins’s “Buyer and Cellar” and on Broadway, in John Logan’s “I’ll Eat You Last.” And, in the process, both critically-acclaimed shows are making the box office sing. Continue Reading
Alec Baldwin, Stung by Early Closing of “Orphans,” Bites Back at New York Times
May 8, 2013, 4:37 pm
Using his perch at the Huffington Post, Alec Baldwin launched a full frontal attack on Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic of the New York Times, in an essay titled “How Broadway Has Changed.” In it, he blames the early closing this Sunday of “Orphans” — in which he co-stars with Tom Sturridge and Ben Foster — in part on the dismissive review for the show in the Paper of Record. Baldwin noted that he had chosen to return to the commercial theater only after an absence of 21 years, since appearing as Stanley in the 1992 production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” opposite Jessica Lange. He implied that performing in the non-profit theater world made actors and productions less vulnerable to the damaging and, according to him, senseless “Why bother?” approach of Brantley’s criticism. The essay included ad hominem attacks on the critic and compared him unfavorably to his powerful predecessor, Frank Rich, and to his New York Times colleague and fellow theater critic Charles Isherwood. (Rich, by the way, wrote very favorably of Baldwin’s Stanley.) Continue Reading
“Orphans”: A Fiery Beginning, A Surprisingly Damp Ending
May 6, 2013, 4:36 pm
The production of “Orphans,” starring Alec Baldwin, will be closing on May 19, six weeks earlier than a previously announced end date of June 30. Apparently two Tony nominations — one for Best Revival and one for the dynamic performance of Tom Sturridge — was not enough to goose dwindling sales. Continue Reading
Quick Close of “Testament of Mary” Tests Power of Tonys and the New York Times
May 2, 2013, 4:59 pm
First there was the Tony nomination for Best Play. Then the closing. Within hours came news that the run of “The Testament of Mary” — which also received nods for lighting and sound but not for its acclaimed star, Fiona Shaw, or director, Deborah Warner — would end on Sunday, May 5. Continue Reading
Tony Nominations: It’s “Kinky Boots” Vs. “Matilda”
April 30, 2013, 11:18 am
The Battle Royal has been set for this year’s Tony Awards: The American-made “Kinky Boots” versus the London import “Matilda” for Best Musical — arguably the only award which means anything at the box office. The other two nominees in the category, “A Christmas Story” and “Bring it On!” closed months ago and are not really considered contenders. “Kinky Boots,” about a drag queen who re-boots a failing British shoe factory, took the most nominations, 13 in total. (Hope nobody on the team is triskaidekaphobic.) “Matilda” came a close second with 12 and no doubt would have tied had not the Tony Administration Committee made a special ruling in the case of the musical. The grueling lead role of Matilda — the preternaturally bright young girl who uses her special powers against her vulgar parents and a gorgon of a teacher — is alternately played by four different tykes over the eight-performance schedule. The committee recently ruled that they received a special Tony, thereby taking them out of the competition for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical. Continue Reading
“Rocky” Heads for a Major Match on Broadway
April 29, 2013, 4:29 pm
No surprise here. “Rocky, Das Musical,” based on the 1976 Sylvester Stallone movie, will become “Rocky, The Musical” when it opens in March 2013 at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. The first title came courtesy of its out-of-town tryout in Hamburg, Germany, where it has been running since last November. Though it is in German, the show was created by a largely American team, including director Alex Timbers (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”), librettist Tom Meehan (“Annie,” “The Producers”), and the songwriting team Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. They will be repeating their duties for the American production. Continue Reading
Emma Stone’s Next Big Career Move: Sally in “Cabaret” at Studio 54
April 29, 2013, 2:09 pm
The ink isn’t dried yet, but there’s a very good chance that Emma Stone, the charming star of such films as “Easy A,” “The Help,” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” will be the divinely decadent Sally Bowles when the musical “Cabaret” returns to Studio 54 next winter. There were initial reports in the press that the classic role of a saucy English chanteuse in Weimar Berlin would be played by Anne Hathaway. They turned out to be erroneous, according to Hathaway’s publicist, who quickly denied them. The misinformation was no doubt fed by the fact that last fall the Oscar-winning star had performed songs from “Cabaret” in a one-night-only benefit at the Public Theater. (Among the singers that memorable night were Audra McDonald, Raul Esparza, Linda Lavin, and Eddie Redmayne as Cliff, the bisexual American writer who falls hard for Sally.) Continue Reading
“Motown,” the Juggernaut: Critics Can’t Dampen the Musical’s Fire
April 15, 2013, 5:15 pm
The producers of “Motown, the Musical” have every right to be happy on the day after the reviews came out. Sure, the consensus of the Broadway critics is that the musical’s book — about the rise of the famous pop record label and its founder, Berry Gordy, Jr. — is “clunky,” “shallow,” “crude,” “cynical,” and studded with “laughable dialogue.” But as Marilyn Stasio put it in her review for Variety, the response of the baby boomer audience to her critical brickbats will be, “We don’t care!” Even the most downbeat review — Jesse Green in New York Magazine was particularly caustic — noted that the songs from the Motown catalogue are impressive and, for the most part, gorgeously delivered by a talented and hard-working cast of 34 led by a terrific Brandon Victor Dixon. “The songs are staggering, the book is utterly flimsy,” wrote Mark Kennedy for AP. Continue Reading
