I love blogging. I love teaching. But they do tend to conflict with each other. The two busiest times of the year for New York theater tend to be right before Christmas and then right before…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:11PM[SHARE]Shortly after I saw the new musical Scandalous on Broadway, I received an email asking me to "spread the word" about the show. Nothing strange there, I suppose. But the show was still in pre…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:05PM[SHARE]I guess we're running out of musicals worth reviving. That's what has been going through my mind recently as I've contemplated recent announcements of upcoming musical revivals on Broadway. …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:34PM[SHARE]I was saving this in case Romney won, but the point is thankfully moot. Four more years.
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:23PM[SHARE]Here's my latest review for TheaterMania: Something's Afoot at the venerable Goodspeed Opera House. Did I find the comic murder mystery either funny or mysterious? Click here to find out.
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 10:36AM[SHARE]Gee, you folks really like lists, don't you? Well, I'm more than happy to comply. I recently posted this semester's list of the "most overrated" musicals, as selected and defended by my curr…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 10:23AM[SHARE]Whodunnit? Who cares? That's the impression I was left with at the end of Something's Afoot a a trifle of a musical murder mystery by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach, current…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 09:48AM[SHARE]"Oh, my God. That show is soooooo overrated." One thing that musical-theater majors are never short on is attitude. And when I started teaching musical-theater history at the Boston Conserva…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:36PM[SHARE]Dear Reader: As part of my course on the history of msuical theater at the Boston Conservatory, I'm currently directing a staged reading of the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee.…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:30PM[SHARE]I love the fall. I've always been the type of nerd who couldn't wait to get back to school. And now that I teach full-time, that nerd-liness continues unabated. Of course, one of the things …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:44PM[SHARE]Some bad musicals make you angry. Ghost was one, mostly due to the arrogance of the pop-music dilettantes who blithely thought that, just because they could write hit songs, they could autom…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:20PM[SHARE]Like many of you, I'm sure, I was skeptical when I first heard that Bring It On: The Musical was to become a musical. "Great," I thought. "Another movie-to-musical franchise show." And we're…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:13AM[SHARE]Because I spent so much time at NYMF this summer, I didn't really have plans to take in any shows at the NY Fringe Festival. I think it's partly because I'm kind of over the four-hour bus ri…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:13PM[SHARE]The idea of setting by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods in the actual woods may seem, at first, to be a stroke of genius, or at the very least an obvious but cool idea. It …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:04PM[SHARE]One of the great things about getting down to New York City as frequently as I do now is having the opportunity to catch revivals of obscure shows at some of the Off-Broadway non-profit thea…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:32PM[SHARE]Here's the fourth and final installment of my capsule reviews from this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first, second, and third installments. My since…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:47PM[SHARE]Here's my third of what will be four installments of capsule reviews from the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here for my first and second installments. One of the break…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 01:26PM[SHARE]Here's the latest of my reviews for TheaterMania. This time it's a production of Carousel at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. There are those who think, in terms of the innova…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 07:45PM[SHARE]Goodspeed serves up a genuinely thrilling production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's classic musical.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 02:45PM[SHARE]My latest review for TheaterMania. It's of a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons out at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, Mass. The last time I saw this play, it was the 2008 Broadway re…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:47PM[SHARE]My students at the Boston Conservatory are always looking for new songs to add to their "rep" books: basically three-ring binders filled with sheet music that they use for auditions, singing…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:54PM[SHARE]Here's installment number two of my capsule reviews for the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first set of reviews. Watch for at least one additional insta…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:48PM[SHARE]Barrington Stage presents a genuinely thrilling and cathartic production of Arthur Miller's play.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 01:10PM[SHARE]It will probably come as a surprise to many of my readers that I have never been to the New York Musical Theatre Festival(NYMF) before this year. I mean, I've been almost singularly devoted …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:36PM[SHARE]During its current season, the York Theatre Company has been featuring what it describes as "classic shows from Off-Broadway." Currently playing at the York is Closer Than Ever, a …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:43PM[SHARE]The owner of the North Shore Music Theatre talks about turning around the beloved institution's forces.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 08:00AM[SHARE]We all know about how Jonathan Larson, the author of Rent, died suddenly the night before the show premiered Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop. It's the stuff of theatrical legen…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:45PM[SHARE]Here's my second big-boy review with TheaterMania. This time it's Fiddler on the Roof at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass. Fiddler is easily one of my all-time favorite music…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:37AM[SHARE]Barrington Stage Company presents an uneven production of the near-perfect Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock musical.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 10:00PM[SHARE]Maybe the Tonys aren't a total sham after all. That was my first thought when I got home Sunday night and saw the results of the 66th Annual Tony Awards. I didn't watch the show live, becaus…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:11PM[SHARE]The Independent Theater Bloggers Association (the "ITBA") is proud to announce the 2012 recipients of the Fourth Annual Patrick Lee Theater Blogger Awards, (the "the Patricks"). Patrick Lee …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:33PM[SHARE]
