All stories by Richard Seff on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The new Cinderella on Broadway is wonderful by Richard Seff

A phoenix has risen on Broadway.  Out of the ashes of a very pleasant TV Special by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, once thought of as enchanting, but now considered something o…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:08AM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 16, 2013

Clifford Odets' The Big Knife on Broadway by Richard Seff

In 1949 Clifford Odets, after years of cashing in on his early successes with the Group Theatre, returned to Broadway with The Big Knife, which was to be his bitter comment on the price h…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:47PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Trip to Bountiful by Richard Seff

Cicely Tyson now joins Laurette Taylor in the small pantheon of actresses who have given us  monumental performances onstage; Ms. Taylor  of course, for her Amanda in The Glass Menager…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:57AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Nikolai and the Others by Richard Seff

I feel I’ve had to do almost as much research as the actors who perform in the Lincoln Center Theatre’s production of Richard Nelson’s Nikolai and the Others. That’s …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:25AM[SHARE]
Monday, April 29, 2013

Buyer & Cellar by Richard Seff

Playwright Jonathan Tolins has managed to take material that could have inspired a campy gay play limited in its appeal to those whose idea of first class entertainment is a Saturday night s…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:41AM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 25, 2013

I'll Eat You Last by Richard Seff

The Divine Miss M has finally, after forty years, found her way to a Broadway stage in a legit play which could  be called The Divine Miss M, but isn’t, because that title was alrea…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:37AM[SHARE]

Alex Baldwin leads an outstanding cast in Orphans by Richard Seff

Lyle Kessler’s career has been pretty well defined by an early play of his, Orphans. There have been other plays, but nothing that created the stir that this one did.  It’s…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:38AM[SHARE]
Monday, April 22, 2013

The Nance by Richard Seff

Douglas Carter Beane, prolific playwright with a comic twist, brought Broadway  a revised book to Cinderella just weeks ago, and here he is again with an original play about another kind …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:08AM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Assembled Parties by Richard Seff

Richard Greenberg is a prolific playwright whose Take Me Out established him some years ago as a welcome new voice. That play about the locker room aspects of a baseball team and the coming …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:18AM[SHARE]
Monday, April 8, 2013

Kinky Boots by Richard Seff

The Golden Age of musicals on Broadway has been over for several years now. I think on that we are all agreed (by “all” I mean those of us who were around to revel in it, to appr…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:05AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Written for Helen Hayes, now at TACT: Happy Birthday by Richard Seff

Anita Loos, the charming and talented screenplay writer and novelist, was having a sort of mid life crisis in her career and in her personal life in 1946.  Ms. Loos was 58 years old at th…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:53AM[SHARE]
Friday, March 29, 2013

Hands on a Hardbody by Richard Seff

I knew Keith Carradine and Hunter Foster were featured in this musical, but the rest of the cast were not familiar to me.  I knew Neil Pepe,  the artistic head of the off Broadway Atla…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:32AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Katie Roche at the Mint by Richard Seff

For reasons of his own, Jonathan Bank, the artistic director of the very useful Mint Theatre, seems determined to single-handedly deliver the playwright Teresa Deevy from oblivion to rene…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:53AM[SHARE]
Monday, March 11, 2013

Annie Baker's new play,The Flick by Richard Seff

Picture yourself stuck in a run down 100 seat movie theatre in Worcester County, Massachusetts in the summer of 2012. You are hidden from view, and you cannot speak, so for 3 hours you must …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:58AM[SHARE]
Monday, February 11, 2013

David Ives' All in the Timing by Richard Seff

Twenty years ago, the writer David Ives arrived on the New York theatre scene with a bang when his evening of short comic plays opened off Broadway, where they remained for some 600 plus per…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:11AM[SHARE]
Friday, January 25, 2013

Nice Work If You Can Get It (revisited) by Richard Seff

This musical pastiche, put together with bits and pieces of a dozen old musical comedies, opened 9 months ago at the Imperial on Broadway, and it’s very much still there, doing busines…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:18AM[SHARE]
Friday, January 18, 2013

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Richard Seff

It was interesting to see William Inge’s Picnic and Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on successive nights.  Both first arrived on Broadway in the mid-fifties, both re…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:48AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Picnic by Richard Seff

William Inge is one of those mid-20th century American playwrights who started late (he was 30 when his first play, Come Back, Little Sheba arrived on Broadway).  It was a success, and ul…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:06AM[SHARE]
Saturday, December 29, 2012

Old Jews Telling Jokes by Richard Seff

As we approach the fiscal cliff (by the time you read this, we might be over the edge), as we battle the sleet and the hail and the snow and the rain, there is one oasis that puts all that u…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:15AM[SHARE]
Monday, December 17, 2012

Golden Age by Richard Seff

Every now and then Terrence McNally, one of America’s prized and prolific playwrights, having been off the boards for a season or two, sits down to write a play that isn’t about …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:56AM[SHARE]
Friday, December 14, 2012

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Richard Seff

Edward Albee’s master work has always been treated with great reverence, and is always talked about in hushed tones, indicating it is profound and probing in ways that few other domest…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:40AM[SHARE]
Monday, December 10, 2012

The Heiress by Richard Seff

The Heiress is one of those well made plays from the 1940s that takes its time to tell its absorbing story of Catherine Sloper, a lady living a very dull life in her father’s house on …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:17AM[SHARE]
Friday, December 7, 2012

Golden Boy by Richard Seff

Daniel Swee is casting director for Lincoln Center Theatre and for the revival of Golden Boy at the Belasco on Broadway, he has helped the management and director Bartlett Sher assemble a st…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:45AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Giant by Richard Seff

It’s taken seven years to bring  John LaChiusa and Sibylle Pearson’s musical, based on Edna Ferber’s novel, to fruition.  The Dallas Theatre Center has presented it, …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:38AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 26, 2012

If There Is I Haven't Found it Yet by Richard Seff

Here  we have another dysfunctional family just in time for the holiday season. This one, in the play with the title I have trouble remembering, is by a gifted writer named Nick Payne. Hi…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:44AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Remember 'Saving Aimee'? It's Scandalous on Broadway by Richard Seff

Kathie Lee Gifford as book writer, lyricist and part time composer, has spent twelve  years creating material, polishing it, pruning it, having a look at it in two regional productions, […

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:28AM[SHARE]
Sunday, November 18, 2012

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Richard Seff

You don’t have to be a Chekhovophile to enjoy Christopher Durang’s riff on everything Anton Chekhov ever wrote, but it helps. This master parodist and satirist has been away from…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:57AM[SHARE]
Friday, November 16, 2012

Bring It On: The Musical by Richard Seff

Amanda Green and Lin-Manuel Miranda ought to sue.  I have no idea whether or not their  lyrics are first rate because I still haven’t heard them, even though I was there at a rec…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:32AM[SHARE]
Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Richard Seff

This musical, based on Charles’ Dickens final, unfinished novel, enjoyed a run of over 600 performances in 1986-7 but has only popped up here and there intermittently these past 25 yea…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:42AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Grace by Richard Seff

The new play, Grace, at the Cort on Broadway, is a revelation. For starters, it makes it clear that Paul Rudd is far more than a dimple and a charming smile. The lad can act, and though he&#…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:47AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 12, 2012

Cyrano de Bergerac by Richard Seff

The Roundabout is offering us some very large scale productions this season, and Cyrano de Bergerac at the American Airlines Theatre is certainly one of them. Edmond Rostand wrote it in 1897…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:36PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off