-
2 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
Amber Iman lives up to the title of a musical about the divine gift of song. If you're going to call your show "Goddess," you'd better have one handy. Luckily, the musical with that name that opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater stars Amber Iman, who fully fits the bill.
-
3 weeks ago | 
flipboard.com | Jesse Green
1 hour agoDarren Criss stood up, fast asleep, his head heavy. When he awoke, he reverse body rolled, slowly turned his head from side to side, then brushed his teeth, mechanically moving his toothbrush — left, right, left — like a cartoon character. But this was no cartoon come to life (that would be “Boop!,” …
-
3 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
Our chief theater critic looks at this year's nominees and weighs in on the plays, musicals and artists he thinks will - and should - take home trophies on June 8. Tony voters do not have it easy. As the quality of (some) shows on Broadway improves, so does the difficulty and futility of ranking them.
-
1 month ago | 
flipboard.com | Jesse Green
A judge used Trump’s own words to expose his real agendaThe president and those around him just had to brag — and Howell turned their own words against them. In issuing a permanent injunction halting the …
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
When James Joyce's masterpiece faced banning, the American justice system came to the rescue. A new play wonders if it would today. The United States vs Ulysses Though it was a civil case, the defendant faced capital punishment. Or so the defendant's attorney, Morris Ernst, argued, because his client was a book. And not just any book, but a particular copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" that had been impounded at U.S. Customs and charged with obscenity.
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green |Alexis Soloski |Scott Heller
Ensemble-driven plays like "Purpose" and "English" received a slew of nominations, while Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Idina Menzel were overlooked. Stars abounded. Attendance rebounded. Performers raised the roof and so did ticket prices. This was a big season for Broadway, finally achieving a credible post-Covid rebuild - but as what? Think of the Tony Award nominations as tea leaves, hinting at where the commercial theater has been and predicting where it's going.
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
Clockwise from top left: "Oh, Mary!"; "Maybe Happy Ending"; "Yellow Face"; and "Gypsy." Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; top right: Jeenah Moon for The New York Times Though the official Tony Awards nominations aren't scheduled to be announced until Thursday, I give you my unofficial ones right now. If it were up to me, these would be the nominees.
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
A Broadway remake of the operetta, starring David Hyde Pierce, moves the plot to the Big Easy, where good times roll, even if some jokes don't quite land. Pirates! The Penzance Musical W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, the operetta kings of 19th-century Britain, had a hit in America with "H.M.S. Pinafore," but they reaped no American fortune from it.
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
"Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp," a new collection of one-acts by the great British playwright, is a cause for celebration, wonderment and grief. Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. NYT Critic's Pick A girl made of glass. A god - or, really, all of them. Ghosts, but of the future. An imp who may be trapped in a bottle. Just another day in Caryl Churchill's world. The arrival of new work by Churchill is like the arrival of a new theorem in a supposedly settled body of knowledge.
-
1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Jesse Green
Kimberly Belflower's play, on Broadway starring Sadie Sink, gives high school students a chance to prosecute a #MeToo case against "The Crucible." John Proctor Is the VillainNYT Critic's Pick The first word spoken in " John Proctor Is the Villain," a vital new play in a thrilling production at the Booth Theater on Broadway, is "sex."Defining the word is part of a six-week sex education unit at a rural Georgia high school that doesn't want to teach it.
