Ryan Leeds

2 weeks ago | metroweekly.com | Ryan Leeds

Dead Outlaw – Photo: Matthew MurphyDeath is hanging over the air on Broadway these days. Yet somehow, it has an air of cool about it. At the Lunt-Fontanne, two divas are dishing and dueling their way to eternal life in the smash hit musical comedy Death Becomes Her. Meanwhile, British forces are thwarting German troops in World War II with a dead man at the Golden Theatre in the British tuner Operation Mincemeat.

4 weeks ago | metroweekly.com | Ryan Leeds

Old Friends: Bernadette Peters – Photo: Matthew MurphyDo we never tire of Stephen Sondheim’s music? Not if it is performed with flawless finesse by a troupe of performers who breathe fresh interpretations into the songs that musical theater lovers have heard umpteen times. Lucky for us, this is the case with the new Broadway revue, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, a two-and-a-half-hour soiree that showcases the late composer.

4 weeks ago | metroweekly.com | Ryan Leeds

Pirates!: David Hyde Pierce – Photo: Joan MarcusSometimes, I sit in a Broadway theater with genuine bewilderment and confusion. Is this production really as awful as I think it is? Am I the only one not enjoying it? What was the creative team thinking, and why did anyone else think this was a good idea? These questions arise moments into Pirates! The Penzance Musical, a revamped version of the old chestnut, The Pirates of Penzance.

4 weeks ago | manhattandigest.com | Ryan Leeds

On Monday night, while celebrities paraded through the rain uptown at the Met Gala, theater insiders and their admirers gathered at a private apartment near downtown’s Astor place to hear a young composer named Jake Landau. Landau is only 30 years old, but he’s already managed to leave a mark across the worlds of musical theater, opera, and ballet. Landau took to the piano, accompanying Broadway’s finest talent.

4 weeks ago | us1.campaign-archive.com | Ryan Leeds

To celebrate Metro Weekly's 31st Anniversary, we present, for the first time since 1994, the interview that started it all. The cover of that issue, which hit newsstands on Thursday, May 5, featured a local photographer -- Annie Adjchavanich -- who had an exhibit at Georgetown’s Hemphill Fine Arts Gallery entitled “Biological Men.” The interview set in stone what would become Metro Weekly’s calling card -- the Q&A. We’ve held to that format more than three decades later.