Zachary Pincus Roth

Washington, D.C., United States

Senior Editor, Style at The Washington Post

Senior editor for Style at @WashingtonPost. Written for @NYTimes @LATimes @Slate @WSJ @Variety @Newsday @LAWeekly & more. In a relationship with Giselle Odum

Articles

Why does Trump like ‘Les Mis’? The many meanings of the megamusical.

2 weeks ago | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Why does Trump like ‘Les Mis’? The many meanings of the megamusical. (washingtonpost.com) Why does Trump like ‘Les Mis’? The many meanings of the megamusical.
A wonderfully sung musical from a late, great composer

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key TakeawaysThey try all sorts of ways to be happy in the musical “Falsettos”: therapy, religion, fitness, chess, love many times over. At one point they even try willing it: As one repeated lyric advises, “Why don’t you feel all right for the rest of your life?”Can we? Why don’t we?
It is the very model of a silly show-off theater song

2 months ago | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

It is the very model of a silly show-off theater song (washingtonpost.com) It is the very model of a silly show-off theater song By Zachary Pincus-Roth 2025042413150000 In "Despicable Me 3," the Minions are escaping from security guards and find themselves onstage at a singing competition. What will get them out of this mess? Some Gilbert and Sullivan, it turns out.
It is the very model of a silly show-off theater song

2 months ago | yahoo.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

In “Despicable Me 3,” the Minions are escaping from security guards and find themselves onstage at a singing competition. What will get them out of this mess? Some Gilbert and Sullivan, it turns out.
This corn musical is salty but doesn't quite pop

Feb 26, 2025 | yahoo.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article.
Review | This corn musical is salty but doesn’t quite pop

Feb 26, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

You could tell a story of American culture through corn, tracing it through the first Thanksgiving, bourbon, the Iowa caucuses, the stalks “as high as an elephant’s eye” that heralded the modern musical and were plowed over to build a field of dreams in Hollywood, which has been propped up by a high-calorie buttered version — eventually landing at a 2022 viral video in which a child eloquently points out that the “big lump with knobs” “has the juice.” This history serves as the ethanol fuel...
‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ at Signature Theatre, reviewed

Nov 8, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Cameron Loyal, left foreground, with Erin Weaver and the cast of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at Signature Theatre. (Christopher Mueller)Review by Zachary Pincus-RothNovember 8, 2024 at 6:44 p.m. ESTThey are licking lips in Arlington, Virginia, flailing arms, rubbing nipples, humping spears, humping columns, humping feet and pantomiming diarrhea. Faces end up in breasts. Swords in butts.
A gender-bending take on a Sondheim musical farce

Nov 8, 2024 | yahoo.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

They are licking lips in Arlington, Virginia, flailing arms, rubbing nipples, humping spears, humping columns, humping feet and pantomiming diarrhea. Faces end up in breasts. Swords in butts. All get an appearance or two or five in Signature Theatre’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a production most intriguing for its gender-bending updates to the Ancient Rome-set farce, even as (unrelatedly) the belly laughs don’t come as easily as expected amid the carnal antics.
The ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ songwriters are in their 90s - and still best friends

Jun 4, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Lee Adams, the 99-year-old lyricist of “Bye Bye Birdie,” doesn’t remember much about creating the show in 1960, but he can quote the New York Times review that came out during the opening night festivities: “‘Bye Bye Birdie’ is neither fish, fowl nor good musical comedy.”“He simply did not get it,” Adams says, adding, “That was the kiss of death. And he was the number one reviewer. Then the other reviews started to come in. They all were positive.
Can’t get to Broadway? There’s a ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ in D.C., too.

Feb 8, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Zachary Pincus Roth

Two decades ago, my mom and I wanted to see something in the Kennedy Center’s landmark festival of Stephen Sondheim shows, so we picked the title being performed on a convenient day, one we only vaguely recognized: “Merrily We Roll Along.” After experiencing its stirring melodies, its poignant tale of three friends told backward in time and a memorable comic performance by Raúl Esparza as Charley, I was stunned that it was stuck in obscurity. In fact, there was a reason.