By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”)
By all things reasonable, Waitress, the Broadway musical currently serving its fare at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York, should have never made it to Broadway. It is a story of...
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“)
Until 2015 the Yiddish operetta “Di Goldene Kale” (“The Golden Bride”) composed by Joseph Rumshinsky had not been performed on stage for seven decades. That was when the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbeine...
By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN Theatre Critic, WYES-TV’s “Steppin’ Out“
The time-worn story of Tevye, the simple dairyman, his beleaguered family and the village of Anatevka first told by Shalom Aleichem and transformed into one of Broadway’s biggest...
VENICE, Italy (JTA) – Last week, an international, multilingual cast performed Shakespeare’s controversial play, “The Merchant of Venice,” in the secluded main plaza of the city’s historic Jewish Ghetto. It was the first time the play was performed in the iconic location,...
The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announced on January 15 that playwright Sharyn Rothstein had been awarded the 2015 Francesca Primus Prize for her play By the Water. Jointly sponsored by ATCA and the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation, the Primus...
George Dansker, a noted scholar with expertise on musical theatre and opera, is presenting the first lecture and concert as part of his continuing series on Broadway and its impact on American culture.
When Jewish author Ron Chernow published his epic biography on Alexander Hamilton in 2003, he had no idea of the impact it would have on Broadway audiences more than a decade later. That’s...
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out)
It may seem an odd choice, but Andrew Lloyd Webber has chosen a 2003 Jack Black film vehicle as the basis of re-establishing his preeminence as a rock musical composer. “School of...
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”)
There is little doubt that Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht made a formidable team of composer and lyricist. Their two greatest triumphs – “The Three Penny Opera” and “The Rise and Fall...
NEW YORK (JTA) — Ever since Zero Mostel imagined himself as a rich man in the original 1964 Broadway production,“Fiddler on the Roof” has been a cultural landmark on Broadway and in the Jewish sphere.
