Swings
[I like to post articles that define, describe, or explain the work of theater pros who aren’t generally known or understood by lay people (whom one of my teachers liked to call “civilians”). On 14...
View ArticleCalvino Is To The Mind What Exercise Is To The Body (Part 1)
[I read some of Italo Calvino’s books back in the ’80s and I wrote about them for various reasons. Calvino, as you’ll discover, is a totally unique writer, so I decided it would be interesting to post...
View ArticleCalvino Is To The Mind What Exercise Is To The Body (Part 2)
[This is the second part of my two-part article on Italo Calvino, my report on his novella, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Readers who haven’t read Part 1 are urged to go back and read it as it...
View ArticleThe Nanny That Shouldn't Have Been Able To Fly
by Kirk Woodward[Kirk Woodward, ROT’s most loyal (and prolific) contributor, returns once again with an interesting take on a familiar subject. This time it’s Mary Poppins, the stage musical, the...
View Article'Hold On to Me Darling'
I seem to be running into a spate of plays recently where I come away not knowing what the playwright is trying to communicate. I might suspect that I’m losing my faculties, except that I haven’t been...
View Article'Pericles'
Last month I traveled to Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, and the Greek island of Lesbos. There were also two storm-tossed sea voyages as well. And it all took place over 2¾ hours on a Thursday...
View ArticleAsimov’s Shakespeare
by Kirk Woodward[In my recent report on the production of William Shakespeare’s Pericles at the Theatre for a New Audience (posted on 1 April), I made a reference to Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare and a...
View Article'Bright Star'
[My play report on the current Broadway première of Bright Star, the initial musical theater venture of comedian-musician-author Steve Martin and singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, is considerably longer...
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"10 Theatres In Weird Places"
[I was checking some U.K. reviews of a British play, one of which was in the London Telegraph. While I was reading the notice, I spotted a link to a story headlined “10 Theatres in Weird Places,” and...
View Article“To Be . . . Performed: Hamlet to Haunt Stages in Every Country in the World”
Reported by Jeffrey Brown[The most famous words of the most famous play of the most famous playwright of the English language will soon be echoed all over the earth. In honor of William Shakespeare’s...
View Article'Nathan the Wise'
In my last performance report (“Bright Star,” 11 April), I started with a list of things of which I’m not a fan. (“I think more reviewers should make their predispositions clear the way you do!”...
View ArticleBeckett Trilogy: 'Not I', 'Footfalls,''Rockaby'
Back in October 2015, I walked down to the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University, just south of Washington Square, to meet my friend Diana for a performance of Samuel...
View Article“Joe Patten, a Theater Caretaker Known As the Phantom of the Fox, Dies at 89”
by Margalit Fox[I don’t usually post obituaries on ROT—memorials occasionally, remembrances of people who were important to me or to theater, but not obits from the published press. This case is a...
View Article'Something Rotten!' 1
by Kirk Woodward[When Kirk first sent me this article on Something Rotten!, which he’d just seen, he remarked, “I will have to see the musical again to be confident that I’ve seen most of what’s going...
View Article'Something Rotten!' 2
[Yes, that’s right: there are now two . . . count ’em, two . . . write-ups of Something Rotten! on ROT. ROTters who caught Kirk’s article, posted on 11 May, will know that he and I saw Something...
View Article'Toast'
“I love work plays,” says British playwright Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors). “Work has hierarchy, hope, ambition, need, compromise, tragedy, and comedy.” Bean has reason to know, largely from...
View Article“Labor History in Musical Theatre”
[The May 2016 issue of Allegro (Volume 116, No. 5), the news magazine of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the union that represents Broadway and Off-Broadway theater musicians, ran an...
View Article'Daphne's Dive'
“My stepfather owned some bars in Philadelphia, where I used to hang out after school . . . . I loved the bar as the hub of local news amongst the neighbors—from there the voices just started coming...
View ArticleSignature Plays
For a theatergoer, one-act plays can be part blessing, part predicament. If you’re enjoying a one-act play, it’s over too fast; if you aren’t, it’s a short unpleasantness, quickly ended. Because few...
View ArticleMore Words on Words
[Back on 1 February 2014, I posted a trio of articles, two from the New York Times and one from the Washington Post, that I entitled together “Words on Words” because they were about the craft of...
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