The recent trend of converting hit movies into Broadway musicals (“Shrek,” “Billy Elliott,” etc.) may have reached the point of ridiculous with today’s news that a stage musical of the Clint Eastwood film “Magnum Force” is in the works: Magnum
Contrary to popular belief the sky is NOT falling on Broadway. Yes, about a dozen shows closed after the holidays, but up until about 15 years ago, that was the norm. There have traditionally been three “seasons” for shows to
Playbill is announcing a revival of the musical “Ragtime” this Spring at the Kennedy Center. I love “Ragtime.” It’s a great piece of theatre. And it’s a completely, totally and entirely a left-wing wacko propaganda piece. “Ragtime” is based on
Variety is reporting that as part of a fundraiser for multiple same-sex marriage organizations, “Hairspray” composer Marc Shaiman’s satirical “Prop 8: The Musical” will be staged live. The event called “Defying Inequality” will be performed on a dark night on
Aaron Sorkin really pisses me off. And not for the reasons you might think. Yes, he’s a liberal’s liberal. And he epitomizes all that Big Hollywood rails against. He infuses his politics into everything he writes. He purposefully paints most
Wicked, the smash international stage hit, is a phenomenon and triumph of luck, pluck and virtue for it’s primary creator: composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz made a revolutionary cultural impact on American Theatre with his 1971 Off-Broadway hit Godspell. He followed
While we’re in the business of revealing secrets from the entertainment industry, let me add a whopper for you all to chew on: Most people who work on Broadway hate Andrew Lloyd Webber. That’s right. Despite creating more employment and
The lights came up at the Nederlander Theatre at intermission. My girlfriend, at the time, turns to me and says, “Well, what do you think?”. We had just seen the first half of RENT, the groundbreaking, 1996 grunge-rock musical based
You hear the stories about the DMV worker asked to remove an American Flag from their cubicle, and the secretary forced to not have a bible on her desk, or the fireman who can’t have a Hooters calendar up at
The horrifying news that Susan Sarandon will make her Broadway debut this Spring (because Broadway isn’t left ENOUGH?) has gotten me to thinking… Instead of Ms. Sarandon, and Rosie O’Donnell and Alec Baldwin & Jessica Lange (in the SAME play,
I know that as the guy on the “Broadway Beat” I should have a take on the Will Ferrell one-man show due to start previews at the Cort on Inauguration Day, “You’re Welcome America, A Final Night with George Bush”,
Although Big Hollywood is still in its infancy, a recurring theme seems to be running through the posts and the comments: (paraphrasing) “Stop bitching about the left in show business, go out and make a new reality with your own
That’s what I felt like yelling during last November’s horrifying public shaming of a theatre executive in California. Scott Eckern, the Artistic Director of Sacramento Music Theatre, was forced to resign after the public revelation that he donated $1,000 to
It was a cold November evening in 1994 when I shut off my television and went to a board meeting of a Los Angeles service organization for theatre owners and producers. I had just heard the news that for the
The American Theatre world was rocked last year by playwright David Mamet’s confession in the “Village Voice” headlined: “Why I am no longer a ‘brain-dead liberal“. Some of us saw it coming. You need only recall Mamet’s 1992 masterpiece “Oleanna”
