State of the Art

Watching "& Juliet" is like eating a box of Twizzlers. Yeah, it might be fun...it may result in a hyperactive sugar rush, but there's no question that it has absolutely no substance and, if you're really honest with yourself, it just tastes of plastic.  The attraction of "& Juliet" is the energy, dance, chance to experience fun pop songs and eye popping design elements (namely the costumes.) But the story feels like it was written by a five year old who once looked up "boss bitch" in the dictionary and has most definitely never read "Romeo and Juliet."  The plot is, on the surface, simple and yet so convoluted it is literally painful trying to make sense of it. The surface level is this: Willam Shakespeare is about to debut his new play, "Romeo and Juliet." His wife, Anne Hathaway, blessed with a rare night off from taking care of the kids, has come to Stratford to see the premiere. Shakespeare has just finished the endi...

  All photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman  and feature Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen "Maybe Happy Ending" is the most charming musical to come to Broadway in a long time. Is it perfect? No. But what a breath of fresh air to have a beautiful, fully original new musical with a fantastic score that's sure to become a musical theater staple. It find it telling that, more and more, the best new musicals are no longer coming from the U.S., but from overseas. "Maybe Happy Ending", written by Will Aronson and Hue Park. Though Aronson is American, and Park was in America when he first got the idea for the show, it was originally produced in South Korea, in Korean (one wonders if, in the bureaucracy that is American commercial musical theater if such a gem ever would have gotten out of the development stage, as many brilliant shows never do.) Becoming a huge hit it is now on Broadway at the Belasco Theater starring Darren Criss and fantastic newcomer Helen J. She...

Thank goodness for this brilliant film adaptation.  There is so much that could have gone wrong with this film, in fact I avoided seeing it for quite a while because I was so worried it would hurt my heart. Like so many, "Wicked" has meant a great deal to me since it opened over twenty years ago. Indeed, with the exception of "Hamilton", one could easily argue that it is the most culturally impactful musical of the past two decades. And the piece is more relevant now than ever  - from the political under (and over) tones the musical does not shy away from (though it softens them from the book), and the idea of an ostracized but powerful young woman fighting against an all but worshipped leader who is destroying an entire population in the name of needing a "scapegoat" (pun intended by me and the show) to the fact that the Man Behind The Curtain never knew what he was doing in the first place, has gone from applicable to terrifyingly resonant. The film uses...

                                            The company of Swept Away , photo by Emilio Madrid "Swept Away", now playing at the Longacre Theater on Broadway is...frustrating. It's the kind of piece that annoys theatergoers, and especially industry insiders, to no end. A musical that seemingly came out of nowhere (it had a successful production at Arena stage just before opening on Broadway) with marketing that tells us less than nothing about the show except that the ocean is in someway involved. One hopes that it's vague origins equate to a "diamond in the rough" piece... that rare original musical that caught the attention of a talented, intelligent producer and got it's "big break." Sadly, that's not what I saw at the Longacre. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that "Swept Away" was simply a "bee in the bonnet" passion project of the lead producer. One need only look at the...