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SWEPT AWAY on Broadway

                                            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...

OUR TOWN on Broadway

                                                                                             The cast of OUR TOWN , Daniel Rader I didn't know it was possible to make so many terrible decisions about this beautiful piece. OUR TOWN is widely considered not just one of the greatest American plays, but one of the greatest plays ever written. Experimental for its time, Thornton Wilder's piece, written in 1938, uses an all but bare stage and mimed action to examine the very nature of human existence. Divided into three "acts" (in practical terms the show is an hour and a half with no intermission... these "act" breaks do not denote actual breaks...) "Daily Life", "Love and Marriage" and "Death and Eternity", a Stage Manager takes us through the everyday lives o...