On keeping singing in musical theater about storytelling, rather than showboating
Beyond
Intermission Talk: An Actors Fund Benefit, And Everything’s Coming Up Rosie
The jolly tone and theater-centric focus of the old Rosie O’Donnell Show is charmingly recaptured on line for an awfully good cause
Intermission Talk: About Mack & Mabel
The inauspicious origins of the ill-fated Jerry Herman/Michael Stewart musical, recently revived at City Center
The Feingold Column: Songs to Write Plays by–Part 1
How classic American songs worked their way into the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and more
From London: Kushner Visits Dürrenmatt’s The Visit
★★★☆☆ Lesley Manville is the vengeful Claire Zachanassian in director Jeremy Herrin’s production at the National
From London: Death of England, A Number, and Endgame
Intellectual exercises with Rafe Spall, Roger Allam, Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe in worthy productions
From London: Stoppard Potently Examines His Elusive Background in Leopoldstadt
★★★★★ For his supposedly last work, the revered playwright looks at vanished Viennese Jews
Next to Normal: It’s Gonna Be Good
★★★★★ Director Michael Greif brings the musical to D.C. for a brief but intensely emotional run starring Rachel Bay Jones
From Massachusetts: Moby-Dick, A Nantucket Sleigh Ride Of An Adventure
★★★★☆ It has to be said: Dave Malloy’s Melville adaptation is a whale of a show
From Boston: Quixote Nuevo, Modern-Day Man of La Plancha
★★★☆☆ Octavio Solis’s modern-day take on Don Quixote taps into the current crisis along the U.S./Mexico border