194 stories by "Diane Snyder"
That film and television now fulfill a role that theater once played is not such a bad thing. Case in point: There's no longer a need for playwrights like Sidney Howard to be quite so overt …
Lots of theaters (though certainly not enough of them) introduce their audiences to new playwrights, but not many can say they introduce their audiences to "new" playwrights who died 40 year…
"Crowd-pleasing" isn't a word often used to describe Horton Foote's CV. And that's actually not meant as a negative. His plays are delicate dissections of the quiet and frequently unfulfille…
Am I the only one who didn't see why Bob Glaudini's Jack Goes Boating received the all the praise that it did when it played Off Broadway several years ago? It seemed like Steppenwolf-lite: …
Douglas Carter Beane's profile of a gay burlesque star in 1930s New York has a case of dramaturgical bipolarity.
Motown's ambitions are as grand as those of the record label's founder...
I almost never tire of dry, quirky, understated Canadian humor, and when that is the main thrust of The Drawer Boy, Michael Healey's play is a delight. But this tale of two farmers with a my…
Think formalizing your final will is one of life's more soporific labors. I'm afraid it's not much more interesting watching Shakespeare accomplish the task in The Last Will, Robert Brustein…
When I heard this morning that Arthur Darvill was stepping into one of the lead roles in the Broadway production of Once, I was sure I missed a press release or three. Surely producers knew …
It sounds gimmicky, but I was really impressed with the creepy, evocative Macbeth now on Broadway, in which Alan Cumming gets to stretch his Shakespeare muscles by playing all of the major c…
The puckish Broadway star returns to New York theater in a (nearly) one-man version of the Scottish Play.
Until I saw Zero Hour, a solo biodrama about the brilliant, difficult Zero Mostel, a few years back, I wasn't aware that Jerome Robbins had given names of suspected communists to the House U…
Even though he's a Broadway newbie, Tom Hanks gives the kind of meticulous, multilayered performance in Lucky Guy that we've come to expect from the two-time Oscar winner.
Amid all the big spring Broadway openings, don't overlook David Harrower's Good with People. I was reading a book of Pinter plays (how pretentious does that sound!) when I caught this thorny…
Not every story needs to be a Broadway extravaganza. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Cinderella, which began life as lovely little 90-minute TV special in 1957, has been stretched an…
She may be iconic, but Holly Golightly is just one of many beautiful young women who come to New York seeking self-reinvention. Scores of TV and film stars arrive on Broadway each season, ho…
Thanks to the Mint Theater Company I've had a lovely time getting acquainted with Irish playwright Teresa Deevy over the last three seasons. Their current offering, Katie Roche, isn't my fav…
Still jolly good fun after all these years...
It's quite delightful conducting an interview when your subjects are Danny Bursetin, who was equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking in the Broadway revivals of South Pacific, and Sarah Paul…
As long as big-name actors yearn to inhabit the bodies and souls of the colorfully crass, ethically compromised salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross, it seems producers will be happy to put up th…
The Radio City Christmas Spectacular was once the only major family holiday show in town. Now there's a flurry of them, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Elf and, new to the New York…
Sometimes the plays and films and TV shows that best fill me with the Christmas spirit aren't the ones that directly relate to the holiday. Take, for example, Red Bull Theater's jaunty, frol…
Think Annie is just for kids, do you? Then you might be surprised to know that the 1977 Tony-winning musical has a dark side, which is never more apparent than in this sterling-silver reviva…
Yep, there actually was an episode of This Is Your Life that featured a Hiroshima survivor meeting one of the pilots who dropped the bomb. Now there's even a play about it, written by Cusi C…
The Heiress isn't widely regarded as a 20th-century classic. But director Moises Kaufman and the starry cast of this Broadway revival will have you reconsidering its merits.
