5,756 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
It's easy to see how the dynamic physical performer Ethan Slater, Broadway's SpongeBob and Hollywood's Boq, would be drawn to the irresistible true story of the world's most famous mim…
Mae is awkward and messy, and so is the play she is in, a revival that is the second theatrical production at the Cherry Lane Theater under its new owners, the A24 movie studio. Portraye…
TeatroFest 2026, a citywide festival of twenty-four productions by the ten member theaters of the Alliance of Teatros Latinos NY , launches February 27 with a free Spring Preview at the New …
"Ruby & Charlie," one of the three works of puppetry at the fifth annual Puppetopia festival presented at HERE,  uses the music of Ray Charles, played by a live band, to chro…
A day in an abortion clinic; children killed in Gaza; children killed in school shootings in America; the life and death of a war photojournalist; donkeys in the desert.  These are the…
Alfred Nakache, a swimmer of Algerian Jewish descent who competed for France in the Olympics both before and after he was sent to Auschwitz, might seem an unlikely subject for an animated fi…
A France in which kissing gets the death penalty; a Palestinian butcher accused by his Israeli co-workers; a spoof of Jane Austin. These are among the five Live Action Short Films nominated …
February is usually the peak month for SADÂ Â (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but it's still striking that four of the five plays I reviewed this past week involve family trauma. Three do…
In the middle of the Saturday Survivors weekly recovery meeting that is the heart of Jacob Perkins' play, Elizabeth Marvel as Joan introduces herself, announces that she is an alcoholic, and…
Only four of the 45 presidents of the United States were born in February, but they include the two most revered, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who are also the two most frequently …
"Twelve Minor Prophets" might sound like a Hebrew School pageant, since it's an educational and playful stage adaptation based on the last twelve books of the Old Testament. But the playfuln…
The characters of many of the currently running Broadway shows weigh in on this most nettlesome and sustaining of emotions. A sample below: From & Juliet: Francois: I just proposed…
Why are actors told to break a leg? Why is Macbeth called The Scottish Play inside a theater? Why can't you whistle in a theater? What is the ghost light all about? In honor of Friday the 13…
WTF? That is how Sean Hayes as Elliott reacts at a startling moment in this 75-minute solo play, and how Hayes as Larry, Elliot's best friend, reacts to Elliott's increasingly obsessive beha…
Theatergoers may identify with Anne (Emma D'Arcy) if they have had to deal with a family member during a crisis who showed no interest in collaboration or compromise, only wanting to be in c…
By the time that Big and Lil are lunging at one another with all the brutal skills they've developed as mixed martial arts fighters, we already realize they aren't monsters at all. They are …
When Timothée Chalamet made his Off-Broadway debut exactly a decade ago, as a troubled Bronx teenager in John Patrick Shanley's "Prodigal Son," I compared him to a young Marlon Brando, writ…
Two of the three shows I reviewed this past week felt like implicit acts of resistance to currently encroaching authoritarian rule. One was modeled on a play by Brecht that he wrote to…
It was not necessarily the most exciting football game for many people watching (it did pick up in the fourth quarter), but Super Bowl LX was more than football. Brandi Carlile sang the nati…
The artist known as La Daniella portrays Gooey, who is billed as "an orphaned sorta mermaid" and dressed in what looks like a fishnet with dredged up detritus from the sea. Her costume looks…
For every well-known showcase of Black Broadway " "Porgy and Bess," 1935; "A Raisin in the Sun" 1959; last year's "Purpose," winner of both the Tony and Pulitzer " there are little-remembere…
It took until the twenty-first century for the extraordinary story of Hans Litten to reach the public at large. In 1930, stormtroopers attacked the patrons of Eden Dance Palace in Berlin. Th…
Anna Fierling, the spokesperson for the National Rifle Association who tells her story in "And Her Children," is a fictional character clearly inspired by former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch…
Tickets are now on sale for Off-Broadway Week, where you can buy two tickets for the price of one for 26 shows, for performances from February 16 through March 12. Sixteen of the shows are n…
In a year when one of the ten Oscar nominees for best picture ends with scenes from one of the greatest plays ever written, another is about a theater actress and her film director father, a…
