Mrs. Christie, currently onstage at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park through March 29th, is an intriguing blend of fact & fiction. It's rooted in a real episode from the life of mystery …
Thick taut ropes stretch across the back of the stage at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles like a forest of piano wires. Stacks of piano harps scale each side of the stage, framed by a pro…
What would you expect when fans have been known to refer to their favorite composer and lyricist (who wrote a song about it) as God? The Sondheimas Mixtape at the Public Theater in Manhat…
In New York City, the Barrow Street Theatre production of Sweeney Todd (running until at least Dec. 31, 2017) truly extends beyond the normalcy of the fourth wall. More than an immers…
New York City Center’s Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway (Feb. 11-April 23, 2017) Every once in a rare while, the theater rewards us with a kind of transcendent experie…
You would think that at some point in its evolution, a theater company devoted to producing works whose themes concern LGBT issues and whose playwrights represent the LGBT community, would g…
At age 22, Sandra Church originated the role of Louise in Jule Styne, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim's Gypsy staged by Jerome Robbins. She retired from the theater in the 1960s to purs…
Color and light, tension and harmony. These design elements should be fundamental to any stage production, but perhaps none more than Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George. In Pe…
In an extraordinary six-year period, Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince brought four landmark musicals to Broadway: Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973) and Pacific Ov…
Everything Sondheim: In 2002 you designed six Sondheim shows in one summer for the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration. Derek McLane: That's true! EvSo: How exactly did it work? Were …
The Stratford Festival in Ontario is one of North America's preeminent theater companies. Producing a rolling repertory of more than a dozen plays and musicals from April through November in…
Like many Stephen Sondheim fans, author Robert L. McLaughlin discovered Sondheim's musical work when he found a cast album (in his case, Company) at the library while in high school. McLaugh…
How do you solve a problem like Company? While now revered as a benchmark of the post-Golden Age, its own advancing years can be a challenge to those who might wish it would always be what i…
It's hard to listen to Barbra Streisand's latest album, Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, without comparing it to her two previous Broadway albums. The liner notes explicitly link her ch…
At the age of 25, Jim Walton originated the role of Franklin Shepard in Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway. Walton talks about the highs and lows of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…
Rabarbrateateret ("The Rhubarb Theater") is a theater company situated in the idyllic "old town" Bakklandet in Trondheim, Norway's third largest city. The company has mounted acclaimed produ…
So is it a musical or an opera? One might have expected Sweeney Todd at the Glimmerglass Festival to come down firmly on the side of the latter. But, to borrow a thought from Into the Woods,…
The big revelation instantly splashed across the media was that Stephen Sondheim's new musical is to have its premiere Off Broadway at the Public Theater in late 2017 " " if I can finish the…
For Everything Sondheim's first installment of "Singing Sondheim," I'm looking at recent releases from male singers. You can expect a follow-up column with female singers next month (includi…
Singer Katie Welsh performed an evening of song, Women in the World of Sondheim, at Feinstein's 54 Below in New York City on June 10, 2016, accompanied by pianist Emily Whitaker. She …
In Barbara Cook's preface to her memoir Then & Now, she expresses the hope that "this book might help some people through bad times." This piercingly candid, remarkably clear-eyed…
John McMartin, an actor with a flair for patrician roles, died on July 6, 2016. According to the New York Times, the cause was cancer. He was 86. McMartin, whose stage career began in…
REVIEW BY ERIK HAAGENSEN Two recent books about show business share a tangential tie to Stephen Sondheim while otherwise being about as different as they can be. American entertainment lawye…
REVIEW BY RICK PENDER When Kurt Peterson and Victoria Mallory walked onstage at New York City Center on Sunday, April 29, 2012, it was a joyous reconnection to present a concert they called …
INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL PORTANTIERE Len Cariou's brilliant career has had at least three acts. His first act was onstage in his native Canada and at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, primaril…