This summer, Ayad Akhtar was struggling with the final scene of “McNeal,” his knotty and disorienting play about a Nobel Prize-winning author who uses artificial intelligence to write a novel. He wanted the title character, played by Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut, to deliver a monologue that sounded …
Read More »‘Attack on Titan’ Shows that Anime and Broadway Could Be a Good Match
There are a few things that New York theatergoers can always expect to see on Broadway stages: some Disney, some Sondheim, some Hollywood stars. One may not expect to see the Colossal Titan. What is the Colossal Titan? That would be a giant, skinless humanoid creature, all red tendons and …
Read More »Lin-Manuel Miranda Releases ‘Warriors’ Album With Eisa Davis
“The Warriors,” a 1979 film about a group of gang members fighting their way home to Brooklyn from the Bronx, isn’t the most brutal movie ever made, but it’s not exactly Sesame Street either — when it was first released, it was blamed (on pretty flimsy evidence) for inciting violence. …
Read More »York Theater Artistic Director Out After ‘Hurtful’ Diversity Comments
The longtime leader of the York Theater Company, a small New York nonprofit known for its emphasis on musical theater, is acknowledging making “hurtful” comments about diversity that he says prompted his abrupt departure from the organization. James Morgan, who has served as producing artistic director of the York since …
Read More »American Sign Language Brings New Layers to ‘American Idiot’
Inside the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles on a recent Wednesday, the air was saturated with stage fog and preshow jitters. The first performance of a revival of Green Day’s “American Idiot” was just hours away, and the choreographer Jennifer Weber had some final instructions for the cast …
Read More »‘Suffs’ Won Tony Awards for Best Score and Book. Now It’s Closing.
“Suffs,” a new musical about the American women’s suffrage movement, has a lot going for it: Its producers include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Malala Yousafzai, it won Tony Awards for its score and its book, and its audiences seemed energized by how the show’s themes resonated with the candidacy of …
Read More »Review: An ‘Our Town’ for All of Us, Starring Jim Parsons
The first act of “Our Town” takes place in Grover’s Corners on May 7, 1901. Nothing much happens in the fictional New Hampshire village that day, except that two local teenagers, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, fall in love completely unaware that they do so under the shadow of the …
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