For playwrights, family dramas are never just about families.
Rob Weinert-Kendt
Rob Weinert-Kendt, an arts journalist and editor of American Theatre magazine, has written for The New York Times and Time Out New York.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Three new shows break the mold of the jukebox musical—for better and for worse
Three new Off-Broadway shows don’t just show us what draws musicians to their chosen medium; they make us hear it, with often bracing effect.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Stephen Sondheim’s final musical is a satisfying cap to an extraordinary career
Sondheim has left the building, and he lives on only in interpretation and iteration, no less than Shakespeare or Mozart.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: August Wilson, a playwright of multitudes
In ‘August Wilson: A Life,’ an excellent new biography by Patti Hartigan, we read of the winding path that led Wilson to his ascendance, then delves into the tumults and triumphs of his two decades at the heights of achievement.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Take me to church (or to Broadway): ‘Purlie Victorious’ and the catharsis of Black theater
Can I get an amen?
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Playwright Annie Baker offers a theology of pain in her new play ‘Infinite Life’
For theater fans, the arrival of a new Annie Baker play is cause for celebration.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Review: ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘The Shark is Broken’ bring movie brands to Broadway
Two new Broadway productions offer case studies in brand extension and fan service.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’ and ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ take a satirical aim at theater itself
The ambitions of these two comedies could hardly be more disparate, yet the craft employed in both is rooted in similarly precise calibrations of our attention and sympathies.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
‘Parade,’ ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Camelot’ offer a history lesson on the American musical
Three strong new revivals offer an instructive comparative lens through which to view the form’s development over the decades.
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan bring love and revolution to life in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’
A lovingly crafted new revival of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music makes a fresh case for reconsideration of Lorraine Hansberry’s less well-known second play, which followed the classic “A Raisin in the Sun.”