Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

A brief note about the world premiere of Martin Sherman 's play, Gently Down the Stream , directed by Sean Mathias , and starring Harvey Fierstein, Gabriel Ebert, and Christopher Sears: Gently Down the Stream brings us yet another history of the gays. I know that sounds dismissive and insensitive; I mean to be dismissive and insensitive toward the play, not the subject matter. As the play began, and Ebert's Rufus asked Fierstein's Beau questions about his past, I thought it was just DJ Exposition, but then Beau proceeded to directly addressed the audience (ostensibly in a testimonial), and the play turned into a prolonged history lesson. What was it all for? Apparently the purpose of slogging through the first 90 minutes of the 100–minute play was to get to the ending: row, row, row your boat gently down the stream / [sometimes not so] merrily you get to a point where you realize your life's dreams. Frankly, I found it trite, and like a poor adaptation of The He...

Rock Hall 2017 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2017 has been announced. Entering the Hall on their first year of eligibility are Pearl Jam and Tupac , with Journey , Yes , Electric Light Orchestra , and Joan Baez as their fellow classmates. Musician Nile Rodgers will be given the Award for Musical Excellence, though his band, Chic, remains left out of the Hall. The artists will be inducted and honored during an April 7, 2017, ceremony/performance in Brooklyn, and, as in years past, an edited version of the festivities will air on HBO in May. Rolling Stone has more. NYCB on Your TV This winter, you'll get to watch New York City Ballet on PBS as part of the Great Performances series. Over the summer, NYCB performed in Paris's Theatre du Chatelet, and on February 17 and 24, 2017, you can tune in to see the Company's final performance from that three-week run. As The New York Times reports, the performance includes Walpurgisnacht Ballet , featuring Sara M...

As I settled in for Casa Valentina , the new play from theatre luminary Harvey Fierstein , I was ready for something to bowl me over. I see a lot of theatre and it had been about a month since I saw something that really excited me. (For those of you keeping score, at the time I saw Casa Valentina , the last thing to excite me was If/Then .) And after the first act of Casa Valentina , I thought I’d found it. The second act disappointed by comparison, but still made for a good production of a good new play. Casa Valentina is “inspired by events that took place in and around the Chevalier d’Eon Resort in the Catskill Mountains in 1962,” playwright Fierstein and director Joe Mantello say in program notes. It was at this resort that heterosexual men who identify as women could relax and dress as themselves, that is, dress in women’s clothing, complete with well-coiffed wigs, perfectly applied make up, undergarments galore, jewelry and heels. (This is an earnest, sincere tale—it...

Tell people that you’re going to see a show called Kinky Boots and they’re instantly intrigued. It sounds like a show that might add some flair to a sometimes staid art form. This splashy, flashy musical certainly does add some pizazz to the Great White Way, albeit in a rather traditional way and with varying degrees of success. Kinky Boots , based on the 2005 film, is a good old traditional book musical. Book writer Harvey Fierstein ( Newsies , Safe Men ) knows his way around the book of a musical and does nice work integrating the book with the score, even if the book itself somewhat lazily borrows heavily from the film. (The stage version does incorporate some moments that did not make the final cut of the film but are available in the DVD extras. Their inclusion helps bring closure to the story’s heart.) And like the first book musicals, Kinky Boots uses the show-within-a-show device to make itself more palatable. (More on that later.) In what’s becoming another tradit...