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

New York City Ballet Teases New Season The full lineup, including specific performance dates, has not been announced yet, but New York City Ballet did announce the outline of its 2016-2017 season. Most noteworthy is that the season will feature two world premieres by female choreographers . (The last time the company premiered a ballet by a female choreographer was in 2011.) Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and principal dancer Lauren Lovette will choreograph ballets that will premiere at the company's Fall Gala, which will also include a new work by soloist and resident choreographer Justin Peck (one of three ballets he'll create in the season), and a new work by corps de ballet member, Peter Walker . Continuing its focus on new(er) works, the spring season will include a four-week festival of ballets that were commissioned in the last 30 years. Highlights of the festival, I'm sure, will be all–Peck, all– Christopher Wheeldon , and all– Alexei Ratmansky nights. (The company...

Ah, She Loves Me . It's a story we all know, thanks, mostly, to the movie You've Got Mail , which is based on the same source material as the musical. (That would be the Miklos Laszlo play Parfumerie  and the ensuing film adaptation, The Shop Around the Corner .) That familiarity doesn't mean it's not worth retelling. It's a lovely story, quaint, old-fashioned, and sincere, the kind of story we don't see these days, which makes this glorious revival such a welcomed treat. She Loves Me  comes from songwriting duo Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), who brought us  Fiddler on the Roof , and book writer Joe Masteroff , who wrote the libretto for the Kander and Ebb classic,  Cabaret . (What a winning trio; Bock and Harnick's score is a feast for your ears, and Masteroff's book is substantive and feels fresh.) It takes place in Maraczek's parfumerie in Budapest, circa 1934. (The locale is rather inconsequential; no one puts on a Hungari...