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

The nominations for the 67th Tony Awards are in! Without any further ado, here is the full list of nominees, first the plays, then the musicals: Best Play The Assembled Parties , Richard Greenberg Lucky Guy , Nora Ephron The Testament of Mary , Colm Toibin Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike , Christopher Durang All of these are spring shows, leaving new plays from the fall, like Grace and Dead Accounts , out of the running. My vote is for the hilarious Vanya... , though I hear good things about Lucky Guy , written by the late Nora Ephron. Best Revival of a Play Golden Boy Orphans The Trip to Bountiful Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Is this even a competition? Virginia Woolf?  was the best show on Broadway this year - play or musical, revival or new. It was an absolutely flawless production. Tony voters, do the right thing, otherwise George and Martha will come after you, and they know how to fight! Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Pl...

“If you want something, keep your hands on it,” say the dreamers in the new musical Hands on a Hardbody . Inspired by the eponymous documentary by S.R. Bindler, the musical looks at the contestants in a hands on a hardbody contest in Longview, Texas, and aims to find out just why they’re holding on. A hands on a hardbody contest is one in which you place your hands on a truck—a hardbody—and you cannot remove them. You always have to have at least one hand on the truck. Like a filibuster, you can’t lean, you can’t stretch; all you can do is stand there and hold on for dear life. (In this contest, there are 15-minute breaks every six hours.) The last man standing wins the truck. But as we learn in this musical, with a book by Doug Wright (a Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winner for I Am My Own Wife ), lyrics by Amanda Green ( Bring It On ) and music by Green and Phish’s Trey Anastasio, winning the truck is just the beginning. For each of the ten contestants, winning the truck means so...