It wasn’t designed this way, but suddenly Bunty Berman Presents…—well, Bunty Berman. Since the fifth preview of this loony, tune-y movie spoof, an insert has been stuffed into the show’s program announcing in the bluntest boldface possible that “The role of Bunty Berman is being played by Ayub Khan Din”—and not just “at this performance,” either. Forever and a day, it would seem. Read More

“If you build it—and give them vodka—they will come.”

That appears to be the game plan behind the May 1 grand opening of Kazino, a new theatrical venue at West 13th and Washington Streets in the Meatpacking District. The place comes with a ready-made show—an electropop opera by Dave Malloy, based on “a 70-page sliver” of War and Peace, called Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812—and a design to meet the specific needs of that play.

It’s the same set Mr. Malloy had when the show appeared last fall at the Ars Nova theater in Hell’s Kitchen—the same banquettes and table seating and wraparound bars—but it’s double the size. “It’s a bit more lush and ritzier than what we had before,” Mr. Malloy told The Observer. Read More

Seeking her next show, Boston-based director Diane Paulus, who has been making a name for herself reimagining classic American musicals, ran through her mental catalog of the musicals she loved. After she did her revival of Hair in 2011, she said, “Pippin was always at the top of the list.” It went on the back burner for a few years while she directed The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, which ended its Broadway run in 2012. “It gave me time to think about the physical production I wanted for Pippin,” she said. “I knew a revival would really need to have a physical vocabulary that touched the Fosse style but then also took it to a new place.” That new place, as audiences will discover when the show opens on April 25 at the Music Box Theatre, is the circus. Read More

Chances are excellent—even without the Las Vegas odds-makers weighing in on the subject—that you won’t recognize the gentleman who, on June 9, steps onto the stage of Radio City Music Hall and collects his Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

As the Broadway season enters its homestretch, two front-runners are emerging in this Read More

To see Amanda Green at Birdland or at 54 Below is to see two theatrical worlds melding in happy harmony. She is the offspring of Tony winners—actress Phyllis   Newman and lyricist Adolph Green—and the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

“It seems like a straight line,” Ms. Green allowed, “but actually it was a very squiggly line that got me to where I am today.” Where she is on this particular Wednesday is the Café Edison, where a few doors down on West 47th she is about to open her second Broadway show of the 2012-2013 season, Hands on a Hardbody. Read More

It was not the sort of applause that generally greets a star. It was that more rarefied kind reserved for somebody truly beloved. Last December, when Judith Light took to the stage of the New Amsterdam at The 24th Annual Gypsy of the Year competition to do what has become her regular moment-of-silence spot for those lost to AIDS, there was a massive outpouring of affection. A longtime Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS standard-bearer, she couldn’t be better cast for the bit, her voice ringing with dignity and compassion. But that reception set off in me a wave of jealousy, along with the toxic thought, “Damn! They love her as much as I do!” Read More

Douglas Carter Beane is aflutter these days, flitting from one fairyland to another like a hummingbird in heat. These are fairylands of his own making or, in the case of his Cinderella, which is bowing March 3 at the Broadway Theatre, remaking; his from-the-ground-up original play The Nance follows suit April 15 at the Lyceum. Read More

Holland Taylor has had it with these people who order “painfully dry vodka martinis.” Pa-lease! “First of all, that’s not a martini because a martini is gin,” she pointed out in a recent interview. “Not that I’m a person very opinionated about it, but the original ratio of gin to vermouth in a martini was one to three. Now, people swish it around in a glass, throw it out and call that a martini. The whole thing is the interaction of the vermouth with the gin. It’s a chemical interaction. When I taste a well-made martini, I think, ‘If I could just hold on to this taste forever, it’d be great.’” Read More

They call him “The Actor Whisperer,” this soft-spoken Scot who finesses quality work from his casts, more often than not without them ever being aware of the strings he pulls or the buttons he pushes. John Doyle’s directing is subtle sleight-of-hand stuff, and it doesn’t get nearly the amount of press as his signature mannerism—turning his actors into his orchestra by having them play musical instruments as well as roles.

That’s how he bowed on Broadway, with Patti LuPone doubling on meat pies and tuba in 2005’s Sweeney Todd. He followed that with Raul Esparza on piano in 2006’s Company. The first got him a Best Director Tony, the second a Best Musical Tony. Read More