Marilyn Maye has nothing on her mind but spreading joy. For a swinging broad of 84 (and I mean that in the best way), she also sings up a storm, but you already knew that. The joy is contagious, and she spreads it around like honey on toast. She calls her current show at Feinstein’s “The Happiest Sound in Town”—she’s not kidding. Read More
As the New York theater season draws to a final curtain, here are a pair of late entries worth noting. A new play by David Rabe is always news, but An Early History of Fire, at the New Group, is his first work in nine years, so attention must be paid. Set in a dreary Read More
Good movies with a point of view are as hard to produce as winning lottery tickets. Kathleen Turner has produced one that is vital and amusing and well worth seeing. It’s called The Perfect Family and it’s about a family that is anything but. Easy as a sigh, the accomplished, charismatic and multifaceted actress is also the star. Kudos all around. Read More
A popular and critical success at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the touching documentary First Position is of interest not only to ballet fans but to anyone who has ever faced tremendous odds to make a dream come true. This is a film of charm and fire about six enormously talented ballet students (seven, actually, but one drops out) on their way to the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest ballet competition that awards full scholarships and job contracts to aspiring dancers ages 9 to 19. More than 5,000 hopefuls enter the semifinals held in 15 cities around the globe. Only 300 of them make it to the finals in New York, where judges from 30 major dance companies reward or reject them, one by one, changing their lives forever. Read More
With nothing on its tiny mind but pulchritude and parody, Nice Work If You Can Get It, a dumping ground of cornball clichés woodenly directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall with tinned arrangements of early tunes by George and Ira Gershwin, has landed on Broadway at the Imperial with a mechanical thud. Except for one or two exceptions, it is so vulgar, boring and stupid that it will probably be a hit.
The stars are Matthew Broderick, who sings weakly, can’t dance and is 20 pounds overweight, and Kelli O’Hara, who does everything musical with welcome panache but ends up wasted in a role so dumb it would have been rejected by Martha Raye. Read More
A cross between Robin Hood and Baby Face Nelson, Edwin Boyd was (and still is) Canada’s most popular and notorious bank robber. A decent family man and decorated war hero, he returned from World War II with one dream in mind: to provide for his wife and two children by making a living as an actor. All he got was frustration, desperation, rejection and tragedy. Thanks to careful writing and direction by newcomer Nathan Morlando and a powerful, charismatic centerpiece performance by Canadian heartthrob Scott Speedman, Citizen Gangster is a sympathetic portrait of this legendary career criminal as steeped in nuance and controversy as that of Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. Read More
One of the many delights of Bernie, the offbeat new comedy by Richard Linklater, is that it is fresh, surprising and funny without going for sitcom punch lines or ridiculous, contrived situations inserted for guffaws. It’s not hilarious. It’s just warm and real enough to keep you smiling and awed at the same time. It is also the only movie I have ever liked Jack Black in, one of the few times Matthew McConaughey, a terrible actor, has ever come anywhere close to giving a tolerable performance, and features Shirley MacLaine’s best role in years. A lot to like here, and I liked it all. Read More
Directed by Mary Harron, who picks unusual subjects (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol and The Notorious Bettie Page) and follows through with drive, focus and a relentless devotion to drawing fine lines between the real and the imaginary, The Moth Diaries is a horror film with a difference. It exudes more emotional intensity than mere things that jump out of closets and go bump in the night.
The setting is Brangwyn College, a former hotel turned into an elite boarding school for proper young ladies, in the middle of a forest where weird things are happening among the mushrooms and moss vines. Read More
Failure is no disgrace at the movies. Rain falls so often in every first-rate director’s life and career it becomes part of the territory, and comebacks are inevitable. But when a veteran cast of wasted champions goes down for the count before the director even yells, “Action!” disappointment doubles.
Nobody survives a train wreck like Lawrence Kasdan’s Darling Companion without Band-Aids, but Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest and Sam Shepard might need sutures. Read More
Warm as a cashmere muffler, relaxed as a happy kitten, and ready for an attack of total perfection, Barbara Cook’s new show at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency shows off the legendary singer in a more intimate light than ever. She calls this appearance “Let’s Fall in Love,” and for good reason. Spring is a time for love songs, so through April 21, she’s up to her Easter bonnet brim with them. And this is the first time she has ever selected the song list on her own, without the aid of a musical “boss,” and done the layouts and interpolations herself. The result is fresh and as personal as if you were spending an evening in her own living room while she pulled favorite tunes from her piano bench. I have never heard that magical voice more mercurial or sparkling with so much musical magic. Read More
