theater

Michael Riedel with Alan Cumming and guest (Patrick McMullan)

New York Post Theater Critic Michael Riedel on ‘Brilliantly’ Playing Self in Smash

People keep coming up to me and telling me, “I didn’t know Michael had a mother!” exclaimed Mrs. Riedel, proving once and for all that the famously divisive theater critic Michael Riedel was not hatched out of an  egg of searing criticism. We were discussing her son after the Theatre Communication Group’s  Salon Evening at The Players club, which Mr. Riedel had moderated.

“I get that a lot,” she smiled. We smiled back at our future mother-in-law. Read More

The Wild Party ‘s Over, And the Allergist ‘s Stuffed-Up

There are no accidents, said Dr. Jung, though he was never a drama critic. But what accounts for the phenomenon of two productions of The Wild Party ? Unless, that is, Joseph Moncure March’s 1926 jazz-age poem about druggy, tragic decadence is coincidentally the spirit of our times.

Yet March’s quite renowned syncopated opening to Read More