his year's Tony Awards will go to the music hall murder mystery, A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder (Best Musical) and All the Way, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan's LBJ play, All the Way (Best Play). [more]
I sure felt the spirit of the late Jonathan Larson strongly at the Trumbull (Connecticut) High School's production of his musical Rent. This was the school, you may recall, where the principal tried to cancel the students' production of Rent, and the students protested successfully for weeks until they won the right to do the show. Perhaps the fact that they had to fight so hard to do the show gave them an extra investment in it. But they pulled it off well. [more]
As I write this, I've just gotten back from attending Edith O'Hara's 97th birthday party, and the 13th Street Repertory Theater (50 W. 13th Street, New York City), which she has long run. She is the senior-most theater-owner/producer in New York. She has an idealistic spirit I've long found inspiring. (I first met her years ago, when I wrote something about her and her theater for The New York Post. She was then battling real-estate developers who sought to demolish her theater and put up a high-rise in its place; she wasn't going to about to give up without a fight. All of these years later, she and her theater are still going strong. [more]
