Dick Scanlan Archives - TheaterScene.net

Dick Scanlan

The New York Pops: Everything I Know: Mandy Gonzalez Sings Lin-Manuel Miranda

November 23, 2025

These highlights stood out not because they were big, but because they were grounded. Nothing felt inflated or overworked. Reineke kept the orchestra responsive, and Gonzalez moved through Miranda’s catalog with the ease of someone who knows the material from the inside out — from the early basement-club creativity of "Freestyle Love Supreme" to the cross-platform storytelling that carries him from "In the Heights" to "Encanto" without changing his fingerprint. [more]

Renascence

October 30, 2018

In her own time, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) was a rock star and a best-selling author until illness and postwar culture dimmed her luster. Still she fascinates with her bohemian lifestyle, beauty, love affairs with both men and women, feminist views, and effortless sounding poetry. In recent years, her life has again obsessed biographers and playwrights in such works as "Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay" (2001), "Becoming Vincent" (2013) and "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay" (2014). Add to this list the adventurous Transport Group’s world premiere musical "Renascence," with book by Dick Scanlan and lyrics from Millay’s own poems set to music by Carmel Dean. Unfortunately, the new show is often arch and pretentious and the musical settings are entirely in the wrong style for Millay’s lyrics from the 1920’s. [more]

Whorl Inside a Loop

August 29, 2015

A titanic ensemble of six highly talented actors plays the prisoners as well as multiple roles including females with slight costume changes. Derrick Baskin, Nicholas Christopher, Chris Myers, Ryan Quinn, Daniel J. Watts, and Donald Webber, Jr. all superbly convey the pathos, comedy and humanity of these characters. [more]