Howard Ashman

The New York Pops —2025 Opening Night

October 25, 2025

Steven Reineke and The New York Pops opened their Carnegie Hall season with a luminous concert tracing the path of great songs from Broadway to Hollywood. Hugh Panaro and Elizabeth Stanley lent the evening its beating heart, blending theatrical soul with cinematic sweep. [more]

Little Shop of Horrors

November 5, 2019

In a counterintuitive casting coup, handsome Jonathan Groff stars as the nebbish Seymour Krelborn who works at Mushnik’s (a funny, kvetchy Tom Alan Robbins) failing flower shop on Skid Row. Seymour discovers an odd potted plant in Chinatown after an eclipse, a plant that leads to great success for both Mushnik and Seymour. Although it is difficult to forget Groff’s physical attributes (well-hidden under Tom Broecker’s costumes), he delivers a brilliantly realized sad sack Seymour. Poor Seymour is in love with the much put upon Audrey played with ditzy perfection by Tammy Blanchard. Two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle chews the scenery as Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend, Orin Scrivello plus several other characters such as a William Morris agent and an NBC TV executive. [more]

Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

July 30, 2016

The charming and charismatic Broadway leading man Santino Fontana performs the role of Elliot Rosewater with as much commitment as if he were playing J. Pierrepont Finch. Mr. Fontana’s performance is the magnetic anchor of the show. Kilgore Trout is a loony science fiction author of 117 novels and over 2000 short stories and is a recurring character in Vonnegut’s novels. Here he appears briefly near the end of the show wearing a hunting cap and rising from a wheelchair. That he is played by the legendary 85-year-old James Earl Jones with his thundering voice, joyous presence and sly comic timing is wonderfully jolting. Mr. Jones also is the narrator. [more]

Editor’s Notes: The 2014 Tony Season Heats Up

May 16, 2014

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]

Little Shop of Horrors

November 28, 2003

Hunter Foster as Seymour Krelbourn and "Audrey II" (the puppet plant created by The Jim Henson Company)

Foster, recently of "Urinetown," is terrific as the Faustian nebbish who sells his soul to win the girl he loves but, mostly, for riches. Butler holds her own and more (for those who cherish the stage and screen performance of Ellen Greene), as Audrey. Bartlett zeros in on Mushnik (shades of Zero Mostel in his performance) until the plant zeros in on him. DeQuina Moore, Trisha Jeffrey, and Carla J. Hargrove, are delicious as the perky girl-group and urchins that sing those tight vocal arrangements by Robert Billig and cavort to Kathleen Marshall's delightful choreography. Bon appetit! [more]