Two years ago, I took a morning off work to attend my childhood rabbi’s funeral. Ours wasn’t an observant family, and I really didn’t have any relationship with the rabbi beyond my decades-ago bar mitzvah, but Jehiel Orenstein, of Congregration Beth El in South Orange, N.J., was a nice man and a good man, a…
When I first meet Helen Mirren, the actress pauses before she shakes my hand. Instead, she goes for the hand sanitizer. “I’m appearing in a play,” she says, “and I’m deathly afraid of catching a cold.” I suggest a fist bump instead, but once sanitized she goes with the more traditional route. Mirren is currently…
Although he is by all appearances a man who does what he wants when he wants, Larry David is nevertheless obsessed by etiquette. It is a recurring motif throughout his two landmark television series, “Seinfeld,” which he co-created, and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which he created and in which he stars. There are debates about tipping,…
When “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in the fall of 1964, I was singing in the chorus in “Ben Franklin In Paris,” another Broadway show, which starred Robert Preston. I also performed in the ballroom scene whenever one of the dancers wasn’t feeling well, because I was the only singer who could also…
Started an acclaimed fashion blog? Check. Founded a magazine? Check. Gave a TED talk? Check. Acted alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini? Check. Hung out with Vogue’s Anna Wintour? Check. Starred in a Broadway show? Check. But celebrate her 18th birthday? That’s something Tavi Gevinson managed only this past April. At 11, Gevinson had garnered…
When I heard that The Public Theater was mounting a musical adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s “The Fortress of Solitude,” I was skeptical of what kind of hot mess it might become. I’d read the book when it came out in 2003 and deeply admired both its encyclopedic evocation of 1970s Brooklyn and its astute understanding…
Amir Kapoor is a guy you know, maybe went to college with. His parents were born in India — or was it Pakistan? — and he grew up in a devout Muslim-American family. He went to college, then to law school; along the way he abandoned his faith, and now he’s a corporate lawyer at…
There’s always some nostalgia baked into a Broadway musical, that old-fashioned and always-dying art form that reached its apex in middle of the 20th century. It’s there in the subject matter, too: Even the freshest “Guys and Dolls” puts you in vintage New York; “Gypsy” is ever in the late days of vaudeville; and even…
100% of profits support our journalism
