As the curtain fell after the fourth round of applause for the American Repertory Theater’s highly anticipated and highly controversial revival of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” which opened on August 31 in Cambridge, Mass., one couldn’t help but give thanks for George Gershwin and Audra McDonald, who played the female title role. Owing to…
Coming soon to an arena near you: the Torah! A big-budget adaptation of the Old Testament will tour the United States starting in late 2012 or early 2013, reports entertainment website Deadline Hollywood. The show, simply called “The Bible,” is being helmed by Philip William McKinley, the director who stepped in to save the massively…
Is Broadway ready for dancing girls in the Warsaw ghetto? Can an American musical high kick through the darkest moments of Jewish history and still avoid giving offense, or worse, falling into kitsch? “The People in the Picture,” a new musical playing at the Roundabout theater until June 19, raises this question, treading where even…
“The Normal Heart,” just revived on Broadway, is less a play than a sensory experience, likely to leave audiences feeling drained, exhilarated and perhaps a bit guilty. That the play is powerful is, given its subject matter, to be expected. That it is nuanced as well is a tribute to playwright Larry Kramer, a man…
Babs fans, how lucky can you get? (Funny Lady pun!) Not only has the Duck Sauce song, “Barbra Streisand,” crept over 44 million YouTube views, far outnumbering any video of Streisand herself, a customizable version of the song is now going viral at GoBarbra. The website allows viewers to type in their own names or…
Jerome A. Chanes goes to see The Living Theatre’s production of “Korach.” Curt Schleier tells the story of three Broadway producers. Jay Michaelson questions whether mysticism is real. Philologos is possessed. Laurence Zuckerman looks back at the life of Judah L. Magnes, one of 20th-century Jewry’s most important — and most overlooked — leaders. Glenn…
The once-seedy Tel Aviv suburb of Holon has become a major tourist destination thanks to its arts scene. The Milken Archive of Jewish Music has launched a virtual museum. A Jewish big band in New York’s East Village is attracting jazz talent from all over the Tri-State Region. British Jewish filmmaker Mike Leigh has canceled…
James Logan’s new play “Red” about abstract painter Mark Rothko, which has just opened on Broadway, begins with an unobstructed view of Alfred Molina’s back. Molina as Rothko, staring at his own painting, begins to pontificate — and this, in essence, is the central image of the play: a self-absorbed artist/genius who turns away from…
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