Morgan Entrekin on the Small Kindnesses of a Literary Giant In London today there will be a memorial celebration for Tom Stoppard. When Tom passed away last November, he was acclaimed and eulogized brilliantly all over the world. To read some of those encomiums you can head here. But in honor of today’s celebration, I…
CrazySexyCool, an ambitious new musical about the visionary 90s trio TLC at Arena Stage in Washington DC, aspires to make good on its title and then some. Crammed with platinum sing-alongs and tabloid-chronicled plot twists, it follows the legendary girl group – Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas and Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins – through…
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Shakespeare’s villains used it at the Globe, walking toward the groundlings to whisper their twisted truths. Since then, it’s been supersized. At big moments in musicals like “A Chorus Line” and “Ragtime,” the cast storms the footlights as if to mow them down — and then…
Over the years, there have probably been 10,000 balcony scenes in 10,000 productions of “Romeo and Juliet.” And in that time, Juliet’s spot high above the Capulet garden has been played onstage by a window, a ladder, an Italianate porch, even a chair. There have been as many kinds of balconies as there have been…
John Basinger, an actor and college professor widely believed to be the only person ever to have memorized all 12 books of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” — a feat he turned into a one-man show that inspired research into the workings of memory — died on May 29 in Brookings, S.D. He was…
In 1949, shortly after “Death of a Salesman” premiered on Broadway, Arthur Miller wrote an article in The New York Times titled “Tragedy and the Common Man” that began, “In this age few tragedies are written.” He suggested that this was thought to be due to a “paucity of heroes among us,” which has led…
I always experience a bit of chronological confusion about “Girl, Interrupted.” Susanna Kaysen published her memoir in 1993, and it was made into a movie in 1999 — a super-melodramatic version starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie — so it often feels to me like an emblem of the ’90s. When I call to mind…
Caissie Levy was Broadway’s first Elsa, starring as the Queen of Arendelle in the stage adaptation of “Frozen.” She was a hippie in “Hair” and a potter in “Ghost.” Since then, she’s played a lot of moms: a bedridden mother in an Off Broadway production of “The Bedwetter,” a bipolar mother in a London production…
There’s a Hollywood action star, standing in silhouette at the top of a creepy manor’s staircase, dressed in a corset and jockstrap, thighs fitted into fishnets and hair secured under a wig that could have been scalped from Charli XCX. “I’m just a sweet transvestite,” the action star, Luke Evans, croons, suggestively caressing his nipples….
María Nieves Rego, who with her dance partner and onetime husband, Juan Carlos Copes, formed a duo that, despite their often painful personal relationship, helped spark a tango revival in Argentina that spread worldwide, died on April 19 in Buenos Aires. She was 91. Her death was announced by the Argentine Association of Actors and…
