Sixty years ago this evening, West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. Even with such craftsmen as Arthur Laurents writing the book; music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the most essential contributor was its director and choreographer, Jerome Robbins. It's not for nothing there was also the additional "Conceived by" credit that Robbins insisted upon (much to Laurents's dismay). The idea of a balletic update of Romeo and Juliet, set amidst wa

A week ago, I posted a birthday tribute to the director and theatre scholar Harold Clurman. Also deserving of a similar celebration, is his longtime friend and contemporary Cheryl Crawford, born within the same week (one year and six days later). These theatre artists shared two of the most distinguished Broadway careers of the mid-twentieth century. And, as one of the earliest of women producers, Crawford's list of achievements were the envy of many who came after her, be th

With today marking the anniversary of the opening of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, fifty-three years ago, I thought I would share the following excerpt from my book Up in the Cheap Seats, a Historical Memoir of Broadway, which explains only a portion of why this musical will always hold a special place in my heart: My Great-Aunt Helen introduced me to the lights of Broadway when, in 1967, she took me to see my first Broadway musical, I Do! I Do!, which starred Mary Martin

Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, a play that earned him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes, opened on Broadway fifty-one years ago this evening. Besides Robert E. Sherwood, whose works are rarely (if ever) revived today, Albee is the only other playwright to have collected three Pulitzers for drama. Of course Eugene O'Neill must be included as a three-timer, though he actually holds the record with four. By all rights, Albee should be tied with O'Neill, as his first Bro

"I disapprove of much, but I enjoy almost everything." So said Harold Clurman, the "author, teacher, lecturer, commentator and conversationalist," as the New York Times wrote about him in a 1979 article published to mark a significant occasion in his life and career: the opening of an Off-Broadway theatre on W 42nd Street bearing his name. Such was his influence, that when it was eventually torn down a few years later to make way for a collective of theatres that were bigger

I have been getting a strong response to the columns I've posted all week about certain Broadway shows that I saw during my teenage theatregoing years in the early 1970s, some of which are included in my memoir, Up in the Cheap Seats. Delving a bit deeper, I thought I should write about something I didn't cover in the book: when Katharine Hepburn portrayed Coco Chanel, the fabled French fashion designer in her first musical, aptly titled Coco. Taking on a brand new challenge

In yesterday's column I wrote of certain Broadway shows so troubled that they folded during their preview period, before even having the chance to open. There also are a number that closed right then and there on their opening night, always a sad thing. It happened a lot more at the height of my teenage theatregoing years, in the early 1970s, than it does today. Now, fifty years later, skyrocketing budgets make the risks to investors greater with each passing season and well-

In an on-line article published last week, Playbill listed twenty-two Broadway musicals that closed in one night over a period of the past fifty years. Of the twenty-two mentioned, I saw six of them—and all were at the height of my teenage theatre going years between 1969 and 1973, the period covered by my book Up in the Cheap Seats. This was a time when it was a far more common occurrence for shows to close after one performance. Sad as it must have been for everyone involve

When I was a kid and infatuated with the theatre, I had only one lifeline that connected me to Broadway from my home on Long Island: the Sunday Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times. And there was no Sunday to which I looked more forward than the one in September that featured the full-page ads for the upcoming season. Yesterday, just as it has reliably done for me these past fifty years, the issue did not disappoint. Not only was there newly minted artwork on display,

On this date in 1970, close to seven years past its opening night, Hello, Dolly! became the longest running musical in Broadway history. Of course this milestone has now been surpassed many times (Phantom of the Opera has been at the Majestic for the past twenty-eight years), but in light of its recent smash hit Broadway revival, I thought it might be fun to look back and appreciate what it all meant forty-seven years ago. Ethel Merman as Dolly and Jack Goode as Horace in Hel

"The greatest actor America has produced." That is what the New York Times wrote on December 28, 1871 in the obituary of James Henry Hackett, a man who these 146 years later no longer holds claim to that honor. It's hard to imagine a modern obit closing with a final sentence like the one for Hackett, exclaiming that "a thrill of sadness will go through the City when the news is told that James Hackett has ceased to be." This for a member of a profession that, at the time, had

Picnic is William Inge's beautiful slice-of-life drama which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Two years later, it was made into a hit film starring William Holden and Kim Novak and, has forever after never managed to go out of fashion. It's been revived on Broadway twice (most recently in 2013), which is a bit surprising, considering that its status over the years has gone from being something contemporary to a period piece. But the sexual repression of the 1950s is still a su